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Gunsight Pass: How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West

by William MacLeod Raine · English · Gutenberg #14574 · 464,087 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Gunsight Pass: How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West

Author: William MacLeod Raine


        
Release date: January 3, 2005 [eBook #14574]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GUNSIGHT PASS: HOW OIL CAME TO THE CATTLE COUNTRY AND BROUGHT A NEW WEST ***

                             GUNSIGHT PASS

       HOW OIL CAME TO THE CATTLE COUNTRY AND BROUGHT A NEW WEST

                       BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

AUTHOR OF THE BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP, A MAN FOUR SQUARE, THE YUKON TRAIL, ETC.

                                 1921




TO JAMES H. LANGLEY

WHO LIVED MANY OF THESE PAGES IN THE DAYS OF HIS HOT-BLOODED YOUTH




CONTENTS


       I. "CROOKED AS A DOG'S HIND LAIG"

      II. THE RACE

     III. DAVE RIDES ON HIS SPURS

      IV. THE PAINT HOSS DISAPPEARS

       V. SUPPER AT DELMONICO'S INTERRUPTED

      VI. BY WAY OF A WINDOW

     VII. BOB HART TAKES A HAND

    VIII. THE D BAR LAZY R BOYS MEET AN ANGEL

      IX. GUNSIGHT PASS

       X. THE CATTLE TRAIN

      XI. THE NIGHT CLERK GETS BUSY PRONTO

     XII. THE LAW PUZZLES DAVE

    XIII. FOR MURDER

     XIV. TEN YEARS

      XV. IN DENVER

     XVI. DAVE MEETS TWO FRIENDS AND A FOE

    XVII. OIL

   XVIII. DOBLE PAYS A VISIT

     XIX. AN INVOLUNTARY BATH

      XX. THE LITTLE MOTHER FREES HER MIND

     XXI. THE HOLD-UP

    XXII. NUMBER THREE COMES IN

   XXIII. THE GUSHER

    XXIV. SHORTY

     XXV. MILLER TALKS

    XXVI. DAVE ACCEPTS AN INVITATION

   XXVII. AT THE JACKPOT

  XXVIII. DAVE MEETS A FINANCIER

    XXIX. THREE IN CONSULTATION

     XXX. ON THE FLYER

    XXXI. TWO ON THE HILLTOPS

   XXXII. DAVE BECOMES AN OFFICE MAN

  XXXIII. ON THE DODGE

   XXXIV. A PLEASANT EVENING

    XXXV. FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL

   XXXVI. FIGHTING FIRE

  XXXVII. SHORTY ASK A QUESTION

 XXXVIII. DUG DOBLE RIDES INTO THE HILLS

   XXXIX. THE TUNNEL

      XL. A MESSAGE

     XLI. HANK BRINGS BAD NEWS

    XLII. SHORTY IS AWAKENED

   XLIII. JUAN OTERO IS CONSCRIPTED

    XLIV. THE BULLDOG BARKS

     XLV. JOYCE MAKES PIES




GUNSIGHT PASS




CHAPTER I

"CROOKED AS A DOG'S HIND LAIG"


It was a land of splintered peaks, of deep, dry gorges, of barren mesas
burnt by the suns of a million torrid summers. The normal condition of it
was warfare. Life here had to protect itself with a tough, callous rind,
to attack with a swift, deadly sting. Only the fit survived.

But moonlight had magically touched the hot, wrinkled earth with a fairy
godmother's wand. It was bathed in a weird, mysterious beauty. Into the
crotches of the hills lakes of wondrous color had been poured at sunset.
The crests had flamed with crowns of glory, the cañons become deep pools
of blue and purple shadow. Blurred by kindly darkness, the gaunt ridges
had softened to pastels of violet and bony mountains to splendid
sentinels keeping watch over a gulf of starlit space.

Around the camp-fire the drivers of the trail herd squatted on their
heels or lay sprawled at indolent ease. The glow of the leaping flames
from the twisted mesquite lit their lean faces, tanned to bronzed health
by the beat of an untempered sun and the sweep of parched winds. Most of
them were still young, scarcely out of their boyhood; a few had reached
maturity. But all were products of the desert. The high-heeled boots, the
leather chaps, the kerchiefs knotted round the neck, were worn at its
insistence. Upon every line of their features, every shade of their
thought, it had stamped its brand indelibly.

The talk was frank and elemental. It had the crisp crackle that goes with
free, unfettered youth. In a parlor some of it would have been offensive,
but under the stars of the open desert it was as natural as the life
itself. They spoke of the spring rains, of the Crawford-Steelman feud, of
how they meant to turn Malapi upside down in their frolic when they
reached town. They "rode" each other with jokes that were familiar old
friends. Their horse play was rough but good-natured.

Out of the soft shadows of the summer night a boy moved from the remuda
toward the camp-fire. He was a lean, sandy-haired young fellow, his
figure still lank and unfilled. In another year his shoulders would be
broader, his frame would take on twenty pounds. As he sat down on the
wagon tongue at the edge of the firelit circle the stringiness of his
appearance became more noticeable.

A young man waved a hand toward him by way of introduction. "Gents of the
D Bar Lazy R outfit, we now have with us roostin' on the wagon tongue Mr.
David Sanders, formerly of Arizona, just returned from makin' love to his
paint hoss. Mr. Sanders will make oration on the why, wherefore, and
how-come-it of Chiquito's superiority to all other equines whatever."

The youth on the wagon tongue smiled. His blue eyes were gentle and
friendly. From his pocket he had taken a knife and was sharpening it on
one of his dawn-at-the-heel-boots.

"I'd like right well to make love to that pinto my own se'f, Bob,"
commented a weather-beaten puncher. "Any old time Dave wants to saw him
off onto me at sixty dollars I'm here to do business."

"You're sure an easy mark, Buck," grunted a large fat man leaning against
a wheel. His white, expressionless face and soft hands differentiated him
from the tough range-riders. He did not belong with the outfit, but had
joined it the day before with George Doble, a half-brother of the trail
foreman, to travel with it as far as Malapi. In the Southwest he was
known as Ad Miller. The two men had brought with them in addition to
their own mounts a led pack-horse.

Doble backed up his partner. "Sure are, Buck. I can get cowponies for ten
and fifteen dollars--all I want of 'em," he said, and contrived by the
lift of his lip to make the remark offensive.

"Not ponies like Chiquito," ventured Sanders amiably.

"That so?" jeered Doble.

He looked at David out of a sly and shifty eye. He had only one. The
other had been gouged out years ago in a drunken fracas.

"You couldn't get Chiquito for a hundred dollars. Not for sale," the
owner of the horse said, a little stiffly.

Miller's fat paunch shook with laughter. "I reckon not--at that price.
I'd give all of fohty for him."

"Different here," replied Doble. "What has this pinto got that makes him
worth over thirty?"

"He's some bronc," explained Bob Hart. "Got a bagful of tricks, a nice
disposition, and sure can burn the wind."

"Yore friend must be valuin' them parlor tricks at ten dollars apiece,"
murmured Miller. "He'd ought to put him in a show and not keep him to
chase cow tails with."

"At that, I've seen circus hosses that weren't one two three with
Chiquito. He'll shake hands and play dead and dance to a mouth-organ and
come a-runnin' when Dave whistles."

"You don't say." The voice of the fat man was heavy with sarcasm. "And on
top of all that edjucation he can run too."

The temper of Sanders began to take an edge. He saw no reason why these
strangers should run on him, to use the phrase of the country. "I don't
claim my pinto's a racer, but he can travel."

"Hmp!" grunted Miller skeptically.

"I'm here to say he can," boasted the owner, stung by the manner of the
other.

"Don't look to me like no racer," Doble dissented. "Why, I'd be 'most
willin' to bet that pack-horse of ours, Whiskey Bill, can beat him."

Buck Byington snorted. "Pack-horse, eh?" The old puncher's brain was
alive with suspicions. On account of the lameness of his horse he had
returned to camp in the middle of the day and had discovered the two
newcomers trying out the speed of the pinto. He wondered now if this
precious pair of crooks had been getting a line on the pony for future
use. It occurred to him that Dave was being engineered into a bet.

The chill, hard eyes of Miller met his. "That's what he said, Buck--our
pack-horse."

For just an instant the old range-rider hesitated, then shrugged his
shoulders. It was none of his business. He was a cautious man, not
looking for trouble. Moreover, the law of the range is that every man
must play his own hand. So he dropped the matter with a grunt that
expressed complete understanding and derision.

Bob Hart helped things along. "Jokin' aside, what's the matter with a
race? We'll be on the Salt Flats to-morrow. I've got ten bucks says the
pinto can beat yore Whiskey Bill."

"Go you once," answered Doble after a moment's apparent consideration.
"Bein' as I'm drug into this I'll be a dead-game sport. I got fifty
dollars more to back the pack-horse. How about it, Sanders? You got
the sand to cover that? Or are you plumb scared of my broomtail?"

"Betcha a month's pay--thirty-five dollars. Give you an order on the boss
if I lose," retorted Dave. He had not meant to bet, but he could not
stand this fellow's insolent manner.

"That order good, Dug?" asked Doble of his half-brother.

The foreman nodded. He was a large leather-faced man in the late
thirties. His reputation in the cattle country was that of a man ill to
cross. Dug Doble was a good cowman--none better. Outside of that his
known virtues were negligible, except for the primal one of gameness.

"Might as well lose a few bucks myself, seeing as Whiskey Bill belongs to
me," said Miller with his wheezy laugh. "Who wants to take a whirl,
boys?"

Inside of three minutes he had placed a hundred dollars. The terms of the
race were arranged and the money put in the hands of the foreman.

"Each man to ride his own caballo," suggested Hart slyly.

This brought a laugh. The idea of Ad Miller's two hundred and fifty
pounds in the seat of a jockey made for hilarity.

"I reckon George will have to ride the broomtail. We don't aim to break
its back," replied Miller genially.

His partner was a short man with a spare, wiry body. Few men trusted him
after a glance at the mutilated face. The thin, hard lips gave warning
that he had sold himself to evil. The low forehead, above which the hair
was plastered flat in an arc, advertised low mentality.

An hour later Buck Byington drew Sanders aside.

"Dave, you're a chuckle-haided rabbit. If ever I seen tinhorn sports them
two is such. They're collectin' a livin' off'n suckers. Didn't you sabe
that come-on stuff? Their pack-horse is a ringer. They tried him out
this evenin', but I noticed they ran under a blanket. Both of 'em are
crooked as a dog's hind laig."

"Maybeso," admitted the young man. "But Chiquito never went back on me
yet. These fellows may be overplayin' their hand, don't you reckon?"

"Not a chanct. That tumblebug Miller is one fishy proposition, and his
sidekick Doble--say, he's the kind of bird that shoots you in the stomach
while he's shakin' hands with you. They're about as warm-hearted as a
loan shark when he's turnin' on the screws--and about as impulsive. Me,
I aim to button up my pocket when them guys are around."

Dave returned to the fire. The two visitors were sitting side by side,
and the leaping flames set fantastic shadows of them moving. One of
these, rooted where Miller sat, was like a bloated spider watching its
victim. The other, dwarfed and prehensile, might in its uncanny
silhouette have been an imp of darkness from the nether regions.

Most of the riders had already rolled up in their blankets and fallen
asleep. To a reduced circle Miller was telling the story of how his
pack-horse won its name.

"... so I noticed he was actin' kinda funny and I seen four pin-pricks in
his nose. O' course I hunted for Mr. Rattler and killed him, then give
Bill a pint of whiskey. It ce'tainly paralyzed him proper. He got
salivated as a mule whacker on a spree. His nose swelled up till it was
big as a barrel--never did get down to normal again. Since which the ol'
plug has been Whiskey Bill."

This reminiscence did not greatly entertain Dave. He found his blankets,
rolled up in them, and promptly fell asleep. For once he dreamed, and his
dreams were not pleasant. He thought that he was caught in a net woven by
a horribly fat spider which watched him try in vain to break the web that
tightened on his arms and legs. Desperately he struggled to escape while
the monster grinned at him maliciously, and the harder he fought the more
securely was he enmeshed.




CHAPTER II

THE RACE


The coyotes were barking when the cook's triangle brought Dave from his
blankets. The objects about him were still mysterious in the pre-dawn
darkness. The shouting of the wranglers and the bells of the remuda
came musically as from a great distance. Hart joined his friend and the
two young men walked out to the remuda together. Each rider had on the
previous night belled the mount he wanted, for he knew that in the
morning it would be too dark to distinguish one bronco from another. The
animals were rim-milling, going round and round in a circle to escape the
lariat.

Dave rode in close and waited, rope ready, his ears attuned to the sound
of his own bell. A horse rushed jingling past. The rope snaked out, fell
true, tightened over the neck of the cowpony, brought up the animal
short. Instantly it surrendered, making no further, attempt to escape.
The roper made a half-hitch round the nose of the bronco, swung to its
back, and cantered back to camp.

In the gray dawn near details were becoming visible. The mountains began
to hover on the edge of the young world. The wind was blowing across half
a continent.

Sanders saddled, then rode out upon the mesa. He whistled sharply. There
came an answering nicker, and presently out of the darkness a pony
trotted. The pinto was a sleek and glossy little fellow, beautiful in
action and gentle as a kitten.

The young fellow took the well-shaped head in his arms, fondled the
soft, dainty nose that nuzzled in his pocket for sugar, fed Chiquito a
half-handful of the delicacy in his open palm, and put the pony through
the repertoire of tricks he had taught his pet.

"You wanta shake a leg to-day, old fellow, and throw dust in that
tinhorn's face," he murmured to his four-footed friend, gentling it with
little pats of love and admiration. "Adios, Chiquito. I know you won't
throw off on yore old pal. So long, old pie-eater."

Across the mesa Dave galloped back, swung from the saddle, and made a
bee-line for breakfast. The other men were already busy at this important
business. From the tail of the chuck wagon he took a tin cup and a tin
plate. He helped himself to coffee, soda biscuits, and a strip of steak
just forked from a large kettle of boiling lard. Presently more coffee,
more biscuits, and more steak went the way of the first helping. The
hard-riding life of the desert stimulates a healthy appetite.

The punchers of the D Bar Lazy R were moving a large herd to a new range.
It was made up of several lots bought from smaller outfits that had gone
out of business under the pressure of falling prices, short grass, and
the activity of rustlers. The cattle had been loose-bedded in a gulch
close at hand, the upper end of which was sealed by an impassable cliff.
Many such cañons in the wilder part of the mountains, fenced across the
face to serve as a corral, had been used by rustlers as caches into which
to drift their stolen stock. This one had no doubt more than once played
such a part in days past.

Expertly the riders threw the cattle back to the mesa and moved them
forward. Among the bunch one could find the T Anchor brand, the Circle
Cross, the Diamond Tail, and the X-Z, scattered among the cows burned
with the D Bar Lazy R, which was the original brand of the owner,
Emerson Crawford.

The sun rose and filled the sky. In a heavy cloud of dust the cattle
trailed steadily toward the distant hills.

Near noon Buck, passing Dave where he rode as drag driver in the wake of
the herd, shouted a greeting at the young man. "Tur'ble hot. I'm spittin'
cotton."

Dave nodded. His eyes were red and sore from the alkali dust, his throat
dry as a lime kiln. "You done, said it, Buck. Hotter 'n hell or Yuma."

"Dug says for us to throw off at Seven-Mile Hole."

"I won't make no holler at that."

The herd leaders, reading the signs of a spring close at hand, quickened
the pace. With necks outstretched, bawling loudly, they hurried forward.
Forty-eight hours ago they had last satisfied their thirst. Usually Doble
watered each noon, but the desert yesterday had been dry as Sahara. Only
such moisture was available as could be found in black grama and needle
grass.

The point of the herd swung in toward the cottonwoods that straggled down
from the draw. For hours the riders were kept busy moving forward the
cattle that had been watered and holding back the pressure of thirsty
animals.

Again the outfit took the desert trail. Heat waves played on the sand.
Vegetation grew scant except for patches of cholla and mesquite, a
sand-cherry bush here and there, occasionally a clump of shining poison
ivy.

Sunset brought them to the Salt Flats. The foreman gave orders to throw
off and make camp.

A course was chosen for the race. From a selected point the horses
were to run to a clump of mesquite, round it, and return to the
starting-place. Dug Doble was chosen both starter and judge.

Dave watched Whiskey Bill with the trained eyes of a horseman. The animal
was an ugly brute as to the head. Its eyes were set too close, and the
shape of the nose was deformed from the effects of the rattlesnake's
sting. But in legs and body it had the fine lines of a racer. The horse
was built for speed. The cowpuncher's heart sank. His bronco was fast,
willing, and very intelligent, but the little range pony had not been
designed to show its heels to a near-thoroughbred.

"Are you ready?" Doble asked of the two men in the saddles.

His brother said, "Let 'er go!" Sanders nodded. The revolver barked.

Chiquito was off like a flash of light, found its stride instantly. The
training of a cowpony makes for alertness, for immediate response. Before
it had covered seventy-five yards the pinto was three lengths to the
good. Dave, flying toward the halfway post, heard his friend Hart's
triumphant "Yip yip yippy yip!" coming to him on the wind.

He leaned forward, patting his horse on the shoulder, murmuring words of
encouragement into its ear. But he knew, without turning round, that the
racer galloping at his heels was drawing closer. Its long shadow thrown
in front of it by the westering sun, reached to Dave's stirrups, crept to
Chiquito's head, moved farther toward the other shadow plunging wildly
eastward. Foot by foot the distance between the horses lessened to two
lengths, to one, to half a length. The ugly head of the racer came
abreast of the cowpuncher. With sickening certainty the range-rider knew
that his Chiquito was doing the best that was in it. Whiskey Bill was a
faster horse.

Simultaneously he became aware of two things. The bay was no longer
gaining. The halfway mark was just ahead. The cowpuncher knew exactly how
to make the turn with the least possible loss of speed and ground. Too
often, in headlong pursuit of a wild hill steer, he had whirled as on a
dollar, to leave him any doubt now. Scarce slackening speed, he swept the
pinto round the clump of mesquite and was off for home.

Dave was halfway back before he was sure that the thud of Whiskey Bill's
hoofs was almost at his heels. He called on the cowpony for a last spurt.
The plucky little horse answered the call, gathered itself for the home
stretch, for a moment held its advantage. Again Bob Hart's yell drifted
to Sanders.

Then he knew that the bay was running side by side with Chiquito, was
slowly creeping to the front. The two horses raced down the stretch
together, Whiskey Bill half a length in the lead and gaining at every
stride. Daylight showed between them when they crossed the line. Chiquito
had been outrun by a speedier horse.




CHAPTER III

DAVE RIDES ON HIS SPURS


Hart came up to his friend grinning. "Well, you old horn-toad, we got no
kick comin'. Chiquito run a mighty pretty race. Only trouble was his
laigs wasn't long enough."

The owner of the pony nodded, a lump in his throat. He was not thinking
about his thirty-five dollars, but about the futile race into which he
had allowed his little beauty to be trapped. Dave would not be twenty-one
till coming grass, and it still hurt his boyish pride to think that his
favorite had been beaten.

Another lank range-rider drifted up. "Same here, Dave. I'll kiss my
twenty bucks good-bye cheerful. You 'n' the li'l hoss run the best race,
at that. Chiquito started like a bullet out of a gun, and say, boys! how
he did swing round on the turn."

"Much obliged, Steve. I reckon he sure done his best," said Sanders
gratefully.

The voice of George Doble cut in, openly and offensively jubilant. "Me,
I'd ruther show the way at the finish than at the start. You're more
liable to collect the mazuma. I'll tell you now that broomtail never
had a chance to beat Whiskey Bill."

"Yore hoss can run, seh," admitted Dave.

"I _know_ it, but you don't. He didn't have to take the kinks out of his
legs to beat that plug."

"You get our money," said Hart quietly. "Ain't that enough without
rubbin' it in?"

"Sure I get yore money--easy money, at that," boasted Doble. "Got any
more you want to put up on the circus bronc?"

Steve Russell voiced his sentiments curtly. "You make me good and tired,
Doble. There's only one thing I hate more'n a poor loser--and that's a
poor winner. As for putting my money on the pinto, I'll just say this:
I'll bet my li'l' pile he can beat yore bay twenty miles, a hundred
miles, or five hundred."

"Not any, thanks. Whiskey Bill is a racer, not a mule team," Miller said,
laughing.

Steve loosened the center-fire cinch of his pony's saddle. He noted that
there was no real geniality in the fat man's mirth. It was a surface
thing designed to convey an effect of good-fellowship. Back of it lay
the chill implacability of the professional gambler.

The usual give-and-take of gay repartee was missing at supper that night.
Since they were of the happy-go-lucky, outdoor West it did not greatly
distress the D Bar Lazy R riders to lose part of their pay checks. Even
if it had, their spirits would have been unimpaired, for it is written in
their code that a man must take his punishment without whining. What hurt
was that they had been tricked, led like lambs to the killing. None of
them doubted now that the pack-horse of the gamblers was a "ringer."
These men had deliberately crossed the path of the trail outfit in order
to take from the vaqueros their money.

The punchers were sulky. Instead of a fair race they had been up against
an open-and-shut proposition, as Russell phrased it. The jeers of Doble
did not improve their tempers. The man was temperamentally mean-hearted.
He could not let his victims alone.

"They say one's born every minute, Ad. Dawged if I don't believe it," he
sneered.

Miller was not saying much himself, but his fat stomach shook at this
sally. If his partner could goad the boys into more betting he was quite
willing to divide the profits.

Audibly Hart yawned and murmured his sentiments aloud. "I'm liable to
tell these birds what I think of 'em, Steve, if they don't spend quite
some time layin' off'n us."

"Don't tell us out loud. We might hear you," advised Doble insolently.

"In regards to that, I'd sure worry if you did."

