Oh, You Tex!

OH, YOU TEX!

TEXAS

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE STORY-PRESS CORPORATION
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO
SAM F. DUNN
OF AMARILLO, TEXAS
INSPECTOR OF CATTLE IN THE DAYS
OF THE LONGHORN DRIVES
TO WHOSE EXPERIENCE AND GENEROUS CRITICISM
I AM INDEBTED FOR AID IN THE
PREPARATION OF THIS BOOK

Contents

OH, YOU TEX!

CHAPTER I

THE LINE-RIDER

Day was breaking in the Panhandle. The line-rider finished his breakfast of buffalo-hump, coffee, and biscuits. He had eaten heartily, for it would be long after sunset before he touched food again.

Cheerfully and tunelessly he warbled a cowboy ditty as he packed his supplies and prepared to go.

"Oh, it's bacon and beans most every day,
I'd as lief be eatin' prairie hay."

While he washed his dishes in the fine sand and rinsed them in the current of the creek he announced jocundly to a young world glad with spring:

"I'll sell my outfit soon as I can,
Won't punch cattle for no damn' man."

The tin cup beat time against the tin plate to accompany a kind of shuffling dance. Jack Roberts was fifty miles from nowhere, alone on the desert, but the warm blood of youth set his feet to moving. Why should he not dance? He was one and twenty, stood five feet eleven in his socks, and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds of bone, sinew, and well-packed muscle. A son of blue skies and wide, wind-swept spaces, he had never been ill in his life. Wherefore the sun-kissed world looked good to him.

He mounted a horse picketed near the camp and rode out to a remuda of seven cow-ponies grazing in a draw. Of these he roped one and brought it back to camp, where he saddled it with deft swiftness.

The line-rider swung to the saddle and put his pony at a jog-trot. He topped a hill and looked across the sunlit mesas which rolled in long swells far as the eye could see. The desert flowered gayly with the purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms of the cacti and with the white, lilylike buds of the Spanish bayonet. The yucca and the prickly pear were abloom. He swept the panorama with trained eyes. In the distance a little bunch of antelope was moving down to water in single file. On a slope two miles away grazed a small herd of buffalo. No sign of human habitation was written on that vast solitude of space.

The cowboy swung to the south and held a steady road gait. With an almost uncanny accuracy he recognized all signs that had to do with cattle. Though cows, half hidden in the brush, melted into the color of the hillside, he picked them out unerringly. Brands, at a distance so great that a tenderfoot could have made of them only a blur, were plain as a primer to him.

Cows that carried on their flanks the A T O, he turned and started northward. As he returned, he would gather up these strays and drive them back to their own range. For in those days, before the barbed wire had reached Texas and crisscrossed it with boundary lines, the cowboy was a fence more mobile than the wandering stock.

It was past noon when Roberts dropped into a draw where an immense man was lying sprawled under a bush. The recumbent man was a mountain of flesh; how he ever climbed to a saddle was a miracle; how a little cow-pony carried him was another. Yet there was no better line-rider in the Panhandle than Jumbo Wilkins.

"'Lo, Texas," the fat man greeted.

The young line-rider had won the nickname of "Texas" in New Mexico a year or two before by his aggressive championship of his native State. Somehow the sobriquet had clung to him even after his return to the Panhandle.

"'Lo, Jumbo," returned the other. "How?"

"Fat like a match. I'm sure losin' flesh. Took up another notch in my belt yestiddy."

Roberts shifted in the saddle, resting his weight on the horn and the ball of one foot for ease. He was a slim, brown youth, hard as nails and tough as whipcord. His eyes were quick and wary. In spite of the imps of mischief that just now lighted them, one got an impression of strength. He might or might not be, in the phrase of the country, a "bad hombre," but it was safe to say he was an efficient one.

"Quick consumption, sure," pronounced the younger man promptly. "You don't look to me like you weigh an ounce over three hundred an' fifty pounds. Appetite kind o' gone?"

"You're damn whistlin'. I got an ailment, I tell you, Tex. This mo'nin' I didn't eat but a few slices of bacon an' some lil' steaks an' a pan or two o' flapjacks an' mebbe nine or ten biscuits. Afterward I felt kind o' bloated like. I need some sa'saparilla. Now, if I could make out to get off for a few days—"

"You could get that sarsaparilla across the bar at the Bird Cage, couldn't you, Jumbo?" the boy grinned.

The whale of a man looked at him reproachfully. "You never seen me shootin' up no towns or raisin' hell when I was lit up. I can take a drink or leave it alone."

"That's right too. Nobody lets it alone more than you do when it can't be got. I've noticed that."

"You cayn't devil me, boy. I was punchin' longhorns when yore mammy was paddlin' you for stealin' the sugar. Say, that reminds me. I'm plumb out o' sugar. Can you loan me some till Pedro gits around? I got to have sugar or I begin to fall off right away," the big man whined.

