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The Round-Up: A Romance of Arizona; Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama

by John Murray · English · Gutenberg #763 · 381,701 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Round-Up: A Romance of Arizona; Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama

Author: John Murray
        Edmund Day
        Marion Mills Miller


        
Release date: December 1, 1996 [eBook #763]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/763

Credits: Produced by Dianne Bean.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROUND-UP: A ROMANCE OF ARIZONA; NOVELIZED FROM EDMUND DAY'S MELODRAMA ***




Produced by Dianne Bean.  HTML version by Al Haines.








THE ROUND-UP

A Romance of Arizona

Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama


by

John Murray and Marion Mills Miller




Chapter

     I.  The Cactus Cross
    II.  The Heart of a Girl
   III.  A Woman's Loyalty
    IV.  The Hold-up
     V.  Hoover Bows to Hymen
    VI.  A Tangled Web
   VII.  Josephine Opens the Sluices
  VIII.  The Sky Pilot
    IX.  What God Hath Joined Together
     X.  The Piano
    XI.  Accusation and Confession
   XII.  The Land of Dead Things
  XIII.  The Atonement
   XIV.  The Round-up
    XV.  Peruna Pulls His Freight
   XVI.  Death of McKee, Disappointed Desperado
  XVII.  A New Deal
 XVIII.  Jack!




THE ROUND-UP



CHAPTER I

The Cactus Cross

Down an old trail in the Ghost Range in northwestern Mexico, just
across the Arizona border, a mounted prospector wound his way, his
horse carefully picking its steps among the broken granite blocks which
had tumbled upon the ancient path from the mountain wall above.  A
burro followed, laden heavily with pack, bed-roll, pick, frying-pan,
and battered coffee-pot, yet stepping along sure-footedly as the
mountain-sheep that first formed the trail ages ago, and whose
petrified hoof-prints still remain to afford footing for the scarcely
larger hoofs of the pack-animal.

An awful stillness hung over the scene, that was broken only by the
click of hoofs of horse and burro upon the rocks, and the clatter of
the loose stones they dislodged that rolled and skipped down the side.
Not a breath of air was stirring, and the sun blazed down from the
zenith with such fierce and direct radiation that the wayfarer needed
not to observe the shadows to note its exact position in the heavens.
Singly among the broken blocks, and in banks along the ledges, the
cactus had burst under the heat, as it were, into the spontaneous
combustion of flowery flame.  To the traveler passing beside them their
red blooms blazed with the irritating superfluity of a torch-light
procession at noonday.

The trail leads down to a flat ledge which overlooks the desert, and
which is the observatory whither countless generations of
mountain-sheep have been wont to resort to survey the strange world
beneath them--with what purpose and what feelings, it remains for some
imaginative writer of animal-stories to inform us.  From the ledge to
the valley below the trail is free from obstructions, and broader, more
beaten, and less devious than above, indicating that it has been formed
by the generations of men toiling up from the valley to the natural
watch-tower on the heights.  Reaching the ledge, the prospector found
that what seemed from the angle above to be an irregular pile of large
boulders was an artificial fortification, the highest wall being toward
the mountains.  Entering the enclosure the prospector dismounted,
relieved his horse of its saddle and his burro of its pack, and
proceeded to prepare his midday meal.  Looking for the best place where
he might light a fire, he observed, in the most protected corner, a
flat stone, marked by fire, and near it, in the rocky ground, a
pot-hole, evidently formed for grinding maize.  The ashes of ancient
fires were scattered about, and in cleaning them off his new-found
hearth the man discovered a potsherd, apparently of a native olla or
water-jar, and a chipped fragment of flint, too small to indicate
whether it had formed part of an Indian arrowhead or had dropped from
an old flintlock musket.

"Lucky strike!" observed the prospector.  "I was down to my last
match."  And, gathering some mesquit brush for fuel, and rubbing a dead
branch into tinder, he drew out a knife and, rapidly and repeatedly
striking the back of its blade with the flint, produced a stream of
sparks, which fell on the tinder.  Blowing the while, he started a
flame.  When the fire was ready the man shook his canteen.  "Precious
little drink left," he said.  "I wish that potsherd carried water as
the flint-chip does fire. However, there's lots of cactus around here,
and they're natural water-jars.  My knife may get me a drink out of the
desert's thorns, as well as kindle a fire from its stones.  And right
here's my watermelon, the bisnaga, the first one I've found in months,"
he exclaimed, going over to the edge of the cliff, above the level of
which peered the fat head of a cactus covered with spines that were
barbed like a fish-hook.  Its short tap-root was fixed in a crevice a
few feet below the parapet.  Lying on the edge of the cliff, the man
sliced off the top of the cactus, and began jabbing into its interior,
breaking down the fibrous walls of the water-cells, of which the
top-heavy plant is almost entirely composed.  In a few moments he arose.

"Now I can empty my canteen in the coffee-pot, sure of a fresh supply
of water by the time I am ready to mosey along."

He filled the pot, set it on the fire, and then pressed the uncorked
and empty canteen down into the macerated interior of the bisnaga.

While his coffee was boiling, the prospector continued his examination
of the fortification, beginning, in the manner of his kind, with the
more minute "signs," and ending with what, to a tourist, would have
been the first and only subject of observation--the view.  On the inner
side of the large boulder in the wall he discerned, the faint outline
of a cross, painted with red ochre.

Scraping with his pick beneath the rock, to see if the emblem was the
sign of hidden treasure or relic, he unearthed a rattlesnake.

Before it could strike, with a quick fling of his tool he sent the
reptile whirling high in the air toward the precipice.  But from the
clump of cactus growth along the parapet arose a sahuaro, with
branching arms, and against this the snake was flung.  Wrapped around
the thorny top by the momentum of the cast, it hung, hissing and
rattling with pain and hatred.

The prospector looked up at the impaled rattlesnake with a smile.

Reminiscences of Sunday-school flashed across his mind.

"Gee, I'm a regular Moses," he ejaculated.  "First I bring water from
the face of the rock, and then I lift up the serpent in the wilderness.
The year I've spent in the mountains and desert seem like forty to me,
and now, at last, I have a sight of the Promised Land.  God, what a
magnificent view!"

Dropping his pick, he stretched out his arms with instinctive
symbolization of the wide prospect, and expression of an exile's
yearning for his native land.

"Over there is God's country, sure enough," he continued, giving the
trite phrase a reverential tone, which he had not used in his first
expression of the name of Deity.  "Thank Him, the parallel with old
Moses stops right here.  Many a time I thought I would never get out of
the mountains alive, and that my grave would be unmarked by so much as
a boulder with a red cross upon it.  But now, before night, I'll be
back in the States, and in three more days at home on the ranch.  I
promised to return in a year, and I'll make good to the hour.  I sure
did hate to leave that strike, though, after all the hard luck I had
been having.  Sixty dollars a day, and growing richer.  But the last
horn was blowing.  No tobacco, six matches, and nothing left of the
bacon but rinds. Well, the gold is there and the claim'll bring
whatever I choose to ask for it.  And Echo shall have a home as good as
Allen Hacienda, and a ranch as fine as Bar One--yes, by God, it'll be
Bar None, my ranch!"

Out of the sea of molten air that stretched before him, that nebulous
chaos of quivering bars and belts of heated atmosphere which remains
above the desert as a memorial of the first stage of the entire
planet's existence, the imagination of the prospector created a
paradise of his own.  There took shape before his eyes a Mexican
hacienda, larger and more beautiful even than that of Echo's father,
the beau-ideal of a home to his limited fancy.  And on the piazza in
front, covered with flowering vines, there stood awaiting him the
slender figure of a woman, with outstretched arms and dark eyes, tender
with yearning love.

"Echo--Echo Allen!" he murmured, fondly repeating the name.  "No, not
Echo Allen, but Echo Lane, for Dick Lane has redeemed his promise, and
returns to claim you as his own."

As he gazed upon the shimmering heat waves which distorted and
displaced the objects within and beneath them, a group of horsemen
suddenly appeared to him in the distance, and as suddenly vanished in
thin air.

"Rurales!" ejaculated Lane.  "I wonder if they are chasing Apaches?
That infernal mirage gives you no idea of distance or direction.  If
the red devils have got away from Crook and slipped by these Greaser
rangers over the border, they'll sure be making straight for the Ghost
Range, and by this very trail.  If so, I'm at the best place on it to
meet them, and here I stay till the coast is clear."  Turning to the
red cross on the rock, he reflected:  "Perhaps, after all, it's a case
of 'Nebo's lonely mountain.'"

Lane had hardly reached this conclusion before he found it justified by
the sight of a mounted Apache in the regalia of war emerging from a
hidden dip in the trail below the fortification. Lane dropped behind
the parapet, evidently before he was observed, as the steadily
increasing number and loudness of the hoof-beats on the rocky trail
indicated to the listener.

Crawling back to his horse and burro, he made them lie down against the
upper wall, and picketed them with short lengths of rope to the ground,
for he foresaw that danger could come only from the mountainside.
Taking his Winchester, he returned to the parapet, and, half-seated,
half-reclining behind it, opened fire on the unsuspecting Apaches.  The
leader, shot through the head, fell from his horse, which reared and
backed wildly down the trail.  Other bullets must have found their
billets also, but, because of the confusion which ensued among the
Indians, the prospector was unable to tell how many of them he had put
out of action.  In a flash every rider had leaped off his horse, and,
protecting himself by its body, was scrambling with his mount to the
protecting declivity in the rear.  The prospector was sorely tempted to
pump his cartridges into the group as it poured back over the rim of
the hollow, but he desisted from the useless slaughter of horses alone,
knowing that he could be attacked only on foot, and that every one of
his slender store of cartridges must find a human mark if he would
return to the States alive. "They've got to put me out of business
before they can go on," he ruminated.  "An Apache is a good deal of a
coward when he's fighting for pleasure, but just corner him, and, great
snakes and spittin' wildcats, what a game he does put up!  I must save
my cartridges; for one thing's sure, they won't waste any of theirs.
They're not as good shots as white men, for ammunition is too scarce
with them for use in gun practise; so they won't fire till they've got
me dead to rights.  Let me see; there's about a dozen left in the
party, and I have fifteen cartridges--that's three in reserve for my
own outfit, if some of the others fail to get their men.  Those red
devils enjoy skinning an animal alive as much as torturing a man, and
you can bet they won't save me any bullets by shooting Nance and Jinny."

Reasoning that the Indians would not dare to attack by way of the open
trail in front, and that it would take some time for them to make the
detour necessary to approach him from above, since they would have to
leave their ponies below and climb on hands and knees over jutting
ledges and around broken granite blocks, Lane coolly proceeded to drink
his coffee, and eat his lunch of hard bread and cold bacon-rind.  After
he had finished, he gave a lump of sugar to each of his animals, and
pressed his cheek with an affectionate hug against the side of his
horse's head.

"Old girl," he said. "I'm sorry we can't take a parting drink, for I'm
afraid neither of us will reach our next water-hole.  But you can count
on me that the red devils won't get you."

Then, going to his pack, he undid it, and took out a double handful of
yellow nuggets and a number of canvas bags.  These he deposited in the
pot-hole, and, prying up the flat stone of the fireplace, laid it over
them, and covered the stone with embers.

"It's a ten to one shot that they finish me," he reflected; "but the
wages I've paid for by a year of hard work and absence from her side,
stay just as near Echo Allen as I can bring them alive, and, if there's
any truth in what they say about spirits disclosing in dreams the place
of buried treasure, with the chance of my getting them to her after I
am dead."

Taking the useless boulders from the edge of the cliff, but carefully,
so as not to expose himself to the fire of the Apaches, he piled them
on top of the upper wall in such a fashion as to form little turrets.
He left an opening in each, through which he could observe, in turn,
each point of the compass whence danger might be expected, and could
fire his Winchester without exposing himself.  Then he began going from
post to post on a continuous round of self-imposed sentinel duty.  "If
I could only climb the sahuaro," he thought, "and fly my red shirt as a
flag, to let the Rurales know I've flanked the enemy, it might hurry
them along in time to put a crimp in these devils before they get me.
But it'll have to be 'Hold the Fort' without any 'Oh, Say Can You See?'
business.  Anyhow, I'm flying the rattlesnake flag of Bunker Hill,
'Don't Tread on Me!'  Whether the Rurales see it or not, I've saved
their hides.  If the Apaches had got to this fort first, gee, how they
would have crumpled up the Greasers as they came along the trail!"

Rendered thirsty by his exertions, Lane remembered the canteen in the
bisnaga, which he had forgotten among his other preparations for
defense.  He cautiously reached his hand over the ledge, and secured
the precious vessel, but, as he was withdrawing it, PING! came a bullet
through the canteen, knocking it out of his hand. As it fell clattering
down the side of the ledge, he groaned: "Damned good shooting!  They've
probably left their best marksman below with the ponies.  No hope for
escape on that side. Well, there's some consolation in the thought that
they'll undoubtedly finish me before I get too damned thirsty.  Glad it
wasn't my hand."

Although the period he spent waiting for the attack was less than an
hour by his watch, it seemed to last so long that he had hopes that the
Rurales would appear in time to rescue him.  His spirits rose with the
prospect.  Looking about him at the walls, the fireplace, and the red
cross, he reflected:  "I am not the first man, or even the first white
man, that has withstood an attack in this place."  In imagination he
constructed the history of the fort.  Here, in ages remote, a tribe of
Indians, defeated and driven to the mountains had constructed an
outpost against their enemies of the plain, but these had captured the
stronghold, and fortified it against its former occupants.  Later, a
band of Spanish gold-seekers had made a stand here against natives whom
they had roused against them by oppression.  Or, perhaps, as indicated
by the cross, it had afforded refuge to the Mission Fathers, those
heroic souls who had faced the horrors of the infernolike desert in
their saintly efforts to convert its fiendish inhabitants.

With the symbol of Christianity in his mind, Lane turned toward the
giant cactus, which he had heretofore regarded chiefly in the aspect of
a flagpole, and saw in its columnar trunk and opposing branches a
distinct resemblance to a cross.  The plant was dead, and dry as punk.
Suddenly there flashed into his mind a hideous suggestion.  More cruel
than even the Romans, the inventors of crucifixion, the Apaches are
wont to bind their captives to these dead cacti, which supply at once
scourging thorns, binding stake, and consuming fuel, and, kindling a
fire at the top, leave it to burn slowly down to the victim, and, long
before it despatches him, to twist his body and limbs into what appear
to the Apache sense of humor to be exquisitely ludicrous contortions.

With his mind occupied by these horrible apprehensions, Lane looked at
the rattlesnake upon the sahuaro whose struggles by this time had
diminished to a movement of the tail.

"Poor old rattler," he thought.  "I wish I could spare a cartridge to
put you out of your misery."

At length, as Lane peered up the mountainside, he saw a bush on a ledge
a little to the left of the trail quiver, as if stirred by a passing
breath of wind.  He aimed his Winchester through a crack in the wall at
the spot, and when a moment later an Apache rose up from the ground and
leaped toward the shelter of a rock below, Lane fired, and the savage
fell crumpling.  Like an echo of the explosion a rifle on the right
spoke, and a bullet struck the rock by Lane's head.  He marked the spot
whence the shot came, and quickly ran to another part of the wall.
From here he saw the edge of an Indian's thigh exposed by the side of
the boulder he had noted.  CRACK! went Lane's Winchester; the leg was
suddenly withdrawn, and at the same moment a head appeared on the other
side of the rock, as if the Indian had stretched himself involuntarily.
CRACK! again, and Lane had got his man.

"Two shots to an Indian is expensive," thought the prospector,
"otherwise this game of tip-jack would be very interesting."

There was a cry in the Apache tongue, and suddenly nine half-naked
bodies arose from behind rocks and bushes extending in an irregular
crescent above the fort, and rushed forward ten, fifteen, and even
twenty, yards to the next cover.  Lane did not count number or distance
at the time, but he figured these out in his next period of waiting
from the photograph flashed on his subconscious mind.  At the time of
the rush he was otherwise occupied.  CRACK! CRACK! and two of the
Indians fell dead in mid-career.  CRACK! and a third crawled, wounded,
to the cover he had almost safely attained.  CRACK! and an
eagle-feather in the head of the fourth Indian shot at was cut off at
the stem, and fell forward on the rock behind which its wearer had
dropped just in time to save his life.  There was an answering volley
from the rifles of the remaining Apaches, which was directed against
the lookout of loose stones from which the prospector's fire had come.
One of the bullets penetrated the opening and plowed a furrow through
Lane's scalp, toppling him to his knees.  He scrambled quickly to his
feet, and, hastily pressing his long hair back from his forehead, to
stanch the bleeding wound, sought the protection the middle lookout.
He congratulated himself.

"Lucky for me they didn't follow the first rush immediately with a
second.  Now I know to wait for their signal.  Six, and possibly seven
of them, are left, and they will storm my works in two more attempts.
Here they come!"

The call again sounded.  Six Apaches leaped forward, and from the rock
that concealed the wounded warrior, a shot rang out in advance of the
first discharge from Lane's Winchester.  The Indian's bullet scored the
top of the turret, and filled the eyes of the man behind it with
powdered stone.  The prospector, already dazed by his wound, fired
wildly, and missed his mark. Quickly recovering himself, he fired again
and again, severely wounding two Apaches.  These lay clawing the ground
within twenty yards of the wall.  The four remaining Indians were
safely concealed at the same distance, protected no less by the
fortification than by the loose boulders behind which they crouched for
the final spring.  Lane realized the fact that his next shots, to be
effective, must be at a downward angle, and to fire them he must expose
himself.

"This is my finish," he thought to himself.  "Better be killed
instantly than tortured.  I hope all four will hit me.  Good-by,
Jinny"--CRACK! went his rifle.  "Good-by, Nance"--CRACK! again.

At the two shots, surmising that the prospector had shot himself and
his horse, the Apaches did not wait for the signal, but sprang forward
and climbed upon the wall before Lane had had time to mount it.  Two of
them he shot as they leaped down within the enclosure.  As he reversed
his Winchester to kill himself with the last cartridge, he noted that
the two remaining Apaches had dropped their rifles and were leaping
upon him to take him alive.

He brought his clubbed weapon down upon the head of one of them,
crushing his skull.  At the same instant Lane was borne to the ground
by the other Apache, who, seizing him by the throat, began throttling
him into insensibility.  In desperation, Lane bethought himself of the
cliff, and, by a mighty effort, whirled over upon his captor toward the
precipice.  The ground sloped slightly in that direction, and the
combatants rolled over and over to the very edge of the cliff, where
the Indian, for the first time realizing that the prospector's purpose
was to hurl both of them to destruction, loosened his hold upon the
prospector's throat that he might use his hands to brace himself
against the otherwise inevitable plunge into the valley below. In an
instant Lane's hands were at the Indian's throat, and in another turn
he was uppermost, and kneeling upon his foe at the very verge of the
precipice.

Both combatants were now thoroughly exhausted.  Lane concentrated all
his remaining strength in throttling the savage.  But, just as the
tense form beneath him grew lax with evident unconsciousness, and head
fell limply back, extending over the edge of cliff, his own head was
jerked violently backward by a noose cast around his lacerated neck.

When Lane recovered consciousness he found himself lying on his back,
bound hand and foot by a lariat, and looking up into a grinning face
that he recognized.

"Buck McKee!" he gasped.  "This is certainly white of you considering
the circumstances of our last meeting.  Did you come with the Rurales?"

"Hell, no! I come ahead of 'em.  In fact, Dick Lane, you air jist a
leetle bit off in your idees about which party I belong to. When you
damned me fer a thievin' half-breed, and run me off the range, an' tole
me to go to the Injun's, whar I belonged, I tuk yer advice.  I'm what
you might call the rear-guard of the outfit you've jist been havin'
your shootin'-match with.  Or I was the rear-guard, for you've wiped
out the whole dam' battalion, so fur as I can see.  Served 'em right
fur detailin' me, the only decent shooter in the bunch, to watch the
horses.  I got one shot in as it wuz.  Well, as the last of the outfit,
I own a string of ten ponies.  All I need now to set up in business is
to have some prospector who hain't long to live, leave me his little
pile uv dust an' nuggets, an' the claims he's located back in the
mountains.  You look a leetle mite like the man.  It'll save vallible
time if you make yer dear friend, Buck McKee, administrater uv yer
estate without too much persuadin'.  You had some objection oncet to my
slittin' a calf's tongue.  Well, you needn't be scared just yet.
That's the last thing I'll do to you.  Come, where's your cache?  I
know you've got one hereabouts, fer I foun' signs of the dust in your
pack."

Lane set his teeth in a firm resolutions not to say a word.  The taunts
of his captor were harder to bear in silence than the prospects of
torture.

"Stubborn, hey?  Well, we'll try a little 'Pache persuadin'." And the
renegade dragged his helpless captive up to the thorny sahuaro, and
bound his back against it with the dead horse's bridle.  McKee searched
through Lane's pockets until he found a match.

"Last one, hey?  Kinder 'propriate.  Las' drink from the old canteen,
las' ca'tridge, last look at the scenery, and las' will an' testyment.
Oh, time's precious, but I'll spare you enough to map out in yer mind
jes' where them claims is located.  The Rurales won't be along fer an
hour yet, if they hain't turned back after our other party."

McKee pulled off Lane's boots.  "It 'ain't decent fer a man to die with
'em on," he said.  He then kindled a fire on the stone, beneath which,
if he but knew it, lay the treasure he sought.  He returned with a
burning brand to the captive.  For the first time he observed the snake
impaled on the sahuaro, writhing but feebly.  "Hullo, ole rattler," he
exclaimed; "here's somethin' to stir you up;" and he tossed the brand
upon the top of the cactus.

Taking another burning stick from the fire, he applied it to the soles
of his victim's feet.  Lane writhed and groaned under the excruciating
torture, but uttered no word or cry.  McKee brought other brands, and
began piling them about his captive's feet.

