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Sundown Slim

by Henry Herbert Knibbs · English · Gutenberg #16334 · 443,011 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Sundown Slim

Author: Henry Herbert Knibbs

Illustrator: Anton Otto Fischer


        
Release date: July 20, 2005 [eBook #16334]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16334

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNDOWN SLIM ***




Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "You!" she exclaimed. "You!"]






SUNDOWN SLIM


BY

HENRY HERBERT KNIBBS



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

ANTON FISCHER






NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS




COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HENRY HERBERT KNIBBS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Published May 1915




DEDICATED TO

EVERETT E. HARASZTHY





Contents

Chapter

          ARIZONA
      I.  SUNDOWN IN ANTELOPE
     II.  THE JOKE
    III.  THIRTY MILES TO THE CONCHO
     IV.  PIE; AND SEPTEMBER MORN
      V.  ON THE CAÑON TRAIL
     VI.  THE BROTHERS
    VII.  FADEAWAY'S HAND
   VIII.  AT "THE LAST CHANCE"
     IX.  SUNDOWN'S FRIEND
      X.  THE STORM
     XI.  CHANCE--CONQUEROR
    XII.  A GIFT
   XIII.  SUNDOWN, VAQUERO
    XIV.  ON THE TRAIL TO THE BLUE
     XV.  THEY KILLED THE BOSS!
    XVI.  SUNDOWN ADVENTURES
   XVII.  THE STRANGER
  XVIII.  THE SHERIFF--AND OTHERS
    XIX.  THE ESCAPE
     XX.  THE WALKING MAN
    XXI.  ON THE MESA
   XXII.  WAIT!
  XXIII.  THE PEACEMAKER
   XXIV.  AN UNEXPECTED VISIT
    XXV.  VAMOSE, EH?
   XXVI.  THE INVADERS
  XXVII.  "JUST ME AND HER"
 XXVIII.  IMPROVEMENTS
   XXIX.  A MAN'S COUNTRY




List of Illustrations

"You!" she exclaimed.  "You!" . . . " . . . _Frontispiece_

"God A'mighty, sech things is wrong."




Arizona

Across the wide, sun-swept mesas the steel trail of the railroad runs
east and west, diminishing at either end to a shimmering blur of
silver.  South of the railroad these level immensities, rich in their
season with ripe bunch-grass and grama-grass roll up to the barrier of
the far blue hills of spruce and pine.  The red, ragged shoulders of
buttes blot the sky-line here and there; wind-worn and grotesque
silhouettes of gigantic fortifications, castles and villages wrought by
some volcanic Cyclops who grew tired of his labors, abandoning his
unfinished task to the weird ravages of wind and weather.

In the southern hills the swart Apache hunts along historic trails o'er
which red cavalcades once swept to the plundering of Sonora's herds.
His sires and their flashing pintos have vanished to other
hunting-grounds, and he rides the boundaries of his scant heritage,
wrapped in sullen imaginings.

The cañons and the hills of this broad land are of heroic mould as are
its men.  Sons of the open, deep-chested, tall and straight, they ride
like conquerors and walk--like bears.  Slow to anger and quick to act,
they carry their strength and health easily and with a dignity which no
worn trappings, faded shirt, or flop-brimmed hat may obscure.  Speak to
one of them and his level gaze will travel to your feet and back again
to your eyes.  He may not know what you are, but he assuredly knows
what you are not.  He will answer you quietly and to the point.  If you
have been fortunate enough to have ridden range, hunted or camped with
him or his kind, ask him, as he stands with thumb in belt and wide
Stetson tilted back, the trail to heaven.  He will smile and point
toward the mesas and the mountains of his home.  Ask him the trail to
that other place with which he so frequently garnishes his
conversation, and he will gravely point to the mesas and the hills
again.  And there you have Arizona.




SUNDOWN SLIM


CHAPTER I

SUNDOWN IN ANTELOPE

Sundown Slim, who had enjoyed the un-upholstered privacy of a box-car
on his journey west from Albuquerque, awakened to realize that his
conveyance was no longer an integral part of the local freight which
had stopped at the town of Antelope, and which was now rumbling and
grumbling across the Arizona mesas.  He was mildly irritated by a
management that gave its passengers such negligent service.  He
complained to himself as he rolled and corded his blankets.  However,
he would disembark and leave the car to those base uses for which
corporate greed, and a shipper of baled hay, intended it.  He was
further annoyed to find that the door of the car had been locked since
he had taken possession.  Hearing voices, he hammered on the door.
After an exchange of compliments with an unseen rescuer, the door was
pushed back and he leaped to the ground.  He was a bit surprised to
find, not the usual bucolic agent of a water-plug station, but a belted
and booted rider of the mesas; a cowboy in all the glory of wide
Stetson, wing chaps, and Mexican spurs.

"Thought you was the agent.  I couldn't see out," apologized the tramp.

The cowboy laughed.  "He was scared to open her up, so I took a chanct,
seein' as I'm agent for the purvention of crulty to Hoboes."

"Well, you got a fine chance to make a record this evening" said
Sundown, estimating with experienced eye the possibilities of Antelope
and its environs.  "I et at Albuquerque."

"Ain't a bad town to eat in," commented the puncher, gazing at the sky.

"I never seen one that was," the tramp offered, experimentally.

The cowboy grinned.  "Well, take a look at this pueblo, then.  You can
see her all from here.  If the station door was open you could see
clean through to New Mexico.  They got about as much use for a Bo in
these parts as they have for raisin' posies.  And this ain't no garden."

"Well, I'm raised.  I got me full growth," said Sundown, straightening
his elongated frame,--he stood six-feet-four in whatever he could get
to stand in,--"and I raised meself."

"Good thing you stopped when you did," commented the puncher.  "What's
your line?"

"Me line?  Well, the Santa Fe, jest now.  Next comes cookin'.  I been
cook in everything from a hotel to a gradin'-camp.  I cooked for
high-collars and swalley-tails, and low-brows and jeans--till it come
time to go.  Incondescent to that I been poet select to the T.W.U."

"Temperance?"

"Not exactly.  T.W.U. is Tie Walkers' Union.  I lost me job account of
a long-hair buttin' in and ramblin' round the country spielin'
high-toned stuff about 'Art for her own sake'--and such.  Me pals
selected him animus for poet, seein' as how I just writ things
nacheral; no high-fluted stuff like him.  Why, say, pardner, I believe
in writin' from the ground up, so folks can understand.  Why, this
country is sufferin' full of guys tryin' to pull all the G strings out
of a harp to onct--when they ought to be practicin' scales on a
mouth-organ.  And it's printed ag'in' 'em in the magazines, right
along.  I read lots of it.  But speakin' of eats and _thinkin_' of
eats, did you ever listen to 'Them Saddest Words,'--er--one of me own
competitions?"

"Not while I was awake.  But come on over to 'The Last Chance' and
lubricate your works.  I don't mind a little po'try on a full stummick."

"Well, I'm willin', pardner."

The process of lubrication was brief; and "Have another?" queried the
tramp.  "I ain't all broke--only I ain't payin' dividen's, bein' hard
times."

"Keep your two-bits," said the puncher.  "This is on me.  You're goin'
to furnish the chaser, Go to it and cinch up them there 'saddest.'"

"Bein' just two-bits this side of bein' a socialist, I guess I'll keep
me change.  I ain't a drinkin' man--regular, but I never was scared of
eatin'."

Sundown gazed about the dingy room.  Like most poets, he was not averse
to an audience, and like most poets he was quite willing that such
audience should help defray his incidental expenses--indirectly, of
course.  Prospects were pretty thin just then.  Two Mexican herders
loafed at the other end of the bar.  They appeared anything but
susceptible to the blandishments of Euterpe.  Sundown gazed at the
ceiling, which was fly-specked and uninspiring,

"Turn her loose!" said the puncher, winking at the bartender.

Sundown folded his long arms and tilted one lean shoulder as though
defying the elements to blast him where he stood:--


  "Lives there a gent who has not heard,
  Before he died, the saddest word?

  "'What word is that?' the maiden cried;
  'I'd like to hear it before I died.'

  "'Then come with me,' her father said,
  As to the stockyards her he led;

  "Where layin' on the ground so low
  She seen a tired and weary Bo.

  "But when he seen her standin' 'round,
  He riz up from the cold, cold ground.

  "'Is this a hold-up game?' sez he.
  And then her pa laughed wickedly.

  "'This ain't no hold-up!' loud he cried,
  As he stood beside the fair maiden's side.

  "'But this here gal of mine ain't heard
  What you Boes call the saddest word.'

  "'The Bo, who onct had been a gent,
  Took off his lid and low he bent.

  "He saw the maiden was fed up good,
  So her father's wink he understood.

  "'The saddest word,' the Bo he spoke,
  'Is the dinner-bell, when you are broke.'"


And Sundown paused, gazing ceilingward, that the moral might seep
through.

"You're ridin' right to home!" laughed the cow-boy.  "You just light
down and we'll trail over to Chola Charley's and prospect a tub of
frijoles.  The dinner-bell when you are broke is plumb correct.  Got
any more of that po'try broke to ride gentle?"

"Uhuh.  Say, how far is it to the next town?"

"Comin' or goin'?"

"Goin'."

"'Bout seventy-three miles, but there's nothin' doin' there.  Worse'n
this."

"Looks like me for a job, or the next rattler goin' west.  Any chanct
for a cook here?"

"Nope.  All Mexican cooks.  But say, I reckon you _might_ tie up over
to the Concho.  Hearn tell that Jack Corliss wants a cook.  Seems his
ole stand-by Hi Wingle's gone to Phoenix on law business.  Jack's a
good boss to tie to.  Worked for him myself."

"How far to his place?" queried Sundown.

"Sixty miles, straight south."

"Gee Gosh!  Looks like the towns was scared of each other in this here
country.  Who'd you say raises them frijoles?"

The cowboy laughed and slapped Sundown on the back.  "Come on, Bud!
You eat with me this trip."


Western humor, accentuated by alcohol, is apt to broaden rapidly in
proportion to the quantity of liquor consumed.  After a given quantity
has been consumed--varying with the individual--Western humor broadens
without regard to proportion of any kind.

The jovial puncher, having enjoyed Sundown's society to the extent of
six-bits' worth of Mexican provender, suggested a return to "The Last
Chance," where the tramp was solemnly introduced to a newly arrived
coterie of thirsty riders of the mesas.  Gaunt and exceedingly tall, he
loomed above the heads of the group in the barroom "like a crane in a
frog-waller," as one cowboy put it.  "Which ain't insinooatin' that our
hind legs is good to eat, either," remarked another.  "He keeps right
on smilin'," asserted the first speaker.  "And takin' his smile," said
the other.  "Wonder what's his game?  He sure is the lonesomest-lookin'
cuss this side of that dead pine on Bald Butte, that I ever seen."  But
conviviality was the order of the evening, and the punchers grouped
together and told and listened to jokes, old and new, talked sagebrush
politics, and threw dice for the privilege of paying rather than
winning.  "Says he's scoutin' for a job cookin'," remarked a young
cowboy to the main group of riders.  "Heard him tell Johnny."

Meanwhile, Sundown, forgetful of everything save the congeniality of
the moment, was recounting, to an amused audience of three, his
experiences as assistant cook in an Eastern hotel.  The rest of the
happy and irresponsible punchers gravitated to the far end of the bar
and proposed that they "have a little fun with the tall guy."  One of
them drew his gun and stepped quietly behind the tramp.  About to fire
into the floor he hesitated, bolstered his gun and tiptoed clumsily
back to his companions.  "Got a better scheme," he whispered.

Presently Sundown, in the midst of his recital, was startled by a roar
of laughter.  He turned quickly.  The laughter ceased.  The cowboy who
had released him from the box-car stated that he must be going, and
amid protests and several challenges to have as many "one-mores," swung
out into the night to ride thirty miles to his ranch.  Then it was, as
has been said elsewhere and oft, "the plot thickened."

A rider, leaning against the bar and puffing thoughtfully at a cigar of
elephantine proportions, suddenly took his cigar from his lips, held it
poised, examined it with the eye of a connoisseur--of cattle--and
remarked slowly: "Now, why didn't I think of it?  Wonder you fellas
didn't think of it.  They need a cook bad!  Been without a cook for a
year--and everybody fussin' 'round cookin' for himself."

Sundown caught the word "cook" and turned to, face the speaker.  "I was
lookin' for a job, meself," he said, apologetically.  "Did you know of
one?"

"You was!" exclaimed the cowboy.  "Well, now, that's right queer.  I
know where a cook is needed bad.  But say, can you honest-to-Gosh
_cook_?"

"I cooked in everything from a hotel to a gradin'-camp.  All I want is
a chanct."

The cowboy shook his head.  "I don' know.  It'll take a pretty good man
to hold down this job."

"Where is the job?" queried Sundown.

Several of the men grinned, and Sundown, eager to be friendly, grinned
in return.

"Mebby you _could_ hold it down," continued the cowboy.  "But say, do
you eat your own cookin'?"

"Guess you're joshin' me."  And the tramp's face expressed
disappointment.  "I eat my own cookin' when I can't get any better," he
added, cheerfully.

"Well, it ain't no joke--cookin' for that hotel," stated the puncher,
gazing at the end of his cigar and shaking his head.  "Is it, boys?"

"Sure ain't," they chorused.

"A man's got to shoot the good chuck to hold the trade," he continued.

"Hotel?" queried Sundown.  "In this here town?"

"Naw!" exclaimed the puncher.  "It's one o' them swell joints out in
the desert.  Kind o' what folks East calls a waterin'-place.  Eh, boys?"

"That's her!" volleyed the group.

"Kind o' select-like," continued the puncher.

"Sure is!" they chorused.

"Do you know what the job pays?" asked Sundown.

"U-m-m-m, let's see.  Don't know as I ever heard.  But there'll be no
trouble about the pay.  And you'll have things your own way, if you can
deliver the goods."

"That's right!" concurred a listener.

Sundown looked upon work of any kind too seriously to suspect that it
could be a subject for jest.  He gazed hopefully at their hard, keen
faces.  They all seemed interested, even eager that he should find
work.  "Well, if it's a job I can hold down," he said, slowly, "I'll
start for her right now.  I ain't afraid to work when I got to."

"That's the talk, pardner!  Well, I'll tell you.  You take that road at
the end of the station and follow her south right plumb over the hill.
Over the hill you'll see a ranch, 'way on.  Keep right on fannin' it
and you'll come to a sign that reads 'American Hotel.'  That's her.
Good water, fine scenery, quiet-like, and just the kind of a place them
tourists is always lookin' for.  I stopped there many a time.  So has
the rest of the boys."

"You was tellin' me it was select-like--" ventured Sundown.

The men roared.  Even Sundown's informant relaxed and grinned.  But he
became grave again, flicked the ashes from his cigar and waved his
hand.  "It's this way, pardner.  That there hotel is run on the
American style; if you got the price, you can have anything in the
house.  And tourists kind o' like to see a bunch of punchers settin'
'round smokin' and talkin' and tellin' yarns.  Why, they was a lady
onct--"

"But she went back East," interrupted a listener.

"That's the way with them," said the cowboy.  "They're always stickin'
their irons on some other fella's stock.  Don't you pay no 'tention to
them."

Sundown shook hands with his informant, crossed to the corner of the
room, and slung his blanket-roll across his back.  "Much obliged to you
fellas," he said, his lean, timorous face beaming with gratitude.  "It
makes a guy feel happy when a bunch of strangers does him a good turn.
You see I ain't got the chanct to get a job, like you fellas, me bein'
a Bo.  I had a pal onct--but He crossed over.  He was the only one that
ever done me a good turn without my askin'.  He was a college guy.  I
wisht he was here so he could say thanks to you fellas classy-like.
I'm feeling them kind of thanks, but I can't say 'em."

The grins faded from some of the faces.  "You ain't goin' to fan it
to-night?" asked one.

"Guess I will.  You see, I'm broke, now.  I'm used to travelin' any old
time, and nights ain't bad--believe me.  It's mighty hot daytimes in
this here country.  How far did you say?"

"Just over the hill--then a piece down the trail.  You can't miss it,"
said the cowboy who had spoken first.

"Well, so-long, gents.  If I get that job and any of you boys come out
to the hotel, I'll sure feed you good."

An eddy of smoke followed Sundown as he passed through the doorway.  A
cowboy snickered.  The room became silent.

"Call the poor ramblin' lightnin'-rod back," suggested a kindly puncher.

"He'll come back fast enough," asserted the perpetrator of the "joke."
"It's thirty dry and dusty miles to the water-hole ranch.  When he gets
a look at how far it is to-morrow mornin' he'll sure back into the
fence and come flyin' for Antelope with reins draggin'.  Set 'em up
again, Joe."




CHAPTER II

THE JOKE

Owing to his unaccustomed potations Sundown was perhaps a trifle
over-zealous in taking the road at night.  He began to realize this
after he had journeyed along the dim, starlit trail for an hour or so
and found no break in the level monotony of the mesa.  He peered ahead,
hoping to see the blur of a hill against the southern stars.  The air
was cool and clear and sweet.  He plodded along, happy in the prospect
of work.  Although he was a physical coward, darkness and the solitudes
held no enemies for him.  He felt that the world belonged to him at
night.  The moon was his lantern and the stars were his friends.
Circumstance and environment had wrought for him a coat of cheerful
effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and
gaping with inconsistencies, which he put on or off at will.  Out on
the starlit mesas he had metaphorically shed his coat.  He was at home.
Here there were no men to joke about his awkwardness and his ungainly
height.  A wanderer by nature, he looked upon space as his kingdom.
Great distances were but the highways of his heritage, each promising
new vistas, new adventuring.  His wayside fires were his altars, their
smoke the incense to his gods.  A true adventurer, albeit timid, he
journeyed not knowing why, but rather because he knew no reason for not
journeying.  Wrapped in his vague imaginings he swung along, peering
ahead from time to time until at last he saw upon the far background of
the night a darker something shaped like a tiny mound.  "That's her!"
he exclaimed, joyously, and quickened his pace.  "But Gee Gosh!  I
guess them fellas forgot I was afoot.  That hill looks turruble far
off.  Mebby because it's dark."  The distant hill seemed to keep pace
ahead of him, sliding away into the southern night as he advanced.
Having that stubbornness so frequently associated with timidity, he
plodded on, determined to top the hill before morning.  "Them fellas as
rides don't know how far things are," he commented.  "But, anyhow, the
folks at that hotel will sure know I want the job, walkin' all night
for it."

Gradually the outline of the hill became bolder.  Sundown estimated
that he had been traveling several hours, when the going stiffened to a
slow grade.  Presently the grade became steep and rocky.  Thus far the
road had led straight south.  Now it swung to the west and skirted the
base of the hill in a gradual ascent.  Then it swung back again
following a fairly easy slope to the top.  His optimism waned as he saw
no light ahead.  The night grew colder.  The stars flickered as the
wind of the dawn, whispering over the grasses, touched his face.  He
paused for a moment on the crest of the hill, turned to look back, and
then started down the slope.  It was steep and rutted.  He had not gone
far when he stumbled and fell.  His blanket-roll had pitched ahead of
him.  He fumbled about for it and finally found it.  "Them as believes
in signs would say it was about time to go to roost," he remarked,
nursing his knee that had been cut on a fragment of ragged tufa.  A
coyote wailed.  Sundown started up.  "Some lonesome.  But she sure is
one grand old night!  Guess I'll turn in."

He rolled in his blankets.  Hardly had he adjusted his length of limb
to the unevenness of the ground when he fell asleep.  He had come
twenty-five miles across the midnight mesas.  Five miles below him was
his destination, shrouded by the night, but visioned in his dreams as a
palatial summer resort, aglow with lights and eagerly awaiting the
coming of the new cook.

The dawn, edging its slow way across the mesas, struck palely on the
hillside where he slept.  A rabbit, huddled beneath a scrub-cedar,
hopped to the middle of the road and sat up, staring with moveless eyes
at the motionless hump of blanket near the road.  In a flash the wide
mesas were tinged with gold as the smouldering red sun rose, to march
unclouded to the western sea.


Midway between the town of Antelope and the river Concho is the
water-hole.  The land immediately surrounding the water-hole is
enclosed with a barb-wire fence.  Within the enclosure is a ranch-house
painted white, a scrub-cedar corral, a small stable, and a lean-to
shading the water-hole from the desert sun.  The place is altogether
neat and habitable.  It is rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to
find the ranch uninhabited.  As desolate as a stranded steamer on a mud
bank, it stands in the center of several hundred acres of desert,
incapable, without irrigation, of producing anything more edible than
lizards and horned toads.  Why a homesteader should have chosen to
locate there is a mystery.  His reason for abandoning the place is
glaringly obvious.  Though failure be written in every angle and nook
of the homestead, it is the failure of large-hearted enterprise, of
daring to attempt, of striving to make the desert bloom, and not the
failure of indolence or sloth.

Western humor like Western topography is apt to be more or less rugged.
Between the high gateposts of the yard enclosure there is a great,
twelve-foot sign lettered in black.  It reads: "American Hotel."  A
band of happy cowboys appropriated the sign when on a visit to
Antelope, pressed a Mexican freighter to pack it thirty miles across
the desert, and nailed it above the gateway of the water-hole ranch.
It is a standing joke among the cattle- and sheep-men of the Concho
Valley.

Sundown sat up and gazed about.  The rabbit, startled out of its
ordinary resourcefulness, stiffened.  The delicate nostrils ceased
twitching.  "Good mornin', little fella!  You been travelin' all night
too?"  And Sundown yawned and stretched.  Down the road sped a brown
exclamation mark with a white dot at its visible end.  "Guess he don't
have to travel nights to get 'most anywhere," laughed Sundown.  He
kicked back his blankets and rose stiffly.  The luxury of his yawn was
stifled as he saw below him the ranchhouse with some strange kind of a
sign above its gate.  "If that's the hotel," he said as he corded his
blankets, "she don't look much bigger than me own.  But distances is
mighty deceivin' in this here open-face country."  For a moment he
stood on the hillside, a gaunt, lonely figure, gazing out across the
limitless mesas.  Then he jogged down the grade, whistling.

As he drew near the ranch his whistling ceased and his expression
changed to one of quizzical uncertainty.  "That's the sign, all
right,--'American Hotel,'--but the hotel part ain't livin' up to the
sign.  But some hotels is like that; mostly front."

He opened the ranch-house gate and strode to the door.  He knocked
timidly.  Then he dropped his blanket-roll and stepped to a window.
Through the grimy glass he saw an empty, board-walled room, a slant of
sunlight across the floor, and in the sunlight a rusted stove.  He
walked back to the gateway and stood gazing at the sign.  He peered
round helplessly.  Then a slow grin illumined his face.  "Why," he
exclaimed, "it's--it's a joke.  Reckon the proprietor must be out
huntin' up trade.  And accordin' to that he won't be back direct."