Dave was at that moment returning to his place with a cup of hot coffee.
By some perverse trick of fate his glance fell on Doble's sinister face
of malignant triumph. His self-control snapped, and in an instant the
whole course of his life was deflected from the path it would otherwise
have taken. With a flip he tossed up the tin cup so that the hot coffee
soused the crook.

"Goddlemighty!" screamed Doble, leaping to his feet. He reached for his
forty-five, just as Sanders closed with him. The range-rider's revolver,
like that of most of his fellows, was in a blanket roll in the wagon.

Miller, with surprising agility for a fat man, got to his feet and
launched himself at the puncher. Dave flung the smaller of his opponents
back against Steve, who was sitting tailor fashion beside him. The gunman
tottered and fell over Russell, who lost no time in pinning his hands to
the ground while Hart deftly removed the revolver from his pocket.

Swinging round to face Miller, Dave saw at once that the big man had
chosen not to draw his gun. In spite of his fat the gambler was a
rough-and-tumble fighter of parts. The extra weight had come in recent
years, but underneath it lay roped muscles and heavy bones. Men often
remarked that they had never seen a fat man who could handle himself like
Ad Miller. The two clinched. Dave had the under hold and tried to trip
his bulkier foe. The other side-stepped, circling round. He got one hand
under the boy's chin and drove it up and back, flinging the range-rider
a dozen yards.

Instantly Dave plunged at him. He had to get at close quarters, for he
could not tell when Miller would change his mind and elect to fight with
a gun. The man had chosen a hand-to-hand tussle, Dave knew, because he
was sure he could beat so stringy an opponent as himself. Once he got the
grip on him that he wanted the big gambler would crush him by sheer
strength. So, though the youngster had to get close, he dared not clinch.
His judgment was that his best bet was his fists.

He jabbed at the big white face, ducked, and jabbed again. Now he was in
the shine of the moon; now he was in darkness. A red streak came out on
the white face opposite, and he knew he had drawn blood. Miller roared
like a bull and flailed away at him. More than one heavy blow jarred him,
sent a bolt of pain shooting through him. The only thing he saw was that
shining face. He pecked away at it with swift jabs, taking what
punishment he must and dodging the rest.

Miller was furious. He had intended to clean up this bantam in about a
minute. He rushed again, broke through Dave's defense, and closed with
him. His great arms crushed into the ribs of his lean opponent. As they
swung round and round, Dave gasped for breath. He twisted and squirmed,
trying to escape that deadly hug. Somehow he succeeded in tripping his
huge foe.

They went down locked together, Dave underneath. The puncher knew that if
he had room Miller would hammer his face to a pulp. He drew himself close
to the barrel body, arms and legs wound tight like hoops.

Miller gave a yell of pain. Instinctively Dave moved his legs higher and
clamped them tighter. The yell rose again, became a scream of agony.

"Lemme loose!" shrieked the man on top. "My Gawd, you're killin' me!"

Dave had not the least idea what was disturbing Miller's peace of mind,
but whatever it was moved to his advantage. He clamped tighter, working
his heels into another secure position. The big man bellowed with pain.
"Take him off! Take him off!" he implored in shrill crescendo.

"What's all this?" demanded an imperious voice.

Miller was torn howling from the arms and legs that bound him and Dave
found himself jerked roughly to his feet. The big raw-boned foreman was
glaring at him above his large hook nose. The trail boss had been out
at the remuda with the jingler when the trouble began. He had arrived
in time to rescue his fat friend.

"What's eatin' you, Sanders?" he demanded curtly.

"He jumped George!" yelped Miller.

Breathing hard, Dave faced his foe warily. He was in a better strategic
position than he had been, for he had pulled the revolver of the fat man
from its holster just as they were dragged apart. It was in his right
hand now, pressed close to his hip, ready for instant use if need be. He
could see without looking that Doble was still struggling ineffectively
in the grip of Russell.

"Dave stumbled and spilt some coffee on George; then George he tried to
gun him. Miller mixed in then," explained Hart.

The foreman glared. "None of this stuff while you're on the trail with my
outfit. Get that, Sanders? I won't have it."

"Dave he couldn't hardly he'p hisse'f," Buck Byington broke in. "They was
runnin' on him considerable, Dug."

"I ain't askin' for excuses. I'm tellin' you boys what's what," retorted
the road boss. "Sanders, give him his gun."

The cowpuncher took a step backward. He had no intention of handing a
loaded gun to Miller while the gambler was in his present frame of mind.
That might be equivalent to suicide. He broke the revolver, turned the
cylinder, and shook out the cartridges. The empty weapon he tossed on the
ground.

"He ripped me with his spurs," Miller said sullenly. "That's howcome I
had to turn him loose."

Dave looked down at the man's legs. His trousers were torn to shreds.
Blood trickled down the lacerated calves where the spurs had roweled the
flesh cruelly. No wonder Miller had suddenly lost interest in the fight.
The vaquero thanked his lucky stars that he had not taken off his spurs
and left them with the saddle.

The first thing that Dave did was to strike straight for the wagon where
his roll of bedding was. He untied the rope, flung open the blankets, and
took from inside the forty-five he carried to shoot rattlesnakes. This he
shoved down between his shirt and trousers where it would be handy for
use in case of need. His roll he brought back with him as a justification
for the trip to the wagon. He had no intention of starting anything.
All he wanted was not to be caught at a disadvantage a second time.

Miller and the two Dobles were standing a little way apart talking
together in low tones. The fat man, his foot on the spoke of a wagon
wheel, was tying up one of his bleeding calves with a bandanna
handkerchief. Dave gathered that his contribution to the conversation
consisted mainly of fervent and almost tearful profanity.

The brothers appeared to be debating some point with heat. George
insisted, and the foreman gave up with a lift of his big shoulders.

"Have it yore own way. I hate to have you leave us after I tell you
there'll be no more trouble, but if that's how you feel about it I got
nothin' to say. What I want understood is this"--Dug Doble raised his
voice for all to hear--"that I'm boss of this outfit and won't stand for
any rough stuff. If the boys, or any one of 'em, can't lose their money
without bellyachin', they can get their time pronto."

The two gamblers packed their race-horse, saddled, and rode away without
a word to any of the range-riders. The men round the fire gave no sign
that they knew the confidence men were on the map until after they had
gone. Then tongues began to wag, the foreman having gone to the edge of
the camp with them.

"Well, my feelin's ain't hurt one li'l' bit because they won't play with
us no more," Steve Russell said, smiling broadly.

"Can you blame that fat guy for not wantin' to play with Dave here?"
asked Hart, and he beamed at the memory of what he had seen. "Son, you
ce'tainly gave him one surprise party when yore rowels dug in."

"Wonder to me he didn't stampede the cows, way he hollered," grinned a
third. "I don't grudge him my ten plunks. Not none. Dave he give me my
money's worth that last round."

"I had a little luck," admitted Dave modestly.

"Betcha," agreed Steve. "I was just startin' over to haul the fat guy off
Dave when he began bleatin' for us to come help him turn loose the bear.
I kinda took my time then."

"Onct I went to a play called 'All's Well That Ends Well,'" said Byington
reminiscently. "At the Tabor Grand the-á-ter, in Denver."

"Did it tell how a freckled cow-punch rode a fat tinhorn on his spurs?"
asked Hart.

"Bet he wears stovepipes on his laigs next time he mixes it with Dave,"
suggested one coffee-brown youth. "Well, looks like the show's over for
to-night. I'm gonna roll in." Motion carried unanimously.




CHAPTER IV

THE PAINT HOSS DISAPPEARS


Wakened by the gong, Dave lay luxuriously in the warmth of his blankets.
It was not for several moments that he remembered the fight or the
circumstances leading to it. The grin that lit his boyish face at thought
of its unexpected conclusion was a fleeting one, for he discovered that
it hurt his face to smile. Briskly he rose, and grunted "Ouch!" His sides
were sore from the rib squeezing of Miller's powerful arms.

Byington walked out to the remuda with him. "How's the man-tamer this
glad mo'nin'?" he asked of Dave.

"Fine and dandy, old lizard."

"You sure got the deadwood on him when yore spurs got into action. A
man's like a watermelon. You cayn't tell how good he is till you thump
him. Miller is right biggity, and they say he's sudden death with a gun.
But when it come down to cases he hadn't the guts to go through and stand
the gaff."

"He's been livin' soft too long, don't you reckon?"

"No, sir. He just didn't have the sand in his craw to hang on and finish
you off whilst you was rippin' up his laigs."

Dave roped his mount and rode out to meet Chiquito. The pinto was an
aristocrat in his way. He preferred to choose his company, was a little
disdainful of the cowpony that had no accomplishments. Usually he grazed
a short distance from the remuda, together with one of Bob Hart's string.
The two ponies had been brought up in the same bunch.

This morning Dave's whistle brought no nicker of joy, no thud of hoofs
galloping out of the darkness to him. He rode deeper into the desert. No
answer came to his calls. At a canter he cut across the plain to the
wrangler. That young man had seen nothing of Chiquito since the evening
before, but this was not at all unusual.

The cowpuncher returned to camp for breakfast and got permission of the
foreman to look for the missing horses.

Beyond the flats was a country creased with draws and dry arroyos. From
one to another of these Dave went without finding a trace of the animals.
All day he pushed through cactus and mesquite heavy with gray dust. In
the late afternoon he gave up for the time and struck back to the flats.
It was possible that the lost broncos had rejoined the remuda of their
own accord or had been found by some of the riders gathering up strays.

Dave struck the herd trail and followed it toward the new camp. A
horseman came out of the golden west of the sunset to meet him. For a
long time he saw the figure rising and falling in the saddle, the pony
moving in the even fox-trot of the cattle country.

The man was Bob Hart.

"Found 'em?" shouted Dave when he was close enough to be heard.

"No, and we won't--not this side of Malapi. Those scalawags didn't make
camp last night. They kep' travelin'. If you ask me, they're movin' yet,
and they've got our broncs with 'em."

This had already occurred to Dave as a possibility. "Any proof?" he asked
quietly.

"A-plenty. I been ridin' on the point all day. Three-four times we cut
trail of five horses. Two of the five are bein' ridden. My Four-Bits hoss
has got a broken front hoof. So has one of the five."

"Movin' fast, are they?"

"You're damn whistlin'. They're hivin' off for parts unknown. Malapi
first off, looks like. They got friends there."

"Steelman and his outfit will protect them while they hunt cover and make
a getaway. Miller mentioned Denver before the race--said he was figurin'
on goin' there. Maybe--"

"He was probably lyin'. You can't tell. Point is, we've got to get busy.
My notion is we'd better make a bee-line for Malapi right away," proposed
Bob.

"We'll travel all night. No use wastin' any more time."

Dug Doble received their decision sourly. "It don't tickle me a heap to
be left short-handed because you two boys have got an excuse to get to
town quicker."

Hart looked him straight in the eye. "Call it an excuse if you want to.
We're after a pair of shorthorn crooks that stole our horses."

The foreman flushed angrily. "Don't come bellyachin' to me about yore
broomtails. I ain't got 'em."

"We know who's got 'em," said Dave evenly. "What we want is a wage check
so as we can cash it at Malapi."

"You don't get it," returned the big foreman bluntly. "We pay off when we
reach the end of the drive."

"I notice you paid yore brother and Miller when we gave an order for it,"
Hart retorted with heat.

"A different proposition. They hadn't signed up for this drive like you
boys did. You'll get what's comin' to you when I pay off the others.
You'll not get it before."

The two riders retired sulkily. They felt it was not fair, but on the
trail the foreman is an autocrat. From the other riders they borrowed a
few dollars and gave in exchange orders on their pay checks.

Within an hour they were on the road. Fresh horses had been roped from
the remuda and were carrying them at an even Spanish jog-trot through the
night. The stars came out, clear and steady above a ghostly world at
sleep. The desert was a place of mystery, of vast space peopled by
strange and misty shapes.

The plain stretched vaguely before them. Far away was the thin outline of
the range which enclosed the valley. The riders held their course by
means of that trained sixth sense of direction their occupation had
developed.

They spoke little. Once a coyote howled dismally from the edge of the
mesa. For the most part there was no sound except the chuffing of the
horses' movements and the occasional ring of a hoof on the baked ground.

The gray dawn, sifting into the sky, found them still traveling. The
mountains came closer, grew more definite. The desert flamed again, dry,
lifeless, torrid beneath a sky of turquoise. Dust eddies whirled in
inverted cones, wind devils playing in spirals across the sand.
Tablelands, mesas, wide plains, desolate lava stretches. Each in turn was
traversed by these lean, grim, bronzed riders.

They reached the foothills and left behind the desert shimmering in the
dancing heat. In a deep gorge, where the hill creases gave them shade,
the punchers threw off the trail, unsaddled, hobbled their horses, and
stole a few hours' sleep.

In the late afternoon they rode back to the trail through a draw, the
ponies wading fetlock deep in yellow, red, blue, and purple flowers. The
mountains across the valley looked in the dry heat as though made of
_papier-mâché_. Closer at hand the undulations of sand hills stretched
toward the pass for which they were making.

A mule deer started out of a dry wash and fled into the sunset light. The
long, stratified faces of rock escarpments caught the glow of the sliding
sun and became battlemented towers of ancient story.

The riders climbed steadily now, no longer engulfed in the ground swell
of land waves. They breathed an air like wine, strong, pure, bracing.
Presently their way led them into a hill pocket, which ran into a gorge
of piñons stretching toward Gunsight Pass.

The stars were out again when they looked down from the other side of the
pass upon the lights of Malapi.




CHAPTER V

SUPPER AT DELMONICO'S INTERRUPTED


The two D Bar Lazy R punchers ate supper at Delmonico's. The restaurant
was owned by Wong Chung. A Cantonese celestial did the cooking and
another waited on table. The price of a meal was twenty-five cents,
regardless of what one ordered.

Hop Lee, the waiter, grinned at the frolicsome youths with the serenity
of a world-old wisdom.

"Bleef steak, plork chop, lamb chop, hlam'neggs, clorn bleef hash,
Splanish stew," he chanted, reciting the bill of fare.

"Yes," murmured Bob.

The waiter said his piece again.

"Listens good to me," agreed Dave. "Lead it to us."

"You takee two--bleef steak and hlam'neggs, mebbe," suggested Hop
helpfully.

"Tha's right. Two orders of everything on the me-an-you, Charlie."

Hop did not argue with them. He never argued with a customer. If they
stormed at him he took refuge in a suddenly acquired lack of
understanding of English. If they called him Charlie or John or One Lung,
he accepted the name cheerfully and laid it to a racial mental deficiency
of the 'melicans. Now he decided to make a selection himself.

"Vely well. Bleef steak and hlam'neggs."

"Fried potatoes done brown, John."

"Flied plotatoes. Tea or cloffee?"

"Coffee," decided Dave for both of them. "Warm mine."

"And custard pie," added Bob. "Made from this year's crop."

"Aigs sunny side up," directed his friend.

"Fry mine one on one side and one on the other," Hart continued
facetiously.

"Vely well." Hop Lee's impassive face betrayed no perplexity as he
departed. In the course of a season he waited on hundreds of wild men
from the hills, drunk and sober.

Dave helped himself to bread from a plate stacked high with thick slices.
He buttered it and began to eat. Hart did the same. At Delmonico's nobody
ever waited till the meal was served. Just about to attack a second
slice, Dave stopped to stare at his companion. Hart was looking past his
shoulder with alert intentness. Dave turned his head. Two men, leaving
the restaurant, were paying the cashier.

"They just stepped outa that booth to the right," whispered Bob.

The men were George Doble and a cowpuncher known as Shorty, a broad,
heavy-set little man who worked for Bradley Steelman, owner of the
Rocking Horse Ranch, what time he was not engaged on nefarious business
of his own. He was wearing a Chihuahua hat and leather chaps with silver
conchas.

At this moment Hop Lee arrived with dinner.

Dave sighed as he grinned at his friend. "I need that supper in my
system. I sure do, but I reckon I don't get it."

"You do not, old lizard," agreed Hart. "I'll say Doble's the most
inconsiderate guy I ever did trail. Why couldn't he 'a' showed up a
half-hour later, dad gum his ornery hide?"

They paid their bill and passed into the street. Immediately the sound of
a clear, high voice arrested their attention. It vibrated indignation and
dread.

"What have you done with my father?" came sharply to them on the wings of
the soft night wind.

A young woman was speaking. She was in a buggy and was talking to two men
on the sidewalk--the two men who had preceded the range-riders out of the
restaurant.

"Why, Miss, we ain't done a thing to him--nothin' a-tall." The man Shorty
was speaking, and in a tone of honeyed conciliation. It was quite plain
he did not want a scene on the street.

"That's a lie." The voice of the girl broke for an instant to a sob. "Do
you think I don't know you're Brad Steelman's handy man, that you do his
meanness for him when he snaps his fingers?"

"You sure do click yore heels mighty loud, Miss." Dave caught in that
soft answer the purr of malice. He remembered now hearing from Buck
Byington that years ago Emerson Crawford had rounded up evidence to send
Shorty to the penitentiary for rebranding through a blanket. "I reckon
you come by it honest. Em always acted like he was God Almighty."

"Where is he? What's become of him?" she cried.

"Is yore paw missin'? I'm right sorry to hear that," the cowpuncher
countered with suave irony. He was eager to be gone. His glance followed
Doble, who was moving slowly down the street.

The girl's face, white and shining in the moonlight, leaned out of the
buggy toward the retreating vaquero. "Don't you dare hurt my father!
Don't you dare!" she warned. The words choked in her tense throat.

Shorty continued to back away. "You're excited, Miss. You go home an'
think it over reasonable. You'll be sorry you talked this away to me," he
said with unctuous virtue. Then, swiftly, he turned and went straddling
down the walk, his spurs jingling music as he moved.

Quickly Dave gave directions to his friend. "Duck back into the
restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those
birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a
burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I
got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along a rope. Might
need it."

A moment later Hart was in the restaurant commandeering rice and Sanders
was lifting his dusty hat to the young woman in the buggy.

"If I can he'p you any, Miss Joyce," he said.

Beneath dark and delicate brows she frowned at him. "Who are you?"

"Dave Sanders my name is. I reckon you never heard tell of me. I punch
cows for yore father."

Her luminous, hazel-brown eyes steadied in his, read the honesty of his
simple, boyish heart.

"You heard what I said to that man?"

"Part of it."

"Well, it's true. I know it is, but I can't prove it."

Hart, moving swiftly down the street, waved a hand at his friend as he
passed. Without turning his attention from Joyce Crawford, Dave
acknowledged the signal.

"How do you know it?"

"Steelman's men have been watching our house. They were hanging around at
different times day before yesterday. This man Shorty was one."

"Any special reason for the feud to break out right now?"

"Father was going to prove up on a claim this week--the one that takes in
the Tularosa water-holes. You know the trouble they've had about it--how
they kept breaking our fences to water their sheep and cattle. Don't you
think maybe they're trying to keep him from proving up?"

"Maybeso. When did you see him last?"

Her lip trembled. "Night before last. After supper he started for the
Cattleman's Club, but he never got there."

"Sure he wasn't called out to one of the ranches unexpected?"

"I sent out to make sure. He hasn't been seen there."

"Looks like some of Brad Steelman's smooth work," admitted Dave. "If he
could work yore father to sign a relinquishment--"

Fire flickered in her eye. "He'd ought to know Dad better."

"Tha's right too. But Brad needs them water-holes in his business bad.
Without 'em he loses the whole Round Top range. He might take a crack at
turning the screws on yore father."

"You don't think--?" She stopped, to fight back a sob that filled her
soft throat.

Dave was not sure what he thought, but he answered cheerfully and
instantly. "No, I don't reckon they've dry-gulched him or anything.
Emerson Crawford is one sure-enough husky citizen. He couldn't either be
shot or rough-housed in town without some one hearin' the noise. What's
more, it wouldn't be their play to injure him, but to force a
relinquishment."

"That's true. You believe that, don't you?" Joyce cried eagerly.

"Sure I do." And Dave discovered that his argument or his hopes had for
the moment convinced him. "Now the question is, what's to be done?"

"Yes," she admitted, and the tremor of the lips told him that she
depended upon him to work out the problem. His heart swelled with glad
pride at the thought.

"That man who jus' passed is my friend," he told her. "He's trailin' that
duck Shorty. Like as not we'll find out what's stirrin'."

"I'll go with you," the girl said, vivid lips parted in anticipation.

"No, you go home. This is a man's job. Soon as I find out anything I'll
let you know."

"You'll come, no matter what time o' night it is," she pleaded.

"Yes," he promised.

Her firm little hand rested a moment in his brown palm. "I'm depending on
you," she murmured in a whisper lifted to a low wail by a stress of
emotion.




CHAPTER VI

BY WAY OF A WINDOW


The trail of rice led down Mission Street, turned at Junipero, crossed
into an alley, and trickled along a dusty road to the outskirts of the
frontier town.

The responsibility Joyce had put upon him uplifted Dave. He had followed
the horse-race gamblers to town on a purely selfish undertaking. But he
had been caught in a cross-current of fate and was being swept into
dangerous waters for the sake of another.

Doble and Miller were small fish in the swirl of this more desperate
venture. He knew Brad Steelman by sight and by reputation. The man's
coffee-brown, hatchet face, his restless, black eyes, the high, narrow
shoulders, the slope of nose and chin, combined somehow to give him the
look of a wily and predacious wolf. The boy had never met any one who so
impressed him with a sense of ruthless rapacity. He was audacious and
deadly in attack, but always he covered his tracks cunningly. Suspected
of many crimes, he had been proved guilty of none. It was a safe bet that
now he had a line of retreat worked out in case his plans went awry.

A soft, low whistle stayed his feet. From behind a greasewood bush Bob
rose and beckoned him. Dave tiptoed to him. Both of them crouched behind
cover while they whispered.

"The 'dobe house over to the right," said Bob. "I been up and tried to
look in, but they got curtains drawn. I would've like to 've seen how
many gents are present. Nothin' doin'. It's a strictly private party."