In the meantime the sahuaro had caught fire at the top, and was burning
down through the interior.  A thin column of smoke rose straight above
it in the still air.  The Rurales in the valley below, who had reached
the beginning of the ascending trail, and were on the point of giving
up the pursuit, saw the smoke, and, inferred that the Apaches, either
through overconfidence or because of their superstitious fear of the
mountains, which they supposed inhabited by spirits, had camped on the
edge of the valley, and were signaling to their other party.
Accordingly the Mexicans renewed the chase with increased vigor.

As McKee bent over his captive's feet, piling against them the burning
ends of the sticks, the rattlesnake on the sahuaro, incited by the fire
above, struggled free from the impaling thorns by a desperate effort,
and dropped on the back of the half-breed.  It struck its fangs into
his neck.  McKee, springing up with an energy that scattered the sticks
he was piling, tore the reptile loose, hurled it upon the ground, and
stamped it into the earth.  Then he picked up one of the brands and
with it cauterized the wound.  All the while he was cursing
volubly--the snake, himself, and even Dick Lane, who was now lying in a
dead faint caused by the torture.

"Damn such a prospector!  Not a drop of whisky in his outfit! I'd slit
his tongue fer him if he wasn't already done fer.  I must keep
movin'--movin', or I'm a dead man.  I must hustle along to the
mountains, leadin' my horse.  Up there I'll find yarbs to cure
snake-bite that my Cherokee grandmother showed me.  The Rurales will
have to get the other ponies but some day I'll come back after Lane's
cache."

A half-hour later the Mexican guards appeared upon the scene, and
unbound Lane's unconscious form from the sahuaro, which the fire had
consumed to a foot of his bowed head.  They deluged his face and back,
and bathed his tortured feet with the contents of their canteens, and
brought him back to life, but, alas! not to reason.

Six months later there limped out of Chihuahua hospital a discharged
patient, wry-necked, crook-backed, with drawn features, and hair and
beard streaked with gray.  It was Dick Lane, restored to old physical
strength, so far as the distortion of his spine, caused by his torture,
permitted, and to the full possession of his mental faculties.  He
mounted one of the captured ponies, and rode off with the proceeds of
the sales of the others in his pocket, to purchase provisions for a
return to his prospecting.

Before plunging into the wilderness he wrote a letter:

                                           Chihuahua, Mexico

"Mr. John Payson,
    "Sweetwater Ranch,
      "Florence, Arizona Territory, U.S.A.

"Dear Jack: I have been sick and out of my head in the hospital here
for the last six months.  Just about the time you all were expecting me
home, I had a run in with the Apaches.  And who do you think was with
them?  Buck McKee, the half-breed that I ran off the range two years
ago for tongue-slitting.  After I had done for all the rest, he got me,
and--well, the story's too long to write.  I rather think McKee has
made off with the gold I had cached just before the fight.  I'm going
back to see, and if he did, I'll hustle around to find a buyer for one
of my claims.  I don't want to sell my big mine, Jack.  I tell you I
struck it rich!--but that story can wait till I get back.  Your loan
can't, though, so expect to receive $3,000 by express some time before
I put in an appearance.  I hope you got the mortgage renewed at the end
of the year.  If my failure to show up then has caused you trouble,
you'll forgive me, old fellow, I know, under the circumstances.  I'll
make it up to you.  I owe you everything. You're the best friend a man
ever had.  That's why I'm writing to you instead of to Uncle Jim, for I
want you to do me another friendly service.  Just break it gently to
Echo Allen that I'm alive and well though pretty badly damaged by that
renegade McKee and tell her that it wasn't my fault I wasn't home the
day I promised.  She'll forgive me, I know, and be patient a while
longer.  It's all for her sake I'm staying away.  Give her the letter I
enclose.

                              "Your old bunkie,
                                         Dick Lane"



CHAPTER II

The Heart of a Girl

Jim Allen was the sole owner and proprietor of Allen Hacienda. His
ranch, the Bar One, stretched for miles up and down the Sweetwater
Valley.  Bounded on the east and west by the foot-hills, the tract was
one of the garden spots of Arizona. Southward lay the Sweetwater Ranch,
owned by Jack Payson. Northward was the home ranch of the Lazy K, an
Ishmaelitish outfit, ever at petty war with the other settlers in the
district.  It was a miscellaneous and constantly changing crowd,
recruited from rustlers from Wyoming, gamblers from California,
half-breed outlaws from the Indian Territory; in short, "bad men" from
every section of the Western country.  They had a special grudge
against Allen and Payson, whom they held to be accountable for the
sudden disappearance, about a year before, of their leader, Buck McKee,
a half-breed from the Cherokee Strip. However, no other leader had
arisen equal to that masterful spirit, and their enmity expressed
itself only in such petty depredations as changing brands on stray
cattle from the Bar One and Sweetwater Ranches, and the slitting of the
tongues of young calves, so that they would be unable to feed properly,
and, as a result, be disowned by their mothers, whereupon the Lazy K
outfit would slap its brand on them as mavericks.

Allen was a Kentuckian who had served in the Confederate Army as one of
Morgan's raiders, and so had received, by popular brevet, the title of
colonel.  At the close of the war he had come to Arizona with his young
wife, Josephine, and had founded a home on the Sweetwater.  He was now
one of the cattle barons of the great Southwest.  Prosperity had not
spoiled him.  Careless in his attire, cordial in his manner, he was a
man who was loved and respected by his men, from the newest tenderfoot
to the veteran of the bunkhouse.  His wife, however, was not so highly
regarded, for she had never been able to recognize changes in time or
location and so was in perpetual conflict with her environment. She
attempted to make the free and independent cowboys of the Arizona
plains "stand around" like the house servants of the Kentucky
Bluegrass; and she persisted in the effort to manage her husband by the
feminine artifice of weeping.  In days of her youth and beauty this had
been very effective, but now that these had passed, it was productive
only of good-humored raillery from him, and mirth from the bystanders.

"No wonder Jim has the finest ranch in Arizony," the cowboys were wont
to say, "with Josephine a irrigatin' it all the time."

Allen Hacienda was certainly a garden spot in that desert country.  The
building was of the old Mexican style, an architecture found, by
centuries of experience, to be suited best to the climate and the
materials of the land.  The house was only one story in height.  The
rooms and outbuildings sprawled over a wide expanse of ground.  The
walls were of native stone and adobe clay; over them clambered
grape-vines.  In front of the home Mrs. Allen had planted a garden.  A
'dobe wall cut off the house from the corral and the bunk-house.  A
heavy girder spanned the distance from the low roof to the top of the
barrier. Latticework, supporting a grape-vine, formed, with a girder, a
gateway through which one could catch from the piazza a view of a
second cultivated plot.  Palms and flowering cacti added color and life
to the near prospect.  Through the arbor a glimpse of the Tortilla
Mountains, forty miles away, held the eye.  The Sweetwater, its path
across the plains outlined by the trees fringing its banks, flowed past
the ranch.  Yucca palms and sahuaroes threw a scanty shade over the
garden.

Shortly after the arrival of the Allens in Arizona they were blessed
with a daughter, the first white child born in that region.  They
waited for a Protestant clergyman to come along before christening her,
and, as such visits were few and far between, the child was beginning
to talk before she received a name.  From a "cunning" habit she had of
repeating last words of questions put to her, her father provisionally
dubbed her Echo, which name, when the preacher came, he insisted upon
her retaining.

As Echo grew older, in order that she might have a companion, Colonel
Allen went to Kentucky and brought back with him a little orphan girl,
who was a distant relative of his wife.  Polly Hope her name was, and
Polly Hope she insisted on remaining, though the Allens would gladly
have adopted her.

Colonel Allen trained the girls in all the craft of the plains, just as
if they were boys.  He taught them to ride astride, to shoot, to rope
cattle.  They accompanied him everywhere he went, cantering on broncos
by the side of his Kentucky thoroughbred. Merry, dark-eyed,
black-haired Echo always rode upon the off side, and saucy Polly, with
golden curls, blue eyes, and tip-tilted nose, upon the near.  The
ex-Confederate soldier dubbed them, in military style, his "right and
left wings."  As the three would "make a raid" upon Florence, the
county town, the inhabitants did not need to look out of doors to
ascertain who were coming, for the merriment of the little girls gave
sufficient indication.  "Here comes Jim Allen ridin' like the
destroyin' angel," said young Sheriff Hoover, on one of these
occasions, "I know him by the rustlin' of his 'wings.'"

The household was again increased a few years later by the generous
response of the Allens to an appeal from a Children's Aid Society in an
Eastern city to give a home to two orphaned brothers, Richard and
Henry Lane.  "Dick" and "Buddy" (shortened in time to Bud), as they
were called, being taken young, quickly adapted themselves to their new
environment, and by the time they arrived at manhood had proved
themselves the equals of any cowboy on the range in horsemanship and
kindred accomplishments.  Dick, the elder brother, was a steady,
reliable fellow, modest as he was brave, and remarkably quick-witted
and resourceful in emergencies.  He gave his confidence over readily to
his fellows, but if he ever found himself deceived, withdrew it
absolutely. It was probably this last characteristic that attracted to
him Echo Allen's especial regard, for it was also her distinguishing
trait.  "You have got to act square with Echo," her father was wont to
say, "for if you don't you'll never make it square with her afterward."

Bud was a generous-hearted, impetuous boy, who responded warmly to
affection. He repaid his elder brother's protecting care with a loyalty
that knew no bounds.  The Colonel, who was a strict disciplinarian,
frequently punished him in his boyhood for wayward acts, and the little
fellow made no resistance--only sobbed in deep penitence.  Once,
however, when Uncle Jim, as the boys and Polly called him, felt
compelled to apply to rod to Dick--unjustly, as it afterward
appeared--Bud burst into a tempest of passionate tears, and, leaping
upon the Colonel's back, clung there clawing and striking like a
wildcat until Allen was forced to let Dick go.  It is shrewdly
indicative of the Colonel's character that not only did he refrain from
punishing Bud on that occasion, but, when floggings were subsequently
due the little fellow, laid on the rod less heavily out of regard for
the loyalty to his brother he had then displayed.

This attack also won the admiration of Polly Hope, who was something of
a spitfire herself.  A little jealous of Dick for the chief place he
held in Bud's affection, she openly claimed the younger brother as her
sweetheart, and attempted to constitute him her knight--though with
repeated discouragements, for Bud was a bashful lad, and, though he had
a true affection for the girl, boylike concealed it by a show of
indifference.

The tender relations of these boys and girls persisted naturally into
young manhood and womanhood.  No word of love passed between Dick and
Echo until that time when the "nesting impulse," the desire to have a
home of his own, prompted the young man to go out into the world and
win his fortune.  For a year he had acted as foreman of the Allen
ranch, working in neighborly cooperation with Jack Payson, of
Sweetwater Ranch, a man of about his own age.  The two young men became
the closest of comrades.  When the fever of adventure seized upon Lane,
and he became dissatisfied with the plodding career of a wage-earner,
Payson insisted on mortgaging Sweetwater Ranch for three thousand
dollars and in lending Dick the money for a year's prospecting in the
mountains of Sonora, Mexico, in search of a fabulous rich "Lost Mine of
the Aztecs."

Traditions of lost mines are plentiful in Arizona and northern Mexico.
First taken up by the Spanish invaders of three hundred years ago from
the native Indians, they have been passed down to each subsequent
influx of white men.  The directions are always vague.  The inquirer
cannot pin his informant down to any definite data.  Over the mountains
always lies the road. Hundreds of lives have been sacrificed, and
cruelty unparalleled practised upon innocent men women, and children,
by gold-seekers in their lust for conquest.  Prosperous Indian villages
have been laid waste, and whole bands of adventurers have gone into the
desert in the search of these mines, never to return.

When the time for Lane's departure came Echo wept at the thought of
losing for so long a time the close companion of her childhood and the
sympathetic confidant of her youthful thoughts and aspirations.  Dick,
in whom friendship for Echo had long before ripened into conscious
love, took her tears as evidence that she was similarly affected toward
him, and he allowed all the suppressed passion of his nature full vent
in a declaration of love.  The girl was deeply moved by this revelation
of the heart of a strong man made tender as a woman's by a power
centering in her own humble self, and, being utterly without experience
of the emotion even in its protective form of calf-love, which is the
varioloid of the genuine infection, she imagined through sheer sympathy
that she shared his passion.  So she assented with maidenly reserve to
his plea that she promise to marry him when he should return and
provide a home for her.  Her more cautious mother secured a
modification of this pledge by limiting the time that Echo should wait
for him to one year.  If at the expiration of that period Lane did not
return to claim her promise, or did not write making satisfactory
arrangements for continuance of the engagement, Echo was to be
considered free to marry whom she chose.

Soon after Lane's departure Mrs. Allen persuaded the Colonel to send
Echo east to a New England finishing-school for girls, where her mother
hoped that her budding love for Lane might be nipped in the frigid
atmosphere of intellectual culture, if not, indeed, supplanted by a
saving interest in young men in general, and, perhaps, in some
particular scion of a blue-blooded Boston family.

The plan succeeded in part only.  The companionship of her
schoolfellows, her music and art-lessons, her books (during the limited
periods allotted to serious study and reading), and, above all, her
attrition at receptions with another order of men than that she had
known in the rough, uncultured West, occupied her mind so fully that
poor Dick Lane, who was putting a thought of Echo Allen in every blow
of his pick, received only the scraps of her attention.

Dick had few opportunities to mail a letter, and none of them for
receiving one.  Unpractised in writing, his epistolary compositions
were crude in the extreme, being wholly confined to bald statements of
fact.  Had he been as tender on paper as he was in his words and
accents when he kissed away her tears at parting, her regard for him
would have had fuel to feed on and might have kindled into genuine
love.  As it was, she was forced to admit that, in comparison, with the
brilliant university men with whom she conversed, Dick Lane,
intellectually, was as quartz to diamond.

On the other band, she contrasted Dick in the essential point of
manliness most favorably with the male butterflies of society that
hovered around her.  What one of them was so essentially chivalrous as
the Western man; so modest, so self-sacrificing, so brave and resolute
and resourceful?  Dick Lane, or Jack Payson, for that matter, in all
save the adventitious points of education and culture was the higher
type of manhood, and Jack, at least, if not poor Dick, could hold his
own in mental and artistic perception with the brightest, most cultured
of Harvard graduates.

At the end of the year she came back home to await Dick's return from
the wilds of Mexico.  There was great anxiety about his safety, for
Geronimo, attacked by Crook in the Apache stronghold of the Tonto
Basin, had escaped to the mountains of northwestern Mexico with his
band of fierce Chiricahuas.

Now Dick Lane had not been heard from in this region.  When he neither
made appearance nor sent a message upon the day appointed for his
return, his brother, Bud, was for setting out instantly to find him and
rescue him if he were in difficulties.

Then it was that Echo Allen discovered the true nature of her affection
for her lover, that it was sisterly regard, differing only in degree,
but not in kind, from that which she felt for his brother.  She joined
with Polly in opposing Bud's going, urging his recklessness as a
reason.  "You are certain to be killed," she said, "and I cannot lose
you both."  Jack Payson, for whom Bud was working, then came forward
and offered to accompany him, and keep him with bounds.  Again there
was a revelation of her heart Echo, and one that terrified her with a
sense of disloyalty.  It was Jack she really loved, noble, chivalric,
wonderful Jack Payson, whom, with a Southern intensity of feeling, she
had unconsciously come to regard as her standard of all that makes for
manhood.  Plausible objections could not be urged against his
sacrificing himself for his friend.  With an irresistible impulse she
cast herself upon his breast and said: "I cannot BEAR to see you go."

Payson gently disengaged her arms.

"I must, Echo.  It is what Dick would do for me if I were in his place."

However, while Payson and Bud were preparing for their departure, Buck
McKee appeared in the region and reported that Dick Lane had been
killed by the Apaches.  He told with convincing details of how he had
met Lane as each was returning from a successful prospecting trip in
the Ghost Range, and how they had sunk their differences in standing
together against an attack of the Indians.  He extolled Dick's bravery,
relating how, severely wounded, he had stood off the savages to enable
himself to escape.

When he handed over Dick's watch to Echo--for he had learned on his
return that she was betrothed to Lane--as a last token from her lover,
no doubt remained in the minds of his hearers of the truth of his
story, and Payson and Bud Lane gave up their purposed expedition.

The owner of Sweetwater Ranch, while accepting McKee's account, could
not wholly forget the half-breed's former evil reputation, and was
reserved in his reception of the advances of the ex-rustler who was
anxious to curry favor.  Warm-hearted, impulsive Bud, however, whose
fraternal loyalty had increased under his bereavement to the supreme
passion of life, took the insinuating half-breed into the aching
vacancy made by his brother's death.  The two became boon companions,
to the great detriment of the younger man's morals.  McKee had plenty
of money which he spent liberally, gambling and carousing in company
with Bud.  Polly was wild with indignation at her sweetheart's
desertion, and savagely upbraided him for his conduct whenever they
met, which may be inferred, grew less and less frequently. It was in
revenge she made advances to another man who long "loved her from afar."

This was William Henry Harrison Hoover, sheriff of the county, known as
"Slim" Hoover by the humorous propensity of men on the range to give
nicknames on the principle of contraries, for he was fattest man in
Pinal County.  Slim was one of those fleshy men who have nerves of
steel and muscles of iron.  A round, boyish face, twinkling blue eyes,
flaming red hair gave him an appearance entirely at variance with his
personality.  A vein of sentiment made him all the more lovable.  His
associates--ranchers, men of the plains, soldiers,  and the owners and
frequenters of the frontier barroom--respected him greatly.

"He's square as Slim" was the best recommendation ever given of a man
in that region.

Pinal County settlers had made Slim sheriff term after term because he
was the one citizen supremely fitted for the place. He had ridden the
range and "busted" broncos before election.  After it he hunted
wrong-doers.  Right was right and wrong was wrong to him.  There was no
shading in the meaning.  All he asked of men was to ride fast, shoot
straight, and deal squarely in any game. He admitted that murder,
horse-stealing, and branding another man's calves were subjects for the
unwritten law.  But in his code this law meant death only after a fair
trial, with neighbors for a jury.  He was not scrupulous that a judge
should be present.  His duties were ended when he brought in his
prisoner.

Hoover's rule had been marked by the taming of bad men in Florence, and
a truce declared in the guerrilla warfare between the cattlemen and the
sheepmen on the range.

Slim's seemingly superfluous flesh was really of great advantage to
him: it served as a mask for his remarkable athletic abilities, and so
lulled the outlaws with whom he had to deal into a false sense of
superiority and security.

Slow and lethargic in his ordinary movements, in an emergency he was
quick as a panther, never failing to get the drop on his man.

Furthermore, his fat exerted a beneficial influence on his character in
keeping him humble-minded.  Being the most popular man in the county,
he would probably have been swollen with vanity had there been any
space left vacant for it in his huge frame.  He was especially admired
by the women, but was at ease only in the company of those who were
married.  It was his fate to see the few girls of the region, with
every one of whom, by turns, he was in love, grow up to marry each some
less diffident wooer.

"Dangnation take it!" he used to say, "I don't git up enough spunk to
cut a heifer out o' the herd until somebody else has roped her and
slapped his brand onto her.  Talk about too many irons in the fire,
why, I've only got one, and it's het up red all the time waitin' fer
the right chanct to use it; but some how I never git it out o' the
coals.  Hell! what's the use, anyhow? Nobody loves a fat man."

Slim was inordinately puffed up by Polly's preference of him, which she
showed by all sorts of feminine tyrannies, and he was forced
continually to slap his huge paunch to remind himself of what he
considered his disabling deformity.  "Miss Polly," he would
apostrophize the absent lady, "you don't know what a volcano of
seethin' fiery love this here mountain of flesh is that your walkin'
over.  Some day I'll erupt, and jest eternally calcify you, if you
don't look out!"

The sheriff took no stock in Buck McKee's professed reformation, and
was greatly worried over the influence he had acquired over Bud Lane,
who had before this been Slim's protege.  Accordingly, he readily
conspired with her to break off the relations between the former outlaw
and the young horse-wrangler, but thus far had met with no success.

Payson, feeling himself absolved by the death of Dick Lane from all
obligations to his friend, began openly to woo Echo Allen, but without
presuming upon the revelation of her love for him which she had made at
his proposition to go into the desert to Lane's rescue.  She responded
to his courteous advances as frankly and naturally as a bud opens to
the gentle wooing of the April sun.  Softened by her grief for Dick as
for a departed brother, as the flower is by the morning dew, the petals
of her affection opened and laid bare her heart of purest gold.  The
gentle, diffident girl expanded into a glorious woman, conscious of her
powers, and proud and happy that she was fulfilling the highest
function of womanhood, that of loving and aiding with her love a noble
man.

Jack Payson, however, failed to get the proper credit for this sudden
flowering of Echo's beauty and charm.  These were ascribed to her
year's schooling in the East, and her proud mother was offended by the
way in which she accepted the young ranchman's advances.  "You hold
yourself too cheap," she said.  "It is at least due to the memory of
poor Dick Lane" (whom, now that he was safely dead, she idealized as a
type of perfect manhood) "that you make Jack wait as long as you did
him."  When Payson reasonably objected to this delay by pointing out he
was fully able to support a wife, as Lane had not been, and proposed,
with Echo's assent, six months as the limit of waiting, Mrs. Allen
resorted to her expedient--tears.

"BOO-HOO! you are going to take away my only daughter!"

The Colonel, however, though he had loved Dick as if he were his own
son, was delighted to the bottom of his hospitable soul that it was a
man not already in the family circle who was to marry Echo, especially
when he was a royal fellow like Jack Payson; so he arranged a
compromise between the time proposed by Mrs. Allen and that desired by
the lovers, and the date of the wedding was fixed nine months ahead.

"It will fall in June," said the old fellow, who knew exactly how to
handle his fractious wife; "the month when swell folks back in the East
do all their hitchin' up.  Why, come to think of it, it was the very
month I ran off with you in, though I didn't know, then that we was
elopin' so strictly accordin' to the Book of Etikwet."