He wandered about the place like a stray cat in a strange attic,
timorous and curious.  Ordinarily he would have considered himself
fortunate.  The house offered shelter and seclusion.  There was clear
cold water to drink and a stove on which to cook.  As he thought of the
stove the latitude and longitude of the "joke" dawned upon him with
full significance.  He drank at the water-hole and, gathering a few
sticks, built a fire.  From his blankets he took a tin can, drew a wad
of newspaper from it, and made coffee.  Then he cast about for
something to eat.  "Now, if I was a cow--" he began, when he suddenly
remembered the rabbit.  "Reckon he's got relations hoppin' around in
them bushes."  He picked up a stick and started for the gate.

Not far from the ranch he saw a rabbit crouched beneath a clump of
brush.  He flung his stick and missed.  The rabbit ran to another bush
and stopped.  Encouraged by the little animal's nonchalance, he dashed
after it with a wild and startling whoop.  The rabbit circled the brush
and set off at right angles to his pursuer's course.  Sundown made the
turn, but it was "on one wheel" so to speak.  His foot caught in a
prairie-dog hole and he dove headlong with an exclamation that sounded
as much like "Whump!" as anything else.  He uttered another and less
forced exclamation when he discovered in the tangle of brush that had
broken his fall, another rabbit that had not survived his sudden
visitation.  He picked up the limp, furry shape.  "Asleep at the
switch," he said.  "He ain't much bigger than a whisper, but he's
breakfast."

Rabbit, fried on a stove-lid, makes a pretty satisfying meal when
eating ceases to be a pleasure and becomes a necessity.  Sundown wisely
reserved a portion of his kill for future consumption.

As the morning grew warmer, he fell asleep in the shade of the
ranch-house.  Late in the afternoon he wakened, went into the house and
made coffee.  After the coffee he came out, rolled a cigarette, and sat
smoking and gazing out across the afternoon mesas.  "I feel it comin',"
he said to himself.  "And it's a good one, so I guess I'll put her in
me book."

He rummaged in his blankets and unearthed a grimy, tattered notebook.
Lubricating the blunt point of a stubby pencil he set to work.  When he
had finished, the sun was close to the horizon.  He sat back and gazed
sideways at his effort.  "I'll try her on meself," he said, drawing up
his leg and resting the notebook against his lean knee.  "Wish I could
stand off and listen to meself," he muttered.  "Kind o' get the defect
better." Then he read laboriously:--


  "Bo, it's goin' to be hot all right;
    Sun's a floodin' the eastern range.
  Mebby it was kind o' cold last night,
    But there's nothin' like havin' a little change.
  Money?  No.  Only jest room for me;
    Mountings and valleys and plains and such.
  Ain't I got eyes that was made to see?
    Ain't I got ears?  But they don't hear much:
  Only a kind of a inside song,
    Like when the grasshopper quits his sad,
  And says: 'Rickety-chick!  Why, there is nothin' wrong!'
    And after the coffee, things ain't so bad."


"Huh!  Sounds all right for a starter.  Ladies and them as came with
you, I will now spiel the next section."


  "The wind is makin' my bed for me,
    Smoothin' the grass where I'm goin' to flop,
  When the quails roost up in the live-oak tree,
    And my legs feel like as they want to stop.
  Pal or no pal, it's about the same,
    For nobody knows how you feel inside.
  Hittin' the grit is a lonesome game,--
    But quit it?  No matter how hard I tried.
  But mebby I will when that inside song
    Stops a-buzzin' like bees that's mad,
  Grumblin' together: 'There's nothin' wrong!'
    And--after the coffee things ain't so bad."


"Bees ain't so darned happy, either.  They're too busy.  Guess it's a
good thing I went back to me grasshopper in the last verse.  And now,
ladies and gents, this is posituvely the last appearance of the noted
electrocutionist, Sundown Slim; so, listen."


  "Ladies, I've beat it from Los to Maine.
    And, gents, not knowin' jest what to do,
  I turned and slippered it back again,
    Wantin' to see, jest the same as you.
  Ridin' rods and a-dodgin' flies;
    Eatin' at times when me luck was good.
  Spielin' the con to the easy guys,
    But never jest makin' it understood,
  Even to me, why that inside song
    Kep' a-handin' me out the glad,
  Like the grasshopper singin': 'There's nothin' wrong!'
    And--after the coffee things ain't so bad."


Sundown grinned with unalloyed pleasure.  His mythical audience seemed
to await a few words, so he rose stiffly, and struck an attitude
somewhat akin to that of Henry Irving standing beside a milk-can and
contemplating the village pump.  "It gives me great pleasure to inform
you"--he hesitated and cleared his throat--"that them there words of
mine was expired by half a rabbit--small--and two cans of coffee.  Had
I been fed up like youse"--and he bowed grandly--"there's no tellin'
what I might 'a' writ.  Thankin' you for the box-office receipts, I am
yours to demand, Sundown Slim, of Outdoors, Anywhere, till further
notice."

Then he marched histrionically to the ranchhouse and made a fire in the
rusted stove.




CHAPTER III

THIRTY MILES TO THE CONCHO

John Corliss rode up to the water-hole, dismounted, and pushed through
the gate.  His horse "Chinook" watched him with gently inquisitive
eyes.  Chinook was not accustomed to inattention when he was thirsty.
He had covered the thirty miles from the Concho Ranch in five long,
dry, and dusty hours.  He nickered.  "In a minute," said Corliss.  Then
he knocked at the ranch-house door.  Riders of the Concho usually
strode jingling into the ranch-house without formality.  Corliss,
however, had been gazing at the lean stovepipe for hours before he
finally decided that there was smoke rising from it.  He knocked a
second time.

"She ain't locked," came in a rusty, smothered voice.

Corliss shoved the door open with his knee.  The interior was heavy
with smoke.  Near the stove knelt Sundown trying to encourage the smoke
to more perpendicular behavior.  He coughed.  "She ain't good in her
intentions, this here stove.  One time she goes and the next time she
stays and takes a smoke.  Her innards is out of gear.  Whew!"

"The damper has slipped down," said Corliss.

"Her little ole chest-pertector is kind o' worked down toward her
stummick.  There, now she feels better a'ready."

"Cooking chuck?" queried Corliss, glancing round the bare room.

"Rabbit," replied Sundown.  "When I hit this here hotel I was hungry.
I seen a rabbit--not this here one, but the other one.  This one was
settin' in a bunch of-brush on me right-of-way.  I was behind and
runnin' to make up time.  I kind o' seen the leetle prairie-dog give me
the red to slow down, but it was too late.  Hit his cyclone cellar with
me right driver, and got wrecked.  This here leetle wad o' cotton was
under me steam-chest.  No other passengers hurt, except the engineer."

Corliss laughed.  "You're a railroad man, I take it.  Belong in this
country?"

Sundown rose from his knees and backed away from the stove.  "Nope.
Don't belong anywhere, I guess.  My address when I'm to home is Sundown
Slim, Outdoors, Anywhere, speakin' general."

"Come in afoot?"

"Uhuh.  Kind o' thought I'd get a job.  Fellas at Antelope told me they
wanted a cook at this hotel.  I reckon they do--and some boarders and
somethin' to cook."

"That's one of their jokes.  Pretty stiff joke, sending you in here
afoot."

"Oh, I ain't sore, mister.  They stole me nanny, all right, but I feel
jest as good here as anywhere."

Corliss led Chinook to the water-hole.  Sundown followed.

"Ever think how many kinds of water they was?" queried Sundown.  "Some
is jest water; then they's some got a taste; then some's jest wet, but
this here is fine!  Felt like jumpin' in and drinkin' from the bottom
up when I lit here.  Where do you live?"

"On the Concho, thirty miles south."

"Any towns in between?"

Corliss smiled.  "No, there isn't a fence or a house from here to the
ranch."

"Gee Gosh!  Any cows in this country?"

"Yes.  The Concho runs ten thousand head on the range."

"Had your supper?"

"No.  I was late getting away from the ranch.  Expected to make
Antelope, but I guess I'll bush here to-night."

"Well, seein' you're the first boarder at me hotel, I'll pass the
hash."  And Sundown stepped into the house and returned with the half
rabbit.  "I got some coffee, too.  I can cook to beat the band when I
got somethin' to cook.  Help yourself, pardner.  What's mine is
anybody's that's hungry.  I et the other half."

"Don't mind if I do.  Thanks.  Say, you can cook?"

"Next to writin' po'try it's me long suit."

"Well, I'm no judge of poetry," said Corliss.  "This rabbit tastes
pretty good."

"You ain't a cop, be you?" queried Sundown.

"No.  Why?"

"Nothin'.  I was jest wonderin'."

"You have traveled some, I take it."

"Me?  Say!  I'm the ramblin' son with the nervous feet.  Been round the
world and back again on them same feet, and some freights.  Had a pal
onct.  He was a college guy.  Run on to him on a cattle-boat.  He writ
po'try that was the real thing!  It's ketchin' and I guess I caught it
from him.  He was a good little pal."

"What became of him?"

"I dunno, pardner.  They was a wreck--but guess I'll get that coffee."

"How did you cross the Beaver Dam?" inquired Corliss as Sundown
reappeared with his can of coffee.

"So that's what you call that creek back there?  Well, it don't need no
Beaver hitched on to it to say what I'd call it.  I come through last
night, but I'm dry now."

The cattle-man proffered Sundown tobacco and papers.  They smoked and
gazed at the stars.  "Said your friend was a college man.  What was his
name?" queried Corliss, turning to glance at Sundown.

"Well, his real name was Billy Corliss, but I called him jest Bill."

"Corliss!  When did you lose track of him?"

"In that wreck, 'bout a year ago.  We was ridin' a fast freight goin'
west.  He said he was goin' home, but he never said where it was.  Hit
a open switch--so they said after--and when they pulled the stitches,
and took that plaster dingus off me leg, I starts out huntin' for
Billy.  Nobody knowed anything about him.  Wasn't no signs in the
wreck,--so they said.  You see I was in that fadeaway joint six weeks."

"What did he look like?"

"Billy?  More like a girl than a man.  Slim-like, with blue eyes and
kind o' bright, wavy-like hair.  He never said nothin' about his folks.
He was a awful quiet kid."

John Corliss studied Sundown's face.  "You say he was killed in a
wreck?"

"I ain't sure.  But I reckon he was.  It was a bad one.  He was ridin'
a empty, just ahead of me.  Then the whole train buckled up and
somethin' hit me on the lid.  That's all I remember, till after."

"What are you going to do now?  Go back to Antelope?"

"Me?  Guess I will.  I was lookin' for a job cooking but the pay ain't
right here.  What you lookin' at me that way for?"

"Sit still.  I'm all right.  My brother Will left home three years ago.
Didn't say a word to any one.  He'd been to school East, and he wrote
some things for the magazines--poetry.  I was wondering--"

"Say, mister, what's your name?"

"John Corliss."

"Gee Gosh!  I knowed when I et that rabbit this mornin' that somethin'
was goin' to happen.  Thought it was po'try, but I was mistook."

"So you ate your half of the rabbit this morning, eh?"

"Sure!!--"

"And you gave me the rest.  You sure are loco."

"Mebby I be.  Anyhow, I'm used to bein' hungry.  They ain't so much of
me to keep as you--crossways, I mean.  Of course, up and down--"

"Well, I'm right sorry," said Corliss.  "You're the queerest Hobo I
ever saw."

"That's what they all say," said Sundown, grinning.  "I ain't no common
hand-out grabber, not me!  I learnt things from Bill.  He had class!"

"You sure Will never said anything about the Concho, or his brother, or
Chance?"

"Chance?  Who's he?"

"Wolf-dog that belonged to Will."

"Gee Gosh!  Big, and long legs, and kind of long, rough hair, and deep
in the chest and--"

"That's Chance; but how did you know?"

"Why, Billy writ a pome 'bout him onct.  Sold it and we lived high--for
a week.  Sure as you live!  It was called 'Chance of the Concher.'  Gee
Gosh!  I thought it was jest one of them poetical dogs, like."

Corliss, who was not given to sentiment, smoked and pondered the
possibility of his brother's whereabouts.  He had written to all the
large cities asking for information from the police as to the
probability of their being able to locate his brother.  The answers had
not been encouraging.  At the end of three years he practically gave up
making inquiry and turned his whole attention to the management of the
Concho.  There had been trouble between the cattle and sheep interests
and time had passed more swiftly than he had realized.  His meeting
with Sundown had awakened the old regret for his brother's uncalled-for
disappearance.  Had he been positive that his brother had been killed
in the wreck he would have felt a kind of relief.  As it was, the
uncertainty as to his whereabouts, his welfare, worried and perplexed
him, especially in view of the fact that he was on his way to Antelope
to present to the Forest Service a petition from the cattle-men of the
valley for grazing allotments.  The sheep had been destroying the
grazing on the west side of the river.  There had been bickerings and
finally an open declaration of war against David Loring, the old
sheep-man of the valley.  Corliss wished to avoid friction with David
Loring.  Their ranches were opposite each other.  And as Corliss was
known as level-headed and shrewd, it devolved upon him to present in
person the complaint and petition of his brother cattle-men.  Argument
with David Loring, as he had passed the latter's homestead that
morning, had delayed him on his journey to Antelope.  Presently he got
up and entered the ranch-house.  Sundown followed and poked about in
the corners of the room.  He found a bundle of gunny-sacks and
spreading them on the floor, laid his blankets on them.

Corliss stepped out and led Chinook to the distant mesa and picketed
him for the night.  As he returned, he considered the advisability of
hiring the tramp to cook until his own cook returned from Phoenix.  He
entered the house, kicked off his leather chaps, tossed his spurs into
a corner, and made a bed of his saddle-blankets and saddle.  "I'll be
starting early," he said as he drew off his boots.  "What are you
intending to do next?"

"Me?  Well, I ain't got no plans.  Beat it back to Antelope, I guess.
Say, mister, do you think my pal was your brother?"

"I don't know.  From your description I should say so.  See here.  I
don't know you, but I need a cook.  The Concho is thirty miles in.  I'm
headed the other way, but if you are game to walk it, I'll see if I can
use you."

"Me!  You ain't givin' me another josh, be you?"

"Never a josh.  You won't think so when you get to punchin' dough for
fifteen hungry cowboys.  Want to try it?"

"Say, mister, I'm just comin' to.  A guy told me in Antelope that they
was a John Corliss--only he said Jack--what was needin' a cook.  Just
thunk of it, seein' as I was thinkin' of Billy most ever since I met
you.  Are you the one?"

"Guess I am," said Corliss, smiling.  "It's up to you."

"Say, mister, that listens like home more'n anything I heard since I
was a kid.  I can sure cook, but I ain't no rider."

"How long would it take you to foot it to the Concho?"

"Oh, travelin' easy, say 'bout eight hours."

"Don't see that you need a horse, then, even if there was one handy."

"Nope.  I don't need no horse.  All I need is a job."

"All right.  You'd have to travel thirty miles either way--to get out
of here.  I won't be there, but you can tell my foreman, Bud Shoop,
that I sent you in."

"And I'll jest be tellin' him that 'bout twelve, to-morrow.  I sure
wisht Billy was here.  He'd sure be glad to know his ole pal was
cookin' for his brother.  Me for the shavin's.  And say, thanks,
pardner.  Reckon they ain't all jokers in Arizona."

"No.  There are a few that can't make or take one," said Corliss.
"Hope you'll make the ranch all right."

"I'm there!  Next to cookin' and writin' po'try, walkin' is me long
suit."




CHAPTER IV

PIE; AND SEPTEMBER MORN

When a Westerner, a native-born son of the outlands, likes a man, he
likes him.  That is all there is to it.  His horses, blankets, money,
provender, and even his saddle are at his friend's disposal.  If the
friend prove worthy,--and your Westerner is shrewd,--a lifelong
friendship is the result.  If the friend prove unworthy, it is well for
him to seek other latitudes, for the average man of the outlands has a
peculiar and deep-seated pride which is apt to manifest itself in
prompt and vigorous action when touched by ridicule or ingratitude.
There are many Davids and Jonathans in the sagebrush country.  David
may have flocks and herds, and Jonathan may have naught but the care of
them.  David may possess lands and water-rights, and Jonathan nothing
more than a pick, a shovel, a pan, and an incurable itch for placering.
A Westerner likes a man for what he is and not because of his vocation.
He usually proceeds cautiously in the matter of friendship, but sudden
and instinctive friendships are not infrequent.  It so happened that
John Corliss had taken a liking to the Hobo, Sundown Slim.  Knowing a
great deal more about cattle than about psychology, the rancher wasted
no time in trying to analyze his feelings.  If the tramp had courage
enough to walk another thirty miles across the mesas to get a job
cooking, there must be something to him besides legs.  Possibly the
cattle-man felt that he was paying a tribute to the memory of his
brother.  In any event, he greeted Sundown next morning as the latter
came to the water-hole to drink.  "You can't lose your way," he said,
pointing across the mesa.  "Just keep to the road.  The first ranch on
the right is the Concho.  Good luck!"  And he led Chinook through the
gateway.  In an hour he had topped the hill.  He reined Chinook round.
He saw a tiny figure far to the south.  Half in joke he waved his
sombrero.  Sundown, who had glanced back from time to time, saw the
salute and answered it with a sweeping gesture of his lean arm.  "And
now," he said, "I got the whole works to meself.  That Concho guy is a
mighty fine-lookin' young fella, but he don't look like Billy.  Rides
that hoss easy-like jest as if he was settin' in a rockin'-chair
knittin' socks.  But I reckon he could flash up if you stepped on his
tail.  I sure ain't goin' to."


It was mid-afternoon, when Sundown, gaunt and weary, arrived at the
Concho.  He was faint for lack of food and water.  The Mexican cook, or
rather the cook's assistant, was the only one present when Sundown
drifted in, for the Concho was, in the parlance of the riders, "A man's
ranch from chuck to sunup, and never a skirt on the clothes-line."

Not until evening was Sundown able to make his errand known, and
appreciated.  A group of riders swung in in a swirl of dust,
dismounted, and, as if by magic, the yard was empty of horses.

The riders disappeared in the bunk-house to wash and make ready for
supper.  One of the men, who had spoken to him in passing, reappeared.

"Lookin' for the boss?" he asked.

"Nope.  I seen him.  I'm lookin' for Mr. Shoop."

"All right, pardner.  Saw off the mister and size me up.  I'm him."

"The boss said I was to be cook," said Sundown, rather awed by the
personality of the bluff foreman.

"Meet him at Antelope?"

"No.  It was the American Hotel.  He said for me to tell you if I
walked in I could get a job cookin'."

"All right.  What he says goes.  Had anything to eat recent?"

"I et a half a rabbit yesterday mornin'."

"Well, sufferin' shucks!  You fan it right in here!"

Later that evening, Sundown straggled out to the corral and stood
watching the saddle-stock of the Concho pull hay from the long
feed-rack and munch lazily.  Suddenly he jerked up his hand and jumped
round.  The men, loafing in front of the bunk-house, laughed.  Chance,
the great wolf-dog, was critically inspecting the tramp's legs.

Sundown was a self-confessed coward, physically.  Above all things he
feared dogs.  His reception by the men, aside from Bud Shoop's
greeting, had been cool.  Even the friendship of a dog seemed
acceptable at that moment.  Plodding along the weary miles between the
water-hole and the ranch, he had, in his way, decided to turn over a
new leaf: to ignore the insistent call of the road and settle down to
something worth while.  Childishly egotistical, he felt in a vague way
that his virtuous intent was not appreciated, not reasoning that the
men knew nothing of his wanderings, nor cared to know anything other
than as to his ability to cook.  So he timidly stroked the long muzzle
of the wolf-dog, and was agreeably surprised to find that Chance seemed
to like it.  In fact, Chance, having an instinct superior to that of
his men companions of the Concho, recognized in the gaunt and lonely
figure a kindred spirit; a being that had the wander-fever in its
veins; that was forever searching for the undiscoverable, the something
just beyond the visible boundaries of day.  The dog, part Russian
wolf-hound and part Great Dane, deep-chested, swift and powerful, shook
his shaggy coat and sneezed.  Sundown jumped.  Again the men laughed.
"You and me's built about alike--for speed," he said, endeavoring to
convey his friendly intent through compliment.  "Did you ever ketch a
rabbit?"

Chance whined.  Possibly he understood.  In any event, he leaped
playfully against Sundown's chest and stood with his paws on the
tramp's shoulders.  Sundown shrunk back against the corral bars.  "Go
to it," he said, trying to cover his fear with a jest, "if you like
bones."

From behind him came a rush of feet.  "Great Scott!" exclaimed Shoop.
"Come 'ere, Chance.  I sure didn't know he was loose."

The dog dropped to his feet and wagged his tail inquiringly.

"Chance--there--he don't cotton to strangers," explained Shoop,
slipping his hand in the wolf-dog's collar.  "Did he nip you?"

"Nope.  But me and him ain't strangers, mister.  You see, I knowed the
boss's brother Billy, what passed over in a wreck.  He used to own
Chance, so the boss says."

"You knew Billy!  But Chance don't know that.  I'll chain him up till
he gets used to seein' you 'round."

Shoop led the dog to the stable.  Sundown felt relieved.  The
solicitude of the foreman, impersonal as it was, made him happier.

Next morning he was installed as cook.  He did fairly well, and the men
rode away joking about the new "dough-puncher."

Then it was that Sundown had an inspiration--not to write verse, but to
manufacture pies.  He knew that the great American appetite is keen for
pies.  Finding plenty of material,--dried apples, dried prunes, and
apricots,--he set to work, having in mind former experiences on the
various "east-sides" of various cities.  Determined that his reputation
should rest not alone upon flavor, he borrowed a huge Mexican spur from
his assistant and immersed it in a pan of boiling water.  "And speakin'
of locality color," he murmured, grinning at the possibilities before
him, "how's that, Johnny?"  And he rolled out a thin layer of pie-dough
and taking the spur for a "pattern-wheel," he indented a free-hand
sketch of the Concho brand on the immaculate dough.  Next he wheeled
out a rather wobbly cayuse, then an equally wobbly and ferocious cow.
Each pie came from the oven with some symbol of the range printed upon
it, the general effect being enhanced by the upheaval of the piecrust
in the process of baking.  When the punchers rode in that evening and
entered the messroom, they sniffed knowingly.  But not until the
psychological moment did Sundown parade his pies.  Then he stepped to
the kitchen and, with the lordly gesture of a Michael Angelo unveiling
a statue for the approval of Latin princes, commanded the assistant to
"Bring forth them pies."  And they were "brung."

Each astonished puncher was gravely presented with a whole
pie--bubbling kine, dimpled cayuses, and sprawling spurs.  Silence--as
silence is wont to do in dramatic moments--reigned supreme.  Then it
was that the purveyor of spontaneous Western exclamations missed his
opportunity, being elsewhere at the time.

"Whoop!  Let 'er buck!" exclaimed Bud Shoop, swinging an imaginary hat
and rocking from side to side.

"So-o, Boss!" exclaimed a puncher from the Middle West.

"Hand-made and silver mounted," remarked another.  "Hate to eat 'em."

"Trade you my pinto for a steer," offered still another.