Dave told him what he had learned from the daughter of Emerson Crawford.

"Might make a gather of boys and raid the joint," suggested Hart.

"Bad medicine, Bob. Our work's got to be smoother than that. How do we
know they got the old man a prisoner there? What excuse we got for
attacktin' a peaceable house? A friend of mine's brother onct got shot
up makin' a similar mistake. Maybe Crawford's there. Maybe he ain't. Say
he is. All right. There's some gun-play back and forth like as not. A
b'ilin' of men pour outa the place. We go in and find the old man with a
bullet right spang through his forehead. Well, ain't that too bad! In the
rookus his own punchers must 'a' gunned him accidental. How would that
story listen in court?"

"It wouldn't listen good to me. Howcome Crawford to be a prisoner there,
I'd want to know."

"Sure you would, and Steelman would have witnesses a-plenty to swear the
old man had just drapped in to see if they couldn't talk things over and
make a settlement of their troubles."

"All right. What's yore programme, then?" asked Bob.

"Darned if I know. Say we scout the ground over first."

They made a wide circuit and approached the house from the rear, worming
their way through the Indian grass toward the back door. Dave crept
forward and tried the door. It was locked. The window was latched and the
blind lowered. He drew back and rejoined his companion.

"No chance there," he whispered.

"How about the roof?" asked Hart.

It was an eight-roomed house. From the roof two dormers jutted. No light
issued from either of them.

Dave's eyes lit.

"What's the matter with takin' a whirl at it?" his partner continued.
"You're tophand with a rope."

"Suits me fine."

The young puncher arranged the coils carefully and whirled the loop
around his head to get the feel of the throw. It would not do to miss the
first cast and let the rope fall dragging down the roof. Some one might
hear and come out to investigate.

The rope snaked forward and up, settled gracefully over the chimney, and
tightened round it close to the shingles.

"Good enough. Now me for the climb," murmured Hart.

"Don't pull yore picket-pin, Bob. Me first."

"All right. We ain't no time to debate. Shag up, old scout."

Dave slipped off his high-heeled boots and went up hand over hand, using
his feet against the rough adobe walls to help in the ascent. When he
came to the eaves he threw a leg up and clambered to the roof. In another
moment he was huddled against the chimney waiting for his companion.

As soon as Hart had joined him he pulled up the rope and wound it round
the chimney.

"You stay here while I see what's doin'," Dave proposed.

"I never did see such a fellow for hoggin' all the fun," objected Bob.
"Ain't you goin' to leave me trail along?"

"Got to play a lone hand till we find out where we're at, Bob. Doubles
the chances of being bumped into if we both go."

"Then you roost on the roof and lemme look the range over for the old
man."

"Didn't Miss Joyce tell me to find her paw? What's eatin' you, pard?"

"You pore plugged nickel!" derided Hart. "Think she picked you special
for this job, do you?"

"Be reasonable, Bob," pleaded Dave.

His friend gave way. "Cut yore stick, then. Holler for me when I'm
wanted."

Dave moved down the roof to the nearest dormer. The house, he judged, had
originally belonged to a well-to-do Mexican family and had later been
rebuilt upon American ideas. The thick adobe walls had come down from the
earlier owners, but the roof had been put on as a substitute for the flat
one of its first incarnation.

The range-rider was wearing plain shiny leather chaps with a gun in an
open holster tied at the bottom to facilitate quick action. He drew out
the revolver, tested it noiselessly, and restored it carefully to its
place. If he needed the six-shooter at all, he would need it badly and
suddenly.

Gingerly he tested the window of the dormer, working at it from the side
so that his body would not be visible to anybody who happened to be
watching from within. Apparently it was latched. He crept across the roof
to the other dormer.

It was a casement window, and at the touch of the hand it gave way.
The heart of the cowpuncher beat fast with excitement. In the shadowy
darkness of that room death might be lurking, its hand already
outstretched toward him. He peered in, accustoming his eyes to the
blackness. A prickling of the skin ran over him. The tiny cold feet of
mice pattered up and down his spine. For he knew that, though he could
not yet make out the objects inside the room, his face must be like a
framed portrait to anybody there.

He made out presently that it was a bedroom with sloping ceiling. A bunk
with blankets thrown back just as the sleeper had left them filled one
side of the chamber. There were two chairs, a washstand, a six-inch by
ten looking-glass, and a chromo or two on the wall. A sawed-off shotgun
was standing in a corner. Here and there were scattered soiled clothing
and stained boots. The door was ajar, but nobody was in the room.

Dave eased himself over the sill and waited for a moment while he
listened, the revolver in his hand. It seemed to him that he could hear
a faint murmur of voices, but he was not sure. He moved across the bare
plank floor, slid through the door, and again stopped to take stock of
his surroundings.

He was at the head of a stairway which ran down to the first floor and
lost itself in the darkness of the hall. Leaning over the banister, he
listened intently for any sign of life below. He was sure now that he
heard the sound of low voices behind a closed door.

The cowpuncher hesitated. Should he stop to explore the upper story? Or
should he go down at once and try to find out what those voices might
tell him? It might be that time was of the essence of his contract to
discover what had become of Emerson Crawford. He decided to look for his
information on the first floor.

Never before had Dave noticed that stairs creaked and groaned so loudly
beneath the pressure of a soft footstep. They seemed to shout his
approach, though he took every step with elaborate precautions. A door
slammed somewhere, and his heart jumped at the sound of it. He did not
hide the truth from himself. If Steelman or his men found him here
looking for Crawford he would never leave the house alive. His foot left
the last tread and found the uncarpeted floor. He crept, hand
outstretched, toward the door behind which he heard men talking. As he
moved forward his stomach muscles tightened. At any moment some one might
come out of the room and walk into him.

He put his eye to the keyhole, and through it saw a narrow segment of the
room. Ad Miller was sitting a-straddle a chair, his elbows on the back.
Another man, one not visible to the cowpuncher, was announcing a decision
and giving an order.

"Hook up the horses, Shorty. He's got his neck bowed and he won't sign.
All right. I'll get the durn fool up in the hills and show him whether he
will or won't."

"I could 'a' told you he had sand in his craw." Shorty was speaking. He
too was beyond the range of Dave's vision. "Em Crawford won't sign unless
he's a mind to."

"Take my advice, Brad. Collect the kid, an' you'll sure have Em hogtied.
He sets the world an' all by her. Y'betcha he'll talk turkey then,"
predicted Miller.

"Are we fightin' kids?" the squat puncher wanted to know.

"Did I ask your advice, Shorty?" inquired Steelman acidly.

The range-rider grumbled an indistinct answer. Dave did not make out the
words, and his interest in the conversation abruptly ceased.

For from upstairs there came the sudden sounds of trampling feet, of
bodies thrashing to and fro in conflict. A revolver shot barked its
sinister menace.

Dave rose to go. At the same time the door in front of him was jerked
open. He pushed his forty-five into Miller's fat ribs.

"What's yore hurry? Stick up yore hands--stick 'em up!"

The boy was backing along the passage as he spoke. He reached the newel
post in that second while Miller was being flung aside by an eruption of
men from the room. Like a frightened rabbit Dave leaped for the stairs,
taking them three at a time. Halfway up he collided with a man flying
down. They came together with the heavy impact of fast-moving bodies. The
two collapsed and rolled down, one over the other.

Sanders rose like a rubber ball. The other man lay still. He had been put
out cold. Dave's head had struck him in the solar plexus and knocked the
breath out of him. The young cowpuncher found himself the active center
of a cyclone. His own revolver was gone. He grappled with a man, seizing
him by the wrist to prevent the use of a long-barreled Colt's. The
trigger fell, a bullet flying through the ceiling.

Other men pressed about him, trying to reach him with their fists and to
strike him with their weapons. Their high heels crushed cruelly the flesh
of his stockinged feet. The darkness befriended Dave. In the massed mêlée
they dared not shoot for fear of hitting the wrong mark. Nor could they
always be sure which shifting figure was the enemy.

Dave clung close to the man he had seized, using him as a shield against
the others. The pack swayed down the hall into the wedge of light thrown
by the lamp in the room.

Across the head of the man next him Shorty reached and raised his arm.
Dave saw the blue barrel of the revolver sweeping down, but could not
free a hand to protect himself. A jagged pain shot through his head.
The power went out of his legs. He sagged at the hinges of his knees.
He stumbled and went down. Heavy boots kicked at him where he lay. It
seemed to him that bolts of lightning were zigzagging through him.

The pain ceased and he floated away into a sea of space.




CHAPTER VII

BOB HART TAKES A HAND


Bob Hart waited till his friend had disappeared into the house before he
moved.

"Thought he'd run it over me, so I'd roost here on the roof, did he?
Well, I'm after the ol' horn-toad full jump," the puncher murmured,
a gay grin on his good-looking face.

He, too, examined his gun before he followed Dave through the dormer
window and passed into the frowsy bedchamber. None of the details of it
escaped his cool, keen gaze, least of all the sawed-off shotgun in the
corner.

"That scatter gun might come handy. Reckon I'll move it so's I'll know
just where it's at when I need it," he said to himself, and carried the
gun to the bed, where he covered it with a quilt.

At the top of the stairs Bob also hesitated before passing down. Why not
be sure of his line of communications with the roof before going too far?
He did not want to be in such a hurry that his retreat would be cut off.

With as little noise as possible Bob explored the upper story. The first
room in which he found himself was empty of all furniture except a pair
of broken-backed chairs. One casual glance was enough here.

He was about to try a second door when some one spoke. He recognized the
voice. It belonged to the man who wrote his pay checks, and it came from
an adjoining room.

"Always knew you was crooked as a dog's hind laigs Doble. Never liked you
a lick in the road. I'll say this. Some day I'll certainly hang yore hide
up to dry for yore treachery."

"No use to get on the peck, Em. It don't do you no good to make me sore.
Maybe you'll need a friend before you're shet of Brad."

"It relieves my mind some to tell you what a yellow coyote you are,"
explained the cattleman. "You got about as much sand as a brush rabbit
and I'd trust you as far as I would a rattler, you damned sidewinder."

Bob tried the door. The knob turned in his hand and the door slowly
opened inward.

The rattle of the latch brought George Doble's sly, shifty eye round.
He was expecting to see one of his friends from below. A stare of blank
astonishment gave way to a leaping flicker of fear. The crook jumped to
his feet, tugging at his gun. Before he could fire, the range-rider had
closed with him.

The plunging attack drove Doble back against the table, a flimsy,
round-topped affair which gave way beneath this assault upon it. The two
men went down in the wreck. Doble squirmed away like a cat, but before he
could turn to use his revolver Bob was on him again. The puncher caught
his right arm, in time and in no more than time. The deflected bullet
pinged through a looking-glass on a dresser near the foot of the bed.

"Go to it, son! Grab the gun and bust his haid wide open!" an excited
voice encouraged Hart.

But Doble clung to his weapon as a lost cow does to a 'dobe water-hole in
the desert. Bob got a grip on his arm and twisted till he screamed with
pain. He did a head spin and escaped. One hundred and sixty pounds of
steel-muscled cowpuncher landed on his midriff and the six-shooter went
clattering away to a far corner of the room.

Bob dived for the revolver, Doble for the door. A moment, and Hart had
the gun. But whereas there had been three in the room there were now but
two.

A voice from the bed spoke in curt command. "Cut me loose." Bob had heard
that voice on more than one round-up. It was that of Emerson Crawford.

The range-rider's sharp knife cut the ropes that tied the hands and feet
of his employer. He worked in the dark and it took time.

"Who are you? Howcome you here?" demanded the cattleman.

"I'm Bob Hart. It's quite a story. Miss Joyce sent me and Dave Sanders,"
answered the young man, still busy with the ropes.

From below came the sound of a shot, the shuffling of many feet.

"Must be him downstairs."

"I reckon. They's a muley gun in the hall."

Crawford stretched his cramped muscles, flexing and reflexing his arms
and legs. "Get it, son. We'll drift down and sit in."

When Bob returned he found the big cattleman examining Doble's revolver.
He broke the shotgun to make sure it was loaded.

Then, "We'll travel," he said coolly.

The battle sounds below had died away. From the landing they looked down
into the hall and saw a bar of light that came through a partly open
door. Voices were lifted in excitement.

"One of Em Crawford's riders," some one was saying. "A whole passel of
'em must be round the place."

Came the thud of a boot on something soft. "Put the damn spy outa
business, I say," broke in another angrily.

Hart's gorge rose. "Tha's Miller," he whispered to his chief. "He's
kickin' Dave now he's down 'cause Dave whaled him good."

Softly the two men padded down the stair treads and moved along the
passage.

"Who's that?" demanded Shorty, thrusting his head into the hall. "Stay
right there or I'll shoot."

"Oh, no, you won't," answered the cattleman evenly. "I'm comin' into that
room to have a settlement. There'll be no shootin'--unless I do it."

His step did not falter. He moved forward, brushed Shorty aside, and
strode into the midst of his enemies.

Dave lay on the floor. His hair was clotted with blood and a thin stream
of it dripped from his head. The men grouped round his body had their
eyes focused on the man who had just pushed his way in. All of them were
armed, but not one of them made a move to attack.

For there is something about a strong man unafraid more potent than a
company of troopers. Such a man was Emerson Crawford now. His life might
be hanging in the balance of his enemies' fears, but he gave no sign
of uncertainty. His steady gray eyes swept the circle, rested on each
worried face, and fastened on Brad Steelman.

The two had been enemies for years, rivals for control of the range and
for leadership in the community. Before that, as young men, they had been
candidates for the hand of the girl that the better one had won. The
sheepman was shrewd and cunning, but he had no such force of character as
Crawford. At the bottom of his heart, though he seethed with hatred, he
quailed before that level gaze. Did his foe have the house surrounded
with his range-riders? Did he mean to make him pay with his life for the
thing he had done?

Steelman laughed uneasily. An option lay before him. He could fight or he
could throw up the hand he had dealt himself from a stacked deck. If he
let his enemy walk away scot free, some day he would probably have to pay
Crawford with interest. His choice was a characteristic one.

"Well, I reckon you've kinda upset my plans, Em. 'Course I was a-coddin'
you. I didn't aim to hurt you none, though I'd 'a' liked to have talked
you outa the water-holes."

The big cattleman ignored this absolutely. "Have a team hitched right
away. Shorty will 'tend to that. Bob, tie up yore friend's haid with a
handkerchief."

Without an instant's hesitation Hart thrust his revolver back into its
holster. He was willing to trust Crawford to dominate this group of
lawless foes, every one of whom held some deep grudge against him. One
he had sent to the penitentiary. Another he had actually kicked out of
his employ. A third was in his debt for many injuries received. Almost
any of them would have shot him in the back on a dark night, but none
had the cold nerve to meet him in the open. For even in a land which
bred men there were few to match Emerson Crawford.

Shorty looked at Steelman. "I'm waitin', Brad," he said.

The sheepman nodded sullenly. "You done heard your orders, Shorty."

The ex-convict reached for his steeple hat, thrust his revolver back into
its holster, and went jingling from the room. He looked insolently at
Crawford as he passed.

"Different here. If it was my say-so I'd go through."

Hart administered first aid to his friend. "I'm servin' notice, Miller,
that some day I'll bust you wide and handsome for this," he said, looking
straight at the fat gambler. "You have give Dave a raw deal, and you'll
not get away with it."

"I pack a gun. Come a-shootin' when you're ready," retorted Miller.

"Tha's liable to be right soon, you damn horsethief. We've rid 'most a
hundred miles to have a li'l' talk with you and yore pardner there."

"Shoutin' about that race yet, are you? If I wasn't a better loser than
you--"

"Don't bluff, Miller. You know why we trailed you."

Doble edged into the talk. He was still short of wind, but to his thick
wits a denial seemed necessary. "We ain't got yore broncs."

"Who mentioned our broncs?" Hart demanded, swiftly.

"Called Ad a horsethief, didn't you?"

"So he is. You, too. You've got our ponies. Not in yore vest pockets, but
hid out in the brush somewheres. I'm servin' notice right now that Dave
and me have come to collect."

Dave opened his eyes upon a world which danced hazily before him. He had
a splitting headache.

"Wha's the matter?" he asked.

"You had a run-in with a bunch of sheep wranglers," Bob told him.
"They're going to be plumb sorry they got gay."

Presently Shorty returned. "That team's hooked up," he told the world at
large.

"You'll drive us, Steelman," announced Crawford.

"Me!" screamed the leader of the other faction. "You got the most nerve
I ever did see."

"Sure. Drive him home, Brad," advised Shorty with bitter sarcasm. "Black
his boots. Wait on him good. Step lively when yore new boss whistles." He
cackled with splenetic laughter.

"I dunno as I need to drive you home," Steelman said slowly, feeling his
way to a decision. "You know the way better'n I do."

The eyes of the two leaders met.

"You'll drive," the cattleman repeated steadily.

The weak spot in Steelman's leadership was that he was personally not
game. Crawford had a pungent personality. He was dynamic, strong, master
of himself in any emergency. The sheepman's will melted before his
insistence. He dared not face a showdown.

"Oh, well, what's it matter? We can talk things over on the way. Me, I'm
not lookin' for trouble none," he said, his small black eyes moving
restlessly to watch the effect of this on his men.

Bob helped his partner out of the house and into the surrey. The
cattleman took the seat beside Steelman, across his knees the sawed-off
shotgun. He had brought his enemy along for two reasons. One was to
weaken his prestige with his own men. The other was to prevent them
from shooting at the rig as they drove away.

Steelman drove in silence. His heart was filled with surging hatred.
During that ride was born a determination to have nothing less than the
life of his enemy when the time should be ripe.

At the door of his house Crawford dismissed him contemptuously. "Get
out."

The man with the reins spoke softly, venomously, from a dry throat. "One
o' these days you'll crawl on your hands and knees to me for this."

He whipped up the team and rattled away furiously into the night.




CHAPTER VIII

THE D BAR LAZY R BOYS MEET AN ANGEL


Joyce came flying to her father's arms. The white lace of a nightgown
showed beneath the dressing-robe she had hurriedly donned. A plait of
dark hair hung across her shoulder far below the waist. She threw herself
at Crawford with a moaning little sob.

"Oh Dad ... Dad ... Dad!" she cried, and her slender arms went round his
neck.

"'T's all right, sweetheart. Yore old dad's not even powder-burnt. You
been worryin' a heap, I reckon." His voice was full of rough tenderness.

She began to cry.

He patted her shoulder and caressed her dark head drawing it close to his
shoulder. "Now--now--now sweetheart, don't you cry. It's all right, li'l'
honey bug."

"You're not ... hurt," she begged through her tears.

"Not none. Never was huskier. But I got a boy out here that's beat up
some. Come in, Dave--and you, Bob. They're good boys, Joy. I want you to
meet 'em both."

The girl had thought her father alone. She flung one startled glance into
the night, clutched the dressing-gown closer round her throat, and fled
her barefoot way into the darkness of the house. To the boys, hanging
back awkwardly at the gate, the slim child-woman was a vision wonderful.
Their starved eyes found in her white loveliness a glimpse of heaven.

Her father laughed. "Joy ain't dressed for callers. Come in, boys."

He lit a lamp and drew Dave to a lounge. "Lemme look at yore haid, son.
Bob, you hot-foot it for Doc Green."

"It's nothin' a-tall to make a fuss about," Dave apologized. "Only a love
tap, compliments of Shorty, and some kicks in the slats, kindness of Mr.
Miller."

In spite of his debonair manner Dave still had a bad headache and was so
sore around the body that he could scarcely move without groaning. He
kept his teeth clamped on the pain because he had been brought up in
the outdoor code of the West which demands of a man that he grin and
stand the gaff.

While the doctor was attending to his injuries, Dave caught sight once
or twice of Joyce at the door, clad now in a summer frock of white with a
blue sash. She was busy supplying, in a brisk, competent way, the demands
of the doctor for hot and cold water and clean linen.

Meanwhile Crawford told his story. "I was right close to the club when
Doble met me. He pulled a story of how his brother Dug had had trouble
with Steelman and got shot up. I swallowed it hook, bait, and sinker.
Soon as I got into the house they swarmed over me like bees. I didn't
even get my six-gun out. Brad wanted me to sign a relinquishment. I told
him where he could head in at."

"What would have happened if the boys hadn't dropped along?" asked Dr.
Green as he repacked his medicine case.

The cattleman looked at him, and his eyes were hard and bleak. "Why, Doc,
yore guess is as good as mine." he said.

"Mine is, you'd have been among the missing, Em. Well, I'm leaving a
sleeping-powder for the patient in case he needs it in an hour or two.
In the morning I'll drop round again," the doctor said.

He did, and found Dave much improved. The clean outdoors of the
rough-riding West builds blood that is red. A city man might have kept
his bed a week, but Dave was up and ready to say good-bye within
forty-eight hours. He was still a bit under par, a trifle washed-out,
but he wanted to take the road in pursuit of Miller and Doble, who had
again decamped in a hurry with the two horses they had stolen.

"They had the broncs hid up Frio Cañon way, I reckon," explained Hart.
"But they didn't take no chances. When they left that 'dobe house they
lit a-runnin' and clumb for the high hills on the jump. And they didn't
leave no address neither. We'll be followin' a cold trail. We're not
liable to find them after they hole up in some mountain pocket."

"Might. Never can tell. Le's take a whirl at it anyhow," urged Dave.

"Hate to give up yore paint hoss, don't you?" said Bob with his friendly
grin. "Ain't blamin' you none whatever, I'd sleep on those fellows' trail
if Chiquito was mine. What say we outfit in the mornin' and pull our
freights? Maybeso we'll meet up with the thieves at that. Yo no se (I
don't know)."