The line-riders chatted casually of the topics that interest men in the land of wide, empty frontiers. Of Indians they had something to say, of their diminishing grub supply more. Jumbo mentioned that he had found an A T O cow dead by a water-hole. They spoke incidentally of the Dinsmore gang, a band of rustlers operating in No Man's Land. They had little news of people, since neither of them had for three weeks seen another human being except Quint Sullivan, the line-rider who fenced the A T O cattle to the east of Roberts.

Presently Roberts nodded a good-bye and passed again into the solitude of empty spaces. The land-waves swallowed him. Once more he followed draws, crossed washes, climbed cow-backed hills, picking up drift-cattle as he rode.

It was late afternoon when he saw a thin spiral of smoke from a rise of ground. Smoke meant that some human being was abroad in the land, and every man on the range called for investigation. The rider moved forward to reconnoiter.

He saw a man, a horse, a cow, a calf, and a fire. When these five things came together, it meant that somebody was branding. The present business of Roberts was to find out what brand was on the cow and what one was being run on the flank of the calf. He rode forward at a slow canter.

The man beside the fire straightened. He took off his hat and swept it in front of him in a semicircle from left to right. The line-rider understood the sign language of the plains. He was being "waved around." The man was serving notice upon him to pass in a wide circle. It meant that the dismounted man did not intend to let himself be recognized. The easy deduction was that he was a rustler.

The cowboy rode steadily forward. The man beside the fire picked up a rifle lying at his feet and dropped a bullet a few yards in front of the advancing man.

Roberts drew to a halt. He was armed with a six-shooter, but a revolver was of no use at this distance. For a moment he hesitated. Another bullet lifted a spurt of dust almost at his horse's feet.

The line-rider waited for no more definite warning. He waved a hand toward the rustler and shouted down the wind: "Some other day." Quickly he swung his horse to the left and vanished into an arroyo. Then, without an instant's loss of time, he put his pony swiftly up the draw toward a "rim-rock" edging a mesa. Over to the right was Box Cañon, which led to the rough lands of a terrain unknown to Roberts. It was a three-to-one chance that the rustler would disappear into the cañon.

The young man rode fast, putting his bronco at the hills with a rush. He was in a treeless country, covered with polecat brush. Through this he plunged recklessly, taking breaks in the ground without slackening speed in the least.

Near the summit of the rise Roberts swung from the saddle and ran forward through the brush, crouching as he moved. With a minimum of noise and a maximum of speed he negotiated the thick shrubbery and reached the gorge.

He crept forward cautiously and looked down. Through the shin-oak which grew thick on the edge of the bluff he made out a man on horseback driving a calf. The mount was a sorrel with white stockings and a splash of white on the nose. The distance was too great for Roberts to make out the features of the rider clearly, though he could see the fellow was dark and slender.

The line-rider watched him out of sight, then slithered down the face of the bluff to the sandy wash. He knelt down and studied intently the hoofprints written in the soil. They told him that the left hind hoof of the animal was broken in an odd way.

Jack Roberts clambered up the steep edge of the gulch and returned to the cow-pony waiting for him with drooping hip and sleepy eyes.

"Oh, you Two Bits, we'll amble along and see where our friend is headin' for."

He picked a way down into the cañon and followed the rustler. At the head of the gulch the man on the sorrel had turned to the left. The cowboy turned also in that direction. A sign by the side of the trail confronted him.

THIS IS PETE DINSMORE'S ROAD—
TAKE ANOTHER

"The plot sure thickens," grinned Jack. "Reckon I won't take Pete's advice to-day. It don't listen good."

He spoke aloud, to himself or to his horse or to the empty world at large, as lonely riders often do on the plains or in the hills, but from the heavens above an answer dropped down to him in a heavy, masterful voice:

"Git back along that trail pronto!"

Roberts looked up. A flat rock topped the bluff above. From the edge of it the barrel of a rifle projected. Behind it was a face masked by a bandana handkerchief. The combination was a sinister one.

If the line-rider was dismayed or even surprised, he gave no evidence of it.

"Just as you say, stranger. I reckon you're callin' this dance," he admitted.

"You'll be lucky if you don't die of lead-poisonin' inside o' five minutes. No funny business! Git!"

The cowboy got. He whirled his pony in its tracks and sent it jogging down the back trail. A tenderfoot would have taken the gulch at breakneck speed. Most old-timers would have found a canter none too fast. But Jack Roberts held to a steady road gait. Not once did he look back—but every foot of the way till he had turned a bend in the cañon there was an ache in the small of his back. It was a purely sympathetic sensation, for at any moment a bullet might come crashing between the shoulders.

Once safely out of range the rider mopped a perspiring face.

"Wow! This is your lucky day, Jack. Ain't you got better sense than to trail rustlers with no weapon but a Sunday-School text? Well, here's hopin'! Maybe we'll meet again in the sweet by an' by. You never can always tell."