"Nothin" doin'!  That hoss of yours has got colic--bad."

"Swap this here goat for that rooster of yours," said "Sinker," a youth
whose early education in art had been neglected.

"Goat?  You box-head!  That's a calf.  Kind 'a' mired down, but it's
sure a calf.  And this ain't no rooster.  This here's a eagle settin'
on his eggs.  You need specs."

"Noah has sure been herdin' 'em in," said another puncher.

Meanwhile, "Noah" stood in the messroom doorway, arms folded and face
beaming.  His attitude invited applause, and won it.  Eventually his
reputation as a "pie-artist" spread far and wide.  When it leaked out
that he had wrought his masterpieces with a spur, there was some
murmuring.  Being assured by the assistant that the spur had been
previously boiled, the murmuring changed to approval.  "That new cook
was sure a original cuss!  Stickin' right to the range in his
picture-work.  Had them there old Hopi picture-writin's on the rocks
beat a mile."  And the like.

Inspired by a sense of repletion, conducive to generosity and humor,
the boys presented Sundown with a pair of large-rowelled Mexican spurs,
silver-mounted and altogether formidable.  Like many an historic
adventurer, he had won his spurs by a _tour-de-force_ that swept his
compatriots off their feet; innuendo if you will--but the average
cowboy is capable of assimilating much pie.

Although Sundown was offered the use of a bunk in the men's quarters,
he chose to sleep in a box-stall in the stable, explaining that he was
accustomed to sleep in all kinds of places, and that the unused
box-stall with fresh clean straw and blankets would make a very
comfortable bedroom.  His reason for declining a place with the men
became apparent about midnight.

Bud Shoop had, in a bluff, offhand way, given him a flannel shirt,
overalls, an old flop-brimmed Stetson, and, much to Sundown's delight,
a pair of old riding-boots.  Hitherto, Sundown had been too preoccupied
with culinary matters to pay much attention to his clothing.
Incidentally he was spending not a little time in getting accustomed to
his spurs, which he wore upon all occasions, clinking and clanking
about the cook-room, a veritable Don Quixote of the (kitchen) range.

The arrival of Corliss, three days after Sundown's advent, had a
stimulating effect on the new cook.  He determined to make the best
appearance possible.

The myriad Arizona stars burned with darting radiance, in thin,
unwavering shafts of splintered fire.  The moon, coldly brilliant,
sharp-edged and flat like a disk of silver paper, touched the twinkling
aspens with a pallid glow and stamped a distorted silhouette of the
low-roofed ranch-buildings on the hard-packed earth.  In the corral the
shadow of a restless pony drifted back and forth.  Chance, chained to a
post near the bunk-house, shook himself and sniffed the keen air, for
just at that moment the stable door had opened and a ghostly figure
appeared; a figure that shivered in the moonlight.  The dog bristled
and whined.  "S-s-s-h!" whispered Sundown.  "It's me, ain't it?"

With his bundle of clothes beneath his arm, he picked a hesitating
course across the yard and deposited the bundle beside the
water-trough.  Chance, not altogether satisfied with Sundown's
assurance, proclaimed his distrust by a long nerve-reaching howl.  Some
one in the bunkhouse muttered.  Sundown squatted hastily in the shadow
of the trough.  Bud Shoop rose from his bunk and crept to the door.  He
saw nothing unusual, and was about to return to his bed when an
apparition rose slowly from behind the water-trough.  The foreman drew
back in the shadow of the doorway and watched.

Sundown's bath was extensive as to territory but brief as to duration.
He dried himself with a gunny-sack and slipped shivering into his new
raiment.  "That there September Morn ain't got nothin' on me except
looks," he spluttered.  "And she is welcome to the looks.  Shirts and
pants for mine!"

Then he crept back to his blankets and slept the sleep of one who has
atoned for his sins of omission and suffered righteously in the ordeal.

Bud Shoop wanted to laugh, but forgot to do it.  Instead he padded back
to his bunk and lay awake pondering.  "Takin' a bath sure does make a
fella feel like the fella he wants to feel like--but in the
drinkin'-trough, at night . . .!  I reckon that there Hobo ain't right
in his head."

Sundown dreamed that he was chasing an elusive rabbit over endless
wastes of sand and greasewood.  With him ran a phantom dog, a lean,
shaggy shape that raced tirelessly.  When Sundown wanted to give up the
dream-hunt and rest, the dog would urge him on with whimperings and
short, explosive barks of impatience.  Presently the dream-dog ran
ahead and disappeared beyond a rise.  Sundown sank to the desert and
slept.  He dreamed within his dream that the dog was curled beside him.
He put out his hand and stroked the dog's head.  Presently a side of
the box-stall took outline.  A ray of sunlight filtered in; sunlight
flecked with fine golden dust.  The straw rustled at his side and he
sat up quickly.  Chance, stretching himself and yawning, showed his
long, white fangs in an elaborated dog-smile.  "Gee Gosh!" exclaimed
Sundown, eyeing the dog sideways, "so it's you, eh?  You wasn't foolin'
me, then, when you said we'd be pals?"

Chance settled down in the straw again and sighed contentedly.

From the corral came the sound of horses running.  The boys were
catching up their ponies for the day's work.  Chance pricked his ears.
"I guess it's up to me and you to move lively," said Sundown,
stretching and groaning.  "We're sleepin' late, account of them
midnight abolitions."

He rose and limped to the doorway.  Chance followed him, evidently
quite uninterested in the activities outside.  Would this queer,
ungainly man-thing saddle a horse and ride with the others, or would he
now depart on foot, taking the trail to Antelope?  Chance knew quite as
well as did the men that something unusual was in the air.  Hi Wingle,
the cook, had returned unexpectedly that night.  Chance had listened
gravely while his master had told Bud Shoop that "the outfit" would
move over to Bald Knoll in the morning.  Then the dog had barked and
capered about, anticipating a break in the monotony of ranch-life.

Sundown hurried to the cook-room.  Chance at his heels.  Hi Wingle was
already installed in his old quarters, but he greeted Sundown heartily,
and set him to work helping.

After breakfast, Bud Shoop, in heavy wing chaps and trailing his spurs,
swaggered up to Sundown.  "How you makin' it this mornin'?" he
inquired.  There was a note of humorous good-fellowship in his voice
that did not escape Sundown.

"Doin' fine without crutches," replied Sundown, grinning.

"Well, you go eat now, and I'll catch up a cayuse for you.  We're goin'
to fan it for Bald Knoll in about ten minutes."

"Do I go, too?"

"Sure!  Do you think we don't eat pie only onct a year?  You bet you
go--helpin' Hi.  Boss's orders."

"Thanks--but I ain't no rider."

Shoop glanced questioningly at Sundown's legs.  "Mebby not.  But if I
owned them legs I'd contract to ride white-lightnin' bareback.  I'd
just curl 'em 'round and grab holt of my feet when they showed up on
the other side.  Them ain't legs; them's _cinchas_."

"Mebby they ain't," sighed Sundown.  "It's the only pair I got, and I'm
kind of used to 'em."

"Did you let Chance loose?" queried the foreman.

"Me?  Nix.  But he was sleepin' in the stall with me this mornin'."

"Heard him goin' on last night.  Thought mebby a coyote or a wolf had
strayed in to get a drink."

"Get a drink!  Can't they get a drink up in them hills?"

"Sure!  But they kind of fancy the flavor of the water-trough.  They
come in frequent.  But you better fan it for chuck.  See you later."


Sundown hurried through breakfast.  He was anxious to hear more about
the habits of coyotes and wolves.  When he again came to the corral,
many of the riders had departed.  Shoop stood waiting for John Corliss.

"You said them wolves and coyotes--" began Sundown.

"Yes, ding 'em!" interrupted Shoop.  "Looks like they come down last
night.  Somethin' 's been monkeyin' with the water."

"Did you ever see one--at night?" queried Sundown, nervously.

"See 'em?  Why, I shot droves of 'em right from the bunk-house door.  I
never miss a chance.  Cut loose every time I see one standin' with his
front paws on the trough.  Get 'em every time."

"Wisht I'd knowed that."

"So?"

"Uhuh.  I'd 'a' borrowed a gun off you and set up and watched for 'em
myself."

Bud Shoop made a pretense of tightening a cinch on Sundown's pony, that
he might "blush unseen," as it were.

Presently Corliss appeared and motioned to Shoop.  "How's the new cook
doing?" he asked.

"Fine!"

Sundown retired modestly to the off-side of the pony.

"Got a line on him already," said Shoop.  "First thing, Chance, here,
took to him.  Then, next thing, he manufactures a batch of pies that
ain't been matched on the Concho since she was a ranch.  Then, next
thing after that, Chance slips his collar and goes and bushes with the
Bo--sleeps with him till this mornin'.  And you can rope me for a
parson if that walkin' wish-bone didn't get to ramblin' in his sleep
last night and come out and take a _bath_ in the _drinkin_'-trough!
He's got on them clothes I give him, this mornin'.  Can you copper
that?"

"Bad dream, Bud."

"You wait!" said the grinning foreman.  "You watch him.  Don't pay no
'tention to me."

Corliss smiled.  Shoop's many and devious methods of estimating
character had their humorous angles.  The rancher appreciated a joke
quite as much as did any of his employees, but usually as a spectator
and not a participant.  Bud Shoop had served him well and faithfully,
tiding over many a threatened quarrel among the men by a humorous
suggestion or a seemingly impersonal anecdote anent disputes in
general.  So Corliss waited, meanwhile inspecting the ponies in the
corral.  He noticed a pinto with a saddle-gall and told Shoop to turn
the horse out on the range.

"It's one of Fadeaway's string," said Shoop.

"I know it.  Catch him up."

Shoop, who felt that his opportunity to confirm his dream-like
statement about Sundown's bathing, was slipping away, suddenly evolved
a plan.  He knew that the horses had all been watered.  "Hey!" he
called to Sundown, who stood gravely inspecting his own mount.  "Come
over here and make this cayuse drink.  He won't for me."

Shoop roped the horse and handed the rope to Sundown, who marched to
the water-trough.  The pony sniffed at the water and threw up his head.
"I reckoned that was it!" said Shoop.

"What?" queried Corliss, meanwhile watching Sundown's face.

"Oh, some dam' coyote's been paddlin' in that trough again.  No wonder
the hosses won't drink this mornin'.  I don't blame 'em."

Sundown rolled a frightened eye and tried to look at everything but his
companions.  Corliss and Shoop exploded simultaneously.  Slowly the
light of understanding dawned, rose, and radiated in the dull red of
the new cook's face.  He was hurt and a bit angry.  The anticipating
and performing of his midnight ablutions had cost Slim a mighty
struggle, mentally and otherwise.

"If you think it's any early mornin' joke to take a wash-up in that
there Chinese coffin--why, try her yourself, about midnight."  Then he
addressed Shoop singly.  "If I was _you_, and you got kind of
absent-minded and done likewise, and I seen _you_, do you think I'd go
snitch to the boss?  Nix, for it might set him to worryin'."

Shoop accepted the compliment good-naturedly, for he knew he had earned
it.  He swaggered up to Sundown and slapped him on the back.  "Cheer
up, pardner, and listen to the good news.  I'm goin' to have that
trough made three foot longer so it'll be more comfortable."

"Thanks, but never again at night.  Guess if I hadn't been feelin'
all-to-Gosh happy at havin' a home and a job, I'd 'a' froze stiff."




CHAPTER V

ON THE CAÑON TRAIL

The Loring homestead, a group of low-roofed adobe buildings blending
with the abrupt red background of the hill which sheltered it from the
winter winds, was a settlement in itself, providing shelter and comfort
for the wives and children of the herders.  Each home maintained a
small garden of flowers and vegetables.  Across the somber brown of the
'dobe walls hung strings of chiles drying in the sun.  Gay blossoms,
neatly kept garden rows, red ollas hanging in the shade of cypress and
acacia, the rose-bordered plaza on which fronted the house of the
patron, the gigantic windmill purring lazily and turning now to the
right, now to the left, to meet the varying breeze, the entire prospect
was in its pastoral quietude a reflection of Señora Loring's sweet and
placid nature.  Innuendo might include the windmill, and justly so, for
the Señora in truth met the varying breeze of circumstance and
invariably turned it to good uses, cooling the hot temper of the patron
with a flow of soft Spanish utterances, and enriching the simple lives
of the little colony with a charity as free and unvarying as the flow
of the clear, cool water.

Far to the east, where the mesas sloped gently to the hills, grazed the
sheep, some twenty bands of a thousand each, and each band guarded and
cared for by a herder and an assistant who cooked and at times
journeyed with the lazy burros to and from the hacienda for supplies
and provisions.

David Loring, erstwhile plainsman and scout, had drifted in the early
days from New Mexico to Arizona with his small band of sheep, and
settled in the valley of the Concho.  He had been tolerated by the
cattle-men, as his flock was but a speck on the limitless mesas.  As
his holdings increased, the ranchers awakened to the fact that he had
come to stay and that some boundary must be established to protect
their grazing.  The Concho River was chosen as the dividing line, which
would have been well enough had Loring been a party to the agreement.
But he declined to recognize any boundary.  The cattle-men felt that
they had given him fair warning in naming the Concho as the line of
demarcation.  He, in turn, considered that his right to graze his sheep
on any part or all of the free range had not been circumscribed.

His neighbor--if cattle-men and sheep-men may under any circumstances
be termed neighbors--was John Corliss.  The Corliss rancho was just
across the river opposite the Loring homestead.  After the death of
their parents the Corliss boys, John and his younger brother Will, had
been constant visitors at the sheep-man's home, both of them enjoying
the vivacious companionship of Eleanor Loring, and each, in his way, in
love with the girl.  Eventually the younger brother disappeared without
any apparent reason.  Then it was that John Corliss's visits to the
Loring rancho became less frequent and the friendliness which had
existed between the rival ranches became a kind of tolerant
acquaintanceship, as that of neighbors who have nothing in common save
the back fence.


Fernando, the oldest herder in Loring's employ, stood shading his eyes
from the glare of noon as he gazed toward the distant rancho.  His son
was with the flock and the old man had just risen from preparing the
noon meal.  "The Señorita," he murmured, and his swart features were
lighted by a wrinkled smile.  He stepped to his tent, whipped a gay
bandanna from his blankets and knotted it about his lean throat.  Then
he took off his hat, gazing at it speculatively.  It was beyond
reconstruction as to definite shape, so he tossed it to the ground, ran
his fingers through his silver-streaked hair, and stepped out to await
his Señorita's arrival.

The sunlight flashed on silver spur and bit as the black-and-white
pinto "Challenge" swept across the mesa toward the sheep-camp.  Into
the camp he flung, fretting at the curb and pivoting.  His rider,
Eleanor Loring, about to dismount, spoke to him sharply.  Still he
continued to pivot uneasily.  "Morning, Fernando!  Challenge is fussy
this morning.  I'll be right back!"  And she disciplined Challenge with
bit and spur, wheeling him and loping him away from the camp.  Down the
trail she checked him and brought him around on his hind feet.  Back
they came, with a rush.  Fernando's deep-set eyes glowed with
admiration as the girl "set-up" the pinto and swung to the ground with
a laugh.  "Made him do it all over again, si.  He is the big baby, but
he pretends he is bronco.  Don't you, Challenge?"  She dropped the
reins and rubbed his nose.  The pony laid back his ears in simulated
anger and nipped at her sleeve.  "Straighten your ears up, pronto!" she
commanded, nevertheless laughing.  Then a strain of her father's blood
was apparent as she seized the reins and stood back from the horse.
"Because you're bluffing this morning, I'm going to make you do your
latest trick.  Down!" she commanded.  The pony extended his foreleg and
begged to shake hands.  "No!  Down!"  With a grunt the horse dropped to
his knees, rolled to his side, but still kept his head raised.  "Clear
down!  Dead, Challenge!"  The horse lay with extended neck, but
switched his tail significantly.  "Don't you dare roll!" she said, as
he gave evidence of getting up.  Then, at her gesture, he heaved
himself to his feet and shook himself till the stirrups clattered.  The
girl dropped the reins and turned to the old herder.  "I taught him
that, Fernando.  I didn't make him do it just to show off.  He
understands now, and he'll behave."

Old Fernando grinned.  "He always have the good manner, being always
with the Señorita," he said bowing.

"Thanks, Fernando.  You always say something nice.  But I can't let you
get ahead of me.  What a pretty scarf.  It's just right.  Do you wear
it always, Fernando?"

"It is--I know--what the vaquero of the Concho call the 'josh' that you
give me, but I am yet not too old to like it.  It is muy pleasure, si!
to be noticed when one is old--by the Señorita of especial."

The girl's dark eyes flashed and she laughed happily.  "It's lots of
fun, isn't it--to 'josh'?  But I came to see if you needed anything."

"Nothing while still the Señorita is at thees camp."

"Well, you'd better think up something, for I'm going in a minute.
Have to make the rounds.  Dad is down with the rheumatism and as cross
as a grizzly.  I was glad to get away.  And then, there's Madre."

Fernando smiled and nodded.  He was not unfamiliar with the patron's
temper when rheumatism obliged him to be inactive.  "He say nothing,
the patron--that we cross the sheep to the west of the river, Señorita?"

"No.  Not lately.  I don't know why he should want to.  The feed is
good here."

"I have this morning talk with the vaquero Corlees.  He tell me that
the South Fork is dry up."

"John Corliss is not usually interested in our sheep," said the girl.

"No.  Of the sheep he knows nothing."  And the old herder smiled.  "But
many times he look out there," he added, pointing toward the Loring
rancho.

"He was afraid father would catch him talking to one of the herders,"
laughed the girl.

"The vaquero Corlees he afraid of not even the bear, I think, Señorita."

Eleanor Loring laughed.  "Don't you let father catch you calling him a
bear!" she cautioned, provoking the old herder to immediate apology and
a picturesque explanation of the fact that he had referred not to the
patron, but the grizzly.

"All right, Fernando.  I'll not forget to tell the patron that you
called him a bear."

The old herder grinned and waved farewell as she mounted and rode down
the trail.  Practical in everyday affairs, he untied his bandanna and
neatly folded and replaced it among his effects.  As he came out of the
tent he picked up his hat.  He was no longer the cavalier, but a
stoop-shouldered, shriveled little Mexican herder.  He slouched out
toward the flock and called his son to dinner.  No, it was not so many
years--was not the Señorita but twenty years old?--since he had wooed
the Señora Loring, then a slim dark girl of the people, his people, but
now the wealthy Señora, wife of his patron.  Ah, yes!  It was good that
she should have the comfortable home and the beautiful daughter.  He
had nothing but his beloved sheep, but did they not belong to his
Señorita?


At the ford the girl took the trail to the uplands, deciding to visit
the farthest camp first, and then, if she had time, to call at one or
two other camps on her way back to the rancho.  As the trail grew
steeper, she curbed the impatient Challenge to a steadier pace and rode
leisurely to the level of the timber.  On the park-like level,
clean-swept between the boles of the great pines, she again put
Challenge to a lope until she came to the edge on the upper mesa.  Then
she drew up suddenly and held the horse in.

Far out on the mesa was the figure of a man, on foot.  Toward him came
a horse without bridle or saddle.  She recognized the figure as that of
John Corliss, and she wondered why he was on foot and evidently trying
to coax a stray horse toward him.  Presently she saw Corliss reach out
slowly and give the horse something from his hand.  Still she was
puzzled, and urging Challenge forward, drew nearer.  The stray, seeing
her horse, pricked up its ears, swung round stiffly, and galloped off.
Corliss turned and held up his hand, palm toward her.  It was their old
greeting; a greeting that they had exchanged as boy and girl long
before David Loring had become recognized as a power to be reckoned
with in the Concho Valley.

"Peace?" she queried, smiling, as she rode up.

"Why not, Nell?"

"Oh, cattle and sheep, I suppose.  There's no other reason, is there?"

Corliss was silent, thinking of his brother Will.

"Unless--Will--" she said, reading his thought.

He shook his head, "That would be no reason for--for our quarreling,
would it?"

She laughed.  "Why, who has quarreled?  I'm sure I haven't."

"But you don't seem the same--since Will left."

"Neither do you, John.  You haven't called at the rancho for--well,
about a year."

"And then I was told to stay away even longer than that."

"Oh, you mustn't mind Dad.  He growls--but he won't bite."

Corliss glanced up at her.  His steady gray eyes were smiling, but his
lips were grave.  "Would it make any difference if I did come?"

The girl's dark face flushed and her eyes sparkled.  "Lots!  Perhaps
you and Dad could agree to stop growling altogether.  But we won't talk
about it.  I'd like to know what you are doing up here afoot?"

"Wouldn't tell you for a dollar," he replied, smiling.  "My horse is
over there--near the timber.  The rest of the band are at the
waterhole."

"Oh, but you will tell me!" she said.  "And before we get back to the
cañon."

"I wasn't headed that way--" he began; but she interrupted quickly.

"Of course.  I'm not, either."  Then she glanced at him with mischief
scintillating in her dark eyes.  "Fernando told me you were talking
with him this morning.  I don't see that it has done you much good."

His perplexity was apparent in his silence.

"Fernando is--is polite," she asserted, wheeling her horse.

Corliss stood gazing at her unsmilingly.  "I want to be," he said
presently.

"Oh, John!  I--you always take things so seriously.  I was just
'joshing' you, as Fernando says.  Of course you do!  Won't you shake
hands?"

He strode forward.  The girl drew off her gauntlet and extended her
hand.  "Let's begin over again," she said as he shook hands with her.
"We've both been acting."

Before she was aware of his intent, he bowed his head and kissed her
fingers.  She drew her hand away with a little cry of surprise.  She
was pleased, yet he mistook her expression.

He flushed and, confused, drew back.  "I--I didn't mean it," he said,
as though apologizing for his gallantry.

The girl's eyes dilated for an instant.  Then she laughed with all the
joyous _abandon_ of youth and absolute health.  "You get worse and
worse," she said, teasingly.  "Do go and have another talk with
Fernando, John.  Then come and tell me all about it."

Despite her teasing, Corliss was beginning to enjoy the play.  As a
rule undemonstrative, he was when moved capable of intense feeling, and
the girl knew it.  She saw a light in his eyes that she recognized; a
light that she remembered well, for once when they were boy and girl
together she had dared him to kiss her, and had not been disappointed.

"You are cross this morning," she said, making as though to go.

"Well, I've begun over again, Nell.  You wait till I get Chinook and
we'll ride home together."

"Oh, but I'm--you're not going that way," she mocked.

"Yes, I am--and so are you.  If you won't wait, I'll catch you up,
anyway.  You daren't put Challenge down the cañon trail faster than a
walk."

"I daren't?  Then, catch me!"

She wheeled her pony and sped toward the timber.  Corliss, running
heavily in his high-heeled boots, caught up his own horse and leaped to
the saddle as Chinook broke into a run.  The young rancher knew that
the girl would do her best to beat him to the cañon level.  He feared
for her safety on the ragged trail below them.

Chinook swung down the trail taking the turns without slackening his
speed and Corliss, leaning in on the curves, dodged the sweeping
branches.