When Joyce was in the room where Dave lay on the lounge, the young man
never looked at her, but he saw nobody else. Brought up in a saddle on
the range, he had never before met a girl like her. It was not only that
she was beautiful and fragrant as apple-blossoms, a mystery of maidenhood
whose presence awed his simple soul. It was not only that she seemed so
delicately precious, a princess of the blood royal set apart by reason of
her buoyant grace, the soft rustle of her skirts, the fine texture of the
satiny skin. What took him by the throat was her goodness. She was
enshrined in his heart as a young saint. He would have thought it
sacrilege to think of her as a wide-awake young woman subject to all the
vanities of her sex. And he could have cited evidence. The sweetness of
her affection for rough Em Crawford, the dear, maternal tenderness with
which she ruled her three-year-old brother Keith, motherless since the
week of his birth, the kindness of the luminous brown eyes to the uncouth
stranger thrown upon her hospitality: Dave treasured them all as signs of
angelic grace, and they played upon his heartstrings disturbingly.

Joyce brought Keith in to say good-bye to Dave and his friend before
they left. The little fellow ran across the room to his new pal, who
had busied himself weaving horsehair playthings for the youngster.

"You turn back and make me a bwidle, Dave," he cried.

"I'll sure come or else send you one," the cowpuncher promised, rising to
meet Joyce.

She carried her slender figure across the room with perfect ease and
rhythm, head beautifully poised, young seventeen as self-possessed as
thirty. As much could not be said for her guests. They were all legs and
gangling arms, red ears and dusty boots.

"Yes, we all want you to come back," she said with a charming smile. "I
think you saved Father's life. We can't tell you how much we owe you. Can
we, Keith?"

"Nope. When will you send the bwidle?" he demanded.

"Soon," the restored patient said to the boy, and to her: "That wasn't
nothin' a-tall. From where I come from we always been use to standin' by
our boss."

He shifted awkwardly to the other foot, flushing to the hair while he
buried her soft little hand in his big freckled one. The girl showed no
shyness. Seventeen is sometimes so much older than twenty.

"Tha's what us D Bar Lazy R boys are ridin' with yore paw's outfit for,
Miss--to be handy when he needs us," Bob added in his turn. "We're sure
tickled we got a chanct to go to Brad Steelman's party. I'm ce'tainly
glad to 'a' met you, Miss Joyce." He ducked his head and scraped back a
foot in what was meant to be a bow.

Emerson Crawford sauntered in, big and bluff and easy-going. "Hittin' the
trail, boys? Good enough. Hope you find the thieves. If you do, play yore
cards close. They're treacherous devils. Don't take no chances with 'em.
I left an order at the store for you to draw on me for another pair of
boots in place of those you lost in the brush, Dave. Get a good pair,
son. They're on me. Well, so long. Luck, boys. I'll look for you-all back
with the D Bar Lazy R when you've finished this job."

The punchers rode away without looking back, but many times in the days
that followed their hearts turned to that roof which had given the word
home a new meaning to them both.




CHAPTER IX

GUNSIGHT PASS


The pursuit took the riders across a wide, undulating plain above which
danced the dry heat of the desert. Lizards sunned themselves on flat
rocks. A rattlesnake slid toward the cover of a prickly pear. The
bleached bones of a cow shone white beside the trail.

The throats of the cowpunchers filled with alkali dust and their eyes
grew red and sore from it. Magnificent mirages unfolded themselves: lakes
cool and limpid, stretching to the horizon, with inviting forests in the
distance; an oasis of lush green fields that covered miles; mesquite
distorted to the size of giant trees and cattle transformed into
dinosaurs. The great gray desert took on freakish shapes of erosion.
Always, hour after hour beneath a copper sky, they rode in palpitating
heat through sand drifts, among the salt bushes and the creosote, into
cowbacked hills beyond which the stark mountains rose.

Out of the fiery furnace of the plain they came in late afternoon to
the uplands, plunging into a land of deep gorges and great chasms. Here
manzanita grew and liveoaks flourished. They sent a whitetail buck
crashing through the brush into a cañon.

When night fell they built a fire of niggerheads and after they had eaten
found its glow grateful. For they were well up in the hills now and the
night air was sharp.

In the sandy desert they had followed easily the trail of the thieves,
but as they had got into the hills the tracks had become fainter and
fewer. The young men discussed this while they lay in their blankets in
a water-gutted gulch not too near the fire they had built.

"Like huntin' for a needle in a haystack," said Bob. "Their trail's done
petered out. They might be in any one of a hundred pockets right close,
or they may have bore 'way off to the right. All they got to do is hole
up and not build any fires."

"Fat chance we got," admitted Dave. "Unless they build a fire like we
done. Say, I'd a heap rather be sleepin' here than by that niggerhead
blaze to-night. They might creep up and try to gun us."

Before they had been in the saddle an hour next day the trail of the
thieves was lost. The pursuers spent till sunset trying to pick it up
again. The third day was wasted in aimless drifting among the defiles
of the mountains.

"No use, Bob," said his friend while they were cooking supper. "They've
made their getaway. Might as well drift back to Malapi, don't you
reckon?"

"Looks like. We're only wastin' our time here."

Long before day broke they started.

The cañons below were filled with mist as they rode down out of the
mountains toward the crystal dawn that already flooded the plain. The
court-house clock at Malapi said the time was midnight when the
dust-covered men and horses drew into the town.

The tired men slept till noon. At the Delmonico Restaurant they found
Buck Byington and Steve Russell. The trail herd had been driven in an
hour before.

"How's old Alkali?" asked Dave of his friend Buck, thumping him on the
back.

"Jes' tolable," answered the old-timer equably, making great play with
knife and fork. "A man or a hawss don't either one amount to much after
they onct been stove up. Since that bronc piled me at Willow Creek I
been mighty stiff, you might say."

"Dug's payin' off to-day, boys," Russell told them. "You'll find him
round to the Boston Emporium."

The foreman settled first with Hart, after which he, turned to the page
in his pocket notebook that held the account of Sanders.

"You've drew one month's pay. That leaves you three months, less the week
you've fooled away after the pinto."

"C'rect," admitted Dave.

"I'll dock you seven and a half for that. Three times thirty's ninety.
Take seven and a half from that leaves eighty-two fifty."

"Hold on!" objected Dave. "My pay's thirty-five a month."

"First I knew of it," said the foreman, eyes bleak and harsh. "Thirty's
what you're gettin'."

"I came in as top hand at thirty-five."

"You did not," denied Doble flatly.

The young man flushed. "You can't run that on me, Dug. I'll not stand for
it."

"Eighty-two fifty is what you get," answered the other dogmatically. "You
can take it or go to hell."

He began to sort out a number of small checks with which to pay the
puncher. At that time the currency of the country consisted largely of
cattlemen's checks which passed from hand to hand till they were grimy
with dirt. Often these were not cashed for months later.

"We'll see what the old man says about that," retorted Dave hotly. It was
in his mind to say that he did not intend to be robbed by both the Doble
brothers, but he wisely repressed the impulse. Dug would as soon fight as
eat, and the young rider knew he would not have a chance in the world
against him.

"All right," sneered the foreman. "Run with yore tale of grief to
Crawford. Tell him I been pickin' on you. I hear you've got to be quite
a pet of his."

This brought Dave up with a short turn. He could not take advantage of
the service he had done the owner of the D Bar Lazy R to ask him to
interfere in his behalf with the foreman. Doble might be cynically
defrauding him of part of what was due him in wages. Dave would have to
fight that out with him for himself. The worst of it was that he had no
redress. Unless he appealed to the cattleman he would have to accept
what the foreman offered.

Moreover, his pride was touched. He was young enough to be sensitive on
the subject of his ability to look out for himself.

"I'm no pet of anybody," he flung out. "Gimme that money. It ain't a
square deal, but I reckon I can stand it."

"I reckon you'll have to. It's neck meat or nothin'," grunted the
foreman.

Doble counted him out eighty dollars in cattlemen's checks and paid him
two-fifty in cash. While Dave signed a receipt the hook-nosed foreman,
broad shoulders thrown back and thumbs hitched in the arm-holes of his
vest, sat at ease in a tilted chair and grinned maliciously at his
victim. He was "puttin' somethin' over on him," and he wanted Dave to
know it. Dug had no affection for his half-brother, but he resented
the fact that Sanders publicly and openly despised him as a crook. He
took it as a personal reflection on himself.

Still smouldering with anger at this high-handed proceeding, Dave went
down to the Longhorn Corral and saddled his horse. He had promised
Byington to help water the herd.

This done, he rode back to town, hitched the horse back of a barber shop,
and went in for a shave. Presently he was stretched in a chair, his boots
thrown across the foot rest in front of him.

The barber lathered his face and murmured gossip in his ear. "George
Doble and Miller claim they're goin' to Denver to run some skin game at
a street fair. They're sure slick guys."

Dave offered no comment.

"You notice they didn't steal any of Em Crawford's stock. No, sirree!
They knew better. Hopped away with broncs belongin' to you boys because
they knew it'd be safe."

"Picked easy marks, did they?" asked the puncher sardonically.

The man with the razor tilted the chin of his customer and began to
scrape. "Well, o'course you're only boys. They took advantage of that
and done you a meanness."

Dug Doble came into the shop, very grim about the mouth. He stopped to
look down sarcastically at the new boots Sanders was wearing.

"I see you've bought you a new pair of boots," he said in a heavy,
domineering voice.

Dave waited without answering, his eyes meeting steadily those of the
foreman.

The big fellow laid a paper on the breast of the cowpuncher. "Here's a
bill for a pair of boots you charged to the old man's account--eighteen
dollars. I got it just now at the store. You'll dig up."

It was the custom for riders who came to town to have the supplies they
needed charged to their employers against wages due them. Doble took it
for granted that Sanders had done this, which was contrary to the orders
he had given his outfit. He did not know the young man had lost his boots
while rescuing Crawford and had been authorized by him to get another
pair in place of them.

Nor did Dave intend to tell him. Here was a chance to even the score
against the foreman. Already he had a plan simmering in his mind that
would take him out of this part of the country for a time. He could no
longer work for Doble without friction, and he had business of his own to
attend to. The way to solve the immediate difficulty flashed through his
brain instantly, every detail clear.

It was scarcely a moment before he drawled an answer. "I'll 'tend to it
soon as I'm out of the chair."

"I gave orders for none of you fellows to charge goods to the old man,"
said Doble harshly.

"Did you?" Dave's voice was light and careless.

"You can go hunt a job somewheres else. You're through with me."

"I'll hate to part with you."

"Don't get heavy, young fellow."

"No," answered Dave with mock meekness.

Doble sat down in a chair to wait. He had no intention of leaving until
Dave had settled.

After the barber had finished with him the puncher stepped across to a
looking-glass and adjusted carefully the silk handkerchief worn knotted
loosely round the throat.

"Get a move on you!" urged the foreman. His patience, of which he never
had a large supply to draw from, was nearly exhausted. "I'm not goin' to
spend all day on this."

"I'm ready."

Dave followed Doble out of the shop. Apparently he did not hear the
gentle reminder of the barber, who was forced to come to the door and
repeat his question.

"Want that shave charged?"

"Oh! Clean forgot." Sanders turned back, feeling in his pocket for
change.

He pushed past the barber into the shop, slapped a quarter down on the
cigar-case, and ran out through the back door. A moment later he pulled
the slip-knot of his bridle from the hitching-bar, swung to the saddle
and spurred his horse to a gallop. In a cloud of dust he swept round the
building to the road and waved a hand derisively toward Doble.

"See you later!" he shouted.

The foreman wasted no breath in futile rage. He strode to the nearest
hitching-post and flung himself astride leather. The horse's hoofs
pounded down the road in pursuit.

Sanders was riding the same bronco he had used to follow the
horsethieves. It had been under a saddle most of the time for a week and
was far from fresh. Before he had gone a mile he knew that the foreman
would catch up with him.

He was riding for Gunsight Pass. It was necessary to get there before
Doble reached him. Otherwise he would have to surrender or fight, and
neither of these fitted in with his plans.

Once he had heard Emerson Crawford give a piece of advice to a hotheaded
and unwise puncher. "Never call for a gun-play on a bluff, son. There's
no easier way to commit suicide than to pull a six-shooter you ain't
willin' to use." Dug Doble was what Byington called "bull-haided." He had
forced a situation which could not be met without a showdown. This meant
that the young range-rider would either have to take a thrashing or draw
his forty-five and use it. Neither of these alternatives seemed worth
while in view of the small stakes at issue. Because he was not ready to
kill or be killed, Dave was flying for the hills.

The fugitive had to use his quirt to get there in time. The steepness of
the road made heavy going. As he neared the summit the grade grew worse.
The bronco labored heavily in its stride as its feet reached for the
road ahead.

But here Dave had the advantage. Doble was a much heavier man than he,
and his mount took the shoulder of the ridge slower. By the time the
foreman showed in silhouette against the skyline at the entrance to the
pass the younger man had disappeared.

The D Bar Lazy R foreman found out at once what had become of him. A
crisp voice gave clear directions.

"That'll be far enough. Stop right where you're at or you'll notice
trouble pop. And don't reach for yore gun unless you want to hear the
band begin to play a funeral piece."

The words came, it seemed to Doble, out of the air. He looked up. Two
great boulders lay edge to edge beside the path. Through a narrow rift
the blue nose of a forty-five protruded. Back of it glittered a pair
of steady, steely eyes.

The foreman did not at all like the look of things. Sanders was a good
shot. From where he lay, almost entirely protected, all he had to do was
to pick his opponent off at his leisure. If his hand were forced he would
do it. And the law would let him go scot free, since Doble was a fighting
man and had been seen to start in pursuit of the boy.

"Come outa there and shell out that eighteen dollars," demanded Doble.

"Nothin' doin', Dug."

"Don't run on the rope with me, young fellow. You'll sure be huntin'
trouble."

"What's the use o' beefin'? I've got the deadwood on you. Better hit the
dust back to town and explain to the boys how yore bronc went lame,"
advised Dave.

"Come down and I'll wallop the tar outa you."

"Much obliged. I'm right comfortable here."

"I've a mind to come up and dig you out."

"Please yoreself, Dug. We'll find out then which one of us goes to hell."

The foreman cursed, fluently, expertly, passionately. Not in a long time
had he had the turn called on him so adroitly. He promised Dave sudden
death in various forms whenever he could lay hands upon him.

"You're sure doin' yoreself proud, Dug," the young man told him evenly.
"I'll write the boys how you spilled language so thorough."

"If I could only lay my hands on you!" the raw-boned cattleman stormed.

"I'll bet you'd massacree me proper," admitted Dave quite cheerfully.

Suddenly Doble gave up. He wheeled his horse and began to descend the
steep slope. Steadily he jogged on to town, not once turning to look
back. His soul was filled with chagrin and fury at the defeat this
stripling had given him. He was ready to pick a quarrel with the first
man who asked him a question about what had taken place at the pass.

Nobody asked a question. Men looked at him, read the menace of his
sullen, angry face, and side-stepped his rage. They did not need to be
told that his ride had been a failure. His manner advertised it. Whatever
had taken place had not redounded to the glory of Dug Doble.

Later in the day the foreman met the owner of the D Bar Lazy R brand
to make a detailed statement of the cost of the drive. He took peculiar
pleasure in mentioning one item.

"That young scalawag Sanders beat you outa eighteen dollars," he said
with a sneer of triumph.

Doble had heard the story of what Dave and Bob had done for Crawford and
of how the wounded boy had been taken to the cattleman's home and nursed
there. It pleased him now to score off what he chose to think was the
soft-headedness of his chief.

The cattleman showed interest. "That so, Dug? Sorry. I took a fancy to
that boy. What did he do?"

"You know how vaqueros are always comin' in and chargin' goods against
the boss. I give out the word they was to quit it. Sanders he gets a pair
of eighteen-dollar boots, then jumps the town before I find out about
it."

Crawford started to speak, but Doble finished his story.

"I took out after him, but my bronc went lame from a stone in its hoof.
You'll never see that eighteen plunks, Em. It don't do to pet cowhands."

"Too bad you took all that trouble, Dug," the old cattleman began mildly.
"The fact is--"

"Trouble. Say, I'd ride to Tombstone to get a crack at that young smart
Aleck. I told him what I'd do to him if I ever got my fists on him."

"So you _did_ catch up with him."

Dug drew back sulkily within himself. He did not intend to tell all he
knew about the Gunsight Pass episode. "I didn't say _when_ I told him."

"Tha's so. You didn't. Well, I'm right sorry you took so blamed much
trouble to find him. Funny, though, he didn't tell you I gave him the
boots."

"You--what?" The foreman snapped the question out with angry incredulity.

The ranchman took the cigar from his mouth and leaned back easily. He was
smiling now frankly.

"Why, yes. I told him to buy the boots and have 'em charged to my
account. And the blamed little rooster never told you, eh?"

Doble choked for words with which to express himself. He glared at his
employer as though Crawford had actually insulted him.

In an easy, conversational tone the cattleman continued, but now there
was a touch of frost in his eyes.

"It was thisaway, Dug. When he and Bob knocked Steelman's plans hell west
and crooked after that yellow skunk George Doble betrayed me to Brad, the
boy lost his boots in the brush. 'Course I said to get another pair at
the store and charge 'em to me. I reckon he was havin' some fun joshin'
you."

The foreman was furious. He sputtered with the rage that boiled inside
him. But some instinct warned him that unless he wanted to break with
Crawford completely he must restrain his impulse to rip loose.

"All right," he mumbled. "If you told him to get 'em, 'nough said."




CHAPTER X

THE CATTLE TRAIN


Dave stood on the fence of one of the shipping pens at the Albuquerque
stockyards and used a prod-pole to guide the bawling cattle below. The
Fifty-Four Quarter Circle was loading a train of beef steers and cows for
Denver. Just how he was going to manage it Dave did not know, but he
intended to be aboard that freight when it pulled out for the mile-high
town in Colorado.

He had reached Albuquerque by a strange and devious route of zigzags and
back-trackings. His weary bronco he had long since sold for ten dollars
at a cow town where he had sacked his saddle to be held at a livery
stable until sent for. By blind baggage he had ridden a night and part of
a day. For a hundred miles he had actually paid his fare. The next leg of
the journey had been more exciting. He had elected to travel by freight.
For many hours he and a husky brakeman had held different opinions about
this. Dave had been chased from the rods into an empty and out of the box
car to the roof. He had been ditched half a dozen times during the night,
but each time he had managed to hook on before the train had gathered
headway. The brakeman enlisted the rest of the crew in the hunt, with the
result that the range-rider found himself stranded on the desert ten
miles from a station. He walked the ties in his high-heeled boots, and
before he reached the yards his feet were sending messages of pain at
every step. Reluctantly he bought a ticket to Albuquerque. Here he had
picked up a temporary job ten minutes after his arrival.

A raw-boned inspector kept tally at the chute while the cattle passed up
into the car.

"Fifteen, sixteen--prod 'em up, you Arizona--seventeen, eighteen--jab
that whiteface along--nineteen--hustle 'em in."

The air was heavy with the dust raised by the milling cattle. Calves
stretched their necks and blatted for their mothers, which kept up in
turn a steady bawling for their strayed offspring. They were conscious
that something unusual was in progress, something that threatened their
security and comfort, and they resented it in the only way they knew.

Car after car was jammed full of the frightened creatures as the men
moved from pen to pen, threw open and shut the big gates, and hustled the
stock up the chutes. Dave had begun work at six in the morning. A glance
at his watch showed him that it was now ten o'clock.

A middle-aged man in wrinkled corduroys and a pinched-in white hat drove
up to the fence. "How're they coming, Sam?" he asked of the foreman in
charge.

"We'd ought to be movin' by noon, Mr. West."

"Fine. I've decided to send Garrison in charge. He can pick one of the
boys to take along. We can't right well spare any of 'em now. If I knew
where to find a good man--"

The lean Arizona-born youth slid from the fence on his prod-pole and
stepped forward till he stood beside the buckboard of the cattleman.

"I'm the man you're lookin' for, Mr. West."

The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle brand looked him over with
keen eyes around which nets of little wrinkles spread.

"What man?" he asked.

"The one to help Mr. Garrison take the cattle to Denver."

"Recommend yoreself, can you?" asked West with a hint of humor.

"Yes, sir."

"Who are you?"

"Dave Sanders--from Arizona, first off."

"Been punchin' long?"

"Since I was a kid. Worked for the D Bar Lazy R last."

"Ever go on a cattle train?"

"Twice--to Kansas City."

"Hmp!" That grunt told Dave just what the difficulty was. It said, "I
don't know you. Why should I trust you to help take a trainload of my
cattle through?"

"You can wire to Mr. Crawford at Malapi and ask him about me," the young
fellow suggested.

"How long you ride for him?"

"Three years comin' grass."

"How do I knew you you're the man you say you are?"

"One of yore boys knows me--Bud Holway."

West grunted again. He knew Emerson Crawford well. He was a level-headed
cowman and his word was as good as his bond. If Em said this young man
was trustworthy, the shipper was willing to take a chance on him. The
honest eye, the open face, the straightforward manner of the youth
recommended his ability and integrity. The shipper was badly in need of
a man. He made up his mind to wire.

"Let you know later," he said, and for the moment dropped Dave out of the
conversation.

But before noon he sent for him.

"I've heard from Crawford," he said, and mentioned terms.

"Whatever's fair," agreed Dave.

An hour later he was in the caboose of a cattle train rolling eastward.
He was second in command of a shipment consigned to the Denver Terminal
Stockyards Company. Most of them were shipped by the West Cattle Company.
An odd car was a jackpot bunch of pickups composed of various brands. All
the cars were packed to the door, as was the custom of those days.

After the train had settled down to the chant of the rails Garrison
sent Dave on a tour of the cars. The young man reported all well and
returned to the caboose. The train crew was playing poker for small
stakes. Garrison had joined them. For a time Dave watched, then read
a four-day-old newspaper through to the last advertisement. The hum of
the wheels made him drowsy. He stretched out comfortably on the seat
with his coat for a pillow.

When he awoke it was beginning to get dark. Garrison had left the
caboose, evidently to have a look at the stock. Dave ate some crackers
and cheese, climbed to the roof, and with a lantern hanging on his arm
moved forward.