CHAPTER III

A Woman's Loyalty

The first instinctive thought of a man reveals innate character; those
that follow, the moral that he has acquired through environment and
circumstances.  That Jack Payson was at bottom good man is shown by his
first emotion, which was joy, and his first impulse, which was to
impart the glad news to everybody, upon receiving the letter from Dick
Lane telling that he was alive and soon to come home.  He was in his
house at the time. Bud Lane had just brought in the packet of mail from
Florence, and was riding away.  Jack uttered a cry of joy which brought
the young man back to the door.  "What is it?" asked Bud.  But Jack had
already had time for his damning second thought.  He was stunned by the
consideration that the promulgation of the news in the letter meant his
loss of Echo Allen.  He dissembled, though as yet he was not able to
tell an outright falsehood:

"It's a letter telling me that I may expect to receive enough money in
a month or so to pay off the mortgage.  Now your brother's debt needn't
trouble you any longer, Bud."

"Whew-w!" whistled Bud.  "That's great! Where does it come from?"

"Oh, from an old friend that I lent the money to some time ago. But,
say, Bud, there's another matter I want to talk with you about.  You've
got to shake Buck McKee.  I've got it straight that he is the worst man
in Arizona Territory, yes, worse than an Apache.  Why, he has been with
Geronimo, torturing and massacring lone prospectors, and robbing them
of their gold."

"That's a damned lie, Jack Payson, and you know it!" cried the
hot-headed young man.  "It was Buck McKee who stood by Dick's side and
fought the Apaches.  And I'll stand by Buck against all the world.
Everybody is in a conspiracy against him, Polly and Slim Hoover and
you.  Why are you so ready now to take a slanderer's word against his?
You were keen enough to accept his story, when it let you out of going
to Dick's rescue, and gave you free swing to court his girl.  Let me
see the name of the damned snake-in-the-grass that's at the bottom of
all this!"  And he snatched for the letter in Payson's hand.

The ranchman quickly thrust the missive into pocket.  The injustice of
Bud's reflections on former actions gave to his uneasy conscience just
the pretext he desired for justifying his present course.  His cause
being weak and unworthy, he whipped up his indignation by adopting a
high tone and overbearing manner, even demeaning himself by using his
position as Bud's employer to crush the younger man.  Indeed, at the
end of the scene which ensued he well-nigh convinced himself that he
had been most ungratefully treated by Bud while sincerely attempting to
save the boy from the companionship of a fiend in human guise.

"No matter who told me, young man," he exclaimed; "I got it straight,
and you can take it straight from me.  You either give up Buck McKee or
the Sweetwater Ranch.  Snake-in-the-grass!" he was working himself up
into false passion; "it is you, ungrateful boy, who are sinking the
serpent's tooth in the hand that would have helped you.  I tell you
that I intended to make you foreman, though Sage-brush Charley is an
older and better man.  It was for Dick's sake I would have done it."

"No!" Bud burst forth; "for your guilty conscience's sake.  It would
have been to pay for stepping into Dick's place in the heart of a
faithless girl.  To hell with your job; I'm through with you!"

And, leaping on his horse, Bud rode furiously back to rejoin Buck McKee
in Florence.

Jack Payson's purpose was now cinched to suppress Dick Lane's letter
until Echo Allen was irrevocably joined to him in marriage.  He argued
with himself that she loved him, Jack Payson, yet so loyal was she by
nature that if Dick Lane returned before the wedding and claimed her,
she would sacrifice her love to her sense of duty.  This would ruin her
life, he reasoned, and he could not permit it.  There was honesty in
this argument, but he vitiated it by deferring to act upon the
suggestion that naturally arose with it:  Why, then, not take Jim
Allen, Echo's father, to whom her happiness was the chief purpose in
life, into confidence in regard to the matter?  There will be time
enough to tell the Colonel before the wedding, he thought.  In the
meantime something might happen to Dick,, and he may never return.  He
is certain not to get back ahead of his money.

After the time that the note secured by the mortgage fell due, the
young ranchman had already secured two extensions of it for three
months each.  He arranged a third, and began negotiating for the sale
of some of his cattle to take up the note at the time of payment.  "I
can't take the money from Dick," he thought, "even if he does owe it to
me.  And yet if I refuse it, it will be like buying Echo--'paying for
stepping into Dick's place,' as Bud expressed it.  What to do I don't
know.  Well, events will decide."  And by this favorite reflection of
the moral coward, Jack Payson marked the lowest depths of his
degradation.

That afternoon Payson rode to Allen Hacienda to see Echo, and to sound
her upon her feelings to Dick Lane.  He wished thoroughly to convince
himself that he, Jack Payson, held complete sway over her heart.
Perhaps he might dare to put her love to the test, and fulfil the trust
his friend had imposed on him, by giving her Dick's letter.

Payson overtook Polly riding slowly on her way home from Florence.  She
barely greeted him.  "Has she met Bud, and has he been slurring me?" he
thought.  He checked his pacing horse to the half-trot, half-walk, of
Polly's mount, and, ignoring her incivility, began talking to her.

"'D'yeh see Bud in Florence?"

"Yep.  Couldn't help it.  Him an' Buck McKee are about the whole of
Florence these days."

"Too bad about Bud consorting with that rustler.  I've had to fire him
for it."

"Fire him?  Well you ARE a good friend.  Talk about men's loyalty!  If
women threw men down that easy you all would go to the bowwows too fast
for us to bake dog-biscuit.  Now, I've settled Buck McKee's hash by
putting Slim Hoover wise to that tongue-slittin'.  Oh, I'll bring Bud
around, all right, all right, even if men that ought to be his friends
go back on him."

"But, Pollykins--"

"Don't you girlie me, Jack Payson.  I'm a woman, and I'm goin' to be a
married one, too, in spite of all you do to Bud.  Yes, sirree, bob.
I've set out to make a man of him, and I'll marry him to do it if he
ain't a dollar to his name.  But money'd make it lots quicker an'
easier.  He was savin' up till he run in with Buck McKee."

A sudden thought struck Payson.  Here was a way to dispose of Dick
Lane's money when it came.

"All right, Mrs. Bud Lane to be.  Promise not tell Bud, and through you
I'll soon make good to him many times over for the foreman's wages he's
lost.  It's money that's coming from an enterprise that his brother and
I were partners in, and Bud shall Dick's share.  He's sore on me now,
and I can't tell him. Besides, he'd gamble it away before he got it to
Buck McKee.  Bud isn't strictly ethical in regard to money matters,
Polly, and you must manage the exchequer."

"Gee, what funny big words you use, Jack!  But I know what you mean;
he's too free-handed.  Well, he'll be savin' as a trade rat until we
get our home paid for.  And I'll manage the checker business when we're
married.  No more poker and keno for Bud. Thank you, Jack.  I always
knew you was square."

Polly's sincere praise of his "squareness" was the sharpest thrust
possible at Payson's guilty conscience.  Well, he resolved to come as
near being square and level as he could.  He had told half-truths to
Bud and Polly; he would present the situation to Echo as a possible,
though not actual, one.  If Polly were wrong, and Echo loved him so
much that she would break the word she had pledged to Dick Lane, then
he would confess all, and they would do what could be done to make it
right with the discarded lover.

Echo, observing from the window who was Polly's companion, ran out to
Jack with a cry of joy.  He looked meaningly at Polly. She said: "Oh,
give me your bridle; I know how many's a crowd." Jack leaped to the
ground and took Echo in his arms while Polly rode off with the horses
to the corral, singing significantly:

         "Spoon, spoon, spoon,
         While the dish ran away with the spoon."

Jack and Echo embraced clingingly and kissed lingeringly.  "It takes a
crazy old song like that to express how foolish we lovers are," said
Jack.  "Why, I feel that I could outfiddle the cat, outjump the cow,
outlaugh the dog, and start an elopement that would knock the
performance of the tableware as silly as--well, as I am talking now.
I'm living in a dream--a Midsummer Night's Dream, such as you were
reading to me."

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet," quoted Echo suggestively.

Dusk was falling.  From the bunk-house rose the tinkling notes of a
mandolin; after a few preliminary chords, the player, a Mexican, began
a love-song in Spanish.  The distant chimes of Mission bells sounded
softly on the evening air.

Jack and Echo sat down upon the steps of the piazza.  Jack continued
the strain of his thought, but in a more serious vein:

"Echo, I'm so happy that I am frightened."

"Frightened?" she asked wonderingly.

"Yes, scared--downright scared," he answered.  "I reckon I'm like an
Indian.  An Indian doesn't believe it's good medicine to let the gods
know he's big happy.  For there's the Thunder Bird--"

"The Thunder Bird?"

"The evil spirit of the storm," continued Jack.  "When the Thunder Bird
hears a fellow saying he's big happy, he sends him bad luck--"

Echo laid her hand softly on the mouth of her sweetheart.  "We won't
spoil our happiness, then, by talking about it.  We will just feel
it--just be it."

She laid her head upon Jack's knee.  He placed his arm lightly but
protectingly over her shoulder.  They sat in silence listening to the
Mexican's song.  Finally Jack bent over and whispered gently in her ear:

"Softly, so the Thunder Bird won't hear, Echo; tell me you love me;
that you love only me; that you will always love me, no matter what
shall happen; that you never loved, until you loved me."

Echo sat upright, with a start.  "What do you mean?" she exclaimed.
"Of course I love you, and you only, but the future and the past are
beyond our control.  Unless you know of something that is going to
happen which may mar our love, your question is silly, not at all like
your Mother Goose nonsense--that was dear.  And as for the past, you
mean Dick Lane."

"Yes, I mean Dick Lane," confessed Payson, in a subdued tone.  "I am
jealous of him--that is--even of his memory."

"That is not like Jack Payson.  What has come over you?  It is the
shadow of your Thunder Bird.  You know what my feeling was for Dick
Lane, and what it is, for it remains the same, the only difference
being that now I know it never was love.  Even if it were, he is dead,
and I love you, Jack, you alone.  Oh, how you shame me by forcing me to
speak of such things!  I have tried to put poor Dick out of my mind,
for every time I think of him it is with a wicked joy that he is dead,
that he cannot come home to claim me as his wife.  Oh, Jack, Jack, I
didn't think it of you!"

And the girl laid her face within her hands on her lover's knee and
burst into a fit of sobbing.

Jack Payson shut his teeth.

"Well, since I have lowered myself so far in your esteem, and since
your mind is already sinning against Dick Lane, we might as well go on
and settle this matter.  I promise I will not mention it again.  I,
too, have troubles of the mind.  I am as I am, and you ought to know
it.  I said I was jealous of Dick Lane's memory.  It is more.  I am
jealous of Dick Lane himself.  If he should return, would you leave me
and go with him--as his wife?"

Again she sat upright.  By a strong effort she controlled her sobbing.

"The man I admired does not deserve an answer, but the child he has
proved himself to be and whom I cannot help loving, shall have it.
Yes, if Dick Lane returns true to his promise I shall be true to mine."

She arose and went into the house.  Payson rode homeward through the
starlight resolved of tormenting doubt only to be consumed by torturing
jealousy.  He now had no thought of confiding in Jim Allen.  He
regretted that he had touched so dangerously near the subject of Dick
Lane's return in talking to Bud and Polly. His burning desire was to be
safely married to Echo Allen before the inevitable return of her former
lover.

"Fool that I was not to ask her one more question:  Would she forgive
her husband where she would not forgive her lover?  What will she think
of me when all is discovered, as it surely will be?  Well, I must take
my chances.  Events will decide."

On his return to Sweetwater Ranch he put the place in charge of his new
foreman, Sage-brush Charlie, and went out to a hunting-cabin he had
built in the Tortilla Mountains.  Here he fought the problem over with
his conscience--and his selfishness won.  He returned, fixed in his
decision to suppress Dick Lane's letter, and to go ahead with the
marriage.



CHAPTER IV

The Hold-up

Riding hard into Florence from Sweetwater Ranch Bud Lane hunted up Buck
McKee at his favorite gambling-joint, and, in a white heat of
indignation informed him in detail of everything that had passed
between Payson and himself.  At once McKee inferred that the writer of
the letter was none other than Dick Lane. Realizing that Payson was
already informed of his villainy, and that in a very short time Dick
Lane himself would make his appearance on the Sweetwater, the
half-breed concluded to make a bold move while he yet retained the
confidence of Bud.

"Bud," he said, "I know the man who is sendin' the money to Payson.
It's Dick, your brother."

"But," stammered Bud, his brain whirling, "if that's so, you lied about
the Apaches killing him you--why you--must have been the renegade, the
devil who tortured prospectors."

"Why, Bud, Dick never wrote all that dime-novel nonsense about the man
who stood by him to--well, not the very last, for Dick has managed
somehow to pull through--probably he was saved by the Rurales that were
chasin' the band that rounded us up.  No, it's Payson, Jack Payson,
that made up that pack of lies, just to keep you away from me, the man
that was last with Dick and so may get on to Jack's game and block it."

"Game! what game?" asked Bud, bewildered.

"Why, you told me it yourself--to marry Dick's girl, and live on Dick's
hard-earned money."

"But Dick borrowed the three thousand of Jack," objected Bud.

"Well, the dollars he borrowed have all gone, ain't they?  And the
money he's sendin' back Dick dug out of the ground by hard work, didn't
he?  Leastways, Payson hadn't ort 'o use the money to rope in Dick's
girl.  It ort 'o be kep' from him, anyhow, till Dick comes on the
ground his own self.  That 'u'd hold up the weddin', all right, if I
know Josephine.  It 'u'd be easy to steer her into refusin' to let Echo
go into a mortgiged home."

Simple-minded Bud readily accepted the wily half-breed's explanations
and surmises, and fell into the trap he was preparing.  This was to
hold up the express-agent and rob him of the money Payson was
expecting, on securing which it was McKee's intention to flee the
country before Dick Lane returned to denounce him.  To ascertain just
when the money came into the agent's hands, and to act as a cover in
the robbery itself, an accomplice was needed.  For this purpose no man
in all the Sweetwater region was better adapted than Bud Lane.  Frank
and friendly with every one, he would be trusted by the most suspicious
and cautious official in Pinal County.  The fact that he had chosen
Buck McKee as an associate had already gone far to rehabilitate this
former "bad man" in the good graces of the community.  Under cover of
this friendship, McKee hoped to escape suspicion of any part in the
homicide he contemplated.  For it was murder, foul, unprovoked murder
that was in the black soul of the half-breed.  He intended to
incriminate Bud so deeply as to put it beyond all thought that he would
confess.

Young Lane, passionately loyal to his brother, was ready for anything
that would delay Payson's marriage to Echo Allen. Together with the
wild joy that sprang up in his heart at the thought that his brother
was alive, was entwined a violent hatred against his former employer.
In the fierce turbulence within his soul, generated by the meeting of
these great emotions, he was impelled to enter upon a mad debauch, in
which McKee abetted and joined him.  Filling up on bad whisky, they
rode through the streets of Florence, yelling and shooting their "guns"
like crazy men.  It was while they were engaged in this spectacular
exhibition of horsemanship, gun-play, and vocalization that Bud's
sweetheart rode into town to execute some commissions in preparation
for Echo Allen's wedding.  Already "blue" over the thought that her own
wedding was far in the dim future, poor Polly was cast into the depths
of despair and disgust by the drunken riot in which her prospective
husband was indulging with her particular aversion, the cruel,
calf-torturing half-breed, McKee.  Thoroughly mortified, she slipped
out of town by a side street, and moodily rode back to Allen Hacienda,
meeting on the way, as we have seen, Jack Payson.

After the debauch was over, and the merry, mad devil of nervous
excitement was succeeded by the brooding demon of nervous depression,
McKee broached to Bud the idea of robbing the express-agent of the
money coming to Payson.  This fell in readily with the young man's
revengeful mood.  He unreservedly placed himself under the half-breed's
orders.

In accordance with these, Bud hung about the road-station a great deal,
cultivating the friends of Terrill, the agent.  'Ole Man' Terrill, as
he was called, although he was a vigorous specimen of manhood on the
under side of sixty, was ticket and freight agent, express-messenger,
and telegraph-operator, in fact, the entire Bureau of Transportation
and communication at Florence station. Bud frankly told him he was out
of a job, and had, indeed, decided in view of his coming marriage, to
give up horse-wrangling for some vocation of a more elevating
character. So Terrill let him help about the station, chiefly in the
clerical work.  While so engaged, Bud learned that a package valued at
three thousand dollars was expected upon a certain train.  Although no
consignee was mentioned, the fact that the amount tallied exactly with
the sum Payson was expecting caused him to conclude it was Dick's
repayment of his loan.  Accordingly he informed McKee that the time
they were awaiting had arrived.

Florence had grown up as a settlement about a spring of water some time
before the advent of the railroad.  Builders of the line got into
trouble with the inhabitants, and in revenge located the station half a
mile away from the spring, thinking new settlers would come to them.
In this they were disappointed.

The point was an isolated one, and the station a deserted spot between
trains.

Eastward and westward the single track of railroad  drifted to
shimmering points on the horizon.  To the south dreary wastes of sand,
glistening white under the burnished sun and crowned with clumps of
grayish green sage-brush, stretched to an encircling rim of hills.
Cacti and yucca palms broke the monotony of the roll of the plains to
the uplands.

Sahuaroes towered over the low station, which was built in the style of
the old Spanish missions.  Its red roof flared above the purple shadows
cast by its walls.  In the fathomless blue above a buzzard sailed
majestically down an air current, and hovered motionless over the
lonely outpost of civilization.

Within the station a telegraph-sounder chattered and chirruped. 'Ole
Man' Terrill was at the instrument.  His duties were over for the
forenoon, the east-bound express, which, with the west-bound, composed
the only trains that traversed that section of the road each day,
having arrived and departed a half-hour before, and he had cut in on
the line to regale himself with the news of the world.  But there was a
dearth of thrilling events, such as his rude soul delighted in.  The
Apache uprising, that was feared, had not taken place.  Colonel Hardie,
of Fort Grant, had the situation well in hand.  The Nihilists were
giving their latest czar a breathing-spell.  No new prize-fighter had
arisen to wrest the championship of the world from John Sullivan, who
had put all his old rivals 'to sleep.' 'Ole Man' Terrill proceeded to
follow their example.  He had been up late the night before at a poker
game.  His head fell forward with a jerk. Aroused by the shock, he
glanced drowsily about him.  Heat-waves danced before the open window.
Deep silence hung over his little world.  Again his eyelids closed; his
head dropped, and slowly he slipped into sleep.

Tragedy was approaching him now, but not along the wire.  Down an
arroyo, or "draw" (the dry bed of a watercourse), that wound in a
detour around the town of Florence, and debauched into the open plain
near the station, crept two men in single file, each leading a horse.
They were Buck McKee and Bud Lane, who had ridden north from the town
that morning with the declared purpose of going to Buck's old ranch,
the Lazy K.  They had circled about the town, timing their arrival at
the station a little after the departure of the train which was
expected to bring Dick Lane's money.

McKee emerged first from the mouth of the draw.  He wore a coarse
flannel shirt, loosened at the throat.  About his neck was a
handkerchief.  His riding-overalls were tucked into high boots with
Spanish heels and long spurs.  A Mexican hat with a bead band topped a
head covered with coarse black hair, which he inherited from his
Cherokee mother.

Save for the vulture floating high in air not a living thing was in
sight.  With the caution of a coyote, McKee crept to the station door
and peered blinkingly through the open door into the room.  The change
from the dazzling light without to the shaded interior blinded him for
a moment.  He heard the heavy breathing of the sleeper before he saw
him.

Returning to the mouth of the arroyo, McKee motioned to his companion
to bring out the horses.  When this was done, the two men cinched the
saddles and made every preparation for sudden flight.  Lane and the
horses remained outside the station behind a freight-car on a siding,
while McKee stole softly through the open door to 'Ole Man' Terrill's
side.

Now, the agent used as a safe-deposit vault his inside waistcoat
pocket, the lock upon which was a huge safety-pin.  For further defense
he carried a revolver loosely hung at his hip, and easily reached.  His
quickness on the draw in the hour of need, and his accuracy of aim made
him a formidable antagonist.

Some men are born into the world to become its watch-dogs; others to
become its wolves.  The presence of a human wolf is, as it were,
scented by the human watch-dog, even when the dog is asleep.  McKee was
known instinctively as a man-wolf to the born guardians of society;
Slim Hoover, himself a high type of the man-mastiff, used to say of the
half-breed:  "I can smell that b'ar-grease he slicks his hair with
agin' the wind.  He may be out o' sight an' out of mind, when somethin'
tells me 'McKee's around'; then I smell b'ar-grease, and the next
thing, Bucky shows up, with his ingrasheatin' grin.  It's alluz 'grease
before meet, as the Sky Pilot would say."

'Ole Man' Terrill was of the watch-dog breed.  Whether warned by the
instinct of his kind or wakened by the scent of McKee's bear-grease, he
suddenly opened his eyes.  Like all men accustomed to emergencies, he
was instantly in full possession of his wits, yet he pretended to be
slightly confused in order to get a grasp upon the situation before
greeting his visitor.

"Howdy, Buck," he said, adjusting his revolver as he swung half-round
in his chair, that he might reach his weapon more readily in an
emergency.  "Bustin' or busted?"

"Well, I'm about even with the game," replied McKee, pulling from his
pocket a bag of tobacco and papers, and deftly rolling a butterfly
cigarette.  "Goin' to shake it before I lose my pile. It's me for the
Lazy K.  Dropped in to say good-by."

Terrill, who had recently had an expensive seance with McKee at poker,
remonstrated:

"Yuh ought 'o give me another chanct at yuh, Buck.  Yo're goin' away
with too much of my money."

"Well, 'Ole Man,' I'm likely to rob yuh of a lot more ef you ain't
keerful," answered McKee.

"Yuh can't jet yeta while," said Terrill.  "Dead broke."

"Aw, come off! everybody knows ye're a walkin' bank.  Bet yuh got three
thousan' in that inside pocket o' your'n this minute."

Terrill started at McKee's naming the exact amount he was carrying.  He
forgot his customary caution in his surprise. "Well, you did just hit
it, shore enough.  I believe ye're half-gipsy instid o' half-Injun.
Jus' like yer knowin' I stood pat on four uv a kind when you had aces
full, and throwin' down yer cyards 'fore I c'u'd git even with yuh.
How do yuh do it, Buck?"