Arrived at the far edge of the timber, he could see the girl ahead of
him, urging Challenge down the rain-gutted trail at a lope.  As she
pulled up at an abrupt turn, she waved to him.  He accepted the
challenge and, despite his better judgment, set spurs to Chinook.

Round the next turn he reined up and leaped from his horse.  Below him
he saw Challenge, riderless, and galloping along the edge of the
hillside.  On the trail lay Eleanor Loring, her black hair vivid
against the gray of the shale.  He plunged toward her and stooping
caught her up in his arms.  "Nell!  Nell!" he cried, smoothing back her
hair from her forehead.  "God, Nell!  I--I didn't mean it."

Her eyelids quivered.  Then she gasped.  He could feel her trembling.
Presently her eyes opened and a faint smile touched her white lips.
"I'm all right.  Challenge fell--and I jumped clear.  Struck my head.
Don't look at me like that!  I'm not going to die."

"I'm--I'm mighty glad, Nell!" he said, helping her to a seat on the
rock against which she had fallen.

Her hands were busy with her hair.  He found her hat and handed it to
her.  "If my head wasn't just splitting, I'd like to laugh.  You are
the funniest man alive!  I couldn't speak, but I heard you call to me
and tell me you didn't mean it!  Then you say you are mighty glad I'm
alive.  Doesn't that sound funny enough to bring a person to life
again?"

"No, it's not funny.  It was a close call."

She glanced at his grave, white face.  "Guess you were scared, John.  I
didn't know you could be scared at anything.  Jack Corliss as white as
a sheet and trembling like a--a girl!"

"On account of a girl," said Corliss, smiling a little.

"Now, _that_ sounds better.  What were you doing up on the mesa this
afternoon?"

"I took some lump-sugar up for my old pony, Apache.  He likes it."

"Well, I'll never forget it!" she exclaimed.  "How the boys would laugh
if they heard _you'd_ been feeding sugar to an old broken-down
cow-pony!  You!  Why, I feel better already."

"I'm right glad you do, Nell.  But you needn't say anything about the
sugar.  I kind of like the old hoss.  Will you promise?"

"I don't know.  Oh, my head!"  She went white and leaned against him.
He put his arm around her, and her head lay back against his shoulder.
"I'll be all right--in a minute," she murmured.

He bent above her, his eyes burning.  Slowly he drew her close and
kissed her lips.  Her eyelids quivered and lifted.  "Nell!" he
whispered.

"Did you mean it?" she murmured, smiling wanly.

He drew his head back and gazed at her up-turned face.  "I'm all
right," she said, and drew herself up beside him.  "Serves me right for
putting Challenge down the trail so fast."

As they rode homeward Corliss told her of the advent of Sundown and
what the latter had said about the wreck and the final disappearance of
his "pal," Will Corliss.

The girl heard him silently and had nothing to say until they parted at
the ford.  Then she turned to him.  "I don't believe Will was killed.
I can't say why, but if he had been killed I think I should have known
it.  Don't ask me to explain, John.  I have always expected that he
would come back.  I have been thinking about him lately."

"I can't understand it," said Corliss.  "Will always had what he
wanted.  He owns a half-interest in the Concho.  I can't do as I want
to, sometimes.  My hands are tied, for if I made a bad move and lost
out, I'd be sinking Will's money with mine."

"I wouldn't make any bad moves if I were you," said the girl, glancing
at the rancher's grave face.

"Business is business, Nell.  We needn't begin that old argument.
Only, understand this: I'll play square just as long as the other side
plays square.  There's going to be trouble before long and you know
why.  It won't begin on the west side of the Concho."

"Good-bye, John," said the girl, reining her pony around.

He raised his hat.  Then he wheeled Chinook and loped toward the ranch.

Eleanor Loring, riding slowly, thought of what he had said.  "He won't
give in an inch," she said aloud.  "Will would have given up the cattle
business, or anything else, to please me."  Then she reasoned with
herself, knowing that Will Corliss had given up all interest in the
Concho, not to please her but to hurt her, for the night before his
disappearance he had asked her to marry him and she had very sensibly
refused, telling him frankly that she liked him, but that until he had
settled down to something worth while she had no other answer for him.

She was thinking of Will when she rode in to the rancho and turned her
horse over to Miguel.  Suddenly she flushed, remembering John Corliss's
eyes as he had held her in his arms.




CHAPTER VI

THE BROTHERS

As Corliss rode up to the ranch gate he took the mail from the little
wooden mail-box and stuffed it into his pocket with the exception of a
letter which bore the postmark of Antelope and his address in a
familiar handwriting.  He tore the envelope open hastily and glanced at
the signature, "Will."

Then he read the letter.  It told of his brother's unexpected arrival
in Antelope, penniless and sick.  Corliss was not altogether surprised
except in regard to the intuition of Eleanor, which puzzled him, coming
as it had so immediately preceding the letter.

He rode to the rancho and ordered one of the men to have the buckboard
at the gate early next morning.  He wondered why his brother had not
driven out to the ranch, being well known in Antelope and able to
command credit.  Then he thought of Eleanor, and surmised that his
brother possibly wished to avoid meeting her.  And as it happened, he
was not mistaken.

On the evening of the following day he drove up to the Palace Hotel and
inquired for his brother.  The proprietor drew him to one side.  "It's
all right for you to see him, John, but I been tryin' to keep him in
his room.  He's--well, he ain't just feelin' right to be on the street.
Sabe?"

Corliss nodded, and turning, climbed the stairs.  He knocked at a door.
There was no response.  He knocked again.

"What you want?" came in a muffled voice.

"It's John," said Corliss.  "Let me in."

The door opened, and Corliss stepped into the room to confront a dismal
scene.  On the washstand stood several empty whiskey bottles and murky
glasses.  The bedding was half on the floor, and standing with hand
braced against the wall was Will Corliss, ragged, unshaven, and visibly
trembling.  His eyelids were red and swollen.  His face was white save
for the spots that burned on his emaciated cheeks.

"John!" he exclaimed, and extended his hand.

Corliss shook hands with him and then motioned him to a chair.  "Well,
Will, if you're sick, this isn't the way to get over it."

"Brother's keeper, eh?  Glad to see me back, eh, Jack?"

"Not in this shape.  What do you suppose Nell would think?"

"I don't know and I don't care.  I'm sick.  That's all."

"Where have you been--for the last three years?"

"A whole lot you care.  Been?  I have been everywhere from heaven to
hell--the whole route.  I'm in hell just now."

"You look it.  Will, what can I do for you?  You want to quit the booze
and straighten up.  You're killing yourself."

"Maybe I don't know it!  Say, Jack, I want some dough.  I'm broke."

"All right.  How much?"

"A couple of hundred--for a starter."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"What do you suppose?  Not going to eat it."

"No.  And you're not going to drink it, either.  I'll see that you have
everything you need.  You're of age and can do as you like.  But you're
not going to kill yourself with whiskey."

Will Corliss stared at his brother; then laughed.

"Have one with me, Jack.  You didn't used to be afraid of it."

"I'm not now, but I'm not going to take a drink with you."

"Sorry.  Well, here's looking."  And the brother poured himself a
half-tumblerful of whiskey and gulped it down.  "Now, let's talk
business."

Corliss smiled despite his disgust.  "All right.  You talk and I'll
listen."

The brother slouched to the bed and sat down.  "How's the Concho been
making it?" he asked.

"We've been doing pretty fair.  I've been busy."

"How's old man Loring?"

"About the same."

"Nell gone into mourning?"

Corliss frowned and straightened his shoulders.

"See here, Will, you said you'd talk business.  I'm waiting."

"Touched you that time, eh?  Well, you can have Nell and be damned.  No
Mexican blood for mine."

"If you weren't down and out--" began Corliss; then checked himself.
"Go ahead.  What do you want?"

"I told you--money."

"And I told you--no."

The younger man started up.  "Think because I'm edged up that I don't
know what's mine?  You've been piling it up for three years and I've
been hitting the road.  Now I've come to get what belongs to me and I'm
going to get it!"

"All right, Will.  But don't forget that I was made guardian of your
interest in the Concho until you got old enough to be responsible.  The
will reads, until you come of age, providing you had settled down and
showed that you could take care of yourself.  Father didn't leave his
money to either of us to be drunk up, or wasted."

"Prodigal son, eh, Jack?  Well, I'm it.  What's the use of getting sore
at me?  All I want is a couple of hundred and I'll get out of this town
mighty quick.  It's the deadest burg I've struck yet."

John Corliss gazed at his brother, thinking of the bright-faced,
blue-eyed lad that had ridden the mesas and the hills with him.  He was
touched by the other's miserable condition, and even more grieved to
realize that this condition was but the outcome of a rapid lowering of
the other's moral and physical well-being.  He strode to him and sat
beside him.  "Will, I'll give anything I have to help you.  You know
that.  Anything!  You're so changed that it just makes me sick to
realize it.  You needn't have got where you are.  I would have helped
you out any time.  Why didn't you write to me?"

"Write?  And have you tell Nell Loring how your good little brother was
whining for help?  She would have enjoyed that--after what she handed
me."

"I don't know what she said to you," said Corliss, glancing at his
brother.  "But I know this: she didn't say anything that wasn't so.  If
that's the reason you left home, it was a mighty poor one.  You've
always had your own way, Will."

"Why shouldn't I?  Who's got anything to say about it?  You seem to
think that I always need looking after--you and Nell Loring.  I can
look after myself."

"Doesn't look like it," said Corliss, gesturing toward the washstand.
"Had anything to eat to-day?"

"No, and I don't want anything."

"Well, wash up and we'll go and get some clothes and something to eat.
I'll wait."

"You needn't.  Just give me a check--and I won't bother you after that."

"No.  I said wash up!  Get busy now!"

The younger man demurred, but finally did as he was told.  They went
downstairs and out to the street.  In an hour they returned, Will
Corliss looking somewhat like his former self in respectable raiment.
"John," he said as they entered the room again, "you've always been a
good old stand-by, ever since we were kids.  I guess I got in bad this
time, but I'm going to quit.  I don't want to go back to the
Concho--you know why.  If you'll give me some dough I'll take care of
myself.  Just forget what I said about my share of the money."

"Wait till morning," said Corliss.  "I'll take the room next, here, and
if you get to feeling bad, call me."

"All right, Jack.  I'll cut it out.  Maybe I will go back to the
Concho; I don't know."

"Wish you would, Will.  You'll get on your feet.  There's plenty to do
and we're short-handed.  Think it over."

"Does--Nell--ever say anything?" queried the brother.

"She talks about you often.  Yesterday we were talking about you.  I
told her what Sundown said about--"

"Sundown?"

"Forgot about him.  He drifted in a few months ago.  I met up with him
at the water-hole ranch.  He was broke and looking for work.  Gave him
a job cooking, and he made good.  He told me that he used to have a pal
named Will Corliss--"

"And Sundown's at the Concho!  I never told him where I lived."

"He came into Antelope on a freight.  Got side-tracked and had to stay.
He didn't know this used to be your country till I told him."

"Well, that beats me, Jack!  Say, Sun was just an uncle to me when we
were on the road.  We made it clear around, freights, cattle-boats, and
afoot.  I didn't hit the booze then.  Funny thing: he used to hit it,
and I kind of weaned him.  Now it's me. . ."

"He's straight, all right," said Corliss.  "He 'tends right to
business.  The boys like him."

"Everybody liked him," asserted Will Corliss.  "But he is the queerest
Hobo that ever hit the grit."

"Some queer, at that.  It's after nine now, Will.  You get to bed.  I
want to see Banks a minute.  I'll be back soon."

When John Corliss had left the room, something intangible went with
him.  Will felt his moral stamina crumbling.  He waited until he heard
his brother leave the hotel.  Then he went downstairs and returned with
a bottle of whiskey.  He drank, hid the bottle, and went to bed.  He
knew that without the whiskey he would have been unable to sleep.


The brothers had breakfast together next morning.  After breakfast
Corliss went for the team and returned to the hotel, hoping to induce
his brother to come home with him.  Will Corliss, however, pleaded
weariness, and said that he would stay at the Palace until he felt
better.

"All right, Will.  I'll leave some cash with Banks.  He'll give you
what you need as you want it."

"Banks?  The sheriff?"

"Yes."

"Oh, all right.  Suppose you think I'm not to be trusted."

"No.  But we'll leave it that way till I see you again.  Write in if
you need me--and take care of yourself.  When you get ready to settle
down, I'll turn over your share of the Concho to you.  So long, Will."

Will Corliss watched his brother drive away.  When the team had
disappeared up the road he walked down the street to the sheriff's
office.  The sheriff greeted him cordially.

"I came for that money, Jim."

"Sure!  Here you are," and the sheriff handed him a five-dollar
gold-piece.

"Quit kidding and come across," said Corliss, ignoring the significance
of the allowance.

"Can't, Will.  John said to give you five any time you wanted it, but
only five a day."

"He did, eh?  John's getting mighty close in his old age, ain't he?"

"Mebby.  I don't know."

"How much did he leave for me?"

"Five a day, as I said."

"Oh, you go to hell!"

The sheriff smiled pleasantly.  "Nope, Billy!  I'm goin' to stay right
to home.  Have a cigar?"

The young man refused the proffered cigar, picked up the gold-piece and
strolled out.

The sheriff leaned back in his chair.  "Well if Billy feels that way
toward folks, reckon he won't get far with John, or anybody else.  Too
dinged bad.  He used to be a good kid."




CHAPTER VII

FADEAWAY'S HAND

Fadeaway, one of the Concho riders, urged his cayuse through the ford,
reined short, and turned to watch Chance, who accompanied him.  The dog
drew back from the edge of the stream and bunching himself, shot up and
over the muddy water, nor did the jump break his stride as he leaped to
overtake the rider, who had spurred out of his way.  Fadeaway cursed
joyously and put his pony to a lope.  Stride for stride Chance ran
beside him.  The cowboy, swaying easily, turned and looked down upon
the dog.  Chance was enjoying himself.  "Wonder how fast the cuss _can_
run?"  And Fadeaway swung his quirt.  The stride quickened to the
rhythmic beat of the cow-horse at top speed.  The dog kept abreast
without apparent effort.  A half-mile beyond the ford the pace
slackened as the pony took the hill across which the trail led to the
open mesas.  As they topped the rise Fadeaway again urged his cayuse to
a run, for the puncher had enjoyed the hospitality of his companions of
"The Blue," a distant cattle ranch, a day longer than had been set for
his return to the Concho.  Just then a startled jack rabbit leaped up
and bounced down the trail ahead of them.  Fadeaway jerked his horse to
a stop.  "Now we'll see some real speed!" he said.  There was a flash
of the dog's long body, which grew smaller and smaller in the distance;
then a puff of dust spurted up.  Fadeaway saw the dog turn end over
end, regain his feet and toss something in the air.

"The fastest dog in Arizona," remarked the cowboy.  "And you, you
glass-eyed son of a mistake, you're about as fast as a fence-post!"
This to his patient and willing pony, that again swung into a run and
ran steadily despite his fatigue, for he feared the instant slash of
the quirt should he slacken pace.

Round a bend in the trail, where an arm of the distant forest ran out
into the mesa.  Fadeaway again set his horse up viciously.  Chance
stopped and looked up at the rider.  The cowboy pointed through the
thin rim of timber beyond which a herd of sheep was grazing.  "Take
'em!" he whispered.  Chance hesitated, not because he was unfamiliar
with sheep, but because he had been punished for chasing and worrying
them.  "Go to it!  Take 'em, Chance!"

The dog slunk through the timber and disappeared.  The cowboy rode
slowly, peering through the timber.  Presently came the trample of
frightened sheep--a shrill bleating, and then silence.  Fadeaway loped
out into the open.  The sheep were running in all directions.  He
whistled the dog to him.  Chance's muzzle dripped red.  The dog slunk
round behind the horse, knowing that he had done wrong, despite the
fact that he had been set upon the sheep.

From the edge of the timber some one shouted.  The cowboy turned and
saw a herder running toward him.  He reined around and sat waiting
grimly.  When the herder was within speaking distance.  Fadeaway's hand
dropped to his hip and the herder stopped.  He gesticulated and spoke
rapidly in Spanish.  Fadeaway answered, but in a kind of Spanish not
taught in schools or heard in indoor conversation.

The herder pressed forward.  "Why, how! Fernando.  Now what's bitin'
you?"

"The sheep!  He kill the lamb!" cried the herder.

Fadeaway laughed.  "Did, eh?  Well, I tried to call him off.  Reckon
you heard me whistle him, didn't you?"

The cowboy's assertion was so palpably an insult that old Fernando's
anger overcame his caution.  He stepped forward threateningly.
Fadeaway's gun was out and a splash of dust leaped up at Fernando's
feet.  The herder turned and ran.  Fadeaway laughed and swung away at a
lope.

When he arrived at the Concho he unsaddled, turned his pony into the
corral, and called to Chance.  He was at the water-trough washing the
dog's muzzle when John Corliss appeared.  Fadeaway straightened up.  He
knew what was coming and knew that he deserved it.  The effects of his
conviviality at the Blue had worn off, leaving him in an ugly mood.

Corliss looked him over from head to heel.  Then he glanced at the dog.
Chance turned his head down and sideways, avoiding his master's eye.
Fadeaway laughed.

"You get your time!" said Corliss.

"You're dam' right!" retorted Fadeaway.

"And you're damned wrong!  Chance knows better than to tackle sheep
unless he's put up to it.  You needn't explain.  Bud will give you your
time."

Then Corliss turned to Shoop who had just ridden in.

"Chain that dog up and keep him chained up!  And give Fadeaway his
time, right up to the minute!"

Shoop dropped easily from the saddle, led his horse toward the corral,
and whistled a sprightly ditty as he unsaddled him.

Fadeaway rolled a cigarette and strolled over to the bunk-house where
he retailed his visit and its climax to a group of interested punchers.

"So he tied the can onto you, eh?  And for settin' Chance on the sheep?
He ought to be much obliged to you, Fade.  They ain't room for sheep
and cattle both on this here range.  We're gettin' backed plumb into
the sunset."

Fadeaway nodded to the puncher who had spoken.

"And ole man Loring's just run in twenty thousand head from New Mex.,"
continued the puncher.  "Wonder how Corliss likes that?"

"Don' know--and dam' 'f I care.  If a guy can't have a little sport
without gettin' fired for it, why, that guy don't work for the Concho.
The Blue's good enough for me and I can get a job ridin' for the Blue
any time I want to cinch up."

"Well, Fade, I reckon you better cinch up pronto, then," said Shoop who
had just entered.  "Here's your time.  Jack's some sore, believe me!"

"Sore, eh?  Well, before he gets through with me he'll be sorer.  You
can tell him for me."

"'Course I _can_--but I ain't goin' to.  And I wouldn't if I was you.
No use showin' your hand so early in the game."  And Shoop laughed.

"Well, she's full--six aces," said Fadeaway, touching his holster
significantly.

"And Jack throws the fastest gun on the Concho," said Shoop, his genial
smile gone; his face flushed.  "I been your friend, if I do say it,
Fade.  But don't you go away with any little ole idea that I ain't
workin' for Jack Corliss."

"What's that to me?  I'm fired, ain't I?"

"Correct.  Only I was thinkin' your cayuse is all in.  You couldn't get
out of sight on him tonight.  But you can take one of my string and
send it back when you get ready."

"Oh, I ain't sweatin' to hit the trail," said Fadeaway, for the benefit
of his audience.

"All right, Fade.  But the boss is.  It's up to you."


After he had eaten, Fadeaway rolled his few belongings in his slicker
and tied it to the saddle.  He was not afraid of Corliss, but like men
of his stamp he wanted Corliss to know that he was not alone unafraid,
but willing to be aggressive.  He mounted and rode up to the
ranch-house.  Corliss, who had seen him approach through the window,
sat at his desk, waiting for the cow-boy to dismount and come in.  But
Fadeaway sat his horse, determined to make the rancher come outside.

Corliss understood, and pushing back his chair, strode to the doorway.
"Want to see me?" he asked.

Fadeaway noticed that Corliss was unarmed, and he twisted the
circumstance to suit a false interpretation of the fact.  "Playin'
safe!" he sneered.

Corliss flushed and the veins swelled on his neck, but he kept silent.
He looked the cowboy in the eye and was met by a gaze as steady as his
own; an aggressive and insolent gaze that had for its backing sheer
physical courage and nothing more.  It became a battle of mental
endurance and Corliss eventually won.

After the lapse of several seconds, the cowboy spoke to his horse.
"Come on, Doc!  The son-of-a----- is loco."

Corliss heard, but held his peace.  He stood watching the cowboy until
the latter was out on the road.  He noticed that he took the northern
branch, toward Antelope.  Then the rancher entered the house, picked up
his hat, buckled on his gun, and hastened to the corral.  He saddled
Chinook and took the trail to the Loring rancho.

He rode slowly, trying to arrive at the best method of presenting his
side of the sheep-killing to Loring.  He hoped that Eleanor Loring
would not be present during the interview with her father.  He was
disappointed, for she came from the wide veranda as he rode up and
greeted him.

"Won't you come in?" she asked.

"I guess not.  I'd like to see your father."

She knew that her father had forbidden Corliss the house, and, indeed,
the premises.  She wondered what urgency brought him to the rancho.
"I'll call him, then."

Corliss answered the grave questioning in her eyes briefly.  "The
sheep," he said.

"Oh!"  She turned and stepped to the veranda.  "Dad, John is here."

David Loring came to the doorway and stood blinking at Corliss.  He did
not speak.

"Mr. Loring, one of my men set Chance on a band of your sheep.  My
foreman tells me that Chance killed a lamb.  I want to pay for it."

Loring had expected something of the kind.  "Mighty proud of it, I
reckon?"

"No, I'm not proud of it.  I apologize--for the Concho."

"You say it easy."

"No, it isn't easy to say--to you.  I'll pay the damage.  How much?"

"Your dog, eh?  Well, if you'll shoot the dam' dog the lamb won't cost
you a cent."

"No, I won't shoot the dog.  He was put up to it.  I fired the man that
set him on to the sheep."

"That's your business.  But that don't square you with me."

"I'll settle, if you'll fix the price," said Corliss.

"You will, eh?  Then, mebby you'd think you was square with ole man
Loring and come foolin' around here like that tramp brother of yours.
Fine doin's in Antelope, from what I hear."

"Dad!" exclaimed the girl, stepping to her father.  "Dad!"

"You go in the house, Nellie!  We'll settle this."

Corliss dismounted and strode up to Loring.  "If you weren't an old man
I'd give you the licking of your life!  I've offered to settle with you
and I've apologized.  You don't belong in a white man's country."

"I got a pup that barks jest like that--and he's afraid of his own
bark," said Loring.

"Have it your way.  I'm through."  And Corliss stepped to his horse.

"Well, I ain't!" cried Loring.  "I'm jest startin' in!  You better
crawl your cayuse and eat the wind for home, Mr. Concho Jack!  And
lemme tell you this: they's twenty thousand head of my sheep goin' to
cross the Concho, and the first puncher that runs any of my sheep is
goin' to finish in smoke!"