Already a few of the calves, yielding to the pressure in the heavily
laden cars, had tried to escape it by lying down. With his prod Dave
drove back the nearest animal. Then he used the nail in the pole to twist
the tails of the calves and force them to their feet. In those days of
crowded cars almost the most important thing in transit was to keep the
cattle on their legs to prevent any from being trampled and smothered to
death.

As the night grew older both men were busier. With their lanterns and
prod-poles they went from car to car relieving the pressure wherever it
was greatest. The weaker animals began to give way, worn out by the
heavy lurching and the jam of heavy bodies against them. They had to be
defended against their own weakness.

Dave was crossing from the top of one car to another when he heard his
name called. He knew the voice belonged to Garrison and he listened to
make sure from which car it came. Presently he heard it a second time
and localized the sound as just below him. He entered the car by the
end door near the roof.

"Hello! Call me?" he asked.

"Yep. I done fell and bust my laig. Can you get me outa here?"

"Bad, is it?"

"Broken."

"I'll get some of the train hands. Will you be all right till I get
back?" the young man asked.

"I reckon. Hop along lively. I'm right in the jam here."

The conductor stopped the train. With the help of the crew Dave got
Garrison back to the caboose. There was no doubt that the leg was broken.
It was decided to put the injured man off at the next station, send him
back by the up train, and wire West that Dave would see the cattle got
through all right. This was done.

Dave got no more sleep that night. He had never been busier in his life.
Before morning broke half the calves were unable to keep their feet. The
only thing to do was to reload.

He went to the conductor and asked for a siding. The man running the
train was annoyed, but he did not say so. He played for time.

"All right. We'll come to one after a while and I'll put you on it," he
promised.

Half an hour later the train rumbled merrily past a siding without
stopping. Dave walked back along the roof to the caboose.

"We've just passed a siding," he told the trainman.

"Couldn't stop there. A freight behind us has orders to take that to let
the Limited pass," he said glibly.

Dave suspected he was lying, but he could not prove it. He asked where
the next siding was.

"A little ways down," said a brakeman.

The puncher saw his left eyelid droop in a wink to the conductor. He knew
now that they were "stalling" for time. The end of their run lay only
thirty miles away. They had no intention of losing two or three hours'
time while the cattle were reloaded. After the train reached the division
point another conductor and crew would have to wrestle with the problem.

Young Sanders felt keenly his inexperience. They were taking advantage of
him because he was a boy. He did not know what to do. He had a right to
insist on a siding, but it was not his business to decide which one.

The train rolled past another siding and into the yards of the division
town. At once Dave hurried to the station. The conductor about to take
charge of the train was talking with the one just leaving. The
range-rider saw them look at him and laugh as he approached. His blood
began to warm.

"I want you to run this train onto a siding," he said at once.

"You the train dispatcher?" asked the new man satirically.

"You know who I am. I'll say right now that the cattle on this train are
suffering. Some won't last another hour. I'm goin' to reload."

"Are you? I guess not. This train's going out soon as we've changed
engines, and that'll be in about seven minutes."

"I'll not go with it."

"Suit yourself," said the officer jauntily, and turned away to talk with
the other man.

Dave walked to the dispatcher's office. The cowpuncher stated his case.

"Fix that up with the train conductor," said the dispatcher. "He can have
a siding whenever he wants it."

"But he won't gimme one."

"Not my business."

"Whose business is it?"

The dispatcher got busy over his charts. Dave became aware that he was
going to get no satisfaction here.

He tramped back to the platform.

"All aboard," sang out the conductor.

Dave, not knowing what else to do, swung on to the caboose as it passed.
He sat down on the steps and put his brains at work. There must be a way
out, if he could only find what it was. The next station was fifteen
miles down the line. Before the train stopped there Dave knew exactly
what he meant to do. He wrote out two messages. One was to the division
superintendent. The other was to Henry B. West.

He had swung from the steps of the caboose and was in the station before
the conductor.

"I want to send two telegrams," he told the agent. "Here they are all
ready. Rush 'em through. I want an answer here to the one to the
superintendent."

The wire to the railroad official read:

Conductor freight number 17 refuses me siding to reload stock in my
charge. Cattle down and dying. Serve notice herewith I put responsibility
for all loss on railroad. Will leave cars in charge of train crew.

DAVID SANDERS

_Representing West Cattle Company_

The other message was just as direct.

Conductor refuses me siding to reload. Cattle suffering and dying. Have
wired division superintendent. Will refuse responsibility and leave train
unless siding given me.

DAVE SANDERS

The conductor caught the eye of the agent.

"I'll send the wires when I get time," said the latter to the cowboy.

"You'll send 'em now--right now," announced Dave.

"Say, are you the president of the road?" bristled the agent.

"You'll lose yore job within forty-eight hours if you don't send them
telegrams _now_. I'll see to that personal." Dave leaned forward and
looked at him steadily.

The conductor spoke to the agent, nodding his head insolently toward
Dave. "Young-man-heap-swelled-head," he introduced him.

But the agent had had a scare. It was his job at stake, not the
conductor's. He sat down sulkily and sent the messages.

The conductor read his orders and walked to the door. "Number 17 leaving.
All aboard," he called back insolently.

"I'm stayin' here till I hear from the superintendent," answered Dave
flatly. "You leave an' you've got them cattle to look out for. They'll be
in yore care."

The conductor swaggered out and gave the signal to go. The train drew out
from the station and disappeared around a curve in the track. Five
minutes later it backed in again. The conductor was furious.

"Get aboard here, you hayseed, if you're goin' to ride with me!" he
yelled.

Dave was sitting on the platform whittling a stick. His back was
comfortably resting against a truck. Apparently he had not heard.

The conductor strode up to him and looked down at the lank boy. "Say, are
you comin' or ain't you?" he shouted, as though he had been fifty yards
away instead of four feet.

"Talkin' to me?" Dave looked up with amiable surprise. "Why, no, not if
you're in a hurry. I'm waitin' to hear from the superintendent."

"If you think any boob can come along and hold my train up till I lose
my right of way you've got another guess comin'. I ain't goin' to be
sidetracked by every train on the division."

"That's the company's business, not mine. I'm interested only in my
cattle."

The conductor had a reputation as a bully. He had intended to override
this young fellow by weight of age, authority, and personality. That he
had failed filled him with rage.

"Say, for half a cent I'd kick you into the middle of next week," he
said, between clamped teeth.

The cowpuncher's steel-blue eyes met his steadily. "Do you reckon that
would be quite safe?" he asked mildly.

That was a question the conductor had been asking himself. He did not
know. A good many cowboys carried six-shooters tucked away on their ample
persons. It was very likely this one had not set out on his long journey
without one.

"You're more obstinate than a Missouri mule," the railroad man exploded.
"I don't have to put up with you, and I won't!"

"No?"

The agent came out from the station waving two slips of paper. "Heard
from the super," he called.

One wire was addressed to Dave, the other to the conductor. Dave read:

Am instructing conductor to put you on siding and place train crew under
your orders to reload.

Beneath was the signature of the superintendent.

The conductor flushed purple as he read the orders sent by his superior.

"Well," he stormed at Dave. "What do you want? Spit it out!"

"Run me on the siding. I'm gonna take the calves out of the cars and tie
'em on the feed-racks above."

"How're you goin' to get 'em up?"

"Elbow grease."

"If you think I'll turn my crew into freight elevators because some fool
cattleman didn't know how to load right--"

"Maybe you've got a kick comin'. I'll not say you haven't. But this is an
emergency. I'm willin' to pay good money for the time they help me." Dave
made no reference to the telegram in his hand. He was giving the
conductor a chance to save his face.

"Oh, well, that's different. I'll put it up to the boys."

Three hours later the wheels were once more moving eastward. Dave had had
the calves roped down to the feed-racks above the cars.




CHAPTER XI

THE NIGHT CLERK GETS BUSY PRONTO


The stars were out long before Dave's train drew into the suburbs of
Denver. It crawled interminably through squalid residence sections,
warehouses, and small manufactories, coming to a halt at last in a
wilderness of tracks on the border of a small, narrow stream flowing
sluggishly between wide banks cut in the clay.

Dave swung down from the caboose and looked round in the dim light for
the stockyards engine that was to pick up his cars and run them to the
unloading pens. He moved forward through the mud, searching the
semi-darkness for the switch engine. It was nowhere to be seen.

He returned to the caboose. The conductor and brakemen were just leaving.

"My engine's not here. Some one must 'a' slipped up on his job, looks
like. Where are the stockyards?" Sanders asked.

The conductor was a small, middle-aged man who made it his business to
get along with everybody he could. He had distinctly refused to pick up
his predecessor's quarrel with Dave. Now he stopped and scratched his
head.

"Too bad. Can't you go uptown and 'phone out to the stockyards? Or if you
want to take a street-car out there you'll have time to hop one at Stout
Street. Last one goes about midnight."

In those days the telephone was not a universal necessity. Dave had never
used one and did not know how to get his connection. He spent several
minutes ringing up, shouting at the operator, and trying to understand
what she told him. He did not shout at the girl because he was annoyed.
His idea was that he would have to speak loud to have his voice carry.
At last he gave up, hot and perspiring from the mental exertion.

Outside the drug-store he just had time to catch the last stockyards car.
His watch told him that it was two minutes past twelve.

He stepped forty-five minutes later into an office in which sat two men
with their feet on a desk. The one in his shirt-sleeves was a smug,
baldish young man with clothes cut in the latest mode. He was rather
heavy-set and looked flabby. The other man appeared to be a visitor.

"This the office of the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company?" asked Dave.

The clerk looked the raw Arizonan over from head to foot and back again.
The judgment that he passed was indicated by the tone of his voice.

"Name's on the door, ain't it?" he asked superciliously.

"You in charge here?"

The clerk was amused, or at least took the trouble to seem so. "You might
think so, mightn't you?"

"Are you in charge?" asked Dave evenly.

"Maybeso. What you want?"

"I asked you if you was runnin' this office."

"Hell, yes! What're your eyes for?"

The clerk's visitor sniggered.

"I've got a train of cattle on the edge of town," explained Dave. "The
stockyards engine didn't show up."

"Consigned to us?"

"To the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company."

"Name of shipper?"

"West Cattle Company and Henry B. West."

"All right. I'll take care of 'em." The clerk turned back to his friend.
His manner dismissed the cowpuncher. "And she says to me, 'I'd love to go
with you, Mr. Edmonds; you dance like an angel.' Then I says--"

"When?" interrupted Dave calmly, but those who knew him might have
guessed his voice was a little too gentle.

"I says, 'You're some little kidder,' and--"

"When?"

The man who danced like an angel turned halfway round, and looked at the
cowboy over his shoulder. He was irritated.

"When what?" he snapped.

"When you goin' to onload my stock?"

"In the morning."

"No, sir. You'll have it done right now. That stock has been more'n two
days without water."

"I'm not responsible for that."

"No, but you'll be responsible if the train ain't onloaded now," said
Dave.

"It won't hurt 'em to wait till morning."

"That's where you're wrong. They're sufferin'. All of 'em are alive now,
but they won't all be by mo'nin' if they ain't 'tended to."

"Guess I'll take a chance on that, since you say it's my responsibility,"
replied the clerk impudently.

"Not none," announced the man from Arizona. "You'll get busy pronto."

"Say, is this my business or yours?"

"Mine and yours both."

"I guess I can run it. If I need any help from you I'll ask for it. Watch
me worry about your old cows. I have guys coming in here every day with
hurry-up tales about how their cattle won't live unless I get a wiggle on
me. I notice they all are able to take a little nourishment next day all
right, all right."

Dave caught at the gate of the railing which was between him and the
night clerk. He could not find the combination to open it and therefore
vaulted over. He caught the clerk back of the neck by the collar and
jounced him up and down hard in his chair.

"You're asleep," he explained. "I got to waken you up before you can sabe
plain talk."

The clerk looked up out of a white, frightened face. "Say, don't do that.
I got heart trouble," he said in a voice dry as a whisper.

"What about that onloadin' proposition?" asked the Arizonan.

"I'll see to it right away."

Presently the clerk, with a lantern in his hand, was going across to the
railroad tracks in front of Dave. He had quite got over the idea that
this lank youth was a safe person to make sport of.

They found the switch crew in the engine of the cab playing seven-up.

"Got a job for you. Train of cattle out at the junction," the clerk said,
swinging up to the cab.

The men finished the hand and settled up, but within a few minutes the
engine was running out to the freight train.

Day was breaking before Dave tumbled into bed. He had left a call with
the clerk to be wakened at noon. When the bell rang, it seemed to him
that he had not been asleep five minutes.

After he had eaten at the stockyards hotel he went out to have a look at
his stock. He found that on the whole the cattle had stood the trip well.
While he was still inspecting them a voice boomed at him a question.

"Well, young fellow, are you satisfied with all the trouble you've made
me?"

He turned, to see standing before him the owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter
Circle brand. The boy's surprise fairly leaped from his eyes.

"Didn't expect to see me here, I reckon," the cattleman went on. "Well,
I hopped a train soon as I got yore first wire. Spill yore story, young
man."

Dave told his tale, while the ranchman listened in grim silence. When
Sanders had finished, the owner of the stock brought a heavy hand down on
his shoulder approvingly.

"You can ship cattle for me long as you've a mind to, boy. You fought for
that stock like as if it had been yore own. You'll do to take along."

Dave flushed with boyish pleasure. He had not known whether the cattleman
would approve what he had done, and after the long strain of the trip
this endorsement of his actions was more to him than food or drink.

"They say I'm kinda stubborn. I didn't aim to lie down and let those guys
run one over me," he said.

"Yore stubbornness is money in my pocket. Do you want to go back and ride
for the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle?"

"Maybe, after a while, Mr. West. I got business in Denver for a few
days."

The cattleman smiled. "Most of my boys have when they hit town, I
notice."

"Mine ain't that kind. I reckon it's some more stubbornness," explained
Dave.

"All right. When you've finished that business I can use you."

If Dave could have looked into the future he would have known that the
days would stretch into months and the months to years before his face
would turn toward ranch life again.




CHAPTER XII

THE LAW PUZZLES DAVE


Dave knew he was stubborn. Not many men would have come on such a
wild-goose chase to Denver in the hope of getting back a favorite horse
worth so little in actual cash. But he meant to move to his end
intelligently.

If Miller and Doble were in the city they would be hanging out at some
saloon or gambling-house. Once or twice Dave dropped in to Chuck Weaver's
place, where the sporting men from all over the continent inevitably
drifted when in Denver. But he had little expectation of finding the men
he wanted there. These two rats of the underworld would not attempt to
fleece keen-eyed professionals. They would prey on the unsophisticated.

His knowledge of their habits took him to that part of town below
Lawrence Street. While he chatted with his foot on the rail, a glass of
beer in front of him, he made inconspicuous inquiries of bartenders. It
did not take him long to strike the trail.

"Two fellows I knew in the cattle country said they were comin' to
Denver. Wonder if they did. One of 'em's a big fat guy name o'
Miller--kinda rolls when he walks. Other's small and has a glass eye.
Called himself George Doble when I knew him."

"Come in here 'most every day--both of 'em. Waitin' for the Festival of
Mountain and Plain to open up. Got some kinda concession. They look to
yours truly like--"

The bartender pulled himself up short and began polishing the top of the
bar vigorously. He was a gossipy soul, and more than once his tongue had
got him into trouble.

"You was sayin'--" suggested the cowboy.

"--that they're good spenders, as the fellow says," amended the
bartender, to be on the safe side.

"When I usta know 'em they had a mighty cute little trick pony--name was
Chiquito, seems to me. Ever hear 'em mention it?"

"They was fussin' about that horse to-day. Seems they got an offer for
him and Doble wants to sell. Miller he says no."

"Yes?"

"I'll tell 'em a friend asked for 'em. What name?"

"Yes, do. Jim Smith."

"The fat old gobbler's liable to drop in any time now."

This seemed a good reason to Mr. Jim Smith, _alias_ David Sanders, for
dropping out. He did not care to have Miller know just yet who the kind
friend was that had inquired for him.

But just as he was turning away a word held him for a moment. The
discretion of the man in the apron was not quite proof against his habit
of talk.

"They been quarrelin' a good deal together. I expect the combination is
about ready to bust up," he whispered confidentially.

"Quarrelin'? What about?"

"Oh, I dunno. They act like they're sore as a boil at each other. Honest,
I thought they was goin' to mix it yesterday. I breezed up wit' a bottle
an' they kinda cooled off."

"Doble drunk?"

"Nope. Fact is, they'd trimmed a Greeley boob and was rowin' about the
split. Miller he claimed Doble held out on him. I'll bet he did too."

Dave did not care how much they quarreled or how soon they parted after
he had got back his horse. Until that time he preferred that they would
give him only one trail to follow instead of two.

The cowpuncher made it his business to loaf on Larimer Street for the
rest of the day. His beat was between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets,
usually on the other side of the road from the Klondike Saloon.

About four o'clock his patience was rewarded. Miller came rolling along
in a sort of sailor fashion characteristic of him. Dave had just time to
dive into a pawnbroker's shop unnoticed.

A black-haired, black-eyed salesman came forward to wait on him. The
puncher cast an eye helplessly about him. It fell on a suitcase.

"How much?" he asked.

"Seven dollars. Dirt sheap, my frient."

"Got any telescope grips?"

The salesman produced one. Dave bought it because he did not know how to
escape without.

He carried it with him while he lounged up and down the sidewalk waiting
for Miller to come out of the Klondike. When the fat gambler reappeared,
the range-rider fell in behind him unobserved and followed uptown past
the Tabor Opera House as far as California Street. Here they swung to the
left to Fourteenth, where Miller disappeared into a rooming-house.

The amateur detective turned back toward the business section. On the way
he dropped guiltily the telescope grip into a delivery wagon standing in
front of a grocery. He had no use for it, and he had already come to feel
it a white elephant on his hands.

With the aid of a city directory Dave located the livery stables within
walking distance of the house where Miller was staying. Inspired perhaps
by the nickel detective stories he had read, the cowboy bought a pair of
blue goggles and a "store" collar. In this last, substituted for the
handkerchief he usually wore loosely round his throat, the sleuth nearly
strangled himself for lack of air. His inquiries at such stables as he
found brought no satisfaction. Neither Miller nor the pinto had been seen
at any of them.

Later in the evening he met Henry B. West at the St. James Hotel.

"How's that business of yore's gettin' along, boy?" asked the cattleman
with a smile.

"Don' know yet. Say, Mr. West, if I find a hawss that's been stole from
me, how can I get it back?"

"Some one steal a hawss from you?"

Dave told his story. West listened to a finish.

"I know a lawyer here. We'll ask him what to do," the ranchman said.

They found the lawyer at the Athletic Club. West stated the case.

"Your remedy is to replevin. If they fight, you'll have to bring
witnesses to prove ownership."

"Bring witnesses from Malapi! Why, I can't do that," said Dave,
staggered. "I ain't got the money. Why can't I just take the hawss?
It's mine."

"The law doesn't know it's yours."

Dave left much depressed. Of course the thieves would go to a lawyer, and
of course he would tell them to fight. The law was a darned queer thing.
It made the recovery of his property so costly that the crooks who stole
it could laugh at him.

"Looks like the law's made to protect scalawags instead of honest folks,"
Dave told West.

"I don't reckon it is, but it acts that way sometimes," admitted the
cattleman. "You can see yoreself it wouldn't do for the law to say a
fellow could get property from another man by just sayin' it was his.
Sorry, Sanders. After all, a bronc's only a bronc. I'll give you yore
pick of two hundred if you come back with me to the ranch."

"Much obliged, seh. Maybe I will later."

The cowpuncher walked the streets while he thought it over. He had no
intention whatever of giving up Chiquito if he could find the horse. So
far as the law went he was in a blind alley. He was tied hand and foot.
That possession was nine points before the courts he had heard before.

The way to recover flashed to his brain like a wave of light. He must get
possession. All he had to do was to steal his own horse and make for the
hills. If the thieves found him later--and the chances were that they
would not even attempt pursuit if he let them know who he was--he would
force them to the expense of going to law for Chiquito. What was sauce
for the goose must be for the gander too.

Dave's tramp had carried him across the Platte into North Denver. On his
way back he passed a corral close to the railroad tracks. He turned in to
look over the horses.

The first one his eyes fell on was Chiquito.




CHAPTER XIII

FOR MURDER


Dave whistled. The pony pricked up its ears, looked round, and came
straight to him. The young man laid his face against the soft, silky
nose, fondled it, whispered endearments to his pet. He put the bronco
through its tricks for the benefit of the corral attendant.

"Well, I'll be doggoned," that youth commented. "The little pinto sure is
a wonder. Acts like he knows you mighty well."

"Ought to. I trained him. Had him before Miller got him."

"Bet you hated to sell him."

"You _know_ it." Dave moved forward to his end, the intention to get
possession of the horse. He spoke in a voice easy and casual. "Saw Miller
a while ago. They're talkin' about sellin' the paint hawss, him and
his pardner Doble. I'm to saddle up and show what Chiquito can do."

"Say, that's a good notion. If I was a buyer I'd pay ten bucks more after
you'd put him through that circus stuff."

"Which is Miller's saddle?" When it was pointed out to him, Dave examined
it and pretended to disapprove. "Too heavy. Lend me a lighter one, can't
you?"

"Sure. Here's three or four. Help yourself."

The wrangler moved into the stable to attend to his work.

Dave cinched, swung to the saddle, and rode to the gate of the corral.
Two men were coming in, and by the sound of their voices were quarreling.
They stepped aside to let him pass, one on each side of the gate, so
that it was necessary to ride between them.

They recognized the pinto at the same moment Dave did them. On the heels
of that recognition came another.

Doble ripped out an oath and a shout of warning. "It's Sanders!"