McKee gave a smile of cunning, inscrutable superiority.  "Oh, it's jes'
a power I has.  'Keen sabby,' as the Greasers say--I'm keen on the
know-how.  Why, I kin tell yuh more about the money. It's fer Jack
Payson--"

"Now, there's whur ye're way off as a cleervoyant, Buck," said Terrill
triumphantly.  "Yuh guessed oncet too often, as yer old pard on the
Lazy K said to the druggist.  'Peruna?' ast the druggist.  'Yep,' said
yer pard.  'Beginnin' mild on a new jag?' ast the druggist a second
time.  'Hell, no!' said yer pard they calls Peruna now from the
in-sih-dent, 'ending up strong on an old one.'  Nope, the three
thousan' is county money, consigned to Sheriff Hoover.  Jack Payson has
jes' lef' with a package from K. C., but it wasn't money.  It was a
purty, gilt chair--a weddin'-present fer the gal he's go'n' to marry."

At that moment the sounder of the telegraph began clicking the call of
the station.  Terrill whirled about in his swivel-chair and faced the
table.

McKee stood close behind him.  His lips twitched nervously.  His eyes
narrowed as he watched every movement of the agent's big shoulders as
he operated the key.  At the same time the half-breed drew his revolver
and covered the back of Terrill's head.

The agent completed his message and turned to continue his interrupted
conversation.  He found himself gazing into the muzzle of a .44, big,
it seemed, as a thirteen-inch gun. "Why--what?" he stammered.

"I'm actin' jes' now as Slim's deppity," said McKee.  "Unbutton an'
han' that money over."

Once having his victim in his power, all the innate cruelty of the
Indian blood of his maternal ancestors flashed to the surface.  Terrill
was at his mercy.  For one desperate moment he would play with him;
even torture him as his forefathers had once made miserable the last
moments of a captive.  He knew that unless he silenced Terrill his life
must pay the forfeit.  Death was the penalty of detection.  The arm of
the express company was long.  Ultimate capture was certain.  Pursued
out of Arizona by the sheriff, he would be trailed through every camp
and town in the far West.

With an oath, Terrill tried to rise and face his antagonist, reaching
for his revolver as he did so.  The butt of his weapon had caught in
the arm of the chair hampering his movements.

McKee threw him roughly back into the chair.

"Throw up your han's," he cried.  "Don't try that."

Up went Terrill's hands high over his head.  He faced the open window.
Not a sign of help was in sight.

Quickly the agent turned over in his mind various schemes to foil
McKee, who now stood behind him with the muzzle of his revolver
pressing into the middle of his back.  Each was rejected before
half-conceived.

McKee laughed sneeringly, saying: "You oughtn't to be so keerless to
show where you cache your roll.  Worse than a senorita with a stocking.
She never keeps a whole pair when Manuel is playing faro."

Terrill made no reply.  His hope of escape was slowly fading.

McKee had reached his left hand over his prisoner's shoulder to disarm
Terrill, who moved slightly away from him, drawing in his feet as he
did so.

One chance had come to him.  He knew that, if he failed, death was
certain, yet he determined to take the risk in order to retrieve the
slip he had made in admitting that he had money in his possession to a
gambling crony; and so to keep clean his record for trustiness, of
which he was so proud.  This last desperate resource was an old
wrestler's trick; one with which he had conquered others in the rough
games of the corral.

Again Terrill moved to the right and farther under McKee, who had to
extend his arm and body far beyond an upright position. Holding his
revolver against Terrill handicapped the half-breed in his movements.

With a quick turn, Terrill grasped McKee's left arm, jerking it down
sharply on his shoulder.  With his right hand he grasped the back of
his antagonist's neck, pulling his head downward and inward.  Using his
shoulder for a fulcrum, with a mighty heave of his legs and back he
sought to toss McKee over his head.

So surprised for an instant was the cowboy by suddenness of the attack
that he made no effort escape the clutches of the desperate
express-agent.

His feet had left the floor, and he was swinging in the air before his
finger pressed the trigger.

There was a muffled report.

The two men fell in a heap on the floor, McKee on top.  Dazed and
shaken, McKee scrambled to his feet.  The air was pungent with odor of
powder smoke.  Terrill rolled over on his side, trembled convulsively,
and died.  He had paid the penalty for a moment's indiscretion with his
life.

McKee quickly unfastened the pin and seized the roll of bills. Skimming
through the package, he smiled with satisfaction to see that the most
of it was in small bills, and none of them stained.

Carefully avoiding the fast-forming pool of blood which was oozing from
the hole in the dead man's head, he hurried to the door.

A glance showed him the coast was clear.  Running across the tracks, he
joined Lane, who was waiting for him behind the freight-car with
impatience.  In silence they mounted their horses.  For a short
distance McKee led the way upon the railroad-track, in order to leave
no hoof-prints, and then struck across the desert toward the hills in
the south.

"Why did you shoot?" gasped Lane.

"He drew on me," snarled McKee.  "It wasn't Dick's money, but you'll
get half.  Shut up."

The burning sun rose higher and higher.  The buzzard dropped lower in
the sky.  The silence of death brooded over the railroad-station.



CHAPTER V

Hoover Bows to Hymen

Unknown to Bud Lane and Buck McKee, who were rioting in Florence, Jack
Payson had hurried up the wedding.  Colonel Jim had wheedled Josephine
into consenting that it should take place two months ahead of the time
that had been fixed.  "April is the month fer showers, Josie, an' we'll
let you weep all you please."

Two weeks' notice, however, gave scant time for preparation for the
important ceremony that Mrs. Allen deemed necessary.  During this
period the busiest spot in Arizona was the kitchen of Allen hacienda.
An immense cake, big as a cheese, was the crowning effort of Josephine,
who wept copiously at the thought of losing her daughter as she
measured and mixed the ingredients.  A layer of frosting an inch in
thickness encrusted this masterpiece of the art of pastry-making.
Topping the creation were manikins of a bride and bridegroom.

This climax of the bridal cake had been brought up by wagon from Tucson
with more caution than if it were a month's clean-up of a paying mine.
Mrs. Allen allowed no one to go near the artistic achievement.  Others
might look at it from afar, but at the slightest movement to get close
to it, she would push the observer back, with the warning: "Keep yer
dirty fingers off'n it.

"'Tain't common icin'; that's confectionary."

Enough chickens to feed a darky camp-meeting were killed for the feast.
Fried, roasted, cold or minced as tamales, the dishes filled ovens and
tables, and overflowed into the spring-house. Favorite recipes carried
across the plains by the wives of the Argonauts met in rivalry with the
dishes of the cooks of old Mexico.

Colonel Allen wandered aimlessly about the ranch, while the
preparations for the feast were in progress.  The women folk drove him
from one favorite loafing-place to another.  His advice was scorned and
his wishes made a subject for jests.

Defiantly he had taken full charge of the liquid refreshments.  A
friendly barkeeper in Tucson, acting under his orders, had shipped him
cases of champagne, a barrel of beer, and a siphon of seltzer.  Why the
seltzer he never could explain.  Later the unlucky bottle marred the
supper and nearly caused a tragedy.  A guest picked it up and peered
into the metal tube to see "how the durned thing worked."

As he gazed and pondered, shaking the bottle in effort to solve the
mystery, he pressed the handle.  The stream struck him fairly between
the eyes.  Shocked, surprised, and half-blinded, he pulled his gun and
declared immediate war on the "sheep-herder who had put up the job on
him."  Allen's other supplies were of the kind taken straight in the
Southwest, and were downed with a hasty gulp.

Driven from the house on the day of the wedding he took refuge on the
piazza.  From behind the hacienda floated dreamily on the sun-drenched
air the music of guitars and mandolins played by Mexicans, practising
for the dance which would follow the ceremony.

The Colonel dozed and dreamed.

Suddenly the peace of the afternoon was shattered by the wild
"yip-yips" of a band of cowboys, riding up the trail. Revolver-shots
punctuated their shrill cries.

Allen bounded from his chair, shaking himself like a terrier. This
riotous sound was the music he longed to hear.

When the staccato beats of the ponies' hoofs ceased, he shouted: "Come
on, boys, make this your home.  Everything goes, and the Sweetwater
outfit is always welcome."

The foreman was the first to pull up in front of the house. "Hullo,
Uncle Jim!" he cried.

"Hello, Sage-brush," answered the Colonel, a broad smile illuminating
his face.  Holding his pipe in one hand, he licked his lips at the
thought of "lickering up" without the invention of an excuse for his
wife.

Then he joined in a hearty laugh with the men about the corral as he
heard the grunts and stamping of a plunging mustang.  A cow-pony had
entered into the spirit of the occasion and was trying to toss his
rider over his head.

Fresno was the victim of the horse's deviltry.

His predicament aroused wild shouts of mirth and sallies of the wit of
the corral.

"Hunt leather, Fresno, or he'll buck you clean over the wall," shouted
Sage-brush.

"Grab his tail," yelled Show Low, with a whoop.

"All over," was the chorus, as Fresno, with a vicious jab of his spurs
and a jerk of the head, brought the animal into subjection.

"Come right in, boys!" called Allen.  "Let the Greasers take the
hosses."

With shrill shouts, whoops, and much laughter the guests crowded about
the ranchman.

Each wore his holiday clothes; new handkerchiefs were knotted about
their necks.  Fresno had stuck little American flags in the band of his
hat, the crown of which he had removed.  "I want head-room for the
morning after," he had said.

Show Low's chaps were conspicuously new, and his movements were
heralded by the creaking of unsoftened leather.

Last of the band was Parenthesis, short, bow-legged, with a face tanned
and seamed by exposure.

The cowboys ran stiffly, toeing slightly inward.  Long hours in the
saddle made them apparently awkward and really ungraceful when on the
ground.

They greeted Allen with hearty enthusiasm, slapping him on the back,
poking him in the ribs, and swinging him from one to the other, with
cries of:  "Howdy, Uncle Jim!"

"Howdy, Sage-brush?  Hello, Fresno!  Waltz right in, Show Low. Glad to
see you all!" cried Allen, as he, in turn, brought his hand down with
ringing slaps upon shoulder and back.  Meantime Parenthesis hopped
about the outer edge of the ring, seeking an entrance.  Failing to
reach his host, he crowed: "How de doddle do," to attract his attention.

Allen broke from the ring.  Grasping Parenthesis by the hand, he said:
"I'm tolerable, thankee, Parenthesis.  Where's Jack?--didn't he come
over with you?"

"What! the boss?  Ain't he got here yet?" asked the foreman. Tall and
lean, with hardened muscles, Sage-brush Charley was as lithe as a
panther on horseback.  His first toy had been a rope with which, as a
toddler, he had practised on the dogs and chickens about the
ranch-yard.  He could not remember when he could not ride.  Days on the
round-up, hours of watching the sleeping herd in the night-watch, had
made him quiet and self-contained in his dealings with men.  His eyes
looked out fearlessly on the world. All of his life he had handled
cattle.  Daily facing dangers on the long drives or in the corral, he
schooled himself to face emergencies.  Acquiring self-control, he was
trusted and admired. When Lyman, the old foreman of the Sweetwater
resigned, Jack Payson promoted Sage-brush, although next to Bud Lane he
was at the time the youngest man in the outfit.  He made his employer's
interests his own.  At the mention of Payson's name he always became
attentive.  With a shade of anxiety he awaited Allen's answer.

"No," replied the ranchman, looking from one of his guests to the other.

"Why, he started three hours ahead of us!" explained Parenthesis.

With a challenging note in his tones, as if his word was disputed, the
host answered:  "Well, he ain't showed up."

The little group had become silent.  Arizona was in a period of unrest.
Rumors of another Apache uprising were growing stronger each day.  Then
Payson was successful, and, therefore, despised by less fortunate men
ever eager for a quarrel.

After a moment's thought Sage-brush brushed aside his fears and
brightened up his comrades with the remark:  "Mebbe he rid over to
Florence station to get a present for Miss Echo.  He said somethin'
about gettin' an artickle from Kansas City."

"Mebbe so," agreed Allen, eager to cast out any forebodings. "It's
time," he continued, "he wuz turnin' up, if this weddin's to be pulled
off by the clock."

"Has the Sky Pilot got here yet?" asked Sage-brush.

"No," replied Allen.  "He's started, though.  There's one thing sartin,
we can't tighten up the cinches till the bridegroom gits here."

The absence of Jack Payson and the failure of the minister to arrive
aroused the suspicions of Sage-brush.  Coming closer to Allen, he
smiled knowingly, and, speaking in a confidential tone, asked:

"Say, Jim, they ain't figgerin' on gittin' away on the sly-like, are
they?"

Show Low interrupted with the explanation: "You see, we're goin' to
decorate the wagon some."

The suggestion that any one connected with Allen Hacienda would ride in
anything on wheels, except the driver of the chuck-wagon out on
round-up, aroused the indignation of the old cattleman. For him the
only use to which a wheeled vehicle drawn by a horse should be put was
to haul materials that could not be packed on a horse.

"They ain't using any wagon!" he fairly shouted; "they're goin' away in
the leather."

The idea of carrying out the traditions of the horse in Pinal County
even to a wedding-journey tickled the boys immensely.

Slapping one another on the back and nodding their heads in
approbation, they shouted: "That's the ticket.  Hooray!"

"This ain't no New York idea, where the bride and groom hits the
life-trail in a hired hack," cried Fresno.

Allen's feelings apparently were not yet fully soothed.  Turning to
Sage-brush, he said: "Wheels don't go in my family.  Why, her ma and me
were married on hossback.  The preacher had to make a hurry job of it,
but it took."

"Hush, now," was Parenthesis' awed comment.

"For her pop was a-chasin' us, and kept it up for twenty miles after
the parson said 'Amen.'"

"Did he ketch you?" asked Fresno, with great seriousness.

"He sure did," answered Allen, with a twinkle in his eye, "an' thanked
me for takin' Josephine off his hands."

The boys laughed.  The joke was upon themselves, as they had expected
to hear a romantic story of earlier days.

When the laughter had subsided, Show Low suggested: "If we can't
decorate the wagon, let's put some fixin's on the ponies."

The proposal was received with more whoops, shouting, and yipping.
They waltzed about the smiling rancher.

"That's what!" cried Sage-brush enthusiastically.

Allen grew sarcastic, remarking: "I reckon you-all must have stopped
some time at the water-tank."

Renewed laughter greeted this sally.

"This is my first wedding," explained Sage-brush, rather apologetically.

"I want to know!" exclaimed Allen, in surprise.

"I'm tellin' you.  I never seed a weddin' in all my life," replied
Sage-brush, as seriously as if he was denying a false accusation of a
serious crime.  "Mother used to tell me about her'n, an' I often wisht
I had been there."

Fresno shouted with amusement.  He had Sage-brush rattled.  The coolest
man on the ranch was flustered by the mere thought of attending a
wedding-ceremony.

"He's plum locoed over this one.  Ain't you, Sage-brush?" he drawled
tauntingly.

Sage-brush took his jibing in the best of humor.  It was a holiday, and
they were with people of their own kind.  Had a stranger been present
the remarks would have been resented bitterly.  On this point cowboys
are particularly sensitive.  In the presence of outsiders they are
silent, answering only in monosyllables, never leading in any
conversation, and if any comment is necessary they make it indirectly.

"Well, I ain't no society-bud like you are," laughed Sage-brush. The
others joined with him in his merriment over Fresno's discomfiture.
"Weddin's ain't so frequent where I come from as they is in Californy."

"It's the climate," answered Fresno, with a broad grin.

"So you ain't never been at a weddin'?" asked Allen, who was looking
for another opening to have more fun with Sage-brush.

Again the cowboy became serious and confessed:  "Nope; I've officiated
at several plain killin's, an' been chief usher at a lynchin', but this
yere's my first weddin', an' I'm goin' to turn loose some and enjoy it."

Sage-brush grinned in anticipation of the good times that he knew lay
in store for him at the dance.

"You're fixed up as if you was the main attraction at this event," said
Allen, looking Sage-brush over carefully and spinning him around on his
heel.

"Ain't I mussed up fine?" answered Sage-brush.

"You're the sure big turkey," interrupted Parenthesis.

"Served up fine, with all the trimmin's," laughed Fresno, taking
another jab at his friend.

Their sport was broken up for the time being by the appearance of Polly
at the door of the ranch-house.  "Hello, boys," she shouted, with the
fascinating cordiality of the Western girl, wherein the breath of the
plains, the purity of the air, and the wholesomeness of life is
embraced in a simple greeting and the clasp of a hand.

The cowboys took off their hats, and made elaborate bows to the young
woman.  "Howdy, Miss Polly!" they cried.

"You sure do look pert," added Sage-brush, with what he considered his
most winning smile.  Fresno snickered and hastily brushed back the hair
from his forehead.

"Where's Jack?" she asked the two men, who at once ranged themselves
one on each side of her.

"He did not start with the boys," explained Allen.  "He'll be along
soon, Polly."

"Well, now when it comes to lookers, what's the matter with Polly
Hope?" exclaimed Sage-brush slyly.

Glances of admiration were cast at the girl, who was dressed simply and
plainly in a little white gown which Mrs. Allen had made for her for
the wedding.  Polly's youth, good nature, and ability to take care of
herself made her a favorite on the ranch.

She had no need of defenders, but if an occasion should arise that
Polly required a knight, there were a score of guns at her service at
an hour's notice.

"Looks like a picture from a book," said Fresno, hoping to win back the
ground he had lost by Sage-brush's openly expressed admiration.

Polly was flattered by the comments and the glances of the boys, which
expressed their approval of her appearance more loudly than spoken
words.  She pretended, however, to be annoyed.  "Go 'long," she said.
"Where's Bud Lane?  Didn't you give him his invite?"

The boys turned from one to the other with feigned glances of disgust
at being slighted by Polly for an absent one.  The one-sided courtship
of Bud and Polly was known up and down the valley, and indefinite
postponement of their wedding-day was one of the jests of the two
ranches.

"Oh, we sent it on to him at Florence.  He'll git it in time, if he
ain't gone to the Lazy K with Buck McKee," said Sage-brush; then,
turning to the other cowboys, he added in an aggrieved tone: "Polly
ain't got no eyes for no one excep' Bud."

Polly stepped to Allen's side, and, laying her head on his shoulder,
said:  "Ain't I?"  Allen patted the girl's head.  He was very fond of
her, looking upon her as another daughter.

Polly smiled back into his face, and then, with a glance at the
cowboys, said:  "Say, Uncle Jim, there's some bottles to be opened."

The invitation was an indirect one, but all knew what it meant, and
started for the house.

"Root-beer," added Polly mischievously; "the corks pull awful hard."

Allen glanced at her in feigned alarm.

"What do you want to do--stampede the bunch?"

Before she could answer, the approach of a horse attracted the
attention of the group.

"There's Jack, now!" cried Sage-brush, in tones which plainly showed
his relief; "no, it ain't," he added reflectively, "he rode his pacin'
mare, and that's a trottin' horse."

The cry of the rider was heard quieting his mount.  Allen recognized
the voice.  "It's Slim Hoover," he cried.

Polly clapped her hands, and said mischievously to Sage-brush: "Now
you'll see me makin' goo-goo eyes to somebody besides Bud Lane.  I
ain't a-going to be the only girl in Pinal County Slim Hoover ain't set
up to."

"An' shied off from," added Sage-brush, a little nettled by Polly's
overlooking him as a subject for flirtation. "But what's Slim doin'
over this way?"

"Come to Jack's weddin', of course," replied Polly, adding
complacently: "And probably projectin' a hitch-up of his own."

Slim ran around the corner of the house directly into the crowd, who
seized him before he could recover from his surprise, and proceeded to
haze him, to their intense delight and the Sheriff's embarrassment, for
he knew that Polly was somewhere near, enjoying his discomfiture.
Polly waited until her victim was fully ready for her particular form
of torture.  The reception of the cowboys was crude to her refined form
of making the fat Sheriff uncomfortable.

With the velvety cruelty of a flirt she held out her hand, saying:
"Hello, Slim."

The Sheriff flushed under his tan.  The red crept up the back of his
neck to his ears.  He awkwardly took off his hat.  With a bow and a
scrape he greeted her: "Howdy, Miss Polly, howdy." Meantime he shook
her hand until she winced from the heartiness of the grip.

"What's the news?" she asked, as she slowly straightened out her
fingers one by one.

"There's been a killin' over Florence way," announced the Sheriff,
putting on his hat and becoming an officer of the law with duty to
perform.

"Who is the misfortunate?" asked Sage-brush, as they gathered about
Hoover and listened intently.

Murder in Arizona was a serious matter, and punishment was meted out to
the slayer or he was freed by his fellow citizens.  Far from courts of
justice and surrounded by men to whom death was often merely an
incident in a career of crime, the settlers were forced to depend upon
themselves to keep peace on the border. They acted quickly, but never
hastily.  Judgment followed quickly on conviction.  Their views were
broad, and rarely were their decisions wrong.

"'Ole Man' Terrill," replied the Sheriff.  "Happened about ten this
mornin'.  Some man caught him alone in the railroad-station and blowed
his head half-off."

"Do tell!" was Allen's exclamation.

"Yep," continued the Sheriff.  "He must have pulled a gun on the
fellow.  He put up some sort of a fight, as the room is some mussed up."

"Robbery?" queried Polly, with wide-open eyes.

"That's what!" answered Slim, turning to her. "He had three thousan'
dollars pinned in his vest--county money for salaries. You know how he
toted his wad around with him, defyin' man or the devil to get it 'way
from him?  Well, some one who was both man an' devil was too much for
him."

"Who found him?"

"I did myself.  Went over around noon after the money.  Didn't stop to
go back to town fer a posse.  Trail was already too cold. Could tell it
was a man that rode a pacin' horse."

His auditors looked at each other, striving to remember who of their
acquaintance rode a pacing horse.  Sage-brush Charley shook his head.
"Nobody down this way, 'ceptin', of course, the boss, rides a pacer.
Must be one of the Lazy K outfit, I reckon."