"All right, Loring.  Glad you put me on to your scheme.  I don't want
trouble with you, but if you're set on having trouble, you can find it."

The old man straightened and shook his fist at the rancher.  "Fust time
you ever talked like a man in your life.  Nex' thing is to see if you
got sand enough to back it up.  There's the gate."

Corliss mounted and wheeled his horse.  The girl, who stood beside her
father, started forward as though to speak to the rancher.  Loring
seized her arm.  Her face flamed and she turned on her father.  "Dad!
Let me go!"

He shrunk beneath her steady gaze.  He released her arm and she stepped
up to Corliss.  "I'm sorry, John," she said, and offered her hand.

"You heard it all, Nell.  I'd do anything to save you all this, if I
could."

"Anything?"

"Yes."

"Well, try and get Will--to--stop drinking.  He--I heard all about it.
I can't do anything to help.  You ought to look after him.  He's your
brother.  He's telling folks in Antelope that you refused to help him.
Is that so?"

"I refused to give him two hundred dollars to blow in if that's what
you mean."

"Did you quarrel with Will?"

"No.  I asked him to come home.  I knew he wouldn't."

"Yes.  And I think I know how you went at it.  I wish I could talk to
him."

"I wish you would.  You can do more with him than anybody."

Loring strode toward Corliss.  The girl turned to her father.  He
raised his arm and pointed toward the road.  "You git!" he said.  She
reached up and patted his grizzled cheek.  Then she clung to him,
sobbing.




CHAPTER VIII

AT "THE LAST CHANCE"

The afternoon following the day of his discharge from the Concho,
Fadeaway rode into Antelope, tied his pony to the hitching-rail in
front of "The Last Chance," and entered the saloon.  Several men loafed
at the bar.  The cowboy, known as "a good spender when flush," was made
welcome.  He said nothing about being out of employment, craftily
anticipating the possibility of having to ask for credit later, as he
had but a half-month's pay with him.  He was discussing the probability
of early rains with a companion when Will Corliss entered the place.

Fadeaway greeted him with loud, counterfeit heartiness, and they drank
together.  Their talk centered on the Concho.  Gradually they drew away
from the group at the bar.  Finally Corliss mentioned his brother.
Fadeaway at once became taciturn.

Corliss noticed this and questioned the puncher.  "Had a row with
Jack?" he asked.

"Between you and me, I did.  He fired me, couple of days ago."

"Full?"

"Nope.  Chance killed one of Loring's sheep.  John hung it onto me,
seein' Chance was with me.  Guess John's gettin' religion."

Corliss laughed, and his lips twisted to a sneer.  "Guess he is.  I
tried to touch him for two hundred of my own money and he turned me
down.  Maybe I like it."

"Turned you down, eh!  That's what I call nerve!  And you been away
three year and more.  Reckon, by the way the Concho is makin' good, you
got more'n two hundred comin'.  She's half yours, ain't she?"

"Yes.  And I'm going to get my share.  He told me I could have a
job--that he was short-handed.  What do you think of that!  And I own
half the Concho!  I guess I'd like to ride range with a lot of--well,
you understand, Fade.  I never liked the Concho and I never will.
Let's have another.  No.  This is on me."

Again they drank and Corliss became more talkative.  He posed as one
wronged by society in general and his brother especially.

As his talk grew louder, Fadeaway cautioned him.  "Easy, Billy.  No use
advertisin'.  Come on over here."  And Fadeaway gestured toward one of
the tables in the rear of the room.

Corliss was about to retort to the other's apparently good-natured
interference with his right to free speech, when he caught Fadeaway's
glance.  "Well?" he exclaimed.

The cowboy evidently had something to say in confidence.  Corliss
followed him to one of the tables.

"It's this way," began the cowboy.  "You're sore at Jack.  Now Jack's
got friends here and it won't help you any to let 'em know you're sore
at him.  I ain't feelin' like kissin' him myself--right now.  But I
ain't advertisin' it.  What you want to do is--"

"What's that got to do with me?" interrupted Corliss.

Fadeaway laughed.  "Nothin'--if you like.  Only there's been doin's
since you lit out."  And he paused to let the inference sink in.

"You mean--?"

"Look here, Billy.  I been your friend ever since you was a kid.  And
seein' you're kind of out of luck makes me sore--when I think what's
yours by rights.  Mebby I'm ridin' over the line some to say it, but
from what I seen since you been gone, Jack ain't goin' to cry any if
you never come back.  Old man Loring ain't goin' to live more'n a
thousand years.  Mebby Jack don't jest love him--but Jack ain't been
losin' any time since you been gone."

Corliss flushed.  "I suppose I don't know that!  But he hasn't seen the
last of me yet."

"If I had what's comin' to you, you bet I wouldn't work on no
cattle-ranch, either.  I'd sure hire a law-shark and find out where I
got off."

Fadeaway's suggestion had its intended effect.  The younger man knew
that an appeal to the law would be futile so long as he chose to ignore
that clause in the will which covered the contingency he was
illustrating by his conduct.  Fadeaway again cautioned him as he became
loud in his invective against his brother.  The cowboy, while posing as
friend and adviser, was in reality working out a subtle plan of his
own, a plan of which Corliss had not the slightest inkling.

"And the Concho's makin' good," said Fadeaway, helping himself to a
drink.  He shoved the bottle toward Corliss.  "Take a little
'Forget-it,' Billy.  That's her!  Here's to what's yours!"  They drank
together.  The cowboy rolled a cigarette, tilted back his chair, and
puffed thoughtfully.  "Yes, she's makin' good.  Why, Bud is gettin' a
hundred and twenty-five, now.  Old Hi Wingle's drawin' down
eighty--Jack's payin' the best wages in this country.  Must of cleaned
up four or five thousand last year.  And here you're settin', broke."

"Well, you needn't rub it in," said Corliss, frowning.

Fadeaway grinned.  "I ain't, Billy.  I'm out of a job myself: and
nothin' comin'--like you."

Corliss felt that there was something in his companion's easy drift
that had not as yet come to the surface.  Fadeaway's hard-lined face
was unreadable.  The cowboy saw a question in the other's eyes and
cleverly ignored it.  Since meeting the brother he had arrived at a
plan to revenge himself on John Corliss and he intended that the
brother should take the initiative.

He got up and proffered his hand.  "So long, Billy.  If you ever need a
friend, you know where to find him."

"Hold on, Fade.  What's your rush?"

"Got to see a fella.  Mebby I'll drop in later."

Corliss rose.

Fadeaway leaned across the table.  "I'm broke, and you're broke.  The
Concho pays off Monday, next week.  The boys got three months
comin'--close to eighteen hundred--and gold."

"Gold?  Thought John paid by check?"

"He's tryin' to keep the boys from cashin' in, here.  Things are goin'
to be lively between Loring and the Concho before long.  Jack needs all
the hands he's got."

"But I don't see what that's got to do with it, Fade."

"Nothing 'ceptin' I'm game to stand by a pal--any time."

"You mean--?"

"Jest a josh, Billy.  I was only thinkin' what _could_ be pulled off by
a couple of wise ones.  So-long!"

And the cowboy departed wondering just how far his covert suggestion
had carried with Will Corliss.  As for Will Corliss, Fadeaway cared
nothing whatever.  Nor did he intend to risk getting caught with a
share of the money in his possession, provided his plan was carried to
a conclusion.  He anticipated that John Corliss would be away from the
ranch frequently, owing to the threatened encroachment of Loring's
sheep on the west side of the Concho River.  Tony, the Mexican, would
be left in charge of the ranch.  Will Corliss knew the combination of
the safe--of that Fadeaway was pretty certain.  Should they get the
money, people in the valley would most naturally suspect the brother.
And Fadeaway reasoned that John Corliss would take no steps to recover
the money should suspicion point to his brother having stolen it.
Meanwhile he would wait.


Shortly after Fadeaway had gone out, Will Corliss got up and sauntered
to the street.  He gazed up and down the straggling length of Antelope
and cursed.  Then he walked across to the sheriff's office.

The sheriff motioned him to a chair, which he declined.  "Better sit
down, Billy.  I want to talk to you."

"Haven't got time," said Corliss.  "You know what I came for."

"That's just what I want to talk about.  See here, Billy, you've been
hitting it up pretty steady this week.  Here's the prospect.  John told
me to hand you five a day for a week.  You got clothes, grub, and a
place to sleep and all paid for.  You could go out to the ranch if you
wanted to.  The week is up and you're goin' it just the same.  If you
want any more money you'll have to see John.  I give you all he left
with me."

"By God, that's the limit!" exclaimed Corliss.

"I guess it is, Billy.  Have a cigar?"

Corliss flung out of the office and tramped across to the saloon.  He
called for whiskey and, seating himself at one of the tables, drank
steadily.  Fadeaway wasn't such a fool, after all.  But robbery!  Was
it robbery?  Eighteen hundred dollars would mean San Francisco . . .
Corliss closed his eyes.  Out of the red mist of remembrance a girl's
face appeared.  The heavy-lidded eyes and vivid lips smiled.  Then
other faces, and the sound of music and laughter.  He nodded to them
and raised his glass. . . .  As the raw whiskey touched his lips the
red mist swirled away.  The dingy interior of the saloon, the booted
and belted riders, the grimy floor littered with cigarette-ends, the
hanging oil-lamp with its blackened chimney, flashed up and spread
before him like the speeding film of a picture, stationary upon the
screen of his vision, yet trembling toward a change of scene.  A blur
appeared in the doorway.  In the nightmare of his intoxication he
welcomed the change.  Why didn't some one say something or do
something?  And the figure that had appeared, why should it pause and
speak to one of the men at the bar, and not come at once to him.  They
were laughing.  He grew silently furious.  Why should they laugh and
talk and keep him waiting?  He knew who had come in.  Of course he
knew!  Did Fadeaway think to hide himself behind the man at the bar?
Then Fadeaway should not wear chaps with silver conchas that glittered
and gleamed as he shifted his leg and turned his back.  "Said he was my
friend," mumbled Corliss.  "My friend!  Huh!"  Was it a friend that
would leave him sitting there, alone?

He rose and lurched to the bar.  Some one steadied him as he swayed.
He stiffened and struck the man in the face.  He felt himself jerked
backward and the shock cleared his vision.  Opposite him two men held
Fadeaway, whose mouth was bleeding.  The puncher was struggling to get
at his gun.

Corliss laughed.  "Got you that time, you thief!"

"He's crazy drunk," said one of the men.  "Don't get het up, Fade.  He
ain't packin' a gun."

Fadeaway cursed and wiped the blood from his mouth.  He was playing his
part well.  Accident had helped him.  To all intents and purposes they
were open enemies.

Still, he was afraid Corliss would talk, so he laughed and extended his
hand.  "Shake, Billy.  I guess you didn't know what you were doin'.  I
was tryin' to keep you from fallin'."

Corliss stared at the other with unwinking eyes.

Fadeaway laughed and turned toward the bar.  "Ought to hand him one,
but he's all in now, I reckon.  That's what a fella gets for mixin' up
with kids.  Set 'em up, Joe."

Left to himself Corliss stared about stupidly.  Then he started for the
doorway.

As he passed Fadeaway, the latter turned and seized his arm.  "Come on
up and forget it, Billy.  You and me's friends, ain't we?"

The cowboy, by sheer force of his personality, dominated the now
repentant Corliss, whose stubbornness had given way to tearful
retraction and reiterated apology.  Of course they were friends!

They drank and Fadeaway noticed the other's increasing pallor.  "Jest
about one more and he'll take a sleep," soliloquized the cowboy.  "In
the mornin' 's when I ketch him, raw, sore, and ready for anything."

One of the cowboys helped Corliss to his room at the Palace.  Later
Fadeaway entered the hotel, asked for a room, and clumped upstairs.  He
rose early and knocked at Corliss's door, then entered without waiting
for a response.

He wakened Corliss, who sat up and stared at him stupidly.  "Mornin',
Billy.  How's the head?"

"I don't know yet.  Got any cash, Fade?  I'm broke."

"Sure.  What you want?"

Corliss made a gesture, at which the other laughed.  "All right,
pardner.  I'll fan it for the medicine."

When he returned to the room, Corliss was up and dressed.  Contrary to
Fadeaway's expectations, the other was apparently himself, although a
little too bright and active to be normal.

"Guess I got noisy last night," said Corliss, glancing at Fadeaway's
swollen lip.

"Forget it!  Have some of this.  Then I got to fan it."

"Where are you going?"

"Me?  Over to the Blue.  Got a job waitin' for me."

Corliss's fingers worked nervously.  "When did you say the Concho paid
off?" he queried, avoiding the other's eye.

Fadeaway's face expressed surprise.  "The Concho?  Why, next Monday.
Why?"

"Oh--nothing.  I was just wondering . . ."

"Want to send any word to Jack?" asked the cowboy.

"No, I don't.  Thanks, just the same, Fade."

"Sure!  Well, I guess I'll be goin'."

"Wait a minute.  Don't be in a rush.  I was thinking . . ."

Fadeaway strode to the window and stood looking out on the street.  His
apparent indifference was effective.

"Say, Fade, do you think we could--could get away with it?"

"With what?" exclaimed the cowboy, turning.

"Oh, you know!  What you said yesterday."

"Guess I said a whole lot yesterday that I forgot this mornin'.  I get
to joshin' when I'm drinkin' bug-juice.  What you gettin' at?"

"The money--at the Concho."

"Oh, that!  Why, Billy, I was jest stringin' you!  Supposin' somebody
was to make a try for it; there's Chance like to be prowlin' around and
the safe ain't standin' open nights.  Besides, Jack sleeps next to the
office.  That was a josh."

"Well, I could handle Chance," said Corliss.  "And I know the
combination to the safe, if it hasn't been changed.  You said Jack was
likely to be away nights, now."

Fadeaway shook his head.  "You're dreamin', Bill.  'Sides, I wouldn't
touch a job like that for less'n five hundred."

"Would you--for five hundred?"

"I dunno.  Depends on who I was ridin' with."

"Well, I'll divvy up--give you five hundred if you'll come in on it."

Again Fadeaway shook his head.  "It's too risky, Billy.  'Course you
mean all right--but I reckon you ain't got nerve enough to put her
through."

"I haven't!" flashed Corliss.  "Try me!"

"And make a get-away," continued the cowboy.  "I wouldn't want to see
you pinched."

"I'll take a chance, if you will," said Corliss, now assuming, as
Fadeaway had intended, the rôle of leader in the proposed robbery.

"How you expect to get clear--when they find it out?"

"I could get old man Soper to hide me out till I could get to Sagetown.
He'll do anything for money.  I could be on the Limited before the news
would get to Antelope."

"And if you got pinched, first thing you'd sing out 'Fadeaway,' and
then me for over the road, eh?"

"Honest, Fade.  I'll swear that I won't give you away, even if I get
caught.  Here's my hand on it."

"Give me nine hundred and I'll go you," said Fadeaway, shaking hands
with his companion.

Corliss hesitated.  Was the risk worth but half the money involved?
"Five's a whole lot, Fade."

"Well, seein' you're goin' to do the gettin' at it, why, mebby I'd risk
it for five hundred.  I dunno."

"You said you'd stand by a pal, Fade.  Now's your chance."

"All right.  See here, Bill.  You cut out the booze all you can to-day.
Foot it out to the Beaver Dam to-night and I'll have a hoss for you.
We can ride up the old cañon trail.  Nobody takes her nowadays, so
we'll be under cover till we hit the ford.  We can camp there back in
the brush and tackle her next evenin'.  So-long."

Fadeaway was downstairs and out on the street before Corliss realized
that he had committed himself to a desperate and dangerous undertaking.
He recalled the expression in Fadeaway's eyes when they had shaken
hands.  Unquestionably the cowboy meant business.




CHAPTER IX

SUNDOWN'S FRIEND

Bud Shoop was illustrating, with quaint and humorous gestures and
adjectives, one of his early experiences as Ranger on the Apache
Reservation.  The men, grouped around the night-fire, smoked and helped
the tale along with reminiscent suggestions and ejaculations of
interest and curiosity.  In the midst of a vivid account of the
juxtaposition of a telephone battery and a curious yet unsuspicious
Apache, Shoop paused in the recital and gazed out across the mesa.
"It's the boss," he said, getting to his feet.  "Wonder what's up?"

Corliss rode into camp, swung from the saddle, and called to Shoop.
The men gazed at each other, nodded, and the words "Loring" and
"sheep," punctuated their mutterings.

Shoop and Corliss talked together.  Then the foreman called to Hi
Wingle, asking him how the "chuck" was holding out.

"Runnin' short on flour and beans, Bud.  Figured on makin' the Concho
to-morrow."

Corliss and his foreman came to the fire.  "Boss says we're goin' to
bush here the rest of this week," and Corliss nodded.

"I'm expecting company on the west side," explained Corliss,

The men gazed at each other knowingly.

"All right," said Wingle.  "Four sacks of flour and a sack of
frijoles'll see us through.  Got enough other stuff."

"Send some one in for it," ordered Corliss.  "I'm going to stay with
the outfit, from now on."

The men cheered.  That was the kind of a boss to work for!  No settin'
back and lettin' the men do the fightin'!  Some style to Jack Corliss!
All of which was subtly expressed in their applause, although unspoken.

"To see that you boys don't get into mischief," continued Corliss,
smiling.

"Which means keepin' other folks out of mischief, eh, patron?" said a
cow-puncher.

At the word "patron" the men laughed.  "They're talkin' of turnin' this
outfit into a sheep-camp," remarked another.  "Ba-a-ah!" And again they
laughed.

Shoop motioned to Sundown who rose from beside the fire.  "You can
saddle up, Sun."

Sundown caught up his horse and stood waiting while one of the men
saddled two pack-animals.  "Tony has the keys.  He'll pack the stuff
for you," said Corliss.  "Keep jogging and you ought to be back here by
sunup."

The assistant cook mounted and took the lead-rope of the pack-horses.
He was not altogether pleased with the prospect of an all-night ride,
but he knew that he had been chosen as the one whose services could
most easily be dispensed with at the camp.  Silently he rode away, the
empty kyacks clattering as the pack-horses trotted unwillingly behind
him.  Too busy with the unaccustomed lead-rope to roll cigarettes, he
whistled, and, in turn, recited verse to keep up his spirits.

About midnight he discerned the outline of the low ranch-buildings and
urged his horse to a faster gait.  As he passed a clump of cottonwoods,
his horse snorted and shied.  Sundown reined him in and leaned peering
ahead.  The pack-animals tugged back on the rope.  Finally he coaxed
them past the cottonwoods and up to the gate.  It was open, an unusual
circumstance which did not escape his notice.  He drifted through the
shadows toward the corral, where he tied the horses.  Then he stepped
to the bunk-house, found a lantern and lighted it.  He hallooed.  There
was no response.  He stalked across to the ranch-house.  He found the
door unlocked.  "Hi!  Tony!" he called.  No one answered.  He pushed
the door open and entered.  Holding the lantern above his head he
peered around the room.

In the dim light of the lantern vague outlines took shape.  He noticed
that the small safe in the corner was open.  He became alarmed and
again called.  He heard a slight movement behind him and turned to see
the door close.  From behind stepped a figure, a slender figure that
seemed unreal, yet familiar.  With a cry of surprise he jumped back and
stood facing his old friend and companion of the road, Will Corliss.

"Billy!" he ejaculated, backing away and staring.

"Yes, it's Billy."  And Corliss extended his hand.

"But--what, where--?"  Sundown hesitated and glanced at the safe.  His
eyes widened and he lowered the lantern.  "Billy!" he said, ignoring
the other's proffered hand, "what you doin' here?"

Corliss assumed a nonchalant air.  "Shake, pal!  It's a long time since
we been in a wreck, eh?"

Sundown was silent, studying the other's hardened features.  "Billy!"
he reiterated, "what you doin' here?"

Corliss laughed nervously.  "What are you doing here?" he
retorted,--"in the office of the Concho, at midnight?"

"I was comin' to get flour and beans for the camp--" he began.

Corliss interrupted him.  "Sounds good, that!  But they don't keep the
grub here.  Guess you made a mistake."

Sundown's face was expressionless.  "Guess you made the mistake, Billy.
I thought you was--dead."

"Not on your tin-type, Sun."

"I never thought you was crooked, Billy."

"Crooked!" flashed Corliss.  "Say, you--you forget it.  I'm here to get
what's coming to me.  Jack turned me down, so I'm going to take what's
mine."

"Mebby it's yours, but you ain't gettin' it right," said Sundown.
"I--I--never thought you was--"

"Oh, cut that out!  You didn't used to be so dam' particular."

"I never swiped a cent in me life, Billy."

"Well, forget it.  I'm in a hurry.  You go ahead and get the chuck.
Here are the keys to the store-room--and beat it.  Just forget that you
saw me; that's all."

Sundown shook his head.  "I ain't forgettin' that easy, Billy.  'Sides,
I'm workin' for the Concho, now.  They're treatin' me fine--and I
reckon I got to be square."

"You mean you're going to squeal--going back on your old pal, eh?"

Sundown's face expressed conflicting emotions.  He straightened his
lean shoulders.  "I tell you, Billy; if you beat it now, they won't be
nothin' to squeal about."

"I'm going to."  And Corliss stepped toward the safe.  "Just hold that
light this way a minute."

Sundown complied, and Corliss thought that the other had overcome his
scruples.  Corliss hastily drew a small canvas sack from the safe and
stuffed it into his pocket.  Sundown backed toward the door.

Corliss got to his feet.  "Well, so-long, Sun.  Guess I'll light out."

"Not with that," said Sundown.  "I ain't no preacher, but I ain't goin'
to see you go straight to hell and me do nothin'.  Mebby some of that
dough is yourn.  I dunno.  But somebody's goin' to get pinched for
takin' it.  Bein' a Bo, it'll be me."

"So that's what's worrying you, eh?  Scared you'll get sent over for
this.  Well, you won't.  You haven't got anything on you."

"'T ain't that, Billy.  It's you."

Corliss laughed.  "You're getting religion, too.  Well, I never thought
you'd go back on me."

"I ain't.  I was always your friend, Billy."

Corliss hesitated.  The door behind Sundown moved ever so little.
Corliss's eyes held Sundown with unwinking gaze.  Slowly the door swung
open.  Sundown felt rather than heard a presence behind him.  Before he
could turn, something crashed down on his head.  The face of his old
friend, intense, hard, desperate, was the last thing imaged upon his
mind as the room swung round and he dropped limply to the floor.

"Just in time," said Fadeaway, bending over the prostrate figure.  "Get
a move, Bill.  I followed him from the cottonwoods and heard his talk.
I was waitin' to get him when he come out, but I seen what he was up to
and I fixed him."

Corliss backed against the wall, trembling and white.  "Is he--did
you--?"

Fadeaway grinned.  "No, just chloroformed him.  Get a move, Bill.  No
tellin' who'll come moseyin' along.  Got the stuff?"