A gun flashed as the pony jumped to a gallop. The silent night grew noisy
with shots, voices, the clatter of hoofs. Twice Dave fired answers to the
challenges which leaped out of the darkness at him. He raced across the
bridge spanning the Platte and for a moment drew up on the other side to
listen for sounds which might tell him whether he would be pursued. One
last solitary revolver shot disturbed the stillness.

The rider grinned. "Think he'd know better than to shoot at me this far."

He broke his revolver, extracted the empty shells, and dropped them to
the street. Then he rode up the long hill toward Highlands, passed
through that suburb of the city, and went along the dark and dusty road
to the shadows of the Rockies silhouetted in the night sky.

His flight had no definite objective except to put as much distance
between himself and Denver as possible. He knew nothing about the
geography of Colorado, except that a large part of the Rocky Mountains
and a delectable city called Denver lived there. His train trip to it had
told him that one of its neighbors was New Mexico, which was in turn
adjacent to Arizona. Therefore he meant to get to New Mexico as quickly
as Chiquito could quite comfortably travel.

Unfortunately Dave was going west instead of south. Every step of the
pony was carrying him nearer the roof of the continent, nearer the passes
of the front range which lead, by divers valleys and higher mountains
beyond, to the snowclad regions of eternal white.

Up in this altitude it was too cold to camp out without a fire and
blankets.

"I reckon we'll keep goin', old pal," the young man told his horse. "I've
noticed roads mostly lead somewheres."

Day broke over valleys of swirling mist far below the rider. The sun rose
and dried the moisture. Dave looked down on a town scattered up and down
a gulch.

He met an ore team and asked the driver what town it was. The man looked
curiously at him.

"Why, it's Idaho Springs," he said. "Where you come from?"

Dave eased himself in the saddle. "From the Southwest."

"You're quite a ways from home. I reckon your hills ain't so uncurried
down there, are they?"

The cowpuncher looked over the mountains. He was among the summits, aglow
in the amber light of day with the many blended colors of wild flowers.
"We got some down there, too, that don't fit a lady's boodwar. Say, if I
keep movin' where'll this road take me?"

The man with the ore team gave information. It struck Dave that he had
run into a blind alley.

"If you're after a job, I reckon you can find one at some of the mines.
They're needin' hands," the teamster added.

Perhaps this was the best immediate solution of the problem. The puncher
nodded farewell and rode down into the town.

He left Chiquito at a livery barn, after having personally fed and
watered the pinto, and went himself to a hotel. Here he registered, not
under his own name, ate breakfast, and lay down for a few hours' sleep.
When he awakened he wrote a note with the stub of a pencil to Bob Hart.
It read:

Well, Bob, I done got Chiquito back though it sure looked like I wasn't
going to but you never can tell and as old Buck Byington says its a hell
of a long road without no bend in it and which you can bet your boots the
old alkali is right at that. Well I found the little pie-eater in Denver
O K but so gaunt he wont hardly throw a shadow and what can you expect
of scalawags like Miller and Doble who don't know how to treat a horse.
Well I run Chiquito off right under their noses and we had a little gun
play and made my getaway and I reckon I will stay a spell and work here.
Well good luck to all the boys till I see them again in the sweet by and
by.

Dave

P.S. Get this money order cashed old-timer and pay the boys what I
borrowed when we hit the trail after Miller and Doble. I lit out to
sudden to settle. Five to Steve and five to Buck. Well so long.

Dave

The puncher went to the post-office, got a money order, and mailed the
letter, after which he returned to the hotel. He intended to eat dinner
and then look for work.

Three or four men were standing on the steps of the hotel talking with
the proprietor. Dave was quite close before the Boniface saw him.

"That's him," the hotel-keeper said in an excited whisper.

A brown-faced man without a coat turned quickly and looked at Sanders. He
wore a belt with cartridges and a revolver.

"What's your name?" he demanded.

Dave knew at once this man was an officer of the law. He knew, too, the
futility of trying to escape under the pseudonym he had written on the
register.

"Sanders--Dave Sanders."

"I want you."

"So? Who are you?"

"Sheriff of the county."

"Whadjawant me for?"

"Murder."

Dave gasped. His heart beat fast with a prescience of impending disaster.
"Murder," he repeated dully.

"You're charged with the murder of George Doble last night in Denver."

The boy stared at him with horror-stricken eyes. "Doble? My God, did I
kill him?" He clutched at a porch post to steady himself. The hills were
sliding queerly up into the sky.




CHAPTER XIV

TEN YEARS


All the way back to Denver, while the train ran down through the narrow,
crooked cañon, Dave's mind dwelt in a penumbra of horror. It was
impossible he could have killed Doble, he kept telling himself. He had
fired back into the night without aim. He had not even tried to hit the
men who were shooting at him. It must be some ghastly joke.

None the less he knew by the dull ache in his heart that this awful thing
had fastened on him and that he would have to pay the penalty. He had
killed a man, snuffed out his life wantonly as a result of taking the
law into his own hands. The knowledge of what he had done shook him to
the soul.

It remained with him, in the background of his mind, up to and through
his trial. What shook his nerve was the fact that he had taken a life,
not the certainty of the punishment that must follow.

West called to see him at the jail, and to the cattleman Dave told the
story exactly as it had happened. The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter
Circle walked up and down the cell rumpling his hair.

"Boy, why didn't you let on to me what you was figurin' on pullin' off?
I knew you was some bull-haided, but I thought you had a lick o' sense
left."

"Wisht I had," said Dave miserably.

"Well, what's done's done. No use cryin' over the bust-up. We'd better
fix up whatever's left from the smash. First off, we'll get a lawyer, I
reckon."

"I gotta li'l' money left--twenty-six dollars," spoke up Dave timidly.
"Maybe that's all he'll want."

West smiled at this babe in the woods. "It'll last as long as a snowball
in you-know-where if he's like some lawyers I've met up with."

It did not take the lawyer whom West engaged long to decide on the line
the defense must take. "We'll show that Miller and Doble were crooks and
that they had wronged Sanders. That will count a lot with a jury," he
told West. "We'll admit the killing and claim self-defense."

The day before the trial Dave was sitting in his cell cheerlessly reading
a newspaper when visitors were announced. At sight of Emerson Crawford
and Bob Hart he choked in his throat. Tears brimmed in his eyes. Nobody
could have been kinder to him than West had been, but these were home
folks. He had known them many years. Their kindness in coming melted his
heart.

He gripped their hands, but found himself unable to say anything in
answer to their greetings. He was afraid to trust his voice, and he
was ashamed of his emotion.

"The boys are for you strong, Dave. We all figure you done right. Steve
he says he wouldn't worry none if you'd got Miller too," Bob breezed on.

"Tha's no way to talk, son," reproved Crawford. "It's bad enough right
as it is without you boys wantin' it any worse. But don't you get
downhearted, Dave. We're allowin' to stand by you to a finish. It ain't
as if you'd got a good man. Doble was a mean-hearted scoundrel if ever
I met up with one. He's no loss to society. We're goin' to show the jury
that too."

They did. By the time Crawford, Hart, and a pair of victims who had been
trapped by the sharpers had testified about Miller and Doble, these
worthies had no shred of reputation left with the jury. It was shown
that they had robbed the defendant of the horse he had trained and that
he had gone to a lawyer and found no legal redress within his means.

But Dave was unable to prove self-defense. Miller stuck doggedly to his
story. The cowpuncher had fired the first shot. He had continued to fire,
though he must have seen Doble sink to the ground immediately. Moreover,
the testimony of the doctor showed that the fatal shot had taken effect
at close range.

Just prior to this time there had been an unusual number of killings in
Denver. The newspapers had stirred up a public sentiment for stricter
enforcement of law. They had claimed that both judges and juries were too
easy on the gunmen who committed these crimes. Now they asked if this
cowboy killer was going to be allowed to escape. Dave was tried when this
wave of feeling was at its height and he was a victim of it.

The jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree. The judge
sentenced him to ten years in the penitentiary.

When Bob Hart came to say good-bye before Dave was removed to Cañon City,
the young range-rider almost broke down. He was greatly distressed at the
misfortune that had befallen his friend.

"We're gonna stay with this, Dave. You know Crawford. He goes through
when he starts. Soon as there's a chance we'll hit the Governor for a
pardon. It's a damn shame, old pal. Tha's what it is."

Dave nodded. A lump in his throat interfered with speech.

"The ol' man lent me money to buy Chiquito, and I'm gonna keep the pinto
till you get out. That'll help pay yore lawyer," continued Bob. "One
thing more. You're not the only one that's liable to be sent up.
Miller's on the way back to Malapi. If he don't get a term for
hawss-stealin', I'm a liar. We got a dead open-and-shut case against
him."

The guard who was to take Dave to the penitentiary bustled in cheerfully.
"All right, boys. If you're ready we'll be movin' down to the depot."

The friends shook hands again.




CHAPTER XV

IN DENVER


The warden handed him a ticket back to Denver, and with it a stereotyped
little lecture of platitudes.

"Your future lies before you to be made or marred by yourself, Sanders.
You owe it to the Governor who has granted this parole and to the good
friends who have worked so hard for it that you be honest and industrious
and temperate. If you do this the world will in time forget your past
mistakes and give you the right hand of fellowship, as I do now."

The paroled man took the fat hand proffered him because he knew the
warden was a sincere humanitarian. He meant exactly what he said. Perhaps
he could not help the touch of condescension. But patronage, no matter
how kindly meant, was one thing this tall, straight convict would not
stand. He was quite civil, but the hard, cynical eyes made the warden
uncomfortable. Once or twice before he had known prisoners like this,
quiet, silent men who were never insolent, but whose eyes told him that
the iron had seared their souls.

The voice of the warden dropped briskly to business. "Seen the
bookkeeper? Everything all right, I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Well, wish you luck."

"Thanks."

The convict turned away, grave, unsmiling.

The prison officer's eyes followed him a little wistfully. His function,
as he understood it, was to win these men back to fitness for service to
the society which had shut them up for their misdeeds. They were not
wild beasts. They were human beings who had made a misstep. Sometimes he
had been able to influence men strongly, but he felt that it had not been
true of this puncher from the cow country.

Sanders walked slowly out of the office and through the door in the wall
that led back to life. He was free. To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows
of all the years of his life were waiting for him. But the fact stirred
in him no emotion. As he stood in the dry Colorado sunshine his heart was
quite dead.

In the earlier days of his imprisonment it had not been so. He had
dreamed often of this hour. At night, in the darkness of his cell,
imagination had projected picture after picture of it, vivid, colorful,
set to music. But his parole had come too late. The years had taken
their toll of him. The shadow of the prison had left its chill, had done
something to him that had made him a different David Sanders from the boy
who had entered. He wondered if he would ever learn to laugh again, if he
would ever run to meet life eagerly as that other David Sanders had a
thousand years ago.

He followed the road down to the little station and took a through train
that came puffing out of the Royal Gorge on its way to the plains.
Through the crowd at the Denver depot he passed into the city, moving
up Seventeenth Street without definite aim or purpose. His parole had
come unexpectedly, so that none of his friends could meet him even if
they had wanted to do so. He was glad of this. He preferred to be alone,
especially during these first days of freedom. It was his intention to go
back to Malapi, to the country he knew and loved, but he wished to pick
up a job in the city for a month or two until he had settled into a frame
of mind in which liberty had become a habit.

Early next morning he began his search for work. It carried him to a
lumber yard adjoining the railroad yards.

"We need a night watchman," the superintendent said. "Where'd you work
last?"

"At Cañon City."

The lumberman looked at him quickly, a question in his glance.

"Yes," Dave went on doggedly. "In the penitentiary."

A moment's awkward embarrassment ensued.

"What were you in for?"

"Killing a man."

"Too bad. I'm afraid--"

"He had stolen my horse and I was trying to get it back. I had no
intention of hitting him when I fired."

"I'd take you in a minute so far as I'm concerned personally, but our
board of directors--afraid they wouldn't like it. That's one trouble in
working for a corporation."

Sanders turned away. The superintendent hesitated, then called after him.

"If you're up against it and need a dollar--"

"Thanks. I don't. I'm looking for work, not charity," the applicant said
stiffly.

Wherever he went it was the same. As soon as he mentioned the prison,
doors of opportunity closed to him. Nobody wanted to employ a man
tarred with that pitch. It did not matter why he had gone, under what
provocation he had erred. The thing that damned him was that he had been
there. It was a taint, a corrosion.

He could have picked up a job easily enough if he had been willing to lie
about his past. But he had made up his mind to tell the truth. In the
long run he could not conceal it. Better start with the slate clean.

When he got a job it was to unload cars of fruit for a commission house.
A man was wanted in a hurry and the employer did not ask any questions.
At the end of an hour he was satisfied.

"Fellow hustles peaches like he'd been at it all his life," the
commission man told his partner.

A few days later came the question that Sanders had been expecting.
"Where'd you work before you came to us?"

"At the penitentiary."

"A guard?" asked the merchant, taken aback.

"No. I was a convict." The big lithe man in overalls spoke quietly, his
eyes meeting those of the Market Street man with unwavering steadiness.

"What was the trouble?"

Dave explained. The merchant made no comment, but when he paid off the
men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, "Sorry, Sanders. The
work will be slack next week. I'll have to lay you off."

The man from Cañon City understood. He looked for another place, was
rebuffed a dozen times, and at last was given work by an employer who had
vision enough to know the truth that the bad men do not all go to prison
and that some who go may be better than those who do not.

In this place Sanders lasted three weeks. He was doing concrete work on a
viaduct job for a contractor employed by the city.

This time it was a fellow-workman who learned of the Arizonan's record.
A letter from Emerson Crawford, forwarded by the warden of the
penitentiary, dropped out of Dave's coat pocket where it hung across
a plank.

The man who picked it up read the letter before returning it to the
pocket. He began at once to whisper the news. The subject was discussed
back and forth among the men on the quiet. Sanders guessed they had
discovered who he was, but he waited for them to move. His years in
prison had given him at least the strength of patience. He could bide
his time.

They went to the contractor. He reasoned with them.

"Does his work all right, doesn't he? Treats you all civilly. Doesn't
force himself on you. I don't see any harm in him."

"We ain't workin' with no jail bird," announced the spokesman.

"He told me the story and I've looked it up since. Talked with the lawyer
that defended him. He says the man Sanders killed was a bad lot and had
stolen his horse from him. Sanders was trying to get it back. He claimed
self-defense, but couldn't prove it."

"Don't make no difference. The jury said he was guilty, didn't it?"

"Suppose he was. We've got to give him a chance when he comes out,
haven't we?"

Some of the men began to weaken. They were not cruel, but they were
children of impulse, easily led by those who had force enough to push
to the front.

"I won't mix cement with no convict," the self-appointed leader announced
flatly. "That goes."

The contractor met him eye to eye. "You don't have to, Reynolds. You can
get your time."

"Meanin' that you keep him on the job and let me go?"

"That's it exactly. Long as he does his work well I'll not ask him to
quit."

A shadow darkened the doorway of the temporary office. The Arizonan
stepped in with his easy, swinging stride, a lithe, straight-backed
Hermes showing strength of character back of every movement.

"I'm leaving to-day, Mr. Shields." His voice carried the quiet power of
reserve force.

"Not because I want you to, Sanders."

"Because I'm not going to stay and make you trouble."

"I don't think it will come to that. I'm talking it over with the boys
now. Your work stands up. I've no criticism."

"I'll not stay now, Mr. Shields. Since they've complained to you I'd
better go."

The ex-convict looked around, the eyes in his sardonic face hard and
bitter. If he could have read the thoughts of the men it would have been
different. Most of them were ashamed of their protest. They would have
liked to have drawn back, but they did not know how to say so. Therefore
they stood awkwardly silent. Afterward, when it was too late, they talked
it over freely enough and blamed each other.

From one job to another Dave drifted. His stubborn pride, due in part to
a native honesty that would not let him live under false pretenses, in
part to a bitterness that had become dogged defiance, kept him out of
good places and forced him to do heavy, unskilled labor that brought the
poorest pay.

Yet he saved money, bought himself good, cheap clothes, and found energy
to attend night school where he studied stationary and mechanical
engineering. He lived wholly within himself, his mental reactions tinged
with morose scorn. He found little comfort either in himself or in the
external world, in spite of the fact that he had determined with all his
stubborn will to get ahead.

The library he patronized a good deal, but he gave no time to general
literature. His reading was of a highly specialized nature. He studied
everything that he could find about the oil fields of America.

The stigma of his disgrace continued to raise its head. One of the
concrete workers was married to the sister of the woman from whom he
rented his room. The quiet, upstanding man who never complained or asked
any privileges had been a favorite of hers, but she was a timid,
conventional soul. Visions of her roomers departing in a flock when they
found out about the man in the second floor back began to haunt her
dreams. Perhaps he might rob them all at night. In a moment of nerve
tension, summoning all her courage, she asked the killer from the cattle
country if he would mind leaving.

He smiled grimly and began to pack. For several days he had seen it
coming. When he left, the expressman took his trunk to the station. The
ticket which Sanders bought showed Malapi as his destination.




CHAPTER XVI

DAVE MEETS TWO FRIENDS AND A FOE


In the early morning Dave turned to rest his cramped limbs. He was in a
day coach, and his sleep through the night had been broken. The light
coming from the window woke him. He looked out on the opalescent dawn
of the desert, and his blood quickened at sight of the enchanted mesa.
To him came that joyous thrill of one who comes home to his own after
years of exile.

Presently he saw the silvery sheen of the mesquite when the sun is
streaming westward. Dust eddies whirled across the barranca. The prickly
pear and the palo verde flashed past, green splashes against a background
of drab. The pudgy creosote, the buffalo grass, the undulation of sand
hills were an old story, but to-day his eyes devoured them hungrily. The
wonderful effect of space and light, the cloud skeins drawn out as by
some invisible hand, the brown ribbon of road that wandered over the
hill: they brought to him an emotion poignant and surprising.

The train slid into a narrow valley bounded by hills freakishly eroded to
fantastic shapes. Piñon trees fled to the rear. A sheep corral fenced
with brush and twisted roots, in which were long, shallow feed troughs
and flat-roofed sheds, leaped out of nowhere, was for a few moments, and
vanished like a scene in a moving picture. A dim, gray mass of color on a
hillside was agitated like a sea wave. It was a flock of sheep moving
toward the corral. For an instant Dave caught a glimpse of a dog circling
the huddled pack; then dog and sheep were out of sight together.

The pictures stirred memories of the acrid smoke of hill camp-fires, of
nights under a tarp with the rain beating down on him, and still others
of a road herd bawling for water, of winter camps when the ropes were
frozen stiff and the snow slid from trees in small avalanches.

At the junction he took the stage for Malapi. Already he could see that
he was going into a new world, one altogether different from that he had
last seen here. These men were not cattlemen. They talked the vocabulary
of oil. They had the shrewd, keen look of the driller and the wildcatter.
They were full of nervous energy that oozed out in constant conversation.

"Jackpot Number Three lost a string o' tools yesterday. While they're
fishin', Steelman'll be drillin' hell-a-mile. You got to sit up all night
to beat that Coal Oil Johnny," one wrinkled little man said.

A big man in boots laced over corduroy trousers nodded. "He's smooth as a
pump plunger, and he sure has luck. He can buy up a dry hole any old time
and it'll be a gusher in a week. He'll bust Em Crawford high and dry
before he finishes with him. Em had ought to 'a' stuck to cattle. That's
one game he knows from hoof to hide."

"Sure. Em's got no business in oil. Say, do you know when they're
expectin' Shiloh Number Two in?"

"She's into the sand now, but still dry as a cork leg. That's liable to
put a crimp in Em's bank roll, don't you reckon?"

"Yep. Old Man Hard Luck's campin' on his trail sure enough. The banks'll
be shakin' their heads at his paper soon."

The stage had stopped to take on a mailsack. Now it started again, and
the rest of the talk was lost to Dave. But he had heard enough to guess
that the old feud between Crawford and Steelman had taken on a new phase,
one in which his friend was likely to get the worst of it.

At Malapi Dave descended from the stage into a town he hardly knew. It
had the same wide main street, but the business section extended five
blocks instead of one. Everywhere oil dominated the place. Hotels,
restaurants, and hardware stores jostled saloons and gambling-houses.
Tents had been set up in vacant lots beside frame buildings, and in them
stores, rooming-houses, and lunch-counters were doing business. Everybody
was in a hurry. The street was filled with men who had to sleep with one
eye open lest they miss the news of some new discovery.

The town was having growing-pains. One contractor was putting down
sidewalks in the same street where another laid sewer pipe and a third
put in telephone poles. A branch line of a trans-continental railroad was
moving across the desert to tap the new oil field. Houses rose overnight.
Mule teams jingled in and out freighting supplies to Malapi and from
there to the fields. On all sides were rustle, energy, and optimism,
signs of the new West in the making.

Up the street a team of half-broken broncos came on the gallop, weaving
among the traffic with a certainty that showed a skilled pair of hands
at the reins. From the buckboard stepped lightly a straight-backed,
well-muscled young fellow. He let out a moment later a surprised shout
of welcome and fell upon Sanders with two brown fists.

"Dave! Where in Mexico you been, old alkali? We been lookin' for you
everywhere."

"In Denver, Bob."

Sanders spoke quietly. His eyes went straight into those of Bob Hart to
see what was written there. He found only a glad and joyous welcome,
neither embarrassment nor any sign of shame.

"But why didn't you write and let us know?" Bob grew mildly profane in
his warmth. He was as easy as though his friend had come back from a week
in the hills on a deer hunt. "We didn't know when the Governor was goin'
to act. Or we'd 'a' been right at the gate, me or Em Crawford one. Whyn't
you answer our letters, you darned old scalawag? Dawggone, but I'm glad
to see you."

Dave's heart warmed to this fine loyalty. He knew that both Hart and
Crawford had worked in season and out of season for a parole or a pardon.
But it's one thing to appear before a pardon board for a convict in whom
you are interested and quite another to welcome him to your heart when he
stands before you. Bob would do to tie to, Sanders told himself with a
rush of gratitude. None of this feeling showed in his dry voice.