"Most likely," said the Sheriff; "he struck out south, probably to
throw me off scent.  Then he fell in with two other men, and this
balled me up.  I lost one of the tracks, but follered the other two
round Sweetwater Mesa, till I came where they rode into the river.  Of
course I couldn't follow the trail any farther at that p'int, so, bein'
as I was near Uncle  Jim's, I rode over fer help to look along both
banks an' pick up the trail wherever it comes out of the river.  Sorry
I must break up yer fun, boys, but some o' yuh must come along with me.
Duty's duty.  I want Sage-brush, anyhow, as I s'pose I can't ask fer
Jack Payson."

Sage-brush pulled a long face.  At any other time he would have jumped
at the chance of running to earth the dastardly murderers of his old
friend Terrill.  But in the matter of this, his first experience a
wedding, he had tickled his palate so long with the sweets of
anticipation that he could not bear to forgo the culminating swallow of
realization.

"I don't see why I shouldn't be let off as well as Jack," he grumbled;
"our cases are similar.  You see it's my first weddin'," explained the
foreman to the sheriff.

The other cowboys howled with delight.  The humor of the situation
caught their fancy, and they yelled a chorus of protestation in
Hoover's ears.  In this Colonel Allen joined.

"Don't spile the weddin'," he pleaded.  "This event has already rounded
up the Sweetwater outfit fer yuh, an' saved yuh more time than you'll
lose by waitin' till it's over. Then we'll all jine yuh."

Hoover commanded silence, and, rolling a cigarette, gravely considered
the proposition.  He realized that the murderers should be followed up
at once, but that if he forced the cowboys by the legal power exercised
to forego the pleasure they had been anticipating so greatly, they
would not be so keen in pursuit as if they had first "given the boss
his send-off."  The considerations being equal, or, as he put it, "hoss
an' hoss," it seemed to him wise to submit to Allen's proposition,
backed as it was by the justice of his plan that the occasion of the
wedding had already saved valuable time in assembling the posse.  He
assented, therefore, but, to maintain the dignity of his office and
control of the situation, with apparent reluctance.

"Well, hurry up the sacreements an' ceremonies, then, an' the minute
the preacher ties the knot, every man uv yuh but Jack an' the parson
an' Uncle Jim gits on his boss an' folluhs me.  I'll wait out in the
corral."

At this there was another storm of expostulation, led this time by
Allen.  Of course Hoover was to come to the wedding, and be its guest
of honor.  "You shall be the first to wish Jack and Echo lucky," said
Allen.  "That means you'll be the next one to marry."

The ruddy-faced Sheriff blushed to the roots of his auburn hair.

"Much obliged, but I ain't fixed up fer a weddin'," and he looked down
at his travel-stained breeches tucked in riding-boots white with
alkali-dust, and felt of his buttonless waistcoat and gingham shirt
open at the throat, with the bandanna handkerchief his neck in lieu of
both collar and tie.

Polly assured him that he would do very well as he was, that for her
part she "wouldn't want no better-dressed man than he to be present at
her wedding, not even the feller she was goin' to be hitched up to;"
whereat Slim Hoover was greatly set at ease.

Polly was bounding up the piazza steps to tell Echo of the accession to
her party, when Hoover held up his hand.  A terrifying suggestion had
flashed through his mind.

"Hold on a minute!" he exclaimed, and, turning to Allen, he asked
anxiously:  "Does this yere guest of honor haf to kiss the bride?"

The question was so foreign to the serious topic which had just been
under discussion that everyone laughed in relief of the nervous tension.

Allen's fun-loving nature at once bubbled to the surface.  With an air
of assumed anger he said to the Sheriff:  "Of course; every guest has
to do it."  Then, turning to the cowboys, he asked:  "Is there any one
as holds out strong objection to kissin' my daughter?"

"Not me," laughed Sage-brush, "I'm here to go the limit."

"I'm an experienced kisser, I am," said Parenthesis, "I don't lose no
chance at practise."

"I'll take two, please," simpered Fresno.

Show Low interrupted the general sally which followed this remark,
saying: "I strings my chips along with Fresno."

"Slim's afraid of females!" drawled Polly provokingly.

"Oh, thunder!" exclaimed Slim to Polly.  "No, I ain't, nothin' of the
sort.  I'm a peaceful man, I am.  I never likes to start no trouble."

"Get out, what's one kiss?" laughed Allen.

"I've seen a big jack-pot of trouble opened by chippin' in just one
kiss," wisely remarked the Sheriff.

Sage-brush, at this point, announced decisively:  "The bride has got to
be kissed."

Slim tried to break through the group and enter the house, thinking
that by making such a move he would divert their attention, and that in
the excitement of the wedding he could avoid kissing the bride, an
ordeal which to him was more terrible than facing the worst gun-fighter
in Arizona.

"I deputize you to do the kissin' for me," he said to Parenthesis, who
had laid his hand shoulder to detain him.

"No, siree," the cowboy replied.  "Every man does his own kissin' in
this game."  Slim half-turned as if undecided.  Suddenly he turned on
his heel, started for the corral.  "I'll wait outside," he shouted.

"No, you don't!" cried his companions. He turned to face a semicircle
of drawn revolvers.  He looked from one man to another, as if puzzled
what move to make next.  Allen was annoyed by the sheriff's actions,
taking it as an insult that he would not kiss his daughter, although he
had started to twit the Sheriff in the beginning.

"You ain't goin' to insult me and mine that way.  No man sidesteps
kissin' one of my kids," he said angrily.

Slim was plaintively apologetic: "I ain't kissed a female since I was a
yearlin'."

"Time you started," snapped Polly.

"You kiss the bride, or I take it pussenel," said Allen, thoroughly
aroused.

"Well, if you put it that way, I'll do it," gasped Slim, in desperation.

The agreement restored the boys to their good nature.

"You will have to put blinders on me, though, and back me up,"
cautioned Hoover.

"We'll hog-tie you and sit on your head," laughed Sage-brush, as the
guests entered the house.



CHAPTER VI

A Tangled Web

After fording Sweetwater River several times to throw pursuit off the
track, Buck McKee and Bud Lane entered an arroyo to rest their mounts
and hold council as to their future movements. During the flight both
had been silent; McKee was busy revolving plans for escape in his mind,
and Bud was brooding over the tragic ending of the lawless adventure
into which he had been led by his companion.  When McKee callously
informed him that the agent had been killed in the encounter, Bud was
too horrified to speak.  A dry sob arose in his throat at the thought
of his old friend lying dead, all alone, in the station.  His first
impulse was to turn back to Florence and surrender himself to the
Sheriff.  Had this entailed punishment of himself alone, he would have
done it but he still retained a blind loyalty in his associate and
principal in the crime.  Murder, it seemed, was to be expected when one
took the law in his own hands to right an injustice.  He didn't clearly
understand it.  It was his first experience with a killing.  The
heartlessness of McKee both awed and horrified him.  Evidently the
half-breed was used to such actions.  It appeared to be entirely
justified in his code.  So Bud followed in dull silence the masterful
man who had involved him in the fearful deed.

When they dismounted, however, his pent-up emotion burst forth.

"You said there would be no killing," he gasped, passing his hand
wearily across his forehead as if to wipe out the memory of the crime.

"Well, what did the old fool pull his gun for?" grumbled McKee
petulantly, as if Terrill was the aggressor in the encounter.

Bud threw himself wearily on the ground.

"I'd give the rest of my life to undo to-day's work," he groaned,
speaking more to himself than to his companion.

McKee heard him.  His anger began to arise.  If  Bud weakened detection
was certain.  Flight back to Texas must be started without delay.  If
he could strengthen the will of the boy either by promise of reward or
fear of punishment, the chances of detection would lessen as the days
passed.

"And that would be about twenty-four hours if you don't keep quiet.
Why didn't he put up his hands when I hollered?  He starts to wrastle
and pull gun, and I had to nail him."  McKee shuddered spite of his
bravado.

Pulling himself together with an apparent effort, he continued: "We'll
hold the money for a spell--not spend a cent of it till this thing
blows over--they'll never get us.  Here, we'll divide it."

"Keep it all.  I never want to touch a penny of it," said Bud
earnestly, moving along the ground to place a greater distance between
him and the murderer.

"Thanks.  But you don't git out of your part of the hold-up that easy.
Take your share, or I'll blow it into you," said McKee, pulling his
revolver.

Bud, with an effort, arose and walked over to Buck.  With clenched
fists, in agonized tones, he cried:  "Shoot, if you want to.  I wish
I'd never seen you--you dragged me into this--you made me your
accomplice in a murder."

McKee looked at him in amazement.  This phase of human character was
new to him, trained as he been on the border, where men rarely suffered
remorse and still more rarely displayed it.

"Shucks!  I killed him--you didn't have no hand in it," answered Buck.
"This ain't my first killin'.  I guess Buck McKee's pretty well known
in some sections.  I took all the chances.  I did the killin'.  You git
half.  Now, brace up and take yer medicine straight."

"But I didn't want to take the money for myself," replied Bud, as if to
soothe his conscience.  "Oh!  Buck, why didn't you let me alone?" he
continued, as the thought of his position again overwhelmed him.

Buck gasped at the shifting of the full blame upon his shoulders.

"Well, I'll be darned!" he muttered.  "You make me sick, Kid." His
voice rose in anger and disgust.  "Why, to hear you talk, one would
think you was the only one had right feelin's.  I'm goin' to take my
share and start a decent life.  I'm goin' back to Texas an' open a
saloon.  You take your half, marry your gal, and settle down right
here.  'Ole Man' Terrill's dead; nothin' will bring him back, an' you
might as well get the good o' the money. It's Slim Hoover's, anyhow.
If Jack Payson can marry your brother Dick's gal on Dick's money--fer
there's no hope o' stoppin' that now--you can cut Slim out with Polly,
on Slim's salary.  Aw, take the money!" and McKee pressed half of the
bills into Bud's lax fingers.

The young man's hand closed upon them mechanically.  A vague thought
that he might some day make restitution conspired with McKee's
insidious appeal to his hatred and jealousy to induce him to retain the
blood-money, and he thrust it within an inside pocket of his loose
waistcoat.

"Now," said McKee, thoroughly satisfied that he had involved Bud in the
crime too deeply for him to confess his share in it, "we'll shake
hands, and say 'adios.'  Slim Hoover's probably on our track by this
time, but I reckon he'll be some mixed in the trail around the mesa,
and give the job up as a bad one when he reaches the river.  I'll show
up on the Lazy K, where the whole outfit will swear I've been fer two
days, if Hoover picks on me as one of the men he's been follerin'.
You're safe.  Nobody'd put killin' anybody on to you, let alone your
ole frien' Terrill. Why, yuh ain't a man yet, Bud, though I don't it to
discurrudge yuh.  You've made a start, an' some day yuh won't think no
more'n me of killin' a feller what stan's in yer way.  I shouldn't be
so turribly surprised if Jack Payson got what's comin' to him someday.
But what have you got there, Bud?" he inquired, as he saw the young man
holding a letter he had withdrawn from the pocket into which he had put
the bills.

"Letter I got in Florence yesterday when I was too full to read it,"
said Bud.  He opened it.  "Why, it's from Polly!" he exclaimed, "it's
an invite--by God! it's an invite to Jack an' Echo's wedding!  It's
today!  That damned scoundrel has hurried the thing up for fear Dick
will get back in time to stop it! Buck McKee, I believe you're right!
I could kill Jack Payson with no more pity than I would a rattler or
Gila monster!"

At this exhibition of hatred by his companion, a new thought flashed
suddenly through the satanic mind of the half-breed.  It involved an
entire change of his plans, but the devilish daring of the conception
was irresistible.

"Say," he broke in, with seeming irrelevance, "don't Payson ride a
pacin' mare?"

"Yes," answered Bud, "what of it?"

"Oh, nothin'," said McKee; "it jus' struck me as sorter funny. PAYSON
and PACIN', don't you see."

Bud was mystified.  Had his companion gone daft?

McKee saw instantly that it would be very easy to fix the charge of
murdering the station-agent upon Payson.  The ranchman had evidently
left the station a short time before the murder, and had gone straight
south to the Sweetwater.  Unless it had become confused with their own
tracks, the trail would be a plain one, owing to the fact that it was
made by a pacing horse, and the pursuit would undoubtedly follow this.

Payson rode the only pacing horse in the Sweetwater and Bar One
outfits, and it was certain to come to light, from Terrill's receipts,
that he had been with the agent about the time of the killing.  The
motive for the robbery would be evident.  Payson was in need of three
thousand dollars to pay off the mortgage on his ranch.

McKee said to Bud:  "I've changed my mind.  I think I'll see a little
fun before I break for Texas.  I'll go with you to the weddin'."

"But you ain't got no invite," objected Bud.

"Oh, I reckon they'll take me along on yours.  I know too much fer
Payson to objeck to me too strenuous."

They rode up to Allen Hacienda shortly after Slim Hoover had arrived.
They could hear the merriment of the wedding-guests in the kitchen.
Loud laughter was punctuated by the popping of corks, and McKee, who
rode in advance of Bud, distinguished the voice of the Sheriff in
expostulation against the general raillery concentrated upon him.

The half-breed grinned wolfishly.  It was evident that the bloodhound
of the law had tracked the supposed murderer just as the real criminal
had conjectured and desired.

Polly ran out on the piazza.  She saw the man whom she regarded as her
lover's evil genius.  As he greeted her ingratiatingly: "Howdy, Miss
Polly," she replied sharply:

"You ain't got no invite to this weddin'."

"I come with my friend Bud," he explained, with an elaborate bow.

"I didn't see you, Bud," answered Polly slightly mollified, as she
crossed the door-yard to shake hands with her sweetheart. Buck offered
her his hand, but she ignored him.  McKee shrugged his shoulders, and
started for the house.

"Bud, he's some cast down because it's not his weddin'," was McKee's
parting shot at the young couple.  "I 'low I'll go in and join the
boys.  Excuse me."

"With pleasure," coldly replied the girl.

The half-breed ignored the sarcasm and, answering innocently, "Much
obliged," he entered the house.

Polly turned on Bud, displaying her resentment.  "You an' him always
kick up the devil when you're together.  What did you bring him along
fer?" she demanded.

"It's his last chance to see any fun around here; he's leavin' for
Texas," explained Bud.

"Fer how long?"

"Fer good."

"Fer our good, you mean.  There's too many of his kind comin' into this
country.  Did you hear about 'Ole Man' Terrill?"

Bud did not wait for her to explain, but nervously answered: "They told
us about it in Florence when we were coming through, We've been at the
Lazy K."

"Wasn't it dreadful?" rattled on Polly.  "Slim's here--the boys are
goin' to turn out with him after the weddin' to see if they can ketch
the feller who did the killin'."

Bud paled as he heard the news.  To conceal his distress he moved
toward the door.  Anywhere to get away from the girl to whom he feared
he would betray himself.  "I'll join 'em," he huskily answered.

Polly, however, could see no reason for his evident haste to leave her.

She felt hurt, but thought his actions were due to her scolding him for
being with McKee.

"You ain't ever ast me how I look," she inquired, seeking to detain him.

"You look fine," complimented Bud perfunctorily.

"W'en a feller ain't seen a feller in a week, seems like a feller ought
to brace up and start something," replied Polly, in an injured tone.

Bud smiled in spite of his fears.  Catching the girl in his arms, he
kissed her, and said:  "I was a-waitin' for the chance."

Polly disengaged herself from his embrace, and sighed contentedly.
"That's something like it.  What's the use of bein' engaged to a feller
if you can't have all the trimmin's that goes with it.  You look as if
you wasn't too happy."

Bud pulled himself together with an effort.  He realized that if he did
not show more interest in the girl and the wedding he might be
suspected of connection with the murder.

He trumped up an explanation of his moodiness.  "Well, what call have I
to be happy?  Ain't I lost my job?"

"Yes, but that's because you were hot-headed, gave your boss too much
lip.  But everything will come out all right.  Jack says--"

"Has that low-down liar an' thief been comin' it over you, Polly? Did
he tell you how he gave the place he promised me to Sage-brush?"

"That wasn't until you gave him slack, Bud.  I'm sure he ain't a thief;
why--"

"Thief, of course he is, an' a blacker-hearted one than the man that
killed Terrill.  Ain't he going to steal my brother Dick's girl this
very night?"

"But Dick is dead," expostulated Polly.

"Dick ain't dead; I know it--that is," he stammered, "I feel it in my
bones he ain't dead. An' Jack feels it, too; that's why he's hurried up
this weddin'."

"But your own friend, Buck McKee, saw Dick just before the 'Paches
killed him."

"But not after it.  An' Buck now thinks the Rurales may have come up in
time to save him."

"Seems to me if that's so he has had time enough since then to write,"
objected Polly, who was, nevertheless, impressed by Bud's vehemence.

"How do you know that he has not written?"

Polly could only gasp.  These accusations were coming too fast for her
to answer.

"You can't tell what a man might do in a case like that.  Perhaps
Dick's 'way in the mountains, away from the railroad, prospectin' down
in the Ghost Range, where he has been tryin' to locate the lost lode.
There's lots of reasons for his not writing to Echo. But Echo doesn't
seem to mind.  A year an' a half is enough to mend any woman's heart."

"Now, you--" began Polly, who was growing angry under the charges which
were being heaped on her two best friends by the overwrought boy.

Bud would not let her finish, but cried: "Echo never loved him. If she
did she would not be acting like she is goin' to to-night."

Rushing to Echo's defense Polly answered:  "She may or may not have
loved Dick Lane, but I know that she loves Jack Payson now with all her
heart and, even if the 'Paches did not get your brother, he's as dead
to her as if they had."

Polly was startled and confused by Bud's accusations. Accordingly, it
was a relief to her when Payson appeared on the scene.  They had been
so interested in their conversation that they did not hear him ride up
to the house.  "Hello, Polly! Hello, Bud!" were his cordial greetings,
for he was determined to ignore his former employee's hostility.  Bud
did not answer, but looked moodily on the ground.

To Eastern eyes Payson's wedding-attire would appear most incongruous.
About his waist was strapped a revolver. His riding-trousers,
close-fitting and corded, were buttoned over the calves of his legs.
Soft, highly polished leather boots reached to his knees.  His shirt
was of silk, deeply embroidered down the front and at the collar.  His
jacket gave him ample breathing-room about the chest, but tapered at
the waist and clung closely over the hips.  He wore a sombrero and a
knotted silk handkerchief.  His face was deeply sunburned, except a
spot shaped like crescent just below the hairline on the forehead,
which was protected from the sun by the hat and the shade of the brim.
A similar line of fairer skin ran around the edge of the scalp,
beginning over the ears.  His hair shaded the upper part of his neck
from the sun's rays.  When his hair was trimmed the untanned part
showed as plainly as if painted.  It is the mark of the plainsman in a
city or on a holiday.

"Well, it's about time that you got here," said Polly, with a sigh of
relief.  "Where have you been?"

"I stopped over to Sam Terrill's to see about something that I ordered
from Kansas City.  Then I had to go back to my ranch--"

Bud started guiltily.  Forgetting his determination to ignore Payson,
he asked anxiously.  "You didn't see Terrill, did you?"

"Oh, yes.  Why do you ask?"

Polly laid her hand on Payson's arm and told him briefly of the
shooting of Terrill.

"Who shot him?" he asked, when she had finished.

"They don't know--he was robbed of a pile of money--Slim Hoover's just
rode over to get a posse," she replied, looking toward the door.  At
this bit of information Payson became anxious about the plans for his
wedding.  The ceremony was uppermost in his mind at the time.

"Well, he can get one after the wedding."  Then he asked:  "Is the
minister here yet?"

Polly laughingly replied:  "You're feelin' pretty spry now, but you'll
be as meek as a baby calf in a little while.  In this section a
bridegroom is treated worse than a tenderfoot."

Payson smiled.  He knew he was in for a thorough hazing by the boys.
"That's all right.  I'll get back at you some day--when you and Bud--"

Polly interrupted him with a remark about minding his own business.

Bud avoided entering into the conversation.  He had walked toward the
door and was standing on the steps when he answered for Polly.

"Looks as if you're chances of gettin' even with us is a long way off,"
he said.  Turning, he entered the house, to join the other guests who,
by the noise, were enjoying Allen's importations from Tucson to the
bottom of every glass.

Polly looked after Bud, smiling quizzically.  "Bud's mighty hopeful,
ain't he?  Ain't you happy?"

"You bet!  Don't I look it?" cried Jack, rubbing his hands. "Never
thought I could be so happy.  A fellow doesn't get married every day in
the week."

"Not unless he lives in Chicago; I hear it's the habit there," answered
Polly.

"The sweetest girl in the Territory--" began Jack.

"You bet she is," Polly broke in.  "If you just want to keep her lovin'
and lovin' you--all you've got to do is to treat her white and play
square with her."

"Play square with her," thought Payson.  Was he playing square with
her?  He knew that he was not, but the chance of losing her was too
great for him to risk.

"For if you ain't on the level with Echo Allen, well--you might as well
crawl out of camp, that's the kind of girl she is," Polly exclaimed
loyally.



CHAPTER VII

Josephine Opens the Sluices

Entering the living-room, Bud found Echo surrounded by several girls
from Florence and the neighboring ranches, who were driving her almost
distracted  with their admiring attentions, for she was greatly
disturbed about her lover's inexplicable absence. Had she been free
from the duties of hospitality, she would have leaped on her horse and
gone in search of him.

Echo's wedding-attire would seem as incongruous as Jack's to the eyes
of an Easterner, yet it was entirely suited to the circumstances, for
the couple intended, as soon as they were married, to ride to a little
hunting-cabin of Jack's in the Tortilla Mountains, where they would
spend their honeymoon.

She was dressed in an olive-green riding-habit, which she had brought
from the East.  The skirt was divided, and reached just below the knee;
her blouse, of lighter material, and brown in color, was loose,
allowing free play for her arms and shoulders. High riding-boots were
laced to the knee.  A sombrero and riding-gloves lay on the table ready
to complete her costume.

Bud coldly acknowledged Echo's affectionate and happy greeting, and
curtly informed her that Jack had arrived.

She rushed out of doors with a cry of joy.

Running across the courtyard toward her lover, who awaited her with
outstretched arms, she began:

"Well, this is a nice time, you outrageous--" when Polly stopped her
with a mock-serious look.  "Wait a minute--wait a minute" (the girl
drawled as if reining in a too eager horse) "don't commence calling
love-names before you get the hitch--time enough after. He has been
actin' up something scandalous with me."