Corliss nodded.

Fadeaway blew out the light.  "Come on, Bill.  She worked slick."

"But--he knows me," said Corliss.  "He'll squeal."

"And I reckon Jack'll believe him.  Why, it's easy, Bill.  They find
the Bo on the job and the money gone.  Who did it?  Ask me."

At the cottonwoods they mounted.  "Now, you fan it for Soper's," said
Fadeaway.  "I'll keep on for the Blue.  To-morrow evenin' I'll ride
over and get my divvy."

Corliss hesitated.

"You better travel," said Fadeaway, reining his horse around.
"So-long."

Chance, a prisoner in the stable, whined and gnawed at the rope with
which Corliss had tied him.  The rope was hard-twisted and tough.
Finally the last strand gave way.  The dog leaped through the doorway
and ran sniffing around the enclosure.  He found Sundown's trail and
followed it to the ranch-house.  At the threshold the dog stopped.  His
neck bristled and he crooked one foreleg.  Slowly he stalked to the
prone figure on the floor.  He sniffed at Sundown's hands and pawed at
him.  Slowly Sundown's eyes opened.  He tried to rise and sank back
groaning.  Chance frisked around him playfully coaxing.  Finally
Sundown managed to sit up.  With pain-heavy eyes he gazed around the
room.  Slowly he got to his feet and staggered to the doorway.  He
leaned against the lintel and breathed deeply of the fresh morning air.
The clear cold tang of the storm that had passed, lingered, giving a
keen edge to the morning.  "We're sure in wrong," he muttered, gazing
at Chance, who stood watching him with head cocked and eyes eager for
something to happen--preferably action.  Sundown studied the dog dully.
"Say, Chance," he said finally, "do you think you could take a little
word to the camp?  I heard of dogs doin' such things.  Mebby you could.
Somebody's got to do 'somethin' and I can't."  Painfully he stooped and
pointed toward the south.  "Go tell the boss!" he commanded.  Chance
whined.  "No, that way.  The camp!"

Chance nosed across the yard toward the gate.  Then he stopped and
looked back.  Sundown encouraged him by waving his arm toward the
south.  "Go ahead, Chance.  The boss wants you."

Chance trotted toward the cottonwood, nosed among them, and finally
took Sundown's trail to the knoll.

Sundown crept to the bunk-house, wondering what had become of the
Mexican, Tony.  He determined to search for him, but became dizzy, and,
crawling to a bunk, lay back groaning as the dull pain in his head
leaped intermittently to blinding stabs of agony.  It seemed ages
before he heard the quick staccato of hoofs on the road.  He raised
himself on his elbow as Shoop and Corliss rode up on their
mud-spattered and steaming ponies.  Sundown called as they dismounted
at the corral.

Corliss and Shoop stamped in, breathing hard.  "What's up?" questioned
Corliss.

"They--they got the money," muttered Sundown, pointing toward the
office.

"Who?  See what's up, Bud."

Shoop swung out and across the enclosure.

Corliss stooped over Sundown.  "What's wrong, Sun?  Why, Great God,
you're hurt!"

The rancher brought water and bathed Sundown's head.  "Who did it?" he
questioned.

"I dunno, boss.  I come and caught 'em at it.  Two of 'em, I guess.  I
was tryin' to stop one fella from takin' it when the other slips me one
on the head, and I takes a sleep.  I was lookin' for Tony in the
office."

"Where's Tony?"

"I dunno.  I was goin' to see--but--my head . . ."

"That's all right.  You take it easy as you can.  I'll find out."

And Corliss left the room.  With Chance he explored the outbuildings
and finally discovered the Mexican bound and gagged in the stable.  He
released him, but could make nothing of his answers save that some one
had come at night, tied his hands and feet, and carried him from the
ranch-house.

Corliss returned to Sundown.  In the bunkhouse he encountered Shoop.

"They robbed the safe," said Shoop, and he spoke with a strange
quietness.  "Better come and take a look, Jack."

"Didn't blow her," said Shoop, pointing toward the corner as they
entered the office.

Corliss knelt and examined the safe.  "The man that did it knew the
combination," he said.  "There isn't a mark on the door."

He rose, and Shoop met his eye.  Corliss shook his head.  "I don't
know," he said, as if in answer to a silent questioning.  Then he told
Shoop to look for tracks.

"The rain's fixed the tracks," said Shoop, turning in the doorway.
"But it ain't drowned out my guess on this proposition."

"Well, keep guessing, Bud, till I talk to Sundown."  And Corliss walked
slowly to the bunkhouse.  He sat on the edge of the bunk and laid his
hand on Sundown's sleeve.  "Look here, Sun, if you know anything about
this, just tell me.  The money's gone and you didn't get that cut on
the head trying to take it.  I guess you're straight, all right, but I
think you know something."

Sundown blinked and set his jaw.

Corliss observed and wisely forbore to threaten or command.  "Did you
recognize either of the men?" he asked, presently.

"No!" lied Sundown.  "Wasn't I hit in the back of me head?"

Corliss smiled grimly.  "What were you doing when you got hit?"

"Tryin' to stop the other guy--"

"What did he look like?"

"I dunno.  Me lantern was on the floor.  He was a hefty guy, bigger 'n
you.  Mebby six feet and pow'ful built.  Had whiskers so's I couldn't
pipe his face.  Big puncher hat down over his eyes and a handkerchief
tied like a mask.  I was scared of him, you bet!"

Corliss slowly drew a sack of tobacco and papers from his pocket.  He
rolled a cigarette and puffed reflectively.  Then he laughed.  "I'm out
about eighteen hundred.  That's the first thing.  Next, you're used up
pretty bad and we're short-handed.  Then, we're losing time trying to
track the thieves.  But I'm not riled up a little bit.  Don't think I'm
mad at you.  I'm mighty glad you didn't get put out in this deal.
That's where I stand.  I want to find out who took the money.  I don't
say that I'll lift a rein to follow them.  Depends on who did it."

Sundown winced, and gazed up helplessly.  He felt oppressed by the
broad-chested figure near him.  He felt that he could not get away
from--what?  Not Corliss, for Corliss was undoubtedly friendly.  In a
flash he saw that he could not get away from the truth.  Yet he
determined to shield his old pal of the road.  "You're sure givin' me
the third degree," he said with an attempt at humor.  "I reckon I got
to come through.  Boss, are you believin' I didn't take the cash?"

"Sure I am!  But that isn't enough.  Are you working for the Concho,
Sun, or for some other outfit?"

"The Concho," muttered Sundown stubbornly.

"And I'm the Concho.  You're working for me.  Listen.  I've got a yarn
to spin.  The man that took the money--or one of them--was short, and
slim, and clean-shaved, and he didn't wear a puncher hat.  You weren't
scared of him because he was a coward.  You tried to get him to play
square and he talked to you while the other man got you from behind.
That's just a guess, but you furnished the meat for it."

"Me hands are up," said Sundown.

"All right.  I'm not going to get after Billy for this.  You lied to
me, but you lied to save your pal.  Shake!"




CHAPTER X

THE STORM

Will Corliss, riding through the timberlands toward the west, shivered
as a drop of rain touched his hand.  He glanced up through the trees.
The sky seemed clouded to the level of the pine-tops.  He spurred his
horse as he again felt a spatter of rain.  Before him lay several miles
of rugged trail leading to an open stretch across which he would again
enter the timber on the edge of the hollow where Soper's cabin was
concealed.  When Corliss had suggested Soper's place as a rendezvous,
Fadeaway had laughed to himself, knowing that old man Soper had been
driven from the country by a committee of irate ranchers.  The illicit
sale of whiskey to the cowboys of the Concho Valley had been the cause
of Soper's hurried evacuation.  The cabin had been burned to the
ground.  Fadeaway knew that without Soper's assistance Corliss would be
unable to get to the railroad--would be obliged either to return to the
Concho or starve on the empty mesas.

Corliss bent his head as the rain drove faster.  When he arrived at the
edge of the mesa, the storm had increased to a steady dull roar of
rushing rain.  He hesitated to face the open and reined up beneath a
spruce.  He was drenched and shivered.  The fever of drink had died out
leaving him unstrung and strangely fearful of the night.  His horse
stood with lowered head, its storm-blown mane whipping in the wind like
a wet cloth.  A branch riven from a giant pine crashed down behind him.
Corliss jerked upright in the saddle, and the horse, obeying the
accidental touch of the spurs, plodded out to the mesa with head held
sideways.

The rider's hands grew numb and he dropped the reins over the horn and
shoved his hands in his pockets.  Unaccustomed to riding he grew weary
and, despite the storm, he drowsed, to awaken with a start as gusts of
wind swept against his face.  He raised his dripping hat and shook the
water from it.  Then he crouched shivering in the saddle.  He cursed
himself for a fool and longed for shelter and the warmth of a fire.
Slowly a feeling of helplessness stole over him and he pictured himself
returning to the Concho and asking forgiveness of his brother.  Yet he
kept stubbornly on, glancing ahead from time to time until at last he
saw the dim edge of the distant timber--a black line against the
darkness.  He urged his horse to a trot, and was all but thrown as the
animal suddenly avoided a prairie-dog hole.  The sweep of the storm was
broken as he entered the farther timber.  Then came the muffled roll of
thunder and an instant white flash.  The horse reared as a bolt struck
a pine.  Came the ghastly whistle of flying splinters as the tree was
shattered.  Corliss grabbed the saddle-horn as the horse bolted through
the timberlands, working against the curb to reach the open.  Once more
on the trail the animal quieted.  They topped a gentle rise.  Corliss
breathed his relief.  Soper's cabin was in the hollow below them.

Cautiously the horse worked sideways down the ridge, slipping and
checking short as the loose stones slithered beneath his feet.  At the
bottom of the hollow Corliss reined up and shouted.  The wind whipped
his call to a thin shred of sound that was swept away in the roar of
the storm.  Again he shouted.  As though in answer there came a burning
flash of blue.  The dripping trees surrounding the hollow jumped into
view to be blotted from sight as the succeeding crash of thunder
diminished to far titanic echoes.  Where Soper's cabin had stood there
was a wet, glistening heap of fallen logs and rafters, charred and
twisted.  The lightning flash had revealed more to the rider than the
desolation of the burned and abandoned homestead.  He saw with instant
vividness the wrecked framework of his own plans.  He heard the echo of
Fadeaway's sneering laugh in the fury of the wind.  He told himself
that he had been duped and that he deserved it.  Lacking physical
strength to carry him through to a place of tentative safety, he gave
up, and credited his sudden regret to true repentance rather than to
weakness.  He would return to the Concho, knowing that his brother
would forgive him.  He wept as he thought of his attitude of the
repentant and broken son returning in sorrow to atone for his sin and
shame.  He magnified his wrongdoing to heroic proportions endeavoring
to filch some sentimental comfort from the romantic.  He it was that
needed the sympathy of the world and not his brother John; John was a
plodder, a clod, good enough, but incapable of emotion, or the finer
feelings.  And Eleanor Loring . . . she could have saved him from all
this.  He had begun well; had written acceptable verse . . . then had
come her refusal to marry him.  What a fool he had been through it all!
The wind and rain chastised his emotional intoxication, and he turned
shivering to look for shelter.  Dismounting, he crept beneath a low
spruce and shivered beneath the scant covering of his saddle-blanket.
To-morrow the sun would shine on a new world.  He would arise and
conquer his temptation.  As he drifted to troubled sleep he knew, deep
in his heart, that despite his heroics he would at that moment have
given the little canvas sack of his brother's money for the
obliterating warmth of intoxication.

With the morning sun he rose and saddled.  About to mount, his
stiffened muscles blundered.  He slipped and fell.  The horse, keen
with hunger, jumped away from him and trotted down the trail.  He
followed shouting.  His strength gave out and he gave up the chase,
wondering where the horse would go.  Stumbling along the slippery
trail, he cursed his clumsiness.  A chill sweat gathered on his face.
His legs trembled and he was forced to rest frequently.  Crossing a
stream, he stooped and drank.  Then he toiled on, eagerly scanning the
hoof-prints in the rain-gutted trail.

The sun was high when he arrived at the wagon-road above the Concho.
Dazed and weak, he endeavored to determine which direction the horse
had taken.  The heat of the sun oppressed him.  He became faint, and,
crawling beneath the shade of a wayside fir, he rested, promising
himself that he would, when the afternoon shadows drifted across the
road, make his way to the Concho.  He had slept little more than an
hour when the swift patter of hoofs wakened him.  As he got to his
feet, a buckboard, drawn by a pair of pinto range-ponies, drew up.
Corliss started back.  The Mexican driving the ponies turned toward the
sweet-faced Spanish woman beside him as though questioning her
pleasure.  She spoke in quick, low accents.  He cramped the wagon and
she stepped to the road.  The Señora Loring, albeit having knowledge of
his recent return to Antelope, his drinking, and all the unsavory
rumors connected with his return, greeted Corliss as a mother greets a
wayward son.  She set all this knowledge aside and spoke to him with
the placid wisdom of her years and nature.  Her gentle solicitude
touched him.  She had been his foster-mother in those years that he and
his brother had known no other fostering hand than that of old Hi
Wingle, the cook, whose efforts to "raise" the Corliss boys were more
largely faithful than discriminating.

Señora Loring knew at a glance that he was in trouble of some kind.
She asked no questions, but held out her hands.

Corliss, blind with tears, dropped to his knee: "Madre!  Madre!" he
cried.

She patted his head.  "You come with me.  Then perhaps you have to say
to me that which now you do not say."

He shook his head, but she paid no attention, leading the way to the
buckboard.  He climbed beside the driver, then with an ejaculation of
apology, leaped to the road and helped her in.

"Where you would like to go?" she asked.  "The Concho?"

Again he shook his head.  "I can't.  I--"

She questioned his hesitation with her eyes.

"I'll tell you when--when I feel better.  Madre, I'm sick."

"I know," she said.

Then, turning to the driver, she gestured down the wagon-trail.

They drove through the morning woodlands, swung to the east, and
crossed the ford.  The clustered adobes of the Loring homestead
glimmered in the sun.  Corliss glanced across the river toward the
Concho.  Again the Señora Loring questioned him with a glance.

He shook his head.  "Away--anywhere," he said, gesturing toward the
horizon.

"You come home with me," she said quietly.  "Nellie is not at the home
to-day.  You rest, and then perhaps you go to the Concho."

As they entered the gateway of the Loring rancho, Corliss made as
though to dismount.  The Señora Loring touched his arm.  He shrugged
his shoulders; then gazed ahead at the peaceful habitation of the old
sheep-herder.

The Señora told the driver to tie the team and wait.  Then she entered
the house.  Corliss gazed about the familiar room while she made
coffee.  Half starved, he ate ravenously the meal she prepared for him.
Later, when she came and sat opposite, her plump hands folded in her
lap, her whole attitude restful and assuring, he told her of the
robbery, concealing nothing save the name of Fadeaway.

Then he drew the canvas sack from his pocket.  "I thought I could go
back and face it out, but now, I can't.  Will you--return it--and--tell
John?"

She nodded.  "Si!  If you wish it so, my son.  You would not do that as
I would tell you--so I say nothing.  I can only--what you say--help,
with my hands," and she gestured gracefully as though leading a child.
"You have money to go away?"

"No, madre."

"Then I give you the money."  And the Señora, ignoring his half-hearted
protests, stepped to an adjoining room and returned.  "Here is this to
help you go.  Some day you come back strong and like your father the
big John Corliss.  Then I shall be much glad."

"I'll pay it back.  I'll do anything--"

But she silenced him, touching his lips with her fingers.  "No.  The
promise to make is not so hard, but to keep . . .  Ah!  When you come
back, then you promise; si?"

Not a word of reproof, not a glance or a look of disapproval, yet
Corliss knew that the Señora's heart was heavy with sorrow for him.  He
strode to the doorway.  Señora Loring followed and called to the
driver.  As Corliss shook hands with her, she kissed him.

An anger against himself flushed his cheek.  "I don't know which road
I'll take, madre,--after I leave here,--this country.  But I shall
always remember . . .  And tell Nell . . . that . . ." he hesitated.

The Señora smiled and patted his arm.  "Si!  I understand."

"And, madre, there is a man--vaquero, or cook, a big man, tall, that
they call Sundown, who works for the Concho.  If you see him, please
tell him--that I sent it back."  And he gestured toward the table
whereon lay the little canvas sack of gold.  "Good-bye!"

He stepped hurriedly from the veranda, climbed to the seat of the
buckboard, and spoke to the driver.  For a long time the Señora stood
in the doorway watching the glint of the speeding ponies.  Then she
went to her bedroom and knelt before the little crucifix.  Her prayer
was, strangely enough, not for Will Corliss.  She prayed that the sweet
Madonna would forgive her if she had done wrong.




CHAPTER XI

CHANCE--CONQUEROR

Sundown's return to the camp occasioned some indirect questioning and
not a little comment.  He told the story of his adventure at the Concho
in detail up to the point of his conversation with Will Corliss.  Then
he lapsed into generalities, exhibiting with some little pride the
wound on his head as evidence of his attempt to prevent the robbery and
incidentally as a reason for being unable to discourse further upon the
subject.  His oft-repeated recital invariably concluded with, "I steps
in and tries to stop the first guy when _Wham!_ round goes the room and
I takes a sleep."

The men seemed satisfied with Sundown's graphic account in the main.
Hi Wingle, the cook, asked no questions, but did a great deal of
thinking.  He was aware that Will Corliss had returned to the Concho,
and also, through rumor, that Corliss and Fadeaway had been together in
Antelope.  The fact that the robbers failed to get the money--so it was
given out--left the drama unfinished, and as such it lacked sustained
interest.  There would be no bandits to capture; no further excitement;
so the talk eventually drifted to other subjects.

The assistant cook's evident melancholy finally gave place to a happier
mood as he realized that he had gained a modicum of respect in a camp
where hitherto he had been more or less of a joke.  While he grieved
over the events which led up to his newly attained prestige as a man of
nerve, he was not a little proud of the prestige itself, and
principally because he lacked the very quality of courage that he was
now accredited with.  Perhaps the fact that he had "played square," as
he saw it, was the true foundation of his attitude.

He discharged his duties as assistant cook with a new and professional
flourish that amused the riders.  When they rolled from their blankets
in the crisp air of the morning, they were never kept waiting for their
coffee, hot bread, and frijoles.  Moreover, he always had a small fire
going, around which he arranged the tin plates, cups, knives and forks.
This additional fire was acceptable, as the cooking was done on a large
sheet-iron camp-stove, the immediate territory of which was sacred to
Hi Wingle.  Wingle, who had been an old-timer when most of the Concho
hands were learning the rudiments of the game, took himself and his
present occupation seriously.  His stove was his altar, though burnt
offerings were infrequent.  He guarded his culinary precincts with a
watchful eye.  His attitude was somewhat akin to that of Cardinal
Richelieu in the handkerchief scene, "Take but one step within these
sacred bounds and on our head I'll lunch the cuss of Rum," or something
to that effect.  He was short, ruddy, and bald, and his antithesis,
Sundown, was a source of constant amazement to him.  Wingle had seen
many tall men, but never such an elongated individual as his assistant.
It became the habit of one or another of the boys to ask the cook the
way to the distant Concho, usually after the evening meal, when they
were loafing by the camp-fire.  Wingle would thereupon scratch his head
and assume an air of intense concentration.  "Well," he would
invariably remark, "you take the trail along Sundown's shadder there,
and keep a-fannin' it smart for about three hours.  When you come to
the end of the shadder, take the right fork of the river, and in
another hour you'll strike the Concho.  That's the quickest way."  And
this bit of attenuated humor never failed to produce an effect.


One morning, about a week after Sundown's return to his duties as
assistant, while Wingle was drying his hands, preparatory to reading a
few pages of his favorite novel, Sundown ambled into camp with an
armful of greasewood, dumped it near the wagon, and, straightening up,
rolled a cigarette.

Wingle, immersed in the novel, read for a while and then glanced up
questioningly.

Sundown shook his head.

"Now this here story," said Wingle; "I read her forty-three times come
next round-up, and blamed if I sabe her yet.  Now, take it where the
perfesser--a slim gent with large round eye-glasses behind which
twinkled a couple of deep-set studyus eyes--so the book says; now, take
it where he talks about them Hopi graves over there in the valley--"

"This here valley?" queried Sundown, immediately interested.

"Sure!  Well, I can sabe all that.  I seen 'em."

"Seen 'em?"

"Sure!  Why Arizona's got more leavin's of history and dead Injuns and
such, right on top of the ground, than any other State in the Union.
Why, right over there in the cañon of the Concho there's a hull ruined
Injun village--stones piled up in little circles, and what was huts and
caves and the leavin's of a old irrigatin' ditch and busted ollas, and
bones and arrow-heads and picture-writin' on the rocks--bears and
eagles and mounting-lions and hosses--scratched right on the rocks.
Them cliffs there is covered with it."

"Them?" queried Sundown, pointing toward the cañon, "Do they charge
anything to see it?"

"Well, seein' they been dead about a thousand years, I reckon not."

"A thousand years!  Huh!  I ain't scared of no Injuns a thousand years
old.  How far is it to them picture-things?"

"'Bout three mile.  You can take a hoss and mosey over if you like.
Figure on gettin' back 'round noon."

"Any snakes over there?"

"Comf'table thick.  You might get a pretty good mess of 'em, if you was
to take your time.  I never bother to look for 'em."

Sundown gazed at his length of nether limb and sighed.

"Snakes won't bother you none," said Wingle, reassuringly.  "They get
tired, same as anybody, and they'd have to climb too fur to see if you
was to home."

Sundown rose and saddled a horse.  He mounted and rode slowly toward
the rim of the distant cañon.  At the cañon's brink, he dismounted and
led his horse down the trail, stopping frequently to gaze in wonderment
at the painted cliffs and masses of red rock strewn along the slopes.
High up on the perpendicular face of the cañon walls he saw many caves
and wondered how they came to be there.  "Makes a fella feel like
sayin' his prayers," he muttered.  "Wisht I knowed one."

He drifted on down the trail, which wound around huge fragments of rock
riven from the cliffs in prehistoric days.  He was awed by the
immensity of the chasm and talked continuously to his horse which
shuffled along behind paying careful attention to the footing.  Arrived
at the stream the horse drank.  Sundown mounted and rode along the
narrow level paralleling the river course.  The cañon widened, and
before he realized it he was in a narrow valley carpeted with
bunch-grass and dotted with solitary cypress and infrequent clumps of
pine.  He paused to inspect a small mound of rock which was partially
surrounded by a wall of neatly laid stone.  Within the semicircular
wall was a hole in the ground--the entrance to a cave.  Farther along
he came upon the ruins of a walled square, unmistakably of human
construction.  He became interested, and, tying his horse to a
scrub-cedar, began to dig among the loose stones covering the interior
of the square.  He discovered a fragment of painted pottery--the
segment of an olla, smooth, dark red, and decorated with a design in
black.  He rubbed the earth from the fragment and polished it on his
overalls.  He unearthed a larger fragment and found that it matched the
other piece.  He was happy.  He forgot his surroundings, and scratched
and dug in the ruin until he accumulated quite a little pile of shards,
oddly marked and colored.  Eventually he gathered up his spoils and
tied them in his handkerchief.