"Thanks, Bob."

Hart knew already that Dave had come back a changed man. He had gone in a
boy, wild, turbulent, untamed. He had come out tempered by the fires of
experience and discipline. The steel-gray eyes were no longer frank and
gentle. They judged warily and inscrutably. He talked little and mostly
in monosyllables. It was a safe guess that he was master of his impulses.
In his manner was a cold reticence entirely foreign to the Dave Sanders
his friend had known and frolicked with. Bob felt in him a quality of
dangerous strength as hard and cold as hammered iron.

"Where's yore trunk? I'll take it right up to my shack," Hart said.

"I've rented a room."

"Well, you can onrent it. You're stayin' with me."

"No, Bob. I reckon I won't do that. I'll live alone awhile."

"No, sir. What do you take me for? We'll load yore things up on the
buckboard."

Dave shook his head. "I'm much obliged, but I'd rather not yet. Got to
feel out my way while I learn the range here."

To this Bob did not consent without a stiff protest, but Sanders was
inflexible.

"All right. Suit yoreself. You always was stubborn as a Missouri mule,"
Hart said with a grin. "Anyhow, you'll eat supper with me. Le's go to the
Delmonico for ol' times' sake. We'll see if Hop Lee knows you. I'll bet
he does."

Hart had come in to see a contractor about building a derrick for a well.
"I got to see him now, Dave. Go along with me," he urged.

"No, see you later. Want to get my trunk from the depot."

They arranged an hour of meeting at the restaurant.

In front of the post-office Bob met Joyce Crawford. The young woman had
fulfilled the promise of her girlhood. As she moved down the street, tall
and slender, there was a light, joyous freedom in her step. So Ellen
Terry walked in her resilient prime.

"Miss Joyce, he's here," Bob said.

"Who--Dave?"

She and her father and Bob had more than once met as a committee of three
to discuss the interests of Sanders both before and since his release.
The week after he left Cañon City letters of thanks had reached both Hart
and Crawford, but these had given no address. Their letters to him had
remained unanswered nor had a detective agency been able to find him.

"Yes, ma'am, Dave! He's right here in town. Met him half an hour ago."

"I'm glad. How does he look?"

"He's grown older, a heap older. And he's different. You know what an
easy-goin' kid he was, always friendly and happy as a half-grown pup.
Well, he ain't thataway now. Looks like he never would laugh again
real cheerful. I don't reckon he ever will. He's done got the prison
brand on him for good. I couldn't see my old Dave in him a-tall. He's
hard as nails--and bitter."

The brown eyes softened. "He would be, of course. How could he help it?"

"And he kinda holds you off. He's been hurt bad and ain't takin' no
chances whatever, don't you reckon?"

"Do you mean he's broken?"

"Not a bit. He's strong, and he looks at you straight and hard. But
they've crushed all the kid outa him. He was a mighty nice boy, Dave was.
I hate to lose him."

"When can I see him?" she asked.

Bob looked at his watch. "I got an appointment to meet him at Delmonico's
right now. Maybe I can get him to come up to the house afterward."

Joyce was a young woman who made swift decisions. "I'll go with you now,"
she said.

Sanders was standing in front of the restaurant, but he was faced in the
other direction. His flat, muscular back was rigid. In his attitude was a
certain tenseness, as though his body was a bundle of steel springs ready
to be released.

Bob's eye traveled swiftly past him to a fat man rolling up the street on
the opposite sidewalk. "It's Ad Miller, back from the pen. I heard he got
out this week," he told the girl in a low voice.

Joyce Crawford felt the blood ebb from her face. It was as though her
heart had been drenched with ice water. What was going to take place
between these men? Were they armed? Would the gambler recognize his old
enemy?

She knew that each was responsible for the other's prison sentence.
Sanders had followed the thieves to Denver and found them with his horse.
The fat crook had lied Dave into the penitentiary by swearing that the
boy had fired the first shots. Now they were meeting for the first time
since.

Miller had been drinking. The stiff precision of his gait showed that.
For a moment it seemed that he would pass without noticing the man across
the road. Then, by some twist of chance, he decided to take the sidewalk
on the other side. The sign of the Delmonico had caught his eye and he
remembered that he was hungry.

He took one step--and stopped. He had recognized Sanders. His eyes
narrowed. The head on his short, red neck was thrust forward.

"Goddlemighty!" he screamed, and next moment was plucking a revolver from
under his left armpit.

Bob caught Joyce and swept her behind him, covering her with his body as
best he could. At the same time Sanders plunged forward, arrow-straight
and swift. The revolver cracked. It spat fire a second time, a third. The
tiger-man, head low, his whole splendid body vibrant with energy, hurled
himself across the road as though he had been flung from a catapult. A
streak of fire ripped through his shoulder. Another shot boomed almost
simultaneously. He thudded hard into the fat paunch of the gunman. They
went down together.

The fingers of Dave's left hand closed on the fat wrist of the gambler.
His other hand tore the revolver away from the slack grasp. The gun rose
and fell. Miller went into unconsciousness without even a groan. The
corrugated butt of the gun had crashed down on his forehead.

Dizzily Sanders rose. He leaned against a telephone pole for support. The
haze cleared to show him the white, anxious face of a young woman.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

Dave looked at Joyce, wondering at her presence here. "He's the one
that's hurt," he answered quietly.

"I thought--I was afraid--" Her voice died away. She felt her knees grow
weak. To her this man had appeared to be plunging straight to death.

No excitement in him reached the surface. His remarkably steady eyes
still held their grim, hard tenseness, but otherwise his self-control was
perfect. He was absolutely imperturbable.

"He was shootin' wild. Sorry you were here, Miss Crawford." His eyes
swept the gathering crowd. "You'd better go, don't you reckon?"

"Yes.... You come too, please." The girl's voice broke.

"Don't worry. It's all over." He turned to the crowd. "He began shootin
'at me. I was unarmed. He shot four times before I got to him."

"Tha's right. I saw it from up street," a stranger volunteered. "Where do
you take out yore insurance, friend? I'd like to get some of the same."

"I'll be in town here if I'm wanted," Dave announced before he came back
to where Bob and Joyce were standing. "Now we'll move, Miss Crawford."

At the second street corner he stopped, evidently intending to go no
farther. "I'll say good-bye, for this time. I'll want to see Mr. Crawford
right soon. How is little Keith comin' on?"

She had mentioned that the boy frequently spoke of him.

"Can you come up to see Father to-night? Or he'll go to your room if
you'd rather."

"Maybe to-morrow--"

"He'll be anxious to see you. I want you and Bob to come to dinner
Sunday."

"Don't hardly think I'll be here Sunday. My plans aren't settled. Thank
you just the same, Miss Crawford."

She took his words as a direct rebuff. There was a little lump in her
throat that she had to get rid of before she spoke again.

"Sorry. Perhaps some other time." Joyce gave him her hand. "I'm mighty
glad to have seen you again, Mr. Sanders."

He bowed. "Thank you."

After she had gone, Dave turned swiftly to his friend. "Where's the
nearest doctor's office? Miller got me in the shoulder."




CHAPTER XVII

OIL


"I'll take off my hat to Dave," said Hart warmly. "He's chain lightnin'.
I never did see anything like the way he took that street in two jumps.
And game? Did you ever hear tell of an unarmed man chargin' a guy with a
gun spittin' at him?"

"I always knew he had sand in his craw. What does Doc Green say?" asked
Crawford, lighting a corncob pipe.

"Says nothin' to worry about. A flesh wound in the shoulder. Ought to
heal up in a few days."

Miss Joyce speaking, with an indignant tremor of the voice: "It was
the most cowardly thing I ever saw. He was unarmed, and he hadn't
lifted a finger when that ruffian began to shoot. I was sure he would
be ... killed."

"He'll take a heap o' killin', that boy," her father reassured. "In a way
it's a good thing this happened now. His enemies have showed their hand.
They tried to gun him, before witnesses, while he was unarmed. Whatever
happens now, Dave's got public sentiment on his side. I'm always glad to
have my enemy declare himself. Then I can take measures."

"What measures can Dave take?" asked Joyce.

A faint, grim smile flitted across the old cattleman's face. "Well, one
measure he'll take pronto will be a good six-shooter on his hip. One I'll
take will be to send Miller back to the pen, where he belongs, soon as I
can get court action. He's out on parole, like Dave is. All the State has
got to do is to reach out and haul him back again."

"If it can find him," added Bob dryly. "I'll bet it can't. He's headed
for the hills or the border right now."

Crawford rose. "Well, I'll run down with you to his room and see the boy,
Bob. Wisht he would come up and stay with us. Maybe he will."

To the cattleman Dave made light of his wound. He would be all right in a
few days, he said. It was only a scratch.

"Tha's good, son," Crawford answered. "Well, now, what are you aimin' to
do? I got a job for you on the ranch if tha's what you want. Or I can use
you in the oil business. It's for you to say which."

"Oil," said Dave without a moment of hesitation. "I want to learn that
business from the ground up. I've been reading all I could get on the
subject."

"Good enough, but don't you go to playin' geology too strong, Dave. Oil
is where it's at. The formation don't amount to a damn. You'll find it
where you find it."

"Mr. Crawford ain't strong for the scientific sharps since a college
professor got him to drill a nice straight hole on Round Top plumb
halfway to China," drawled Bob with a grin.

"I suppose it's a gamble," agreed Sanders.

"Worse'n the cattle market, and no livin' man can guess that," said the
owner of the D Bar Lazy R dogmatically. "Bob, you better put Dave with
the crew of that wildcat you're spuddin' in, don't you reckon?"

"I'll put him on afternoon tower in place of that fellow Scott. I've been
intendin' to fire him soon as I could get a good man."

"Much obliged to you both. Hope you've found that good man," said
Sanders.

"We have. Ain't either of us worryin' about that." With a quizzical smile
Crawford raised a point that was in his mind. "Say, son, you talk a heap
more like a book than you used to. You didn't slip one over on us and go
to college, did you?"

"I went to school in the penitentiary," Dave said.

He had been immured in a place of furtive, obscene whisperings, but he
had found there not only vice. There was the chance of an education. He
had accepted it at first because he dared not let himself be idle in his
spare time. That way lay degeneration and the loss of his manhood. He had
studied under competent instructors English, mathematics, the Spanish
grammar, and mechanical drawing, as well as surveying and stationary
engineering. He had read some of the world's best literature. He had
waded through a good many histories. If his education in books was
lopsided, it was in some respects more thorough than that of many a
college boy.

Dave did not explain all this. He let his simple statement of fact stand
without enlarging on it. His life of late years had tended to make him
reticent.

"Heard from Burns yet about that fishin' job on Jackpot Number Three?"
Bob asked Crawford.

"Only that he thinks he hooked the tools and lost 'em again. Wisht you'd
run out in the mo'nin', son, and see what's doin'. I got to go out to the
ranch."

"I'll drive out to-night and take Dave with me if he feels up to it. Then
we'll know the foreman keeps humpin'."

"Fine and dandy." The cattleman turned to Sanders. "But I reckon you
better stay right here and rest up. Time enough for you to go to work
when yore shoulder's all right."

"Won't hurt me a bit to drive out with Bob. This thing's going to keep me
awake anyhow. I'd rather be outdoors."

They drove out in the buckboard behind the half-broken colts. The young
broncos went out of town to a flying start. They raced across the plain
as hard as they could tear, the light rig swaying behind them as the
wheels hit the high spots. Not till they had worn out their first wild
energy was conversation possible.

Bob told of his change of occupation.

"Started dressin' tools on a wildcat test for Crawford two years ago when
he first begun to plunge in oil. Built derricks for a while. Ran a drill.
Dug sump holes. Shot a coupla wells. Went in with a fellow on a star rig
as pardner. Went busted and took Crawford's offer to be handy man for
him. Tha's about all, except that I own stock in two-three dead ones and
some that ain't come to life yet."

The road was full of chuck holes and very dusty, both faults due to the
heavy travel that went over it day and night. They were in the oil field
now and gaunt derricks tapered to the sky to right and left of them.
Occasionally Dave could hear the kick of an engine or could see a big
beam pumping.

"I suppose most of the D Bar Lazy R boys have got into oil some,"
suggested Sanders.

"Every man, woman, and kid around is in oil neck deep," Bob answered.
"Malapi's gone oil crazy. Folks are tradin' and speculatin' in stock
and royalty rights that never could amount to a hill o' beans. Slick
promoters are gettin' rich. I've known photographers to fake gushers in
their dark-rooms. The country's full of abandoned wells of busted
companies. Oil is a big man's game. It takes capital to operate. I'll
bet it ain't onct in a dozen times an investor gets a square run for
his white alley, at that."

"There are crooks in every game."

"Sure, but oil's so darned temptin' to a crook. All the suckers are
shovin' money at a promoter. They don't ask his capitalization or
investigate his field. Lots o' promoters would hate like Sam Hill to
strike oil. If they did they'd have to take care of it. That's a lot
of trouble. They can make more organizin' a new company and rakin' in
money from new investors."

Bob swung the team from the main road and put it at a long rise.

"There ain't nothin' easier than to drop money into a hole in the
ground and call it an oil well," he went on. "Even if the proposition
is absolutely on the level, the chances are all against the investor.
It's a fifty-to-one shot. Tools are lost, the casin' collapses, the cable
breaks, money gives out, shootin' is badly done, water filters in, or oil
ain't there in payin' quantities. In a coupla years you can buy a deskful
of no-good stock for a dollar Mex."

"Then why is everybody in it?"

"We've all been bit by this get-rich-quick bug. If you hit it right in
oil you can wear all the diamonds you've a mind to. That's part of it,
but it ain't all. The West always did like to take a chance, I reckon.
Well, this is gamblin' on a big scale and it gets into a fellow's blood.
We're all crazy, but we'd hate to be cured."

The driver stopped at the location of Jackpot Number Three and invited
his friend to get out.

"Make yoreself to home, Dave. I reckon you ain't sorry that fool team has
quit joltin' yore shoulder."

Sanders was not, but he did not say so. He could stand the pain of his
wound easily enough, but there was enough of it to remind him pretty
constantly that he had been in a fight.

The fishing for the string of lost tools was going on by lamplight. With
a good deal of interest Dave examined the big hooks that had been sent
down in an unsuccessful attempt to draw out the drill. It was a slow
business and a not very interesting one. The tools seemed as hard to hook
as a wily old trout. Presently Sanders wandered to the bunkhouse and sat
down on the front step. He thought perhaps he had not been wise to come
out with Hart. His shoulder throbbed a good deal.

After a time Bob joined him. Faintly there came to them the sound of an
engine thumping.

"Steelman's outfit," said Hart gloomily. "His li'l' old engine goes right
on kickin' all the darned time. If he gets to oil first we lose. Man who
makes first discovery on a claim wins out in this country."

"How's that? Didn't you locate properly?"

"Had no time to do the assessment work after we located. Dug a sump hole,
maybe. Brad jumps in when the field here began to look up. Company that
shows oil first will sure win out."

"How deep has he drilled?"

"We're a li'l' deeper--not much. Both must be close to the sands. We were
showin' driller's smut when we lost our string." Bob reached into his hip
pocket and drew out "the makings." He rolled his cigarette and lit it.
"I reckon Steelman's a millionaire now--on paper, anyhow. He was about
busted when he got busy in oil. He was lucky right off, and he's crooked
as a dawg's hind laig--don't care how he gets his, so he gets it. He sure
trimmed the suckers a-plenty."

"He and Crawford are still unfriendly," Dave suggested, the inflection of
his voice making the statement a question.

"Onfriendly!" drawled Bob, leaning back against the step and letting a
smoke ring curl up. "Well, tha's a good, nice parlor word. Yes, I reckon
you could call them onfriendly." Presently he went on, in explanation:
"Brad's goin' to put Crawford down and out if it can be done by hook or
crook. He's a big man in the country now. We haven't been lucky, like he
has. Besides, the ol' man's company's on the square. This business ain't
like cows. It takes big money to swing. You make or break mighty sudden."

"Yes."

"And Steelman won't stick at a thing. Wouldn't trust him or any one of
his crowd any further than I could sling a bull by the tail. He'd blow
Crawford and me sky high if he thought he could get away with it."

Sanders nodded agreement. He hadn't a doubt of it.

With a thumb jerk toward the beating engine, Bob took up again his story.
"Got a bunch of thugs over there right now ready for business if
necessary. Imported plug-uglies and genuwine blown-in-the-bottle home
talent. Shorty's still one of the gang, and our old friend Dug Doble is
boss of the rodeo. I'm lookin' for trouble if we win out and get to oil
first."

"You think they'll attack."

A gay light of cool recklessness danced in the eyes of the young oilman.
"I've a kinda notion they'll drap over and pay us a visit one o' these
nights, say in the dark of the moon. If they do--well, we certainly aim
to welcome them proper."




CHAPTER XVIII

DOBLE PAYS A VISIT


"Hello, the Jackpot!"

Out of the night the call came to the men at the bunkhouse.

Bob looked at his companion and grinned. "Seems to me I recognize that
melojious voice."

A man stepped from the gloom with masterful, arrogant strides.

"'Lo, Hart," he said. "Can you lend me a reamer?"

Bob knew he had come to spy out the land and not to borrow tools.

"Don't seem to me we've hardly got any reamers to spare, Dug," drawled
the young man sitting on the porch floor. "What's the trouble? Got a kink
in yore casin'?"

"Not so you could notice it, but you never can tell when you're goin' to
run into bad luck, can you?" He sat down on the porch and took a cigar
from his vest pocket. "What with losin' tools and one thing an' 'nother,
this oil game sure is hell. By the way, how's yore fishin' job comin'
on?"

"Fine, Dug. We ain't hooked our big fish yet, but we're hopeful."

Dave was sitting in the shadow. Doble nodded carelessly to him without
recognition. It was characteristic of his audacity that Dug had walked
over impudently to spy out the camp of the enemy. Bob knew why he had
come, and he knew that Bob knew. Yet both ignored the fact that he was
not welcome.

"I've known fellows angle a right long time for a trout and not catch
him," said Doble, stretching his long legs comfortably.

"Yes," agreed Bob. "Wish I could hire you to throw a monkey wrench in
that engine over there. Its chuggin' keeps me awake."

"I'll bet it does. Well, young fellow, you can't hire me or anybody else
to stop it," retorted Doble, an edge to his voice.

"Well, I just mentioned it," murmured Hart. "I don't aim to rile yore
feelin's. We'll talk of somethin' else.... Hope you enjoyed that reunion
this week with yore old friend, absent far, but dear to memory ever."

"Referrin' to?" demanded Doble with sharp hostility.

"Why, Ad Miller, Dug."

"Is he a friend of mine?"

"Ain't he?"

"Not that I ever heard tell of."

"Glad of that. You won't miss him now he's lit out."

"Oh, he's lit out, has he?"

"A li'l bird whispered to me he had."

"When?"

"This evenin', I understand."

"Where'd he go?"

"He didn't leave any address. Called away on sudden business."

"Did he mention the business?"

"Not to me." Bob turned to his friend. "Did he say anything to you about
that, Dave?"

In the silence one might have heard a watch tick, Doble leaned forward,
his body rigid, danger written large in his burning eyes and clenched
fist.

"So you're back," he said at last in a low, harsh voice.

"I'm back."

"It would 'a' pleased me if they had put a rope round yore neck, Mr.
Convict."

Dave made no comment. Nobody could have guessed from his stillness how
fierce was the blood pressure at his temples.

"It's a difference of opinion makes horse-races, Dug," said Bob lightly.

The big ex-foreman rose snarling. "For half a cent I'd gun you here and
now like you did George."

Sanders looked at him steadily, his hands hanging loosely by his sides.

"I wouldn't try that, Dug," warned Hart. "Dave ain't armed, but I am. My
hand's on my six-shooter right this minute. Don't make a mistake."

The ex-foreman glared at him. Doble was a strong, reckless devil of a
fellow who feared neither God nor man. A primeval savagery burned in
his blood, but like most "bad" men he had that vein of caution in his
make-up which seeks to find its victim at disadvantage. He knew Hart too
well to doubt his word. One cannot ride the range with a man year in,
year out, without knowing whether the iron is in his arteries.

"Declarin' yoreself in on this, are you?" he demanded ominously, showing
his teeth.

"I've always been in on it, Dug. Took a hand at the first deal, the day
of the race. If you're lookin' for trouble with Dave, you'll find it goes
double."

"Not able to play his own hand, eh?"

"Not when you've got a six-shooter and he hasn't. Not after he has just
been wounded by another gunman he cleaned up with his bare hands. You and
yore friends are lookin' for things too easy."

"Easy, hell! I'll fight you and him both, with or without guns. Any time.
Any place."

Doble backed away till his figure grew vague in the darkness. Came the
crack of a revolver. A bullet tore a splinter from the wall of the shack
in front of which Dave was standing. A jeering laugh floated to the two
men, carried on the light night breeze.

Bob whipped out his revolver, but he did not fire. He and his friend
slipped quietly to the far end of the house and found shelter round the
corner.

"Ain't that like Dug, the damned double-crosser?" whispered Bob. "I
reckon he didn't try awful hard to hit you. Just sent his compliments
kinda casual to show good-will."

"I reckon he didn't try very hard to miss me either," said Dave dryly.
"The bullet came within a foot of my head."

"He's one bad citizen, if you ask me," admitted Hart, without reluctance.
"Know how he came to break with the old man? He had the nerve to start
beauin' Miss Joyce. She wouldn't have it a minute. He stayed right with
it--tried to ride over her. Crawford took a hand and kicked him out.
Since then Dug has been one bitter enemy of the old man."

"Then Crawford had better look out. If Doble isn't a killer, I've never
met one."

"I've got a fool notion that he ain't aimin' to kill him; that maybe he
wants to help Steelman bust him so as he can turn the screws on him and
get Miss Joyce. Dug must 'a' been makin' money fast in Brad's company.
He's on the inside."

Dave made no comment.