Jack threw up his hands in protest, hastily denying any probable charge
that the tease might make.  "Why, I haven't been saying a word!" he
cried.

Polly laughed as she ran to the door.

"No, you haven't," she answered mockingly, as one agrees with a child
whose feelings have been hurt.  "He's only been tellin' me he loved--"
Pausing an instant, she pointed at Echo, ending her sentence with a
shouted "you."

With her hand on Jack's shoulder, Echo said:  "Polly, you are a flirt.
You've too many strings to your bow."

"You mean I've too many beaux to my string!" laughingly answered the
girl.

"You'll have Slim Hoover and Bud Lane shooting each other up all on
your account," chided Echo.

"Nothing of the kind," pouted Polly.  "Can't a girl have friends? But I
know what you two are waiting for?"

"What?" asked Jack.

"You want me to vamose.  I'm hep.  I'll vam."

And Polly ran into the kitchen to tell the men that the bridegroom had
arrived, but couldn't be seen until the bride was through with an
important interview with him.  So she hustled them all into the
living-room, where the girls were.

This room was a long and low apartment, roughly plastered.  The heavy
ceiling-beams, hewn with axes, were uncovered, giving an old English
effect, although this was not striven for, but made under the stress of
necessity.  The broad windows were trellised with vines, through which
filtered the sunshine.  A cooling evening breeze stirred the leaves
lazily.  The chairs were broad and comfortable--the workmanship of the
monks of the neighboring mission.  In the corners stood squat, earthen
water-jars of Mexican molding.  On the adobe walls were hung trophies
of the hunt; war-bonnets and the crudely made adornments of the Apaches.

Navajo blankets covered the window-seats, and were used as screens for
sets of shelves built into the spaces between the windows.

Polly carried in on a tray a large bowl of punch surrounded by glasses
and gourds.  This was received with riotous demonstrations.  She placed
it in the center of a table made of planks laid on trestles, and
assisted by the other girls, served the men liberally from the bowl.

The guests showed the effects of outdoor life and training. Their
gestures were full and free.  The tones of their voices were
high-pitched, but they spoke more slowly than their Eastern cousins, as
if feeling the necessity, even when confined, of making every word
carry.  No one lolled in his seat, but sat upright, as if still having
the feel of the saddle under him.

Toward women in all social gatherings, the cowboys act with exaggerated
chivalry, but, as Sage-brush would describe it, they "herd by their
lonesome."  There is none of the commingling of sexes seen in the East.
At a dance the girls sit at one end of the room, the men group
themselves about the doorway until the music strikes up.  Then each
will seize his partner after the boldest has made the first move.  When
the dance-measure ends the cowboy will rarely escort partner to her
seat, but will leave her to find her way back to her chum, while he
moves sheepishly back to the doorway, to be received by his fellows
with slaps on the back and loud jests.  At table cowboys carry on
little conversation with the girls.  They talk amongst themselves, but
at the women.  The presence of the girls leads them to play many pranks
on one another.  The ice is long in breaking, for their habitual
reserve is not easily worn off.  Later in the evening this shyness is
less marked.

As Jack and Echo entered the doorway, Parenthesis had arisen from his
seat at the head of table and was beginning: "Fellow citizens--"

Confused cries of "Sit down," "Let him talk!" greeted him.

Sage-brush held up his hand for silence: "Go ahead, Parenthesis," he
cried encouragingly.

Parenthesis climbed on a chair and put a foot on the table.  This was
too much for the orderly soul of Mrs. Allen.  "Take your dirty feet off
my tablecloth!" she commanded, making a threatening move toward the
offender.

Allen restrained her, and Fresno caused Parenthesis to subside by
yelling: "Get down offen that table, you idiot.  There's the bride an'
groom comin' in behind you.  We CAN see 'em through yer legs, but we
don't like that kin' of a frame."

Jack had slipped his arm about Echo's waist.  She was holding his hand,
smiling at the exuberance of their guests.  Buck McKee, who had been
drinking freely, staggered to his feet and hiccoughed: "Here, now,
this, yere don't go--this spoonin' business--there ain't goin' to be no
mush and milk served out before the weddin'--"

"Will you shut up?" admonished Slim Hoover.

"No, siree," cried the belligerent McKee.  "There ain't no man here can
shut me up.  I'm Buck McKee, I am, and when I starts in on a
weddin'-festivities--I deal--"

"This is one game you are not in on," answered Jack quietly, feeling
that he would have to take the lead in the settlement of the
unfortunate interruption of the fun.

"That's all right, Jack," McKee began, holding out his hand--"let
bygones--"

Jack was in no mood to parley with the offender.  McKee had not been
invited to the wedding.  The young bridegroom knew that if the first
offense were overlooked it would only encourage him, and he would make
trouble all evening.  Moreover, he disliked Buck because of his evil
habits and ugly record.

"You came to this weddin' without an invite," claimed Jack.

"I'm here," he growled.

"You're not wanted."

"What?" shouted McKee, paling with anger.

Turning to his friends, speaking calmly and paying no attention to the
aroused desperado, Jack said:  "Boys, you all know my objection to this
man.  Dick Lane caught him spring before last slitting the tongue of
one of Uncle Jim's calves."

"It's a lie!" shouted McKee, pulling his revolver and attempting to
level it at his accuser.  Hoover was too quick for him. Catching him by
the wrist, he deftly forced him to drop the muzzle toward the floor.

With frightened cries the girls huddled in a corner.  The other cowboys
upset chairs, springing to their feet, drawing revolvers half-way from
holsters as they did so.

Hoover had pressed his thumb into the back of McKee's hand, forcing him
to open his fingers and drop his gun on the table. Picking it up,
Hoover snapped the weapon open, emptied the cylinders of the cartridges.

Jack made no move to defend himself.  He was aware his friends could
protect him.

"That'll do," he said to the raging, disarmed puncher.  "You can go,
Buck.  When I want you in any festivities, I'll send a special invite
to you."

"I'm sure much obliged," sneered McKee, making his way toward the door.

"Here's your gun," cried Slim, tossing the weapon toward him.

McKee caught the weapon, muttering "Thanks."

"It needs cleaning," sneered the Sheriff.

Turning at the doorway, McKee said; "I ain't much stuck on weddin's,
anyway."  Looking at Jack, he continued threateningly: "Next time we
meet it'll be at a little swaree of my own."

"Get," was Jack's laconic and ominous command.

With assumed carelessness, McKee answered:  "I'm a-gettin'. Well,
gents, I hopes you all'll enjoy this yere pink tea.  Say, Bud, put a
piece of weddin'-cake in your pocket for me.  I wants to dream on it."

"Who brought him here?" asked Jack, facing his guests.

"I did," answered Bud defiantly.

"You might have known better," was Jack's only comment.

"I'm not a-sayin' who's to come and go.  This ain't none of my weddin'."

Polly stopped further comment by laying her hand over his mouth and
slipping into the seat beside him.

"Well, let it go at that," said Jack, closing the incident.

He rejoined Echo as he spoke.  The guests reseated themselves. Mrs.
Allen laid her hand on Jack's shoulder and said:  "Just the same, it
ain't right and proper for you to be together before the ceremony
without a chaperonie."

"Nothin' that's right nice is ever right proper," laughed Slim.

"Well, it ain't the way folks does back East," replied Mrs. Allen
tartly, glaring at the Sheriff.

"Blast the East," growled Allen.  "We does things in our own way out
here."

With a mischievous smile, Slim glanced at his comrades, and then
solemnly observed:  "Still, I hear they does make the two
contractin'-parties sit off alone by themselves--"

"What for?" asked Jack.

"Why, to give them the last bit of quiet enjoyment they're goin' to
have for the rest of their lives," chuckled Slim.

The cowboys laughed hilariously at the sally, but Mrs. Allen, throwing
her arms about Echo's neck, burst into tears, crying: "My little girl."

"What's the use of opening up the sluices now, Josephine?"

"Let her alone, Jim," drawled Slim; "her feelin's is harrowed some, an'
irrigation is what they needs most."

The outburst of tears was incomprehensible to the bridegroom. Already
irritated by the McKee incident, he took affront at the display of
sentiment.

"I don't want any crying at MY wedding."

"It's half my wedding," pouted Echo tearfully.

"Ain't I losin' my daughter," sobbed Mrs. Allen.

"Ain't you getting my mother's son?" snapped Jack.

The men howled with glee at the rude badinage which only called forth a
fresh burst of weeping on the part of Mrs. Allen, in which the girls
began show symptoms of joining.

Polly sought to soothe the trouble by pushing Jack playfully to one
side, and saying: "Oh, stop it all.  Look here, Echo Allen, you know
your hair ain't fixed yet."

"An' the minister due here at any minute," added Mrs. Allen.

"Come along, we will take charge of you now," ordered Polly.  The girls
gathered in a group about the bride, bustling and chattering, telling
her all men were brutes at time and, looking at the fat Sheriff, who
blushed to the roots of his hair at the charge, that "Slim Hoover was
the worst of the lot."  Mrs. Allen pushed them away, and again fell
weeping on Echo's shoulder. "Hold on now, They ain't a soul goin' to do
nothin' for her except her mother," she whimpered.

"There she goes again," said Jack in disgust.

"He's goin' to take my child away from me," wailed the mother.

Tears were streaming down Echo's cheek. "Don't cry, mother," she wept.

"No, no, don't cry," echoed the girls.

"It's all for the best," began Polly.

"It's all for the best, it's all for the best," chorused the group.

"Well, I'll be--" gasped Jack.

"Jack Payson you just ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Polly,
stamping her foot.  "You nasty, mean old thing," she threw in for good
measure.

Mrs. Allen led Echo from the room.  The girls followed, crying "You
nasty, mean old thing" to the unfortunate bridegroom.

The cowboys enjoyed the scene immensely.  It was a bit of human comedy,
totally unexpected.  First they imitated the weeping women, and then
laughed uproariously at Jack.

"Did you ever see such darned carryings on," said the bridegroom, in
disgust.  "What have I done?"

"Shucks!  All mothers is like that," remarked Allen sympathetically.
"They fuss if their girls marry and they fuss if they don't.  Why, my
ma carried on something scandalous when Josephine roped me."

All of the men chuckled except Jack.

"I'm appointed a committees," continued the old rancher, "to sit up
with you till the fatal moment."

"I'm game," responded Jack grimly.  "I know what's coming, but I won't
squeal."

"You'll git all that's a-comin' to you," grinned Allen.

Slim had maneuvered until he reached the door blocking Jack's way.  As
the bridegroom started to leave the room he took his hand, and with an
assumption of deep dejection and sorrow bade him "Good-bye."

"Oh, dry up!" laughed Jack, pushing the Sheriff aside.  Halting, he
requested:  "One thing I want to understand right now, if you're goin'
to fling any old boots after me remove the spurs."

"This yere's a sure enough event, an' I'm goin' to tap the barrel--an'
throw away the bung.  Wow!" shouted Sage-brush.



CHAPTER VIII

The Sky Pilot

With the waves of immigration which have rolled Westward from the more
populous East, the minister of the gospel has always been in the van.
Often he combined the functions of the school-teacher with the duties
of the medical missionary.  Wherever a dozen families had settled
within a radius of a hundred miles, the representative of a church was
soon to follow.  He preached no creed.  His doctrines were as wide as
the horizon.  Living in the open air, preaching to congregations
gathered from the ends of the country, dealing with men more
unconventional than immoral, his sermons were concerned with the square
deal rather than with dogma. His influences were incalculable.  He made
ready the field for the reapers who gathered the glory with the advance
of refinement. On the frontier he married the children, buried the
dead, consoled the mourners, and rejoiced with those upon whom fortune
smiled.  His hardships were many and his rewards nothing. Of all the
fields of human endeavor which built up the West, the ministry is the
only one in which the material returns have not been commensurate with
the labor expended.

The Reverend Samuel Price was the representatives of the Christian army
in Pinal County, Arizona, at the time of our story.  He was long and
lank, narrow in the chest, with sloping shoulders.  Even life on the
plains could not eradicate the scholarly droop.  His trousers were
black, and they bagged at the knees.  When riding, his trousers would
work up about his calves, showing a wide expanse of white socks.  For
comfort he wore an alpaca coat, which hung loosely about him, and, for
the dignity of his profession, the only boiled shirt in the county,
with a frayed collar and white string-tie.

The Reverend Mr. Price was liked by the settlers.  He never interfered
with what they considered their relaxations, and he had the saving
grace of humor.

The guests were performing a scalp-dance about the table when he
entered the room.  For a tom-tom, Parenthesis was beating a bucket with
a gourd, and emitting strange cries with each thump. The noise and
shouts confused the minister.  As he was blundering among the dancers,
they fell upon him with war-whoops, slapping him on the back and
crushing his straw hat over his ears.

Slim was the first to recognize the minister.  He dashed into the
group, and, swinging several aside, cried to the others to desist.

"Pardon me, but do I intrude upon a scalp-dance?" smilingly asked the
parson.

"You sure have, Mr. Price," laughed Slim.  "We hain't got to the
scalpin'-part yet, but we're fixin' to dance off Payson's scalp
to-night."

Peering at him with near-sighted eyes, Mr. Price extended his hand,
saying:  "Ah, Mr. Hoover, our sheriff, is it not?"

Slim wrung the parson's hand until the preacher winced.  Hiding his
discomfort, he slowly straightened out his fingers with a painful grin.
Slim had not noticed that he had hurt the parson by the heartiness of
his greeting.  With a gesture he lined up the cowboys for introduction.

"Yes, sir, the boys call me Slim because I ain't."  Pointing to the
first one in the group, he exclaimed:  "This is Parenthesis."

Mr. Price looked at the awkwardly bowing cowboy in amazement. The name
was a puzzle to him.  He could not grasp the application. "The editor
of the Kicker," explained Slim, "called him that because of his legs
bein' built that way."  Mr. Price was forced to smile in spite of his
efforts to be polite.  The editor had grasped the most striking feature
of the puncher's physical characteristics for a label.

Parenthesis beamed on the minister.  "I was born on horseback," he
replied.

"That fellow there with a front tooth is Show Low," began Slim,
speaking like a lecturer in a freak-show.  "The one without a front
tooth is Fresno, a California product.  This yere chap with the
water-dob hair is Sage-brush Charley.  It makes him sore when you call
him plain Charley."

"Charley bein' a Chink name," supplemented its owner.

Silence fell over the group, for they did not know what was the proper
thing to do next.  A minister was to be respected, and not to be made
one of them.  He must take the lead in the conversation.  Mr. Price was
at a loss how to begin.  He had not recovered fully from the roughness
of his welcome, so Slim took the lead again.

"I heard you preach once up to Florence," he announced, to the profound
astonishment of his hearers.

"Indeed," politely responded Mr. Price, feeling the futility of making
any further observations.  He feared to fall into some trap. The
answers made by the boys did not seem to fit particularly well with
what he expected and was accustomed to. The parson could not make out
whether the boys were joking with him, or whether their replies were
unconscious humor on their part.

"Yep, I lost an election bet, and had to go to church," answered Slim,
in all seriousness.

The cowboys laughed, and Mr. Price lamely replied:  "Oh, yes, I see."

"It was a good show," continued Slim, doing his best to appear at ease.
The frantic corrections of his companions only made him flounder about
the more.

"Excuse me," he apologized, "I mean that I enjoyed it."

"Do you recall the subject of my discourse," inquired Mr. Price, coming
to his assistance.

"Your what course?" asked Slim.

"My sermon?" answered the parson.

"Well, I should say yes," replied the Sheriff, greatly relieved to
think that he was once more out of deep water.  "It was about some
shorthorn that jumped the home corral to maverick around loose in the
alfalfa with a bunch of wild ones."

The explanation was too much for Mr. Price.  Great student of the Bible
as he had been, here was one lesson which he had not studied. As told
by Slim, he could not recall any text or series of text from which he
might have drawn similes fitted for his cowboy congregation, when he
had one.  "Really, I--" he began.

Slim, however, was not to be interrupted.  If he stopped he never could
begin again, he felt.  Waving to the preacher to be silent, he
continued his description: "When his wad was gone the bunch threw him
down, and he had to hike for the sage-brush an' feed with the hogs on
husks an' sech like winter fodder."

The minister caught the word "husks."  Slim was repeating his own
version of the parable of the Prodigal Son.

"Husks?  Oh, the Prodigal Son," smiled Price.

"That's him," Slim sighed, with relief.  "This yere feed not being up
to grade, Prod he 'lows he'd pull his freight back home, square himself
with the old man and start a new deal--"

Sage-brush was deeply interested in the story.  Its charm had attracted
him as it had scholars and outcasts alike since first told two thousand
years ago on the plains of Old Judea.

"Did he stand for it?" he interrupted.

"He sure did," eloquently replied Slim, who was surprised and delighted
with the great impression he was making with his experience at church.
"Oh, he was a game old buck, he was.  Why, the minute he sighted that
there prodigious son a-limpin' across the mesa, he ran right out an'
fell on his neck--"

"An' broke it," cried Fresno, slapping Sage-brush with his hat in his
delight at getting at the climax of the story before Slim reached it.

The narrator cast a glance of supreme disgust at the laughing puncher.
"No, what the hell!" he shouted.  "He hugged him.  Then he called in
the neighbors, barbecued a yearlin' calf, an' give a barn-dance, with
fireworks in the evenin'."

"That's all right in books," observed Sage-brush, "but if I'd made a
break like that when I was a kid my old man would a fell on my neck for
fair."

"That was a good story, Parson--it's straight, ain't it?" asked Slim,
as a wave of doubt swept over him.

"It's gospel truth," answered the minister. "Do you know the moral of
the story?"

"Sure," replied Slim.  With a confidence born of deep self-assurance,
Slim launched the answer: "Don't be a fatted calf."

At first his hearers did not grasp the full force of the misapplication
of the parable.  Mr. Price could not refrain from laughing.  The others
joined with him when the humor of the reply dawned upon them.  Pointing
scornfully at the fat Sheriff, they shouted gleefully, while Slim
blushed through his tan.

"Now, if you'll kindly show me where--" began Mr. Price.

"Sure.  All the liquor's in the kitchen--" said Sage-brush, expanding
with hospitality.

Slim pushed Sage-brush back into his chair, and Parenthesis tapped the
minister on the shoulder to distract his attention.

"Thanks.  I meant to ask for a place to change clothes."

"Sure you mustn't mind Sage-brush there," apologized Parenthesis; "he's
allus makin' breaks.  Let me tote your war-bag.  Walk this way."

"Good day, gentlemen," smiled Mr. Price.  "When you are up my way, I
trust you will honor my church with your presence--" adding, after a
pause--"without waiting to lose an election bet."

The entrance of a Greaser to refill glasses diverted the attention of
the guests until the most important function for them was performed.
With "hows" and "here's to the bride," they drank the toast.  Slim, as
majordomo of the feast, felt it incumbent upon himself to keep the
others in order.  Turning angrily upon Sage-brush, he said.  "Why did
you tell the Sky Pilot where the liquor was?"

"I was just tryin' to do the right thing," answered Sage-brush
defiantly.

"Embarrassin' us all like that.  You ought to know that parsons don't
hit up the gasoline--in public," scolded Slim.

Sage muttered sulkily:  "I never herded with parsons none."

Parenthesis diplomatically avoided any further controversy by calling:
"They're gettin' ready.  Jim's got Jack in the back room tryin' to
cheer him up.  Boys, is everything ready for the getaway?"

"Sage-brush, did you get that rice?" demanded Slim.

"That's so--I forgot.  I couldn't get no rice though.  Dawson didn't
have none."

Without telling what he did get, Sage-brush ran from the room to the
corral.

"I told you not to let him have anything to do with it," said Fresno,
glaring at his fellow workers.  Each was silent, as the accusation was
general, and none had been taken into the confidence of Sage-brush and
Fresno when arrangements were being made for the feast.  Fresno had to
blame some one, however.  By this time Sage-brush had returned,
carrying a bag.

"What did you get?" asked Slim.

"Corn," replied Sage-brush laconically.

"Ain't he the darndest!" Show Low expressed the disgust which the
others showed.

"Why, darn it," shouted Slim, shaking his fist at the unfortunate
Sage-brush, "you can't let the bride and groom hop the home ranch
without chuckin' rice at 'em--it's bad medicine."

"Ain't he disgustin'!" interrupted Fresno.

"What does rice mean, anyhow?" asked the bewildered Sage-brush.

"It means something about wishin' 'em good luck, health, wealth, an'
prosperity, an' all that sort of thing--it's a sign an' symbol of joy,"
rattled off Slim.

"Well, now, ain't there more joy in corn than in rice?" triumphantly
asked Sage-brush.

Slim jerked open the top of the bag while Sage-brush stood by
helplessly.  "Well, the darned idiot!" he muttered, as he peered into
it.  "If he ain't gone and got it on the ear," he continued, as he
pulled a big ear out.

"All the better," chuckled Sage-brush.  "We'll chuck 'em joy in
bunches."

"Don't you know that if you hit the bride with a club like this--you'll
put her plumb out?" cried Slim.

Sage-brush was not cast down, however.  Always resourceful, he
suggested:  "We'll shell some for the bride, but we'll hand Jack his in
bunches."

The idea appealing to the punchers, each grabbed an ear of corn. Some
brandished the ears like clubs; others aimed them like revolvers.

"I'll keep this one," said Slim, picking out an unusually large ear.
"It's a .44.  I'll get one of the Greasers to shell some for the bride."

The bride was arrayed in her wedding-gown.  Mrs. Allen was ready for a
fresh burst of weeping.  The girls had assembled in the large room in
which the ceremony was to be performed.  Polly acted as her herald for
the cowboys.  Appearing in the doorway, she commanded: "Say, you folks
come on and get seated."

Slim stood beside Polly as the boys marched past him.  His general
admonition was:  "The first one you shorthorns that makes a break, I'm
goin' to bend a gun over your head."

The guests grinned cheerfully as they marched past the couple.