Leaving his horse, he meandered down the valley until he came to
another and larger cave.  "Wonder what's down there?" he soliloquized.
"Mebby one of them Injuns.  Been there a thousand years waitin' for
somethin' to turn up.  'Nough to make a fella tired, waitin' that
long."  He wanted to explore the cave, but he was afraid.  Moreover,
the interior was dark.  He pondered.  Finally his natural fondness for
mild adventure overcame his fear.  "Got some matches!" he exclaimed,
joyfully.  "Wonder if it's deep?  Guess I could put me legs in first,
and if nothin' bites me legs, why, I could follow 'em down to bottom."
He put his head in the hole.  "Hey!" he hallooed, "are you in there?"
He rose to his feet.  "Nothin' doin'.  Well, here goes.  I sure want to
see what's down there."

In his excitement he overlooked the possibility of disturbing a torpid
rattler.  He slid feet first into the cave, found that he could all but
stand upright, and struck a match.


The ancient Hopis buried their dead in a sitting posture on a woven
grass mat, with an olla, and frequently a bone dagger, beside them.  In
the clean, dry air of the uplands of Arizona the process of decay is
slow.  Sundown, unaware of this, hardly anticipated that which
confronted him as the match flamed blue and flared up, lighting the
interior of the cave with instant brilliance.  About six feet from
where he crouched was the dried and shriveled figure of a Hopi chief,
propped against the wall of the cave.  Beside the figure stood the
painted olla untarnished by age.  The dead Indian's head was bowed upon
his breast, and his skeleton arms, parchment-skinned and rigid, were
crossed upon his knees.

Sundown scrambled for the circle of daylight above him.  "Gee Gosh!" he
panted, as he got to his feet outside the cave.  "It was him!"  He
clambered over the circle of stones and backed away, eyeing the
entrance as though he expected to see the Hopi emerge at any moment.
He crouched behind a boulder, his pulses racing.  He was keyed to a
high tension of expectancy.  In fact, he was in a decidedly receptive
mood for that which immediately happened.  He noticed that his horse, a
hundred yards or so up the valley, was circling the cedar and pulling
back on the reins.  He wondered what was the matter with him.  The
horse was usually a well-behaved animal.  The explanation came rapidly.
Sundown saw the horse back and tear loose from the cedar; saw him whirl
and charge down the valley snorting.  "Guess he seen one, too!" said
Sundown making no effort to check the frightened animal.  Almost
immediately came the long-drawn bell of a dog following a hot scent.
Sundown turned from watching his vanishing steed and saw a huge
timber-wolf leap from a thicket.  Behind the wolf came Chance, neck
outstretched, and flanks working at top speed.  The wolf dodged a
boulder, flashing around it with no apparent loss of ground.  Chance
rose over the boulder as though borne on the wind.  The wolf turned and
snapped at him.  Sundown decided instantly that the sepulcher of the
dead Hopi was preferable to the proximity of the live wolf, and he made
for the cave.

The wolf circled the wall of stones and also made for the cave.
Sundown had arrived a little ahead of him.  The top of Sundown's head
appeared for an instant; then vanished.  The wolf backed snarling
against the wall as Chance leaped in.  When Sundown's head again
appeared, the whirling mass of writhing fur and kicking legs had taken
more definite shape.  Chance had fastened on the wolf's shoulder.  The
wolf was slashing effectively at the dog's side.  Presently they lay
down facing each other.  Chance licked a long gash in his foreleg.  The
wolf snapped as he lay and a red slaver dripped from his fangs.  Not
twelve feet away, Sundown gazed upon the scene with fear-wide eyes.
"Go to it, Chance!" he quavered, and his encouragement was all but the
dog's undoing, for he lost the wolf's gaze for an instant, barely
turning in time to meet the vicious charge.  Sundown groaned as the
wolf, with a slashing stroke, ripped the dog's neck from ear to
shoulder.  The stones in the enclosure were spattered with red as they
whirled, each trying to reach the throat of the other.  Suddenly Chance
leaped up and over the wolf, lunging for his neck as he descended.  The
wolf rolled from under and backed toward the cave.  "Hey!" yelled
Sundown.  "You can't come in here!"

Chance, weakened from loss of blood, lay watching the wolf as it
crouched tensely.  Again the great gray shadow lunged and a bright
streak sprung up on the dog's side.  "Gee Gosh!" whined Sundown; "he
can't stand much more of that!"  Undoubtedly Chance knew it, for he
straight-way gathered himself and leaped in, diving low for the wolf's
fore leg.  As the wolf turned his shoulder, Chance again sprang over
him and, descending, caught him just behind the ear, and held.  The
wolf writhed and snarled.  Chance gripped in and in, with each savage
shake of his head biting deeper.  In a mighty effort to free himself
the wolf surged backward, dragging Chance around the enclosure.
Sundown, rising from the cave's mouth, crouched before it.  "You got
him!  You got him!" he cried.  "Once more, now!"

The body of the wolf quivered and sagged, then stiffened as if for a
last effort.  Chance held.  They were both lying on the stones now.
Chance with fore feet braced against the wolf's chest.  Presently the
dog gave a final shake, drew back, and lay panting.  From head to
flanks he was soaked with blood.  The wolf was dead.

Sundown stood up.  "Good boy, Chance!" he said.  The great, gaunt body
of the dog raised itself on trembling legs, the pride of the conqueror
lighting for a moment his dimming eyes.  "It's me, Chance!" said
Sundown, stroking the dog's head.  Chance wagged his tail and reaching
up his torn and bleeding muzzle licked Sundown's hand.  Then slowly he
sank to the ground, breathed heavily, and rolled to his side.  Sundown
knelt over him and unaccustomed tears ran down his lean cheeks and
dripped on the clotted fur.  "You was some fighter, Chance, ole pal!
Gee Gosh!  He's nothin' except cuts and slashes all over.  Gee Gosh!"
He drew the dog's head to his lap and sat crooning weird, broken words
and stroking the torn ears.  Suddenly he stopped and put his hand over
the dog's heart.  Then he leaped to his feet and, dumping the fragments
of pottery from his bandanna, tore it in strips and began bandaging the
wounds.  The gash on Chance's neck still bled.  Sundown drew his knife
and cut the sleeve from his shirt.  He ripped it open and bound the
dog's neck.  Realizing that Chance was not dead, he became valiant.
"We sure put up the great scrap, didn't we, pal?  We licked him!  But
if he'd 'a' licked you . . ."  And Sundown gazed at the still form of
the wolf and shuddered, not knowing that the wolf would have fled at
sight of him had he been able to get away from Chance.


Two hours later, Eleanor Loring, riding along the cañon stream, met a
lean giant, one sleeve of his shirt gone, his hat missing, and his
hands splotched with blood.  His eyes were wild, his face white and
set.  He carried a great, shaggy dog in his arms.

"Are you hurt?" she asked, swinging from her pony and coming to him.

"Me?  No, lady.  But me pal here is hurt bad.  Jest breathin'.  Killed
a wolf back there.  Mebby I can save him."

"Why, it's Chance--of the Concho!"

"Yes, lady.  What is left of him."

"Do you work for the Concho?  Won't you take my horse?"

"I'm assistant cook at the camp.  No, thanks, lady.  Ridin' might
joggle him and start him to bleedin'.  I can carry him so he'll be
easier-like."

"But how did it happen?"

"I dunno.  Chance chased the wolf and they went to it where I was
explorin' one of them caves.  I guess I better be goin'."

The girl reined her horse around and rode down the valley trail,
pausing occasionally to watch the tall figure climbing the cañon with
that shapeless burden in his arms.  "I wonder if any other man on the
Concho would have done that?" she asked herself.  And Sundown, despite
his more or less terrifying appearance, won her estimation for kindness
at once.

Slowly he climbed the cañon trail, resting at each level.  The dog hung
a limp, dead weight in his arms.  Midway up the trail Sundown rested
again, and gazed down into the valley.  He imagined he could discern
the place of the fight.  "That there wolf," he soliloquized, "he was
some fighter, too.  Mebby he didn't like to get licked any more than
Chance, here.  Wonder what they was fightin' about?  I dunno.  But, Gee
Gosh, she was one dandy scrap!"

At the top of the cañon wall he again rested.  He expected to be
discharged for being late, but solaced himself with the thought that if
he could save Chance, it was worth the risk.

The riders had returned to the chuck-wagon when Sundown arrived lugging
the inert body of the wolf-dog.  They gathered around and asked brief
questions.  Sundown, busy washing the dog's wounds, answered as well as
he could.  His account of the fight did not suffer for lack of
embellishment, and while he did not absolutely state that he had taken
a hand in the fight, his story implied it.

"Don't see nothin' on you to show you been in a scrap," remarked a
young puncher.

"That's because you can't see in deep enough," retorted Sundown.  "If I
wasn't in every jump of that fight, me heart was."

"Better shoot him and put him out of his sufferin'," suggested the
puncher.

Sundown rose from beside the dog.  Shoot Chance?  Not so long as he
could keep between the dog and the cowboy's gun.  The puncher, half in
jest, reached for his holster.  Sundown's overwrought nerves gave way.
He dropped to his knees and lifted his long arms imploringly.  "Don't!
Don't!" he wailed.  "He ain't dead!  Don't shoot my pal!"

Bud Shoop, who had kept silent, shouldered the puncher aside.  "Cut it
out, Sinker," he growled.  "Can't you sabe that Sundown means it?"


Later in the evening, and fortified with a hearty meal.  Sundown gave a
revised version of the fight, wherein his participation was modified,
though the story lost nothing in re-telling.  And, indeed, his own
achievement, of lugging Chance up the cañon trail, awakened a kind of
respect among the easy-going cowboys.  To carry an eighty-pound dog up
that trail took sand!  Again Sundown had unconsciously won their
respect.  Nothing was said about his late return.  And his horse had
found its way back to the camp.


Sometime in the night, Bud Shoop was awakened by the man next him.

"What's goin' on?" queried Shoop, rising on his elbow.

"Ask me again," said the puncher.  "Listen!"

From the vicinity of the wagon came the gurgle of water and then a
distinctly canine sneeze.

"Dinged if he ain't fussin' with that dog again!" grumbled Shoop.  "The
dam' fool!"  Which, as it is the spirit which giveth life to the
letter, was not altogether uncomplimentary.




CHAPTER XII

A GIFT

Warned by John Corliss of Loring's evident intent to graze his sheep on
the west side of the Concho River, the cattle-men held a quiet meeting
at the ranch of the Concho and voted unanimously to round up a month
earlier than usual.  The market was at a fair level.  Beef was in
demand.  Moreover, the round-up would, by the mere physical presence of
the riders and the cattle, check for the time being any such move as
Loring contemplated, as the camps would be at the ford.  Meanwhile the
cattle-men again petitioned the Ranger at Antelope to stir up the
service at Washington in regard to grazing allotments.

The round-up began.  The Concho outfit moved camp to the ford and
Sundown had his first introduction to real work.  From morning till
night and far into the night the fires were going.  Groups of belated
riders swung in and made for the chuck-wagons.  Sundown, following a
strenuous eighteen hours of uninterrupted toil, solemnly borrowed a
piece of "tarp" from his outfit on which he lettered the legend:--

  "CAFE DE CONCHO--MEELS AT ALL
  HOURS--PRIVIT TABELS FOR LADYS"

He hung the tarp in a conspicuous place and retired to rest.  The
following morning his efforts were applauded with much picturesque
expletive, and even criticism was evoked by a lean puncher who insisted
"that the tall guy might be a good cook all right, but he sure didn't
know how to spell 'calf.'"  Naturally the puncher's erudition leaned
toward cattle and the range.

At all times conspicuous, for he topped by a head and shoulders the
tallest rider on the range.  Sundown became doubly conspicuous as the
story of his experience with the hold-ups and his rescue of Chance
became known.  If he strutted, it was pardonable, for he strutted among
men difficult to wrest approval from, and he had won their approval.

At Hi Wingle's suggestion, he "packed a gun"--a formidable .45 lent him
by that gracious individual, for it grieved the solid Wingle's soul to
see so notable a character go unarmed.  Sundown, like many a wiser man,
was not indifferent to the effect of clothing and equipment.  Obliged
frequently to relate his midnight adventure with the robbers, he became
a past-master in the art of dramatic expression.  "If I'd 'a' had me
gun with me," he was wont to say, slapping the holster significantly,
"the deal might 'a' turned out different.  I reckon it's luck I
didn't."  Which may have been true enough, for Sundown would
undoubtedly have been afraid to use the weapon and Fadeaway might have
misunderstood his bungling.

In his spare time he built a lean-to of odds and ends, and beneath it
Chance drowsed away the long, sunny hours while Sundown was rustling
firewood or holding hot argument with an obstreperous dutch-oven.  And
Chance became the pet and the pride of the outfit.  Riders from distant
ranches would stray over to the lean-to and look at him, commenting on
his size and elaborating on the fact that it usually took two of the
best dogs ever whelped to pull down a timber-wolf.

Even Fadeaway, now riding for the Blue, became enthusiastic and boasted
of his former friendship with Chance.  When he essayed the intimacy of
patting the dog's head, some of the onlookers doubted him, for Chance
received these overtures with a deep-throated growl.

"He won't let nobody touch him but that Sundown gent," cautioned a
bystander.

"Guess he's loco since he got chewed up," said Fadeaway, retreating.

Chance licked his wounds and recovered slowly.  He would lie in the
sun, watching with unwinking gaze the camp and the cluster of men about
it until the form of Sundown loomed through the mass.  Then he would
beat the ground with his tail and whine expectantly.  As he became
stronger, he ventured to stretch his wound-stiffened muscles in short
pilgrimages to the camp, where the men welcomed him with hearty and
profane zest.  Was he not the slayer of their enemy's sheep and the
killer of the timber-wolf?  Eventually he was presented with a broad
collar studded with brass spikes, and engraved upon it was the
sanguinary and somewhat ambiguous legend: "Chance--The Killer of the
Concho."


John Corliss, visiting the round-up, rode over to Sundown's tepee, as
it was called.  The assistant cook was greasing Chance's wounds.

"How is he getting along?" asked Corliss.

"Fine, boss, fine!  This here is some little ole red-cross ward,
believe me!  He's gettin' over bein' lame and he eats regular."

"Here, Chance!" called Corliss.

The dog rose stiffly and stalked to his master, smelt of him and wagged
his tail, then stood with lowered head as though pondering some serious
dog-logic.

"He's kind of queer," explained Sundown, "but he's a whole pile better
than he was a spell ago.  Had to bring him water and feed him like a
baby cuttin' teeth--though I never seen one doin' that.  He wouldn't
let nobody touch him 'ceptin' me."

"Is he able to travel?"

"Oh, some."

"Think he could make it to the Concho?"

Sundown hesitated.  "Mebby.  Yes, I reckon he could.  He can run all
right, only I guess he kind of likes hangin' around me."  And Sundown
glanced sideways at Corliss.

"He seems all right.  I guess I'll take him back with me.  I don't like
the idea of his running loose here."

"He ain't bitin' nobody," assured Sundown.

Corliss glanced shrewdly at the other's lean, questioning face.  "Guess
you won't miss him much.  How are you making it?"

"Me?  Fine!  Reckon I'll take out me papers for a full-chested range
cook afore long.  You see the L.D. outfit says that I could have a job
with them after the round-up.  It kind of leaked out about them pies.
'Course they was joshin', mebby.  I dunno."

"The L.D. boys are all right," said Corliss.  "If you want to make a
change--"

"See here, boss!  I done some ramblin' in my time.  Guess because I was
lookin' for somethin' new and excitin'.  Well, I reckon they's plenty
new and excitin' right to home on the Concho.  Any time I get tired of
fallin' off hosses, and gettin' beat up, and mixin' up in dog and wolf
fights, why, I can go to bustin' broncos to keep me from goin' to
sleep.  Then Chance there, he needs lookin' after."

Corliss seemingly ignored the gentle hint.  He mounted and called to
the dog.  Chance made no movement to follow him.  Corliss frowned.
"Here, Chance!" he commanded, slapping his thigh with his gauntleted
hand.  The dog followed at the horse's heels as Corliss rode across the
hard-packed circle around the camp.  Sundown's throat tightened.  His
pal was gone.

He puttered about, straightening the blankets.  "Gee Gosh! but this
here shack looks empty!  Never knowed sick folks could be so much
comp'ny.  And Chance is folks, all right.  Talk about blue blood!  Huh!
I reckon a thoroughbred dog is prouder than common folks, like me.
Some king, he was!  Layin' there lookin' out at them punchers and his
eyes sad-like and proud, and turnin' his head slow, watchin' 'em like
they was workin' for him.  They's somethin' about class that gets a
fella, even in a dog.  And most folks knows it, but won't let on."

He took Chance's drinking-basin--a bread-pan appropriated from the
outfit--and the frayed saddle-blanket that had been the dog's bed, and
carried them to the cottonwoods edging the river.  There he hid the
things.  He returned to the lean-to and threw himself on his blankets.
He felt as though he had just buried a friend.  A cowboy strolled up
and squatted in front of the lean-to.  He gazed at the interior, nodded
to Sundown, and rolled a cigarette.  He smoked for a while, glanced up
at the sky, peered round the camp, and shrugged his shoulders.

Sundown nodded.  "You said it all, Joe.  He's gone."

The cowboy blew rings of smoke, watching them spread and dissolve in
the evening air.  "Had a hoss onct," he began slowly,--"ornery,
glass-eyed, she-colt that got mixed up in a bob-wire fence.  Seein' as
she was like to make the buzzards happy 'most any day, I took to
nussin' her.  Me, Joe Scott, eh?  And a laugh comin'.  Well, the boys
joshed--mebby you hearn some of 'em call me Doc.  That's why.  The boys
joshed and went around like they was in a horsepital, quiet and
steppin' catty.  I could write a book out of them joshin's and sell
her, if I could write her with a brandin'-iron or a rope.  Anyhow, the
colt she gets well and I turns her out on the range, which ought to be
the end of the story, but it ain't.  She come nickerin' after me like I
was her man, hangin' around when I showed up at the ranch jest like I
was a millionaire and she wantin' to get married.  Couldn't get shet of
her.  So one day I ropes her and says to myself I'll make a trick hoss
of her and sell her.  The fust trick she done wasn't the one I reckoned
to learn her.  She lifted me one in the jeans and I like to lost all
the teeth in my head.  'You're welcome, lady,' says I, 'for this here
'fectionate token of thanks for my nussin' and gettin' joshed to
fare-ye-well.  Bein' set on learnin' her, I shortened the rope and let
her kick a few holes in the climate.  When she got tired of that, I
begins workin' on her head, easy-like and talkin' kind.  Fust thing I
knowed she takes a san'wich out of my shirt, the meat part bein' a
piece of my hide.  Then I got riled.  I lit into her with the boots,
and we had it.  When I got tired of exercisin' my feet, she comes to me
rubbin' her nose ag'in' me and kind of nickerin' and lovin' up
tremendous, bein' a she-hoss.  'Now,' says I, 'I'm goin' to do the
courtin', sister.'  And I sot out to learn her to shake hands.  She got
most as good as a state senator at it: purfessional-like, but not real
glad to see you.  Jest put on.  Then I learns her to nod yes.  That was
hard.  Then I gets her so she would lay down and stay till I told her
to get up.  'Course it takes time and I didn't have the time reg'lar.
I feeds her every time, though.  Then she took to sleepin' ag'in' the
bunk-house every night, seein' as she run loose jest like a dog.  When
somebody'd get up in the mornin', there she would be with her eyes
lookin' in the winder, shinin', and her ears lookin' in, too.  You see
she was waitin' for her beau to come out, which was me.  She took to
followin' me on the range when I rid out, and she got fat and sizable.
The boys give up joshin' and got kind of interested.  But that ain't
what I'm gettin' at.  Come one day, about two year after I'd been
monkeyin' with learnin' her her lessons, when I thinks to break her to
ride.  I got shet of the idea of sellin' her and was goin' to keep her
myself.  The boys was lookin' for to see me get piled, always figurin'
a pet hoss was worse to break than a bronc.  She did some fussin', but
she never bucked--never pitched a move.  Thinks I, I sure got a winner.
Next day she was gone.  Never seen her after that.  Trailed all over
the range, but she sure vamoosed.  And nobody never seen her after
that.  She sure made a dent in my feelin's."

Sundown sat up blinking.  "I reckon that's the difference between a
hoss and a dog," he said, slowly.  "Now, a hoss and me ain't what you'd
call a nacheral combination.  And a hoss gets away and don't come back.
But a dog comes back every time, if he can.  'Most any hoss will stay
where the feedin' is good, but a dog won't.  He wants to be where his
boss is."

"And that there Chance is with the boss," said the cowboy, gesturing
toward the north.  "Seen him foller him down the trail."

Sundown nodded.  The cowboy departed, swaggering away in the dusk.

Just before Sundown was called to take his turn with the night-shift, a
lean, brown shape tore through the camp, upsetting a pot of frijoles
and otherwise disturbing the peace and order of the culinary department.

"Coyote!" shouted Wingle, vainly reaching for the gun that he had given
to Sundown.

"Coyote nothin'!" said a puncher, laughing.  "It's the Killer come back
hot-foot to find his pardner."

Chance bounded into the lean-to: it was empty.  He sniffed at the place
where his bed had once been, found Sundown's tracks and followed them
toward the river.  Sundown was on his knees pawing over something that
looked very much like a torn and frayed saddle-blanket.  Chance
volleyed into him, biting playfully at his sleeve, and whining.

Sundown jumped to his feet.  He stood speechless.  Then a slow grin
crept to his face.  "Gee Gosh!" he said, softly.  "Gee Gosh!  It's you!"

Chance lay down panting.  He had come far and fast.  Sundown gathered
up the blanket and pan, rose and marched to the shack.  "I was airin'
'em out against your comin' back," he explained, untruthfully.  The
fact was that he could not bear to see the empty bed in the lean-to and
had hidden it in the bushes.

The dog watched him spread the blanket, but would not lie down.
Instead he followed Sundown to the camp and found a place under the
chuck-wagon, where he watched his lean companion work over the fires
until midnight.  If Sundown disappeared for a minute in search of
something.  Chance was up and at his heels.  Hi Wingle expressed
himself profanely in regard to the return of the dog, adding with
unction, "There's a pair of 'em; a pair of 'em."  Which ambiguity
seemed to satisfy him immensely.