CHAPTER II

"I'LL BE SEVENTEEN, COMING GRASS"

The camper looked up from the antelope steak he was frying, to watch a man cross the shallow creek. In the clear morning light of the Southwest his eyes had picked the rider out of the surrounding landscape nearly an hour before. For at least one fourth of the time since this discovery he had been aware that his approaching visitor was Pedro Menendez, of the A T O ranch.

"Better 'light, son," suggested Roberts.

The Mexican flashed a white-toothed smile at the sizzling steak, took one whiff of the coffee and slid from the saddle. Eating was one of the things that Pedro did best.

"The ol' man—he sen' me," the boy explained. "He wan' you at the ranch."

Further explanation waited till the edge of Pedro's appetite was blunted. The line-rider lighted a cigarette and casually asked a question.

"Whyfor does he want me?"

It developed that the Mexican had been sent to relieve Roberts because the latter was needed to take charge of a trail herd. Not by the flicker of an eyelash did the line-rider show that this news meant anything to him. It was promotion—better pay, a better chance for advancement, an easier life. But Jack Roberts had learned to take good and ill fortune with the impassive face of a gambler.

"Keep an eye out for rustlers, Pedro," he advised before he left. "You want to watch Box Cañon. Unless I'm 'way off, the Dinsmore gang are operatin' through it. I 'most caught one red-handed the other day. Lucky for me I didn't. You an' Jumbo would 'a' had to bury me out on the lone prairee."

Nearly ten hours later Jack Roberts dismounted in front of the whitewashed adobe house that was the headquarters of the A T O ranch. On the porch an old cattleman sat slouched in a chair tilted back against the wall, a run-down heel of his boot hitched in the rung. The wrinkled coat he wore hung on him like a sack, and one leg of his trousers had caught at the top of the high boot. The owner of the A T O was a heavy-set, powerful man in the early fifties. Just now he was smoking a corncob pipe.

The keen eyes of the cattleman watched lazily the young line-rider come up the walk. Most cowboys walked badly; on horseback they might be kings of the earth, but out of the saddle they rolled like sailors. Clint Wadley noticed that the legs of this young fellow were straight and that he trod the ground lightly as a buck in mating-season.

"He'll make a hand," was Wadley's verdict, one he had arrived at after nearly a year of shrewd observation.

But no evidence of satisfaction in his employee showed itself in the greeting of the "old man." He grunted what might pass for "Howdy!" if one were an optimist.

Roberts explained his presence by saying: "You sent for me, Mr. Wadley."

"H'm! That durned fool York done bust his laig. Think you can take a herd up the trail to Tascosa?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's the way all you brash young colts talk. But how many of 'em will you lose on the way? How sorry will they look when you deliver the herd? That's what I'd like to know."

Jack Roberts was paying no attention to the grumbling of his boss—for a young girl had come out of the house. She was a slim little thing, with a slender throat that carried the small head like the stem of a rose. Dark, long-lashed eyes, eager and bubbling with laughter, were fixed on Wadley. She had slipped out on tiptoe to surprise him. Her soft fingers covered his eyes.

"Guess who!" she ordered.

"Quit yore foolishness," growled the cattleman. "Don't you-all see I'm talkin' business?" But the line-rider observed that his arm encircled the waist of the girl.

With a flash of shy eyes the girl caught sight of Roberts, who had been half hidden from her behind the honeysuckle foliage.

"Oh! I didn't know," she cried.

The owner of the A T O introduced them. "This is Jack Roberts, one of my trail foremen. Roberts—my daughter Ramona. I reckon you can see for yoreself she's plumb spoiled."

A soft laugh welled from the throat of the girl. She knew that for her at least her father was all bark and no bite.

"It's you that is spoiled, Dad," she said in the slow, sweet voice of the South. "I've been away too long, but now I'm back I mean to bring you up right. Now I'll leave you to your business."

The eyes of the girl rested for a moment on those of the line-rider as she nodded good-bye. Jack had never before seen Ramona Wadley, nor for that matter had he seen her brother Rutherford. Since he had been in the neighborhood, both of them had been a good deal of the time in Tennessee at school, and Jack did not come to the ranch-house once in three months. It was hard to believe that this dainty child was the daughter of such a battered hulk as Clint Wadley. He was what the wind and the sun and the tough Southwest had made him. And she—she was a daughter of the morning.

But Wadley did not release Ramona. "Since you're here you might as well go through with it," he said. "What do you want?"

"What does a woman always want?" she asked sweetly, and then answered her own question. "Clothes—and money to buy them—lots of it. I'm going to town to-morrow, you know."

"H'm!" His grunt was half a chuckle, half a growl. "Do you call yoreself a woman—a little bit of a trick like you? Why, I could break you in two."

She drew herself up very