"There's a heap of wickedness in that bunch," remarked Slim piously to
the girl.  Tossing a flower to him as she darted away, she cried: "You
ain't none too good yourself, Slim."

"Ain't she a likely filly," mused the love-sick Sheriff.  "If there's
anybody that could make me good, it's her.  I'm all in. If ever I get
the nerve all at once--darn me if I don't ask her right out."

But Slim's courage oozed as quickly as it had arisen, and with a sigh
he followed his companions to the wedding.



CHAPTER IX

What God Hath Joined Together

Dick Lane, on leaving the hospital at Chihuahua, went straight to the
fortified ledge where he had made his heroic defense.  As he
conjectured, the renegade, McKee, had got there first, and found and
made off with the buried treasure.  So Dick manfully set to work to
replace his lost fortune.  It seemed too slow work to go to his mine
and dig the gold he immediately required out of the ground, so he
struck out for civilization to sell some of his smaller claims.  In the
course of a month, at the end of which his wanderings brought him to
Tucson, he had sold enough of his holdings to give him three thousand
dollars in ready cash.  As he was near the Sweetwater, he resolved not
to express the money to Payson, but to take it himself.

He entered the courtyard of Allen Hacienda while the wedding was taking
place within.  None of his friends would have recognized him.  His
frame was emaciated from sickness; his head was drawn back by the
torture which he had suffered; he limped upon feet that had been
distorted by the firebrands in McKee's hands; and his face was
overgrown by an unkempt beard.

Sounds of laughter fell upon his ears as he mounted the steps. He heard
Fresno shout to Slim to hurry up, as he was telling the story about a
fellow that was so tanked up he could not say "sasaparilla."

Dick halted.  "There must be some sort of a party going on here," he
thought to himself.  "It won't do to take Echo too much by surprise.
If Jack got my letter and told her, it's all right, but if it
miscarried--the shock might kill her.  I'll see Jack first."

Dick had ridden first to Sweetwater Ranch, but found the place
deserted.  The party, he mused, accounted for this.  While he was
planning a way to attract the attention of some one in the house, and
to get Payson to the garden without letting Echo know of his presence,
Sage-brush Charley, who had espied the stranger through the window,
sauntered out on the porch to investigate.  Every visitor to the
Territory needed looking over, especially after the trouble with Buck
McKee.

Sage-brush was bound that there should be no hitch at the wedding of
his boss.

"Howdy," greeted Lane pleasantly.  "I'm looking for Jack Payson."

"That so?" answered Sage-brush.  "Who may you be?"

"I'm a friend of his."

The foreman could see no danger to come from this weak, sickly man.
"Then walk right in," he invited; "he's inside."

Sage-brush was about to reenter the house, when Dick halted him with
the request: "I want to see him out here--privately."

"What's the name," asked Sage-brush, his suspicions returning.

"Tell him an old friend from Mexico."

Sage-brush did not like the actions of the stranger and his secrecy.
He was there to fight his boss's battles, if he had any. This was not
in the contract, but it was a part read into the paper by Sage-brush.

"Say, my name's Sage-brush Charley," he cried, with a show of
importance.  "I'm ranch-boss for Payson.  If you want to settle any old
claim agin' Jack, I'm actin' as his substitoot for him this evenin'."

"On the contrary," said Lane, with a smile at Sage-brush's outbreak,
"he has a claim against me."

It was such a pleasant, kindly look he gave Sage-brush, that the
foreman was disarmed completely.

"I'll tell him," he said over his shoulder.

Dick mused over the changes that had occurred since he had left the
region.  Two years' absence from a growing country means new faces, new
ranches, and the wiping out of old landmarks with the advance of
population and the invasion of the railroad.  He wondered if Jack would
know him with his beard.  He knew--his mirror told him--that his
appearance had changed greatly, and he looked twenty years older than
on the day he left the old home ranch.

His trend of thought was interrupted by the entrance of Jack on the
porch from the house.

"My name's Payson," Jack began hurriedly, casting a hasty glance
backward into the hallway, for the ceremony was about to begin. "You
want to see me?"

"Jack!" cried Dick, holding out his hand eagerly.  "Jack, old man,
don't you know me?" he continued falteringly, seeing no sign of
recognition in his friend's eyes.

Payson gasped, shocked and startled.  The man before him was a stranger
in looks, but the voice--the voice was that of Dick Lane, the last man
in the world he wanted to see at that moment. Frightened, almost
betraying himself, he glanced at the half-open door.  If Dick entered
he knew Echo would be lost to him.  She might love him truly, and her
love for Dick might have passed away, but he knew that Echo would never
forgive him for the deception that he had practised upon her.

Grasping his friend's hand weakly, he faltered, "Dick!  Dick Lane!"

Jack realized he must act quickly.  Some way or somehow Dick must be
kept out of the house until after the marriage.  Then he, Jack, must
take the consequences.  Dick saw his hesitation.  It was not what he
had expected.  But something dreadful might have happened while he was
away, there had been so many changes.

"Why, what's the matter?" he asked anxiously. "You got my letter? You
knew I was coming?"

"Yes, yes, I know," lamely answered Jack.  "But I expected notice--you
know you said--"

"I couldn't wait.  Jack, I'm a rich man, thanks to you--"

"Yes, yes, that's all right," said Payson, disclaiming the praise of
the man he had so grievously wronged with a hurried acknowledgment of
his gratitude.

"And I hurried back for fear Echo--"

"Oh, yes.  I'll tell her about it, when she's ready to hear it."

"What is the matter, Jack?  Are you keeping something from me? Where is
she?"

"In there," said Payson feebly, pointing to the door.

Dick eagerly started toward the house, but Jack halted him, saying:
"No--you mustn't go in now. There's a party-you see, she hasn't been
well, doesn't expect you to-night.  The shock might be too much for
her."

Jack grasped at the lame excuse.  It was the first to come to his mind.
He must think quickly.  This experience was tearing the heart out of
him.  He could not save himself from betrayal much longer.

"You're right," acquiesced Dick.  "You tell her when you get a chance.
Jack, as I was saying, I've made quite a bit of money out of my Bisbee
holdings.  I can pay back my stake to you now."

"Not now," said Jack nervously.

Would this torture never end?  Here was his friend, whom he had
betrayed come back in the very hour of his marriage to the woman who
had promised first to marry him.  Now he was offering him money, which
Jack needed badly, for his prospective mother-in-law was complaining
about his taking her daughter to a mortgaged home.

"Sure, now," continued Dick, pulling a roll of bills from his pocket.
"It's three thousand dollars--here it is, all in one bundle."

"Not now, let that wait," said Jack, pushing the money aside.

"It's waited long enough," cried Dick doggedly.  "You put the mortgage
on your ranch to let me have the money, and it must be about due now."

"Yes, it will be due, but let it wait."

"What's the use?  I'm all right now.  I brought the cash with me on
purpose.  I wanted to square it with you on sight."

Dick pressed the money into Jack's hand, closing his fingers over the
roll of bills.  With a sigh of relief, as if a disagreeable task was
completed, he questioned:  "How's Bud?"

Jack replied shortly: "All right; he's inside."

"I didn't write to him," cheerfully resumed Dick.  "I didn't want the
kid to know.  He is so excitable, he would have blabbed it right out.
I'll sure be glad to see the boy again.  He's impulsive, but his
heart's all right.  I know you've kept a lookout over him."

This trust in him was getting too much for Jack to bear, so the voice
of Polly crying to him to hurry up was music to his ears. "I'm coming,"
he shouted.  "I'll see you in a few minutes," he told Dick.  "I've
something to tell you.  I can't tell you now."

"Go in, then," answered Dick.  "I'll wait yonder in the garden. Don't
keep me waiting any longer than you can help."

Dick turned and walked slowly toward the gate which lead to the
kitchen-garden, a part of every ranch home in Arizona.  It was cut off
from the house by a straggling hedge, on which Echo had spent many
hours trying to keep it in shape.

Jack hesitated about going into the house.  Even if Echo married him,
he knew that she would never forgive him when she learned of his
dastardly conduct from Dick Lane's own mouth.  It was better to
sacrifice the life of one to save three lives from being ruined.

Jack followed Lane up, partly drawing his gun.  It would be so easy to
shoot him.  No one would recognize Dick Lane in that crippled figure.
Jack's friends would believe him if he told them the stranger had drawn
on him, and he had to shoot him in self-defense.

Then the thought of how dastardly was the act of shooting a man in the
back, and he his trusting friend, smote him suddenly, and he replaced
the pistol in its holster.  "It is worse than the murder of 'Ole Man'
Terrill," he muttered.

Dick walked on entirely unconscious of how close he had been to death,
with his friend as his murderer.

So interested had the two men been in their conversation, that neither
had noticed Buck McKee hiding behind the hedge, listening to their
talk, and covering Jack Payson, when he was following Dick with his
hand on his revolver.  McKee heard Payson's ejaculation, and smiled
grimly.

Jack's absence had aroused Jim Allen, who hurried out on the porch,
storming.  "Say, Jack, what do you mean by putting the brakes on this
yere weddin'?"

"Jim--say, Jim!  I--want you to do something for me," cried Jack, as he
rushed toward his future father-in-law, greatly excited.

"Sure," answered Allen heartily.

"Stand here at this door during the ceremony, and no matter what
happens don't let any one in."

"But--" interrupted Allen.

"Don't ask me to explain," blurted Jack. "Echo's happiness is at stake."

"That settles it--I've not let any one spile her happiness yet, an' I
won't in the few minutes that are left while I'm still her main
protector.  Nobody gets in."

"Remember--no one--no matter who it is," emphasized Jack, as he darted
into the house.

Jim Allen lighted his pipe.  "Now, what's eatin' him?" he muttered to
himself.  Then, "They're off!" he cried, looking through the window.

The Reverend Samuel Price began to drone the marriage-service.

It is the little things in life that count, after all.  Men will work
themselves into hysteria over the buzzing of a fly, and yet plan a
battle-ship in a boiler-shop.  A city full of people will at one time
become panic-stricken over the burning of a rubbish-heap, and at
another camp out in the ruins of fire-swept homes, treating their
miseries as a huge joke.

Philosophers write learnedly of cause and effect.  In chemistry certain
combinations give certain results.  But no man can say: "I will do thus
and so, this and that will follow."  All things are possible, but few
things are probable.

Dick Lane had planned to shield Echo by writing to Jack Payson, letting
him break the news of his return.  Fate would have it that she would
not know until too late of his escape.  A letter sent directly to her
might have prevented much unhappiness and many heartaches.  Not till
months later, when happiness had returned, did Jack realize that his
one great mistake was made by not telling Echo of Dick's rescue.

Both Dick and Echo might have had a change of heart when they met
again.  Echo was young.  Dick had wandered far.  Both had lost touch
with common interests.  Jack Payson had entered her life as a factor.
He was eager and impetuous; Dick was settled and world-worn by hardship
and much physical suffering.  Now Jack was at the altar racked with
mental torture, while Dick waited in the garden for his traitorous
friend.  The innocent cause of the tragedy was sweetly and calmly
replying to the questions of the marriage-ritual, while Jack was
looking, as Allen said to himself, "darned squeamish."

"According to these words, it is the will of God that nothing shall
sever the marriage-bond," were the words that fell upon Allen's ears as
he stooped to look in the window at the wedding-party.

"The Sky Pilot's taking a long time to make the hitch.  Darned if I
couldn't hitch up a twenty-mule team in the time that he's takin' to
get them two to the pole," said Allen, speaking to himself.

Dick had grown impatient at Jack's absence, and wandered back from the
garden to the front of the house.  Spying Allen, he greeted him with
"Hello, Uncle Jim."

"That's my name," answered Allen suspiciously.  "But I ain't uncle to
every stranger that comes along."

"I'm no stranger," laughed Dick.  "You know me."

"Do I?" replied Allen, unconvinced.  "Who are you?"

"The poor orphan you took from an asylum and made a man of--Dick Lane."

"Dick Lane!" repeated the astonished ranchman.  "Come back from the
dead!"

"No, I ain't dead yet," answered Dick, holding out his hand, which
Allen gingerly grasped, as if he expected to find it thin air. "I
wasn't killed.  I have been in the hospital for a long time.  I wrote
Jack--he knows."

"My God!" Allen cried.  "Jack knows--you wrote to him--he knows." Over
and over he repeated the astonishing news which had been broken to him
so suddenly.  Here was a man, as if back from the dead, standing in his
own dooryard, telling him that Jack knew he was alive.  No word had
been told him.  What could Echo say? This, then, explained Jack's
strange request, and his distress.

"And Echo?" Dick questioned, glancing toward the house.

"Echo."  The name aroused Allen.  He saw at once that he must act
definitely and quickly.  Echo must not see Dick now.  It was too late.
The secret of his return on the wedding-day must be known only to the
three men.

"Look here, Dick," he commanded.  "You mustn't let her see you--she
mustn't know you are alive."

Dick was growing confused over the mystery which was being thrown about
Echo Allen.  First Jack had told him he must wait to see her, and now
her father tells him he must never see her again, or let her know that
he is alive.  His strength was being overtaxed by all this evasion and
delay.

"Dick," said Allen, with deep sympathy, laying his hand upon the man's
shoulder.  "She's my daughter an' I want her life to be happy.  Can't
you see?  Do you understand?  She thinks you're dead."

"What are you saying?" cried Dick, trying to fathom the riddle.

"You've come back too late, Dick," sadly explained Allen.

"Too late," echoed Dick.  "There's something back of all this. I'll see
her now."

He started to enter the door, but Allen restrained him.  "You can't go
in," he shouted to the excited man, and pushed him down the steps.  It
was an easy task for him for Dick was too weak to offer much
resistance.  "No, you won't," he gently told him.  His heart bled for
the poor fellow, whom he loved almost as a son, but Echo's happiness
was at stake, and explanations could come later.  More to emphasize his
earnestness than to indicate intention to shoot, he laid his hand on
the butt of his revolver, saying:  "Not if I have to kill you."

Dick began to realize that whatever was wrong was of the greatest
consequence.  It was a shock to him to have his oldest, his best friend
in the West treat him in this fashion.

"Jim!" he cried in his anguish.

"You've got to go back where you came from, Dick," sternly answered the
ranchman.  "If ever you loved my daughter, now's your chance to prove
it--she must never know you're livin--"

"But--"

"It's a whole lot I'm askin' of you, Dick," continued Allen. "But if
you love her, as I think you do, it may be a drop of comfort in your
heart to know that by doin' this great thing for her, you'll be makin'
her life better and happier."

"I do love her," cried Dick passionately; "but there must be some
reason--tell me."

Allen held up his hand to warn Dick to be silent.  He beckoned him to
follow him.  Slowly he led him to the door, and, partly opening it,
motioned him to listen.

"Forasmuch as John Payson and Echo Allen have consented together in
holy wedlock" were the words that fell upon his ears.

As the doomed man stands, motionless, before his judges, and hears his
death-sentence read without a tremor, ofttimes thinking of some trifle,
so Dick stood for a moment.  At first he did not fully realize what it
all meant.  Then the full depth of his betrayal flooded him.  "What?"
he cried.  "Payson!"  Allen held him back.

Again the minister's voice fell upon their ears repeating the solemn
words.  "And have declared the same before God and in the presence of
these witnesses, I pronounce them husband and wife. What God hath
joined together, let no man put asunder."

Dick, shaken and hurt, slowly sank to his knees, covering his face with
his hands.  A dry sob shook his frame.  Here was the end of all his
hopes.  Here was the sad reward for years of toil and waiting.

"Now you know why you can't stay here," said Allen, his tones full of
pity.

"Now I know."

Dick staggered to his feet, and started blindly from the house.

"Dick!" cried Allen, in a broken voice, "forgive me.  She's my child,
she loves him now."

The betrayed friend took his hand without looking at him.  In vain he
tried to hide his deep emotion.  "I know," he faltered, "I'll never
trouble her.  I'll go away never to return."

"Where'll you go?" asked Allen.

"Back where I came from, back into the desert--into the land of dead
things.  Good-by!"

As he wrung the ranchman's hand and turned to walk out of the life of
his old comrades and the woman he loved, he heard the minister repeat:
"The blessing of the Almighty Father rest upon and abide with you, now
and forevermore.  Amen."

"Evermore.  Amen!" faltered Dick, bidding a last mute farewell to Allen.

The old ranchman watched him quietly as he mounted his horse and rode
down the trail.

His reverie was interrupted by the bursts of laughter of the
wedding-guests, and the cries of Fresno:  "Kiss the bride, Slim! Kiss
the bride!"



CHAPTER X

The Piano

Five weeks had passed since the marriage of Echo and Jack.  On her
return from the honeymoon in the little hunting cabin in the Tortilla
Range, the young wife set to work, and already great changes had been
made in the ranch-house on the Sweetwater. Rooms were repapered and
painted.  The big center room was altered into a cozy living-room.  On
the long, low window, giving an outlook on fields of alfalfa, corn and
the silver ribbons of the irrigation ditches, dainty muslin curtains
now hung.  Potted geraniums filled the sill, and in the unused
fireplace Echo had placed a jar of ferns.  A clock ticking on the
mantelpiece added to the cheerfulness and hominess of the house.  On
the walls, horns of mountain-sheep and antlers of antelope and deer
alternated with the mounted heads of puma and buffalo.  Through the
open window one caught a glimpse of the arms of a windmill, and the
outbuildings of the home ranch.  Navajo blankets were scattered over
the floors and seats.

Echo had taken the souvenirs of the hunt and trail which Jack had
collected, and, with a woman's touch of refinement, had used them for
decorative effects.  She had in truth made the room her very own.  The
grace and charm of her personality were stamped upon the environment.

The men of the ranch fairly worshiped Echo.  Sending to Kansas City,
they purchased a piano for her as a birthday-gift.  On the morning when
the wagon brought it over from Florence station, little work was done
about the place.  The instrument had been unpacked and placed in the
living-room in Echo's absence.  Mrs. Allen, Polly, and Jim rode over to
be present at the presentation. The donors gathered in the living-room
to admire the gift, which shone bravely under the energetic polishing
of Mrs. Allen.

"That's an elegant instrument," was her observation, as she flicked an
imaginary speck of dust from the case.

Polly opened the lid, saying:  "Just what Echo wanted."

Jim cocked his head, as if he were examining a new pinto pony.

"Sent all the way up to Kansas City for it, eh?"

"That's right, Uncle Jim," chorused the punchers.

"Now the room's complete," announced Polly.  "Echo's made a big change
around here."  The group gravely followed Polly's approving glances.

"That she has," assented Mrs. Allen.  "Looked a barn when Jack was a
bachelor.  This certainly is the finest kind of a birthday-present you
all could have thought of."

"Josephine'll cry in a minute, boys," chuckled Allen.

"You hesh up," snapped his wife, glaring at the grinning ranchman.

Sage-brush poured oil on the roughening waters by changing the
conversation.  Speaking as if making a dare, he challenged: "What I
want to know is, is there anybody here present as can rassle a tune out
of that there box?"

No one came forward.

"Ain't there none of you boys that can play on a pianny?" he demanded.

"I've played on the big square one down at the Lone Star," gravely
piped up Show Low.

"What did you play," asked the inquisitive Polly.

"Poker," answered Show Low seriously, his face showing no trace of
humor.

"Poker!" Polly repeated, in disgust.

"That's all they ever plays on it," explained Show Low indignantly.

Polly grew impatient.  This presentation was a serious affair and not
to be turned into an audience for the exploitation of Show Low's
adventures.  Moreover, she did not like to be used even indirectly as a
target for fun-making, although she delighted in making some one else a
feeder for her ideas of fun.

Fresno modestly announced he was something of a musical artist.

"I 'low I can shake a tune out of that," he declared.

"Let's hear you," cried Polly, rather doubtful of Fresno's ability.

"Step up, perfesser," cried Allen heartily, slapping him on the back.

Fresno grinned and solemnly rolled up his sleeves.  His comrades eyed
his every move closely.  He spat on his hands, approached the piano,
and glared fiercely at the keyboard.

"My ma had one of them there things when I was a yearlin'," he observed.

Fresno spun the seat of the piano-stool until it almost twirled off the
screw.  His actions created greatest interest, especially to
Parenthesis, who peered under the seat, to see the wheels go round.
Fresno threw his leg over the seat as if mounting a horse.

"Well, boys, what'll you have?" he asked, glancing from one to the
other in imitation of the manner of his friend, the pianist in the
Tucson honkytonk, on a lively evening.

"The usual poison," absently answered Show Low.

Sage-brush struck him in the breast with the with the back of his hand.
"Shut up," he growled.

Turning to Fresno, he said: "Give us the--er--'The Maiden's Prayer.'"

Fresno whisked about so quickly that he almost lost his balance. Gazing
at the petitioner in blank amazement, he shouted:  "The what?"

Sage-brush blushed under his tan.  In a most apologetic voice he said:
"Well, that's the first tune my sister learned to play, an' she played
it continuous--which is why I left home."

"I'd sure like to oblige you, but Maiden's Prayers ain't in my
repetory," explained the mollified musician.

Fresno raised his finger uncertainly over the keyboard searching for a
key from which to make a start.  The group watched him expectantly.  As
he struck a note each member of his audience jumped back in surprise at
the sound.  Fresno scratched his head and gingerly fingered another
key.  After several false starts, backing and filling, over the
keyboard, he began to pick out with one finger the air "The Suwanee
River."

"That's it.  Now we're started," he cried exultantly.

His overconfidence led him to strike a false note.

"Excuse me," he apologized.  "Got the copper on the wrong chip."

Once more he essayed playing the old melody, but became hopelessly
confused.

"Darn the tune!" he mumbled.

Sage-brush, ever ready to cheer up the failing courage of a performer,
chirruped:  "Shuffle 'em up ag'in and begin a new deal."

Fresno spat on his hands and ruffled his hair like a musical genius.
Again he sought the rhythm among the keys.  He tried to whistle the
air.  That device failed him.

"Will you all whistle that tune?  I'm forgettin' it," was his plaintive
request.

"Sure, let her go, boys," cried Sage-brush.

Falteringly, with many stops and sudden they tried to accompany
Fresno's halting pursuit over the keyboard after the tune that was
dodging about in his mind.  All at once the player struck his gait and
introduced a variation on the bass notes.