"I expect you was some surprised when I told Dug who was roostin' on the
step so clost to him," Hart went on. "Well, I had a reason. He was due to
find it out anyhow in about a minute, so I thought I'd let him know we
wasn't tryin' to keep him from knowin' who his neighbor was; also that I
was good and ready for him if he got red-haided like Miller done."

"I understood, Bob," said his friend quietly.




CHAPTER XIX

AN INVOLUNTARY BATH


Jackpot Number Three hooked its tools the second day after Sanders's
visit to that location. A few hours later its engine was thumping merrily
and the cable rising and falling monotonously in the casing. On the
afternoon of the third day Bob Hart rode up to the wildcat well where
Dave was building a sump hole with a gang of Mexicans.

He drew Sanders to one side. "Trouble to-night, Dave, looks like. At
Jackpot Number Three. We're in a layer of soft shale just above the
oil-bearin' sand. Soon we'll know where we're at. Word has reached me
that Doble means to rush the night tower and wreck the engine."

"You'll stand his crowd off?"

"You're whistlin'."

"Sure your information is right?"

"It's c'rect." Bob added, after a momentary hesitation: "We got a spy in
his camp."

Sanders did not ask whether the affair was to be a pitched battle. He
waited, sure that Bob would tell him when he was ready. That young man
came to the subject indirectly.

"How's yore shoulder, Dave?"

"Doesn't trouble me any unless something is slammed against it."

"Interfere with you usin' a six-shooter?"

"No."

"Like to take a ride with me over to the Jackpot?"

"Yes."

"Good enough. I want you to look the ground over with me. Looks now as if
it would come to fireworks. But we don't want any Fourth-of-July stuff if
we can help it. Can we? That's the point."

At the Jackpot the friends walked over the ground together. Back of the
location and to the west of it an arroyo ran from a cañon above.

"Follow it down and it'll take you right into the location where Steelman
is drillin'," explained Bob. "Dug's gonna lead his gang up the arroyo to
the mesquite here, sneak down on us, and take our camp with a rush. At
least, that's what he aims to do. You can't always tell, as the fellow
says."

"What's up above?"

"A dam. Steelman owns the ground up there. He's got several acres of
water backed up there for irrigation purposes."

"Let's go up and look it over."

Bob showed a mild surprise. "Why, yes, if you want to take some exercise.
This is my busy day, but--"

Sanders ignored the hint. He led the way up a stiff trail that took them
to the mouth of the cañon. Across the face of this a dam stretched. They
climbed to the top of it. The water rose to within about six feet from
the rim of the curved wall.

"Some view," commented Bob with a grin, looking across the plains that
spread fanlike from the mouth of the gorge. "But I ain't much interested
in scenery to-day somehow."

"When were you expectin' to shoot the well, Bob?"

"Some time to-morrow. Don't know just when. Why?"

"Got the nitro here yet?"

"Brought it up this mo'nin' myself."

"How much?"

"Twelve quarts."

"Any dynamite in camp?"

"Yes. A dozen sticks, maybe."

"And three gallons of nitro, you say."

"Yep."

"That's enough to do the job," Sanders said, as though talking aloud to
himself.

"Yep. Tha's what we usually use."

"I'm speaking of another job. Let's get down from here. We might be
seen."

"They couldn't hit us from the Steelman location. Too far," said Bob.
"And I don't reckon any one would try to do that."

"No, but they might get to wondering what we're doing up here."

"I'm wonderin' that myself," drawled Hart. "Most generally when I take a
pasear it's on the back of a bronc. I ain't one of them that believes the
good Lord made human laigs to be walked on, not so long as any broomtails
are left to straddle."

Screened by the heavy mesquite below, Sanders unfolded his proposed plan
of operations. Bob listened, and as Dave talked there came into Hart's
eyes dancing imps of deviltry. He gave a subdued whoop of delight,
slapped his dusty white hat on his thigh, and vented his enthusiasm in
murmurs of admiring profanity.

"It may not work out," suggested his friend. "But if your information is
correct and they come up the arroyo--"

"It's c'rect enough. Lemme ask you a question. If you was attacktin' us,
wouldn't you come that way?"

"Yes."

"Sure. It's the logical way. Dug figures to capture our camp without
firin' a shot. And he'd 'a' done it, too, if we hadn't had warnin'."

Sanders frowned, his mind busy over the plan. "It ought to work, unless
something upsets it," he said.

"Sure it'll work. You darned old fox, I never did see yore beat. Say,
if we pull this off right, Dug's gonna pretty near be laughed outa the
county."

"Keep it quiet. Only three of us need to know it. You stay at the well to
keep Doble's gang back if we slip up. I'll give the signal, and the third
man will fire the fuse."

"Buck Byington will be here pretty soon. I'll get him to set off the
Fourth-of-July celebration. He's a regular clam--won't ever say a word
about this."

"When you hear her go off, you'd better bring the men down on the jump."

Byington came up the road half an hour later at a cowpuncher's jog-trot.
He slid from the saddle and came forward chewing tobacco. His impassive,
leathery face expressed no emotion whatever. Carelessly and casually he
shook hands. "How, Dave?"

"How, Buck?" answered Sanders.

The old puncher had always liked Dave Sanders. The boy had begun work
on the range as a protégé of his. He had taught him how to read sign and
how to throw a rope. They had ridden out a blizzard together, and the
old-timer had cared for him like a father. The boy had repaid him with
a warm, ingenuous affection, an engaging sweetness of outward respect.
A certain fineness in the eager face had lingered as an inheritance from
his clean youth. No playful pup could have been more friendly. Now Buck
shook hands with a grim-faced man, one a thousand years old in bitter
experience. The eyes let no warmth escape. In the younger man's
consciousness rose the memory of a hundred kindnesses flowing from Buck
to him. Yet he could not let himself go. It was as though the prison
chill had encased his heart in ice which held his impulses fast.

After dusk had fallen they made their preparations. The three men slipped
away from the bunkhouse into the chaparral. Bob carried a bulging
gunnysack, Dave a lantern, a pick, a drill, and a hammer. None of them
talked till they had reached the entrance to the cañon.

"We'd better get busy before it's too dark," Bob said. "We picked this
spot, Buck. Suit you?"

Byington had been a hard-rock Colorado miner in his youth. He examined
the dam and came back to the place chosen. After taking off his coat he
picked up the hammer. "Le's start. The sooner the quicker."

Dave soaked the gunnysack in water and folded it over the top of the
drill to deaden the sound. Buck wielded the hammer and Bob held the
drill.

After it grew dark they worked by the light of the lantern. Dave and Bob
relieved Buck at the hammer. They drilled two holes, put in the dynamite
charges, tamped them down, and filled in again the holes. The
nitroglycerine, too, was prepared and set for explosion.

Hart straightened stiffly and looked at his watch. "Time to move back to
camp, Dave. Business may get brisk soon now. Maybe Dug may get in a hurry
and start things earlier than he intended."

"Don't miss my signal, Buck. Two shots, one right after another," said
Dave.

"I'll promise you to send back two shots a heap louder. You sure won't
miss 'em," answered Buck with a grin.

The younger men left him at the dam and went back down the trail to their
camp.

"No report yet from the lads watchin' the arroyo. I expect Dug's waitin'
till he thinks we're all asleep except the night tower," whispered the
man who had been left in charge by Hart.

"Dave, you better relieve the boys at the arroyo," suggested Bob.
"Fireworks soon now, I expect."

Sanders crept through the heavy chaparral to the liveoaks above the
arroyo, snaking his way among cactus and mesquite over the sand. A
watcher jumped up at his approach. Dave raised his hand and moved it
above his head from right to left. The guard disappeared in the darkness
toward the Jackpot. Presently his companion followed him. Dave was left
alone.

It seemed to him that the multitudinous small voices of the night had
never been more active. A faint trickle of water came up from the bed of
the stream. He knew this was caused by leakage from the reservoir in the
gulch. A tiny rustle stirred the dry grass close to his hand. His peering
into the thick brush did not avail to tell him what form of animal life
was palpitating there. Far away a mocking-bird throbbed out a note or
two, grew quiet, and again became tunefully clamorous. A night owl
hooted. The sound of a soft footfall rolling a pebble brought him to taut
alertness. Eyes and ears became automatic detectives keyed to finest
service.

A twig snapped in the arroyo. Indistinctly movements of blurred masses
were visible. The figure of a man detached itself from the gloom and
crept along the sandy wash. A second and a third took shape. The dry
bed became filled with vague motion. Sanders waited no longer. He crawled
back from the lip of the ravine a dozen yards, drew his revolver, and
fired twice.

His guess had been that the attacking party, startled at the shots, would
hesitate and draw together for a whispered conference. This was exactly
what occurred.

An explosion tore to shreds the stillness of the night. Before the first
had died away a second one boomed out. Dave heard a shower of falling
rock and concrete. He heard, too, a roar growing every moment in volume.
It swept down the walled gorge like a railroad train making up lost time.

Sanders stepped forward. The gully, lately a wash of dry sand and baked
adobe, was full of a fury of rushing water. Above the noise of it he
caught the echo of a despairing scream. Swiftly he ran, dodging among the
catclaw and the prickly pear like a half-back carrying the ball through
a broken field. His objective was the place where the arroyo opened to
a draw. At this precise spot Steelman had located his derrick.

The tower no longer tapered gauntly to the sky. The rush of waters
released from the dam had swept it from its foundation, torn apart the
timbers, and scattered them far and wide. With it had gone the wheel,
dragging from the casing the cable. The string of tools, jerked from
their socket, probably lay at the bottom of the well two thousand feet
down.

Dave heard a groan. He moved toward the sound. A man lay on a sand
hummock, washed up by the tide.

"Badly hurt?" asked Dave.

"I've been drowned intirely, swallowed by a flood and knocked galley-west
for Sunday. I don't know yit am I dead or not. Mither o' Moses, phwat was
it hit us?"

"The dam must have broke."

"Was the Mississippi corked up in the dom cañon?"

Bob bore down upon the scene at the head of the Jackpot contingent. He
gave a whoop at sight of the wrecked derrick and engine. "Kindlin' wood
and junk," was his verdict. "Where's Dug and his gang?"

Dave relieved the half-drowned man of his revolver. "Here's one. The rest
must be either in the arroyo or out in the draw."

"Scatter, boys, and find 'em. Look out for them if they're hurt. Collect
their hardware first off."

The water by this time had subsided. Released from the walls of the
arroyo, it had spread over the desert. The supply in the reservoir was
probably exhausted, for the stream no longer poured down in a torrent.
Instead, it came in jets, weakly and with spent energy.

Hart called. "Come here and meet an old friend, Dave."

Sanders made his way, ankle deep in water, to the spot from which that
irrepressibly gay voice had come. He was still carrying the revolver he
had taken from the Irishman.

"Meet Shorty, Dave. Don't mind his not risin' to shake. He's just been
wrastlin' with a waterspout and he's some wore out."

The squat puncher glared at his tormentor. "I done bust my laig," he said
at last sullenly.

He was wet to the skin. His lank, black hair fell in front of his tough,
unshaven face. One hand nursed the lacerated leg. The other was hooked by
the thumb into the band of his trousers.

"That worries us a heap, Shorty," answered Hart callously. "I'd say you
got it comin' to you."

The hand hitched in the trouser band moved slightly. Bob, aware too late
of the man's intention, reached for his six-shooter. Something flew past
him straight and hard.

Shorty threw up his hands with a yelp and collapsed. He had been struck
in the head by a heavy revolver.

"Some throwin', Dave. Much obliged," said Hart. "We'll disarm this bird
and pack him back to the derrick." They did. Shorty almost wept with rage
and pain and impotent malice. He cursed steadily and fluently. He might
as well have saved his breath, for his captors paid not the least
attention to his spleen.

Weak as a drowned rat, Doble came limping out of the ravine. He sat down
on a timber, very sick at the stomach from too much water swallowed in
haste. After he had relieved himself, he looked up wanly and recognized
Hart, who was searching him for a hidden six-shooter.

"Must 'a' lost yore forty-five whilst you was in swimmin', Dug. Was the
water good this evenin'? I'll bet you and yore lads pulled off a lot o'
fancy stunts when the water come down from Lodore or wherever they had it
corralled." Dancing imps of mischief lit the eyes of the ex-cowpuncher.
"Well, I'll bet the boys in town get a great laugh at yore comedy stuff.
You ce'tainly did a good turn. Oh, you've sure earned yore laugh."

If hatred could have killed with a look Bob would have been a dead man.
"You blew up the dam," charged Doble.

"Me! Why, it ain't my dam. Didn't Brad give you orders to open the
sluices to make you a swimmin' hole?"

The searchers began to straggle in, bringing with them a sadly drenched
and battered lot of gunmen. Not one but looked as though he had been
through the wars. An inventory of wounds showed a sprained ankle, a
broken shoulder blade, a cut head, and various other minor wounds. Nearly
every member of Doble's army was exceedingly nauseated. The men sat down
or leaned up against the wreckage of the plant and drooped wretchedly.
There was not an ounce of fight left in any of them.

"They must 'a' blew the dam up. Them shots we heard!" one ventured
without spirit.

"Who blew it up?" demanded one of the Jackpot men belligerently. "If you
say we did, you're a liar."

He was speaking the truth so far as he knew. The man who had been through
the waters did not take up the challenge. Officers in the army say that
men will not fight on an empty stomach, and his was very empty.

"I'll remember this, Hart," Doble said, and his face was a thing ill to
look upon. The lips were drawn back so that his big teeth were bared like
tusks. The eyes were yellow with malignity.

"Y'betcha! The boys'll look after that, Dug," retorted Bob lightly.
"Every time you hook yore heel over the bar rail at the Gusher, you'll
know they're laughin' at you up their sleeves. Sure, you'll remember
it."

"Some day I'll make yore whole damned outfit sorry for this," the big
hook-nosed man threatened blackly. "No livin' man can laugh at me and get
away with it."

"I'm laughin' at you, Dug. We all are. Wish you could see yoreself as we
see you. A little water takes a lot o' tuck outa some men who are feelin'
real biggity."

Byington, at this moment, sauntered into the assembly. He looked around
in simulated surprise. "Must be bath night over at you-all's camp, Dug.
You look kinda drookid yore own self, as you might say."

Doble swore savagely. He pointed with a shaking finger at Sanders, who
was standing silently in the background. "Tha's the man who's responsible
for this. Think I don't know? That jail bird! That convict! That killer!"
His voice trembled with fury. "You'd never a-thought of it in a thousand
years, Hart. Nor you, Buck, you old fathead. Wait. Tha's what I say.
Wait. It'll be me or him one day. Soon, too."

The paroled man said nothing, but no words could have been more effective
than the silence of this lean, powerful man with the close-clamped jaw
whose hard eyes watched his enemy so steadily. He gave out an impression
of great vitality and reserve force. Even these hired thugs, dull and
unimaginative though they were, understood that he was dangerous beyond
most fighting men. A laugh snapped the tension. The Jackpot engineer
pointed to a figure emerging from the arroyo. The man who came dejectedly
into view was large and fat and dripping. He was weeping curses and
trying to pick cactus burrs from his anatomy. Dismal groans punctuated
his profanity.

"It stranded me right on top of a big prickly pear," he complained. "I
like never to 'a' got off, and a million spines are stickin' into me."

Bob whooped. "Look who's among us. If it ain't our old friend Ad Miller,
the human pincushion. Seein' as he drapped in, we'll collect him right
now and find out if the sheriff ain't lookin' for him to take a trip on
the choo-choo cars."

The fat convict looked to Doble in vain for help. His friend was staring
at the ground sourly in a huge disgust at life and all that it contained.
Miller limped painfully to the Jackpot in front of Hart. Two days later
he took the train back to the penitentiary. Emerson Crawford made it a
point to see to that.




CHAPTER XX

THE LITTLE MOTHER FREES HER MIND


If some one had made Emerson Crawford a present of a carload of Herefords
he could not have been more pleased than he was at the result of the
Jackpot crew's night adventure with the Steelman forces. The news came
to him at an opportune moment, for he had just been served notice by the
president of the Malapi First National Bank that Crawford must prepare to
meet at once a call note for $10,000. A few hours earlier in the day the
cattleman had heard it rumored that Steelman had just bought a
controlling interest in the bank. He did not need a lawyer to tell him
that the second fact was responsible for the first. In fact the banker,
personally friendly to Crawford, had as good as told him so.

Bob rode in with the story of the fracas in time to cheer the drooping
spirits of his employer. Emerson walked up and down the parlor waving his
cigar while Joyce laughed at him.

"Dawggone my skin, if that don't beat my time! I'm settin' aside five
thousand shares in the Jackpot for Dave Sanders right now. Smartest trick
ever I did see." The justice of the Jackpot's vengeance on its rival and
the completeness of it came home to him as he strode the carpet. "He not
only saves my property without havin' to fight for it--and that was a
blamed good play itself, for I don't want you boys shootin' up anybody
even in self-defense--but he disarms Brad's plug-uglies, humiliates
them, makes them plumb sick of the job, and at the same time wipes out
Steelman's location lock, stock, and barrel. I'll make that ten thousand
shares, by gum! That boy's sure some stemwinder."

"He uses his haid," admitted Bob admiringly.

"I'd give my best pup to have been there," said the cattleman
regretfully.

"It was some show," drawled the younger man. "Drowned rats was what they
reminded me of. Couldn't get a rise out of any of 'em except Dug. That
man's dangerous, if you ask me. He's crazy mad at all of us, but most
at Dave."

"Will he hurt him?" asked Joyce quickly.

"Can't tell. He'll try. That's a cinch."

The dark brown eyes of the girl brooded. "That's not fair. We can't let
him run into more danger for us, Dad. He's had enough trouble already. We
must do something. Can't you send him to the Spring Valley Ranch?"

"Meanin' Dug Doble?" asked Bob.

She flashed a look of half-smiling, half-tender reproach at him. "You
know who I mean, Bob. And I'm not going to have him put in danger on our
account," she added with naïve dogmatism.

"Joy's right. She's sure right," admitted Crawford.

"Maybeso." Hart fell into his humorous drawl. "How do you aim to get
him to Spring Valley? You goin' to have him hawg-tied and shipped as
freight?"

"I'll talk to him. I'll tell him he must go." Her resolute little face
was aglow and eager. "It's time Malapi was civilized. We mustn't give
these bad men provocation. It's better to avoid them."

"Yes," admitted Bob dryly. "Well, you tell all that to Dave. Maybe he's
the kind o' lad that will pack up and light out because he's afraid of
Dug Doble and his outfit. Then again maybe he ain't."

Crawford shook his head. He was a game man himself. He would go through
when the call came, and he knew quite well that Sanders would do the
same. Nor would any specious plea sidetrack him. At the same time there
was substantial justice in the contention of his daughter. Dave had no
business getting mixed up in this row. The fact that he was an ex-convict
would be in itself a damning thing in case the courts ever had to pass
upon the feud's results. The conviction on the records against him would
make a second conviction very much easier.

"You're right, Bob. Dave won't let Dug's crowd run him out. But you keep
an eye on him. Don't let him go out alone nights. See he packs a gun."

"Packs a gun!" Joyce was sitting in a rocking-chair under the glow of the
lamp. She was darning one of Keith's stockings, and to the young man
watching her--so wholly winsome girl, so much tender but business-like
little mother--she was the last word in the desirability of woman.
"That's the very way to find trouble, Dad. He's been doing his best to
keep out of it. He can't, if he stays here. So he must go away, that's
all there is to it."

Her father laughed. "Ain't it scandalous the way she bosses us all
around, Bob?"

The face of the girl sparkled to a humorous challenge. "Well, some one
has got to boss you-all boys, Dad. If you'd do as I say you wouldn't have
any trouble with that old Steelman or his gunmen."

"We wouldn't have any oil wells either, would we, honey?"

"They're not worth having if you and Dave Sanders and Bob have to live in
danger all the time," she flashed.

"Glad you look at it that way, Joy," Emerson retorted with a rueful
smile. "Fact is, we ain't goin' to have any more oil wells than a
jackrabbit pretty soon. I'm at the end of my rope right now. The First
National promised me another loan on the Arizona ranch, but Brad has got
a-holt of it and he's called in my last loan. I'm not quittin'. I'll put
up a fight yet, but unless things break for me I'm about done."

"Oh, Dad!" Her impulse of sympathy carried Joyce straight to him. Soft,
rounded arms went round his neck with impassioned tenderness. "I didn't
dream it was as bad as that. You've been worrying all this time and you
never let me know."

He stroked her hair fondly. "You're the blamedest little mother ever I
did see--always was. Now don't you fret. It'll work out somehow. Things
do."




CHAPTER XXI

THE HOLD-UP


To Sanders, working on afternoon tower at Jackpot Number Three, the lean,
tanned driller in charge of operations was wise with an uncanny knowledge
the newcomer could not fathom. For eight hours at a stretch he stood on
the platform and watched a greasy cable go slipping into the earth. Every
quiver of it, every motion of the big walking-beam, every kick of the
engine, told him what was taking place down that narrow pipe two thousand
feet below the surface. He knew when the tools were in clay and had
become gummed up. He could tell just when the drill had cut into hard
rock at an acute angle and was running out of the perpendicular to follow
the softer stratum. His judgment appeared infallible as to whether he
ought to send down a reamer to straighten the kink. All Dave knew was
that a string of tools far underground was jerking up and down
monotonously.

This spelt romance to Jed Burns, superintendent of operations, though he
would never have admitted it. He was a bachelor; always would be one.
Hard-working, hard-drinking, at odd times a plunging gambler, he lived
for nothing but oil and the atmosphere of oil fields. From one boom
to another he drifted, as inevitably as the gamblers, grafters, and
organizers of "fake" companies. Several times he had made fortunes, but
it was impossible for him to stay rich. He was always ready to back a
drilling proposition that looked promising, and no independent speculator
can continue to wildcat without going broke.

He was sifting sand through his fingers when Dave came on tower
the day after the flood. To Bob Ha

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