When Sundown finally returned to the lean-to, he was too happy to
sleep.  He built a small fire, rolled a cigarette and sat gazing into
the flames.  Chance sat beside him, proud, dignified, contented.
Sundown became drowsy and slept, his head fallen forward and his lean
arms crossed upon his knees.  Chance waited patiently for him to waken.
Finally the dog nuzzled Sundown's arm with little jerks of impatience.
"What's bitin' you now?" mumbled Sundown.  "We're here, ain't we?"
Nevertheless he slipped his arm around the dog's muscular shoulders and
talked to him.  "How'd you get away?  The boss'll raise peelin's over
this, Chance.  It ain't like to set good with him."  He noticed that
Chance frequently scratched at his collar as though it irritated him.
Finally he slipped his fingers under the collar.  "Suthin' got ketched
in here," he said, unbuckling the strap.  Tied inside the collar was a
folded piece of paper.  Sundown was about to throw it away when he
reconsidered and unfolded it.  In the flickering light of the fire he
spread the paper and read laboriously:--


"Chance followed me to the Concho because I made him come.  He showed
that he didn't want to stay.  I let him go.  If he gets back to you,
keep him.  He is yours.

"JOHN CORLISS."


Sundown folded the note and carefully tucked it in his pocket.  He rose
and slapped his chest grandiloquently.  "Chance, ole pal," he said with
a brave gesture, "you're mine!  Got the dockyments to show.  What do
you think?"

Chance, with mouth open and lolling tongue, seemed to be laughing.

Sundown reached out his long arm as one who greets a friend.

The dog extended his muscular fore leg and solemnly placed his paw in
Sundown's hand.  No document was required to substantiate his
allegiance to his new master, nor his new master's title to ownership.
Despite genealogy, each was in his way a thoroughbred.




CHAPTER XIII

SUNDOWN, VAQUERO

The strenuous days of the round-up were over.  Bands of riders departed
for their distant ranches leaving a few of their number to ride line
and incidentally to keep a vigilant eye On the sheep-camps.

David Loring, realizing that he had been checkmated in the first move
of the game in which cattle and sheep were the pawns and cowboys and
herders the castles, knights, and, stretching the metaphor a bit,
bishops, tacitly admitted defeat and employed a diagonal to draw the
cattle-men's forces elsewhere.  He determined to locate on the
abandoned water-hole ranch, homestead it, and, by so doing, cut off the
supply of water necessary to the cattle on the west side of the Concho
River.  This would be entering the enemy's territory with a vengeance,
yet there was no law prohibiting his homesteading the ranch, the title
of which had reverted to the Government.  Too shrewd to risk legal
entanglement by placing one of his employees on the homestead, he
decided to have his daughter file application, and nothing forbade her
employing whom she chose to do the necessary work to prove up.  The
plan appealed to the girl for various reasons, one of which was that
she might, by her presence, avert the long-threatened war between the
two factions.

Sundown and, indirectly, Fadeaway precipitated the impending trouble.
Fadeaway, riding for the Blue, was left with a companion to ride line
on the mesas.  Sundown, although very much unlike Othello, found that
his occupation was gone.  Assistant cooks were a drug on the range.  He
was equipped with a better horse, a rope, quirt, slicker, and
instructions to cover daily a strip of territory between the Concho and
the sheep-camps.  He became in fact an itinerant patrol, his mere
physical presence on the line being all that was required of him.


It was the Señora Loring who drove to the Concho one morning and was
welcomed by Corliss to whom she gave the little sack of gold.  She told
him all that he wished to know in regard to his brother Will, pleading
for him with motherly gentleness.  Corliss assured her that he felt no
anger toward his brother, but rather solicitude, and made her happy by
his generous attitude toward the wrongdoer.  He had already heard that
his brother had driven to Antelope and taken the train for the West.
His great regret was that Will had not written to him or come to him
directly, instead of leaving to the good Señora the task of
explanation.  "Never figured that repenting by proxy was the best
plan," he told the Señora.  "But he couldn't have chosen a better
proxy."  At which she smiled, and in departing blessed him in her
sincere and simple manner, assuring him in turn that should the sheep
and cattle ever come to an understanding--the Spanish for which
embraced the larger aspect of the problem--there was nothing she
desired or prayed for more than the friendship and presence of Corliss
at the Loring hacienda.  Corliss drew his own inference from this,
which was a pleasant one.  He felt that he had a friend at court, yet
explained humorously that sheep and cattle were not by nature fitted to
occupy the same territory.  He was alive to sentiment, but more keen
than ever to maintain his position unalterably so far as business was
concerned.  The Señora liked him none the less for this.  To her he was
a man who stood straight, on both feet, and faced the sun.  Her
daughter Nell . . .  Ah, the big Juan Corliss has such a fine way with
him . . . what a husband for any woman!  In the mean time . . . only
thoughts, hopes were possible . . . yet . . . mañana . . . mañana . . .
there was always to-morrow that would be a brighter day.

To say that Sundown was proud of his unaccustomed regalia from the
crown of his lofty Stetson to the soles of his high-heeled
riding-boots, would be putting it mildly.  To say that he was
especially useful in his new calling as vaquero would not be to put it
so mildly.  Under the more or less profane tutelage of his companions,
he learned to throw a rope after a fashion, taking the laughing sallies
of his comrades good-naturedly.  He persevered.  He was forever
stealing upon some maternal and unsuspicious cow and launching his rope
at her with a wild shout--possibly as an anticipatory expression of
fear in case his rope should fall true.  More than once he had been
yanked bodily from the saddle and had arisen to find himself minus
rope, cow, and pony, for no self-respecting cow-horse could watch
Sundown's unprecedented evolutions and not depart thitherward, feeling
ashamed and grieved to think that he had ever lived to be a horse.  And
Sundown, despite his length of limb, seemed unbreakable.  "He's the
most durable rider on the range," remarked Hi Wingle, incident to one
of his late assistant's meteoric departures from the saddle.  "He wears
good."

One morning as Sundown was jogging along, engaged chiefly in watching
his shadow bob up and down across the wavering bunch-grass, he saw that
which appeared to be the back of a cow just over a rise.  He walked his
horse to the rise and for some fantastic reason decided to rope the
cow.  He swung his rope.  It fell true--in fact, too true, for it
encircled the animal's neck and looped tight just where the neck joins
the shoulders.  He took a turn of the rope around the saddle horn.  At
last he had mastered the knack of the thing!  Why, it was as easy as
rolling pie-crust!  He was about to wonder what he was going to do
next, when the cow--which happened to be a large and active
steer--humped itself and departed for realms unknown.

With the perversity of inanimate objects the rope flipped in a loop
around Sundown's foot.  The horse bucked, just once, and Sundown was
launched on a new and promising career.  The ground shot beneath him.
He clutched wildly at the bunch-grass, secured some, and took it along
with him.  Chance, who always accompanied Sundown, raced alongside,
enjoying the novelty of the thing.  He barked and then shot ahead,
nipping at the steer's heels, and this did not add to his master's
prospects of ultimate survival.  Sundown shouted for help when he
could, which was not often.  Startled prairie-dogs disappeared in their
holes as the mad trio shot past.  The steer, becoming warmed up to his
work, paid little attention to direction and much to speed.  That a
band of sheep were grazing ahead made no difference to the charging
steer.  He plunged into the band.  Sundown dimly saw a sea of sheep
surge around him and break in storm-tossed waves of wool on either
side.  He heard some one shout.  Then he fainted.

When he again beheld the sun, a girl was kneeling beside him, a girl
with dark, troubled eyes.  She offered him wine from a wicker jug.  He
drank and felt better.

"Are you hurt badly?" she asked.

"Am--I--all here?" queried Sundown.

"I guess so.  You seem to be."

"Was anybody else killed in the wreck?"

The girl smiled.  "You're feeling better.  Let me help you to sit up."

Sundown for the moment felt disinclined to move.  He was in fact pretty
thoroughly used up.  "Say, did he win?" he queried finally.

"Who?"

"Me dog, Chance.  I got the start at first, but he kind of got ahead
for a spell."

"I don't know.  Chance is right behind you.  He's out of breath."

"Huh!  Reckon I'm out more'n that.  He's in luck this trip."

"How did it happen?"

"That's what I'm wonderin', lady.  And say, would you be so kind as to
tell me which way is north?"

Despite her solicitude for the recumbent Sundown, Eleanor Loring
laughed.  "You are in one of the sheep-camps.  I'm Eleanor Loring."

"Sheep-camp?  Gee Gosh!  Did you stop me?"

"Yes.  I was just riding into camp when you--er--arrived.  I headed the
steer back and Fernando cut the rope."

"Thanks, miss.  And Fernando is wise to his business, all right."

"Can you sit up now?" she asked.

"Ow!  I guess I can.  That part of me wasn't expectin' to be moved
sudden-like.  How'd I get under these trees?"

"Fernando carried you."

"Well, little old Fernando is some carrier.  Where is he?  I wouldn't
mind shakin' hands with that gent."

"He's out after the sheep.  The steer stampeded them."

"Well, miss, speakin' from me heart--that there steer was no lady.  I
thought she was till I roped him.  I was mistook serious."

"He might have killed you.  Let me help you up."

Sundown had been endeavoring to get to his feet.  Finally he rose and
leaned against a tree.  Fortunately for him his course had been over a
stretch of yielding bunch-grass, and not, as might have been the case,
over the ragged tufa.  As it was his shirt hung from his back in
shreds, and he felt that his overalls were not all that their name
implied.  The numbness of his abrasions and bruises was wearing off.
The pain quickened his senses.  He realized that his hat was missing,
that one spur was gone and the other was half-way up his leg.  He was
not pleased with his appearance, and determined to "make a slope" as
gracefully and as quickly as circumstances would permit.

Chance, gnawing at a burr that had stuck between his toes, saw his
master rise.  He leaped toward Sundown and stood waiting for more fun.

"Chance seems all right now," said the girl, patting the dog's head.

"John Corliss give him to me, miss.  He's my dog now.  Yes, he's active
all right, 'specially chasin' steers."

"I remember you.  You're the man that carried Chance up the cañon trail
that day when he was hurt."

"Yes, miss.  He ain't forgettin' either."

The girl studied Sundown's lean face as he gazed across the mesas,
wondering how he was going to make his exit without calling undue
attention to his dearth of raiment.  She had heard that this man, this
queer, ungainly outlander, had been companion to Will Corliss.  She had
also heard that Sundown had been injured when the robbery occurred.
Pensively she drew her empty gauntlet through her fingers.

"Do you know who took the money--that night?" she asked suddenly, and
Sundown straightened and gazed at her.

He blinked and coughed.  "Bein' no hand to lie to a lady, I do," he
said, simply.  "But I can't tell, even if you did save me life from
that there steer."

She bit her lips, and nodded.  "I didn't really mean to ask.  I was
curious to know.  Won't you take my horse?  You can send him back
to-morrow."

"And you beat it home afoot?  Say, lady, I mebby been a Bo onct, but I
ain't hurt that bad.  If I can't find me trail back to where I started
from, it won't be because it ain't there.  Thanks, jest the same."

Sundown essayed a step, halted and groaned.  He felt of himself
gingerly.  He did not seem to be injured in any special place, as he
ached equally all over.  "I'll be goin', lady.  I say thanks for savin'
me life."

The girl smiled and nodded.  "Will you please tell Mr. Corliss that I
should like to see him, to-morrow, at Fernando's camp?  I think he'll
understand."

"Sure, miss!  I'll tell him.  That Fernando man looks to be havin' some
trouble with them sheep."

The girl glanced toward the mesa.  Fernando and his assistant were
herding the sheep closer, and despite their activity were really
getting the frightened animals bunched well.  When she turned again
Sundown had disappeared.


Sundown's arrival in camp, on foot, was not altogether unexpected.  One
of the men had seen a riderless horse grazing on the mesa, and had
ridden out and caught it.  Circumstantial evidence--rider and rope
missing--confirmed Hi Wingle's remark that "that there walkin'
clothes-pin has probably roped somethin' at last."  And the "walking
clothes-pin's" condition when he appeared seemed to substantiate the
cook's theory.

"Lose your rope?" queried Wingle as Sundown limped up.

"Uhuh.  And that ain't all.  You ain't got a pair of pants that ain't
working have you?"

Wingle smiled.  "Pants?  Think this here's a Jew clothin'-store?"

"Nope.  But if she was a horsepital now--"

"Been visitin'?"

"Uhuh.  I jest run over to see some friends of mine in a sheep-camp."

"Did, eh?  And mebby you can tell me what you run over?"

"'Most everything out there," said Sundown, pointing to the mesa.
"Say, you ain't got any of that plaster like they put on a guy's head
when he gets hit with a brick?"

"Nope.  But I got salt."

"And pepper," concluded Sundown with some sarcasm.  "Mebby I do look
like a barbecue."

"Straight, Sun, salt and water is mighty healin'.  You better ride over
to the Concho and get fixed up."

"Reckon that ain't no dream, Hi.  Got to see the boss, anyhow."

"Well, 'anyhow' is correc'.  And, say, you want to see him first and
tell him it's you.  Your hoss is tied over there.  Sinker fetched him
in."

"Hoss?  Oh, yes, hoss!  My hoss!  Uhuh!"

With this somewhat ambiguous string of ejaculations Sundown limped
toward the pony.  He turned when halfway there and called to Wingle.
"The cattle business is fine, Hi, fine, but between you and me I reckon
I'll invest in sheep.  A fella is like to live longer."

Wingle stared gravely at the tall and tattered figure.  He stared
gravely, but inwardly he shook with laughter.  "Say, Sun!" he managed
to exclaim finally, "that there Nell Loring is a right fine gal, ain't
she?"

"You bet!"

"And Jack ain't the worst . . ."  Wingle spat and chewed ruminatively.
"No, he ain't the worst," he asserted again.

"I dunno what that's got to do with gettin' drug sixteen mile," said
Sundown.  "But, anyhow, you're right."




CHAPTER XIV

ON THE TRAIL TO THE BLUE

In the shade of the forest that edged the mesa, and just back of
Fernando's camp, a Ranger trail cuts through a patch of quaking-asp and
meanders through the heavy-timbered land toward the Blue range, a
spruce-clad ridge of southern hills.  Close to the trail two saddle
horses were tied.

Fadeaway, riding toward his home ranch on the "Blue," reined up, eyed
the horses, and grinned.  One of them was Chinook, the other Eleanor
Loring's black-and-white pinto, Challenge.  The cowboy bent in his
saddle and peered through the aspens toward the sheep-camp.  He saw
Corliss and Nell Loring standing close together, evidently discussing
something of more than usual import, for at that moment John Corliss
had raised his broad Stetson as though bidding farewell to the girl,
but she had caught his arm as he turned and was clinging to him.  Her
attitude was that of one supplicating, coaxing, imploring.  Fadeaway,
with a vicious twist to his mouth, spat.  "The cattle business and the
sheep business looks like they was goin' into partnership," he
muttered.  "Leave it to a woman to fool a man every time.  And him
pertendin' to be all for the long-horns!"  He saw the girl turn from
Corliss, bury her face in her arms, and lean against the tree beneath
which they were standing.  Fadeaway grinned.  "Women are all crooked,
when they want to be," he remarked,--"or any I ever knowed.  If they
can't work a guy by talkin' and lovin', then they take to cryin'."

Just then Corliss stepped to the girl and put his hand on her shoulder.
Again she turned to him.  He took her hands and held them while he
talked.  Fadeaway could see her lips move, evidently in reply.  He
could not hear what was being said, as his horse was restless, fretting
and stamping.  The saddle creaked.  Fadeaway jerked the horse up, and
in the momentary silence he caught the word "love."

"Makes me sick!" he said, spurring forward.  "'Love,' eh?  Well, mebby
my little idea of puttin' Billy Corliss in wrong didn't work, but I'll
hand Jack a jolt that'll make him think of somethin' else besides love,
one of these fine mornin's!"  And the cowboy rode on, out of tune with
the peace and beauty of his surroundings, his whole being centered upon
making trouble for a man who he knew in his heart wished him no ill,
and in fact had all but forgotten him so far as considering him either
as an enemy or a friend.

Just as he was about to swing out to the open of the mesa near the edge
of the cañon, he came upon a Mexican boy asleep beneath the low
branches of a spruce.  Fadeaway glanced across the mesa and, as he had
expected, saw a band of sheep grazing in the sunshine.  His trail ran
directly toward the sheep.  Beyond lay the cañon.  He would not ride
around a herd of sheep that blocked his trail, not if he knew it!  As
he drew nearer the sheep they bunched, forcing those ahead to move on.
Fadeaway glanced back at the sleeping boy, then set spur to his horse
and waved his sombrero.  The sheep broke into a trot.  He rode back and
forth behind them forcing them toward the cañon.  He beat upon his
rolled slicker with his quirt.  The sound frenzied the sheep and they
leaped forward.  Lambs, trailing behind, called dolefully to the
plunging ewes that trampled each other in their terror.  Again the
cowboy glanced back.  No one was in sight.  He wondered, for an
instant, what had become of Fernando, for he knew it was Fernando's
herd.  He shortened rein and spurred his pony, making him rear.  The
sheep plunged ahead, those in front swerving as they came to the
cañon's brink.  The crowding mass behind forced them on.  Fadeaway
reined up.  A great gray wave rolled over the cliff and disappeared
into the soundless chasm.  A thousand feet below lay the mangled
carcasses of some five hundred sheep and lambs.  A scattered few of the
band had turned and were trotting aimlessly along the edge of the mesa.
They separated as the rider swept up.  One terror-stricken lamb,
bleating piteously, hesitated on the very edge of the chasm.  Fadeaway
swung his hat and laughed as the little creature reared and leaped out
into space.  There had been but little noise--an occasional frightened
bleat, a drumming of hoofs on the mesa, and they were swept from sight.

Fadeaway reined around and took a direct line for the nearest timber.
Halfway across the open he saw the Mexican boy running toward him.  He
leaned forward in the saddle and hung his spurs in his pony's sides.  A
quick beat of hoofs and he was within the shadow of the forest.  The
next thing was to avoid pursuit.  He changed his course and rode toward
the heart of the forest.  He would take an old and untraveled
bridle-trail to the Blue.  He was riding in a rocky hollow when he
thought he heard the creak of saddle-leather.  He glanced back.  No one
was following him.  Farther on he stopped.  He was certain that he had
again heard the sound.  As he topped the rise he saw Corliss riding
toward him.  The rancher had evidently swung from the Concho trail and
was making his way directly toward the unused trail which Fadeaway
rode.  The cowboy became doubly alert.  He shifted a little in the
saddle, sitting straight, his right hand resting easily on his hip.
Corliss drew rein and they faced each other.  There was something about
the rancher's grim, silent attitude that warned Fadeaway.

Yet he grinned and waved a greeting.  "How!" he said, as though he were
meeting an old friend.

Corliss nodded briefly.  He sat gazing at Fadeaway with an unreadable
expression.

"Got the lock-jaw?" queried Fadeaway, his pretended heartiness
vanishing.

Corliss allowed himself to smile, a very little.  "You better ride back
with me," he said, quietly.

Fadeaway laughed.  "I'm takin' orders from the Blue, these days," he
said.  "Mebby you forgot."

"No, I haven't."

"And I'm headed for the Blue," continued the cowboy.  "Goin' my way?"

"You're on the wrong trail," asserted Corliss.  "You've been riding the
wrong trail ever since you left the Concho."

"Uhuh.  Well, I been keepin' clear of the sheep camps, at that."

"Don't know about that," said Corliss, easily.

Fadeaway was too shrewd to have recourse to his gun.  He knew that
Corliss was the quicker man, and he realized that, even should he get
the better of a six-gun argument, the ultimate result would be outlawry
and perhaps death.  He wanted to get away from that steady,
heart-searching gaze that held him.

"Sheep business is lookin' up," he said, with an attempt at jocularity.

"We'll ride back and have a talk with Loring," said Corliss.  "Some one
put a band of his sheep into the cañon, not two hours ago.  Maybe you
know something about it."

"Me?  What you dreaming anyhow?"

"I'm not.  It looks like your work."

"So you're tryin' to hang somethin' onto me, eh?  Well, you want to
call around early--you're late."

"No, I'm the first one on the job.  Did you stampede Loring's sheep?"

"Did I stampede the love-makin'?" sneered Fadeaway.

Corliss shortened rein and drew close to the cowboy.

"Just explain that," he said.

"Oh, I don' know.  You the boss of creation?"

Corliss's lips hardened.  He let his quirt slip butt-first through his
hand and grasped the lash.  Fadeaway's hand slipped to his holster.
Before he could pull his gun, Corliss swung the quirt.  The blow caught
Fadeaway just below the brim of his hat.  He wavered and grabbed at the
saddle-horn.  As Corliss again swung his quirt, the cowboy jerked out
his gun and brought it down on the rancher's head.  Corliss dropped
from the saddle.  Fadeaway rode around and covered him.  Corliss's hat
lay a few feet from where he had fallen.  Beneath his head a dark ooze
spread a hand's-breadth on the trail.  The cowboy dismounted and bent
over him.  "He's sportin' a dam' good hat," he said, "or that would 'a'
fixed _him_.  Guess he'll be good for a spell."  Then he reached for
his stirrup, mounted, and loped up the trail.


Old Fernando, having excused himself on some pretext when Corliss rode
into the camp that morning, returned to find Corliss gone and Nell
Loring strangely grave and white.  She nodded as he spoke to her and
pointed toward the mesa.  "Carlos--is out--looking for the sheep," she
said, her lips trembling.  "He says some one stampeded them--run them
into the cañon."

Fernando called upon his saints and cursed himself for his negligence
in leaving his son with the sheep.  Nell Loring spoke to him quietly,
assuring him that she understood why he had absented himself.  "It's my
fault, Fernando, not yours.  The patron will want to know why you were
away.  You will tell him that John Corliss came to your camp; that you
thought I wanted to talk with him alone.  Then he will know that it was
my fault.  I'll tell him when I get back to the rancho."

Fernando straightened his wizened frame.  "Si!  As the Señorita says, I
shall do.  But first I go to look.  Perhaps the patron shall not know
that the vaquero Corlees was here this morning.  It is that I ask the
Señorita to say nothing to the patron until I look.  Is it that you
will do this?"

"What can you do?" she asked.

"It is yet to know.  Adios, Señorita.  You will remember the old
Fernando, perhaps?"

"But you're coming back!  Oh! it was terrible!" she cried.  "I rode to
the cañon and looked down."

Fernando meanwhile had been thinking rapidly.  With quaint dignity he
excused himself as he departed to catch up one of the burros, which he
saddled and rode out to where his son was standing near the cañon.  The
boy shrank from him as he accosted him.  Fernando's deep-set eyes
blazed forth the anger that his lips imprisoned.  He sent the boy back
to the camp.  Then he picked up the tracks of a horseman on the mesa,
followed them to the cañon's brink, glanced down, shrugged his
shoulders, and again took up the horseman's trail toward the forest.
With the true instinct of the outlander, he reasoned that the horseman
had headed for the old trail to the Blue, as the tracks led diagonally
toward the south.  Finally he realized that he could never overtake the
rider by following the tracks, so he dismounted and tied his burro.  He
struck toward the cañon.  A mile above him there was a ford.  He would
wait there and see who came.  He made his perilous way down a notch in
the cliff, dropped slowly to the level of the stream, and followed it
to the ford.  He searched for tracks i

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