"That ain't in it," shouted Show Low indignantly.

"Shut up!" bellowed Sage-brush.

With both hands hammering the keys indiscriminately, Fresno made a
noisy if not artistic finish, and whirled about on the stool, to be
greeted by hearty applause.

"Well, I reckon that's goin' some!" he boasted, when the hand-clapping
subsided, bowing low to Polly and Mrs. Allen.

"Goin'?" laughed Polly.  "Limpin' is what I call it. If you don't learn
to switch off, you'll get a callous on that one finger of yourn."
Fresno looked at that member dubiously.

"Ain't music civilizin'?" suggested Show Low to Jim Allen.

"You bet!" the ranchman agreed.  "Take a pianny an' enough Winchesters
an' you can civilize the hull of China."

"Fresno could kill more with his pianny-play than his gun-play,"
suggested Show Low.

Mrs. Allen bethought herself that there was a lot of work to be done in
preparation for the party.  Even if everything was ready, the dear old
soul would find something to do or worry about.

"Come, now, clear out of here, the hull kit an' b'ilin' of you," she
ordered.

The men hastily crowded out on the piazza.

"Take that packin'-case out of sight, if you mean this pianny to be a
surprise to Echo.  She'll be trottin' back here in no time," she added.

Fresno had lingered to assure Jim:  "This yere birthday's goin' to be a
success.  Would you like another selection?" he eagerly asked.

"Not unless you wash your finger," snapped Mrs. Allen, busy polishing
the keys Fresno had struck.  "You left a grease-spot on every key
you've touched," she explained.

Fresno held up his finger for Allen's inspection.  "I've been greasin'
the wagon," was his explanation.

"Git out with the rest of them," she commanded.  "I've got enough to do
to look after that cake."  Mrs. Allen darted into the kitchen.  Jim
slowly filled his pipe and hunted up the most comfortable chair.  After
two or three trials he found one to suit him, and sank back with a sigh
of content.

"Jack ain't back yet?" Polly put the question.

Polly rearranged the chairs in the room, picking up and replacing the
articles on the table to suit her own artistic conceptions. She
straightened out a war-bonnet on the wall.  She was flicking off a spot
of dust in the gilt chair that Jack had got as a wedding present for
Echo on the day of the station-agent's murder, and, being reminded of
the tragedy, she asked:  "That posse didn't catch the parties that
killed Terrill, did they?"

"Not that I hear on.  Slim Hoover he took the boys that night an tried
to pick up the trail after it entered the river, but they couldn't find
where it come out."

"One of them fellers, the man that left the station alone, and probably
done the job, rode a pacin' horse," answered Jim, between puffs of his
pipe.

"Then he's a stranger to these parts.  Jack's pinto paces--it's his
regular gait.  It's the only pacing hoss around here."

"That's so," he assented, but made no further comment.  The full force
of the observation did not strike him at the time.

Polly began to pump Colonel Jim.  There were several recent happenings
which she did not fully comprehend.  At the inquisitive age and a girl,
she wanted to know all that was going on.

"Jack's been acting mighty queer of late," she ventured.  "Like he's
got something on his mind."

Jim smiled at her simplicity and jokingly replied:  "Well, he's
married."

The retort exasperated Polly.  She was not meeting with the success she
desired.  "Do hush!" she cried, in her annoyance.

"That's enough on any man's mind," Jim laughed as he sauntered out of
the door.

"Something queer about Jack," observed Polly, seating herself at the
table.  "He ain't been the same man since the weddin'.  He's all right
when Echo's around, but when he thinks no one is watchin' him he sits
around and sighs."

Jack entered the room at this moment.  Absent-mindedly he hung his hat
and spurs on a rack and leaned his rifle against the wall, sighing
deeply as he did so.  So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he did
not notice Polly until he reached the table. He started in surprise
when he saw her.  "Hello, Polly!" was his greeting.  "Where is Echo?"

Polly rose hastily at the sound of his voice.

"Didn't you meet her?" she asked.  "We got her to ride over toward
Tucson this morning to get her out of the way so's to snake the pianny
in without her seein' it."  Polly glided over to the instrument and
touched the keys softly.

With admiration Jack gazed at the instrument.

"I came around by Florence," answered Jack, with a smile.

Eagerly Polly turned toward him.  "See anything of Bud Lane?" she
queried.

"No." Again Jack smiled--this time at the girl's impetuosity.

"He'll lose his job with me if he don't call more regular," she said.

"Say, Jack, you ain't fergettin' what you promised--to help Bud with
the money that you said was comin' in soon, as Dick's share of a
speculation you and him was pardners in?  I'm powerful anxious to get
him away from McKee."

Jack had not forgotten the promise, but, alas, under the goading of
Mrs. Allen that he should clear off the mortgage on his home, he had
used Dick Lane's money for this purpose.  In what a mesh of lies and
broken promises he was entangling himself!  Now he was forced further
to deceive trusting little Polly in the matter that was dearest to her
heart.

"No, Polly, but the fact is--that speculation isn't turning out so
well, after all."

The disappointed girl turned sadly away, and went out to Mrs. Allen in
the kitchen.

Jack removed his belt and gun and hung them on the rack by the door.
Spying his father at the corral, he called to him to come into the
house.

"Hello, Jack!" was Allen's greeting as he entered, shaking the younger
man's hand.

"When did you come over?"

"This morning," Allen told him.  "Echo's birthday, you know, and the
old lady allowed we'd have to be here.  Ain't seen you since the
weddin'--got things lookin' fine here."  Allen slowly surveyed the room.

Jack agreed with him with a gesture of assent.  A more important topic
to him than the furnishing of a room was what had become of Dick Lane.
After the wedding ceremony no chance had come to him to speak privately
to Allen.

The festivities of the wedding had been shortened.  Slim had gathered a
posse and taken up the trail of the slayers.  Jim Allen had joined
them.  The hazing of Jack, and the hasty departure of the bridal pair
on horseback in a shower of corn, shelled and on cob, prevented the two
men from meeting.

The older man had volunteered no explanation.  Jack knew that in his
heart Allen did not approve of his actions, but was keeping silent
because of his daughter.

Jack could restrain himself no longer.  "Jim--what happened that
night?" he asked brokenly.

Allen showed his embarrassment.  "Meanin'--"  Then he hesitated.

"Dick," was all Jack could say.

"I seed him.  If I hadn't, he'd busted up the weddin' some," was his
laconic answer.

"Where is he?"

Allen relighted his pipe.  When he got the smoke drawing freely, he
gazed at Jack thoughtfully and answered:  "He's gone. Back where he
came from--into the desert."  Jim puffed slowly and then added: "Looks
like you didn't give Dick a square deal."

Allen liked his son-in-law, and was going to stand by him, but in
Arizona the saying "All's fair in love and war" is not accepted at its
face value.

"I didn't," acknowledged Jack.  "I was desperate at the thought of
losing her.  She loved me, and had forgotten him--she's happy with me
now."

"I reckon that's right," was Jim's consoling reply.

To clinch his argument and soothe his troublesome conscience, Jack
continued: "She never would have been happy with him."

"That's what I told him," declared Allen.  "He knew it, an' that's why
he went away--an' Echo--no matter what comes, she must never know.
She'd never forgive you--an', fer that matter, me, neither."

Jack looked long out of the window toward the distant mountains--the
barrier behind which Dick was wandering in the great desert, cut off
from the woman he loved by a false friend.

"How I have suffered for that lie!" uttered Jack, in tones full of
anguish.  "That's what hurts me most--the thought that I lied to her.
I might have killed him that night," pondered Jack.  He shuddered at
the thought that he had been on the point of adding murder to the lie.
He had faced the same temptation which Dick had yet to overcome.

"Mebbe you did.  There's more'n one way of killin' a man," suggested
Allen.

Jack swung round and faced him.  The observation had struck home. He
realized how poignantly Dick must have endured the loss of Echo and
thought of his betrayal by Jack.  As he had suffered mentally so Dick
must be suffering in the desert.  In self-justification he returned to
his old argument.

"I waited until I was sure he was dead.  Six months I waited after we
heard the news.  After I had told Echo I loved her and found that I was
loved in return--then came this letter.  God! What a fight I had with
myself when I found that he lived--was thinking of returning home to
claim her for his own.  I rode out into the hills and fought it out all
alone, like an Indian--then I resolved to hurry the wedding--to lie to
her--and I have been living that lie every minute, every hour."

Jack leaned heavily on the table.  His head sank.  His voice dropped
almost to a whisper.

Allen slapped him on the back to cheer him up.  Philosophically he
announced:  "Well, it's got to be as it is.  You'll mebbe never hear
from him again.  You mustn't never tell her.  I ain't a-goin' to say
nothin' about it--her happiness means everything to me."

Jack grasped his hand in silent thankfulness.

The two men walked slowly out of the room to the corral.

As Echo galloped across the prairie in the glorious morning air, the
sunshine, the lowing of the cattle on the hills, and the songs of the
birds in the trees along the Sweetwater had banished all depressing
thoughts, and her mind dwelt on her love for Jack and the pleasantness
of the lines in which her life had fallen.

Only one small cloud had appeared on the horizon.  Jack had not shared
with her his confidences in the business of the ranch.  He told her he
did not want to worry her with such cares.  True, there were times when
he was deeply abstracted; but in her presence his moroseness vanished
quickly.  Carefully as he had tried to hide his secret, she had, with a
woman's intuition, seen beneath the surface of things and realized that
something was lacking to complete her happiness.

As Echo turned toward home a song sprang to her lips.  Polly spied her
far down the trail.

"Boys, she's coming," she shouted to the men, who were at the
bunk-house awaiting Mrs. Payson's return.  As they passed the corral
they called to Jack and Allen to join them in the living-room to
prepare for the surprise for Echo.

The party quickly reassembled.

"Good land!" shouted Allen, "get something to cover the pianny with!"

The punchers rushed in confusion about the room in a vain search.

"Ain't there a plagued thing we can cover the pianny with?" cried the
demoralized Allen, renewing his appeal.

Polly came to the rescue of the helpless men by plucking a Navajo
blanket from the couch.  Tossing one end of it to Show Low, she
motioned to him to help hold it up before the instrument like a curtain.

"Stand in front of it, everybody," ordered Mrs. Allen, who had left her
cake-baking and hurried in from the kitchen.  "Polly, spread your
skirts--you, too, Jim."

Allen ran in front of the piano, holding out an imaginary dress in
imitation of Polly.  "Which I ain't got none," he cried.

Parenthesis jumped in front of the piano-stool, trying vainly to hide
it with his legs.

"Parenthesis, put your legs together," Mrs. Allen cried.

"I can't, ma'am," wailed the unfortunate puncher.  He fell on his knees
before the stool, spreading out his waistcoat for a screen.

Mrs. Allen helped him out with her skirts.

"Steady, everybody!" shouted Jack.

"Here she is!" yelled Sage-brush, as the door opened and the astonished
Echo faced those she loved and liked.

Echo made a pretty picture framed in the doorway.  She wore her
riding-habit of olive-green--from the hem of which peeped her soft
boots.  Her hat, broad, picturesque, typical of the Southwest, had
slipped backward, forming a background for her pretty face.  An amused
smile played about the corners of her mouth.

"Well, what is it?" she smiled inquiringly.

The group looked at her sheepishly.  No one wanted to answer her
question.

"What's the matter?" she resumed.  "You're herded up like a bunch of
cows in a norther."

Sage-brush began gravely to explain.  He got only as far as: "This yere
bein' a birthday," when Echo interrupted him:  "Oh! then it's a
birthday-party?"

Once stopped, Sage-brush could not get started again.  He cleared his
throat with more emphasis than politeness; striking the attitude of an
orator, with one hand upraised and the other on his hip, he hemmed and
hawed until beads of perspiration trickled down his temples.

Again he nerved himself for the ordeal.

"Mebbe," he gasped.

Then he opened and closed his mouth, froglike, several times, taking
long, gulping breaths.  At last, looking helplessly about him, he
shouted:  "Oh, shucks! you tell her, Jack."  He pushed him toward Echo.
Jack rested his hand on the table and began: "We've a surprise for
you--that is, the boys have--"

"What is it?" asked Echo eagerly.

"You've got to call it blind," broke in Sage-brush.

"Guess it," cried Fresno.

"A pony-cart," hazarded Echo.

"Shucks! no," said Show Low at the idea of presenting Echo with
anything on wheels.

Echo then guessed:  "Sewing-machine."

Sage-brush encouraged her, "That's something like it--go on--go on."

"Well, then, it's a--"

Sage-brush grew more excited.  He raised and lowered himself on his
toes, backing toward the piano.  "Go it, you're gettin' there," he
shouted.

"It's a--"

Again she hesitated, to be helped on by Sage-brush with the assurance:
"She'll do it--fire away--it's a--"

"A--"

"Go on."

Sage-brush in his enthusiasm backed too far into the blanket screen.
His spurs became entangled.  To save himself from a fall, he threw out
his hand behind him.  They struck the polished cover of the instrument,
slid off, and Sage-brush sat down on the keys with an unmistakable
crash.

"A piano!" cried Echo exultantly.

"Who done that?" demanded Show Low angrily.

Parenthesis, from his place on the floor, looked at the mischief-maker
in disgust.  "Sage-brush!" he shouted.

"Givin' the hull thing away," snarled Fresno.

Show Low could contain himself no longer.  Going up to Sage-brush, he
shook his fist in his face, saying:  "You're the limit.  You ought to
be herdin' sheep."

The victim of the accident humbly replied:  "I couldn't help it."

Mrs. Allen smoothed out the differences by declaring:  "What's the
difference, she wouldn't have guessed, not in a million years--stand
away and let her see it."

Fresno swept them all aside with the blanket.

"Oh, isn't it beautiful, beautiful!" cried Echo.

"Who--what--where--" she stammered, glancing from one to the other, her
eyes finally resting on Jack.

"Not guilty," he cried.  "You'll have to thank the boys for this."

With happy tears welling up in her eyes, Echo said: "I do thank them, I
do--I do--I can't tell how delighted I am.  I can't say how much this
means to me--I thank you--I say it once, but I feel it a thousand
times."  She seized each of the boys by the hand and shook it heartily.

"Would you like to have another selection?" asked Fresno, relieving the
tension of the situation.

"No!" shouted the punchers unanimously.  Fresno looked very much
crestfallen, since he considered that he had made a deep impression by
his first effort.

"Mrs. Payson's goin' to hit us out a tune," announced Sage-brush.

Echo seated herself at the piano.  Jack leaned against the instrument,
gazing fondly into her eyes, as she raised her face radiant with
happiness.  Allen had taken possession of the best rocking-chair.  Mrs.
Allen sat at the table, and the boys ranged themselves about the room.
Their faces reflected gratification. They watched Echo expectantly.

Echo played the opening bars of "The Old Folks at Home."  Before she
sang Fresno, holding up his right index-finger, remarked to no one in
particular:  "I washed that finger."

The singing deeply affected her little audience.  Echo had a sweet,
natural voice.  She threw her whole soul into the old ballad.  She was
so happy she felt like singing, not lively airs, but songs about home.
Her new home had become so dear to her at that moment.

Mrs. Allen as usual began to cry.  Polly soon followed her example.
There were tears even in the of some of the punchers, although they
blinked vigorously to keep them back.

When she repeated the chorus, Sage-brush said to Fresno:  "Ain't that
great?"

That worthy, however, with the jealousy of an artist, and to hide his
own deeply moved sensibilities, replied: "That ain't so much."

Jack had become completely absorbed in the music.  He and Echo were
oblivious to surroundings.  His arm had slipped about his wife's waist,
and she gazed fondly into his face.  Sage-brush was the first to notice
their attitude.  On his calling the attention of the boys to their
happiness, these quietly tiptoed from the room.  Polly signaled to Mrs.
Allen, and followed the boys. Josephine awoke Jim as if from a dream
and led him slowly out, leaving the young couple in an earthly paradise
of married love.

When Echo finished, she turned in surprise to find themselves alone.

"Was it as bad as that?" she naively asked Jack.

"What?"

"Why, they've all left us."

Jack laughed softly.  "So they have--I forgot they were here," he said,
looking fondly down at his wife.

Echo began to play quietly another ballad.  "I've always wanted a
piano," she said.

"You'd found one here waiting, if I'd only known it," he chided.

"You've given me so much already," she murmured.  "I've been a big
expense to you."

Jack again slipped his arm about her waist and kissed her. "There ain't
any limit on my love," he declared.  "I want you to be happy--"

"Don't you think I am," laughed Echo.  "I'm the happiest woman on
earth, Jack, and it's all you.  I want to be more than a wife to you, I
want to be a helpmate--but you won't let me."

A wistful expression crept over Echo's countenance.

"Who says so?" he demanded playfully, as if he would punish any man who
dared make such an accusation.

Echo turned on the stool and took his hand.  "I know it," she said,
with emphasis.  "You've been worried about something for days and
days--don't tell me you haven't."

Jack opened his lips as if to contradict her.  "We women learn to look
beneath the surface; what is it, Jack?" she continued.

Jack loosened his wife's handclasp and walked over to the table.

"Nothing--what should I have to worry about?"  He spoke carelessly.

"The mortgage?" suggested Echo.

"I paid that off last week," explained Jack.

Echo felt deeply hurt that this news should have been kept from her by
her husband.

"You did, and never told me?" she chided.  "Where did you get the
money?" she inquired.

"Why, I--" Jack halted.  He could not frame an excuse at once, nor
invent a new lie to cover his old sin.  Deeper and deeper he was
getting into the mire of deception.

Echo had arisen from the seat. "It was over three thousand dollars,
wasn't it?" she insisted.

"Something like that," answered Jack noncommittally.

"Well, where did you get it?" demanded his wife.

"An old debt--a friend of mine--I loaned him the money a long time ago
and he paid it back--that's all."

Jack took a drink of water from the olla to hide his confusion.

"Who was it?" persisted Echo.

"You wouldn't know if I told you.  Now just stop talking business."

"It isn't fair," declared Echo.  "You share all the good things of life
with me, and I want to share some of your business worries.  I want to
stand my share of the bad."

Jack saw he must humor her.  "When the bad comes I'll tell you," he
assured her, patting her hand.

"You stand between me and the world.  You're like a great big mountain,
standing guard over a little tree in the valley, keeping the cold north
wind from treating it too roughly."  She sighed contentedly.  "But the
mountain does it all."

Jack looked down tenderly at his little wife.  Her love for him moved
him deeply.

"Not at all," he said to her.  "The little tree grows green and
beautiful.  It casts a welcome shade about it, and the heart of the
mountain is made glad to its rocky core to know that the safety of that
little tree is in its keeping."

Taking her in his arms, he kissed her again and again.

"Kissing again," shouted Polly from the doorway.  "Say, will you two
never settle down to business?  There's Bud Lane and a bunch of others
just into the corral--maybe they want you, Jack."

Jack excused himself.  As he stepped out on the piazza he asked Polly:
"Shall I send Bud in?"

"Let him come in if he wants to.  I'm not sending for him." Polly
spitefully turned up her nose at him.  Jack laughed as he closed the
door.

Echo reseated herself at the piano, fingering the keys.

"How are you getting on with Bud?" she asked the younger girl.

"We don't get on a little bit," she snapped.  "Bud never seems to
collect much revenue an' we just keep trottin' slow like--wish I was
married and had a home of my own."

"Aren't you happy with father and mother?"

Polly glanced at Echo with a smile.  "Lord, yes," she replied, "in a
way, but I'm only a poor relation--your ma was my ma's cousin or
something like that."

Echo laughed.  "Nonsense," she retorted.  "Nonsense--you're my dear
sister, and the only daughter that's at the old home now."

"But I want a home of my own, like this," said Polly.

"Then you'd better shake Bud and give Slim a chance."

Polly was too disgusted to answer at once.  "Slim Hoover, shucks! Slim
doesn't care for girls--he's afraid of 'em," she said at length.  "I
like Bud, with all his orneriness," she declared.

"Why doesn't he come to see you more often?"

"I don't know, maybe it's because he's never forgiven you for marryin'
Jack."

"Why should he mind that?" she asked, startled.

"Well, you know," she answered between stitches, drawing the needle
through the cloth with angry little jerks, "Bud, he never quite
believed Dick was dead."

Echo rose hastily.  The vague, haunting half-thoughts of weeks were
crystallized on the instant.  She felt as if Dick was trying to speak
to her from out of the great beyond.  With a shudder she into a chair
at the table opposite Polly.

"Don't," she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper, "I can't bear to
hear him spoken of.  I dreamed of him the other night--a dreadful
dream."

Polly was delighted with this new mystery.  It was all so romantic.

"Did you? let's hear it."

With unseeing eyes Echo gazed straight ahead rebuilding from her dream
fabric a tragedy of the desert, in which the two men who had played so
great a part in her life were the actors.

"It seems," she told, "that I was in the desert, such a vast, terrible
desert, where the little dust devils eddied and swirled, and the
merciless sun beat down until it shriveled up every growing thing."

Polly nodded her head sagely.

"That's the way the desert looks--and no water."

Echo paid no heed to the interruption.  Her face became wan and
haggard, as in her mind's eye she saw the weary waste of waterless land
quiver and swim under the merciless sun.  Not a tree, not a blade of
grass, not a sign of life broke the monotony of crumbling cliffs and
pinnacled rocks.  Onward and ever onward stretched yellow ridges and
alkali-whitened ravines, blinding the eye and parching the throat.

"Then I saw a man staggering toward me," she continued; "his face was
white and drawn, his lips cracked and parched--now and then he would
stumble and fall, and lie there on his face in the hot sand, digging
into it with his bony fingers seeking for water."

Echo shut her eyes as if to blot out the picture. Its reality almost
overpowered her.

"Suddenly he raised his eyes to mine," she resumed, after a pause.  "It
was Dick."

In her excitement she had arisen, stretching out her arms as if to ward
off an apparition.

"He tried to call me.  I saw his lips move, framing my name. Dragging
himself to his feet, he came toward me with his arms outstretched.
Then another form appeared between us fighting to keep him back.  They
fought there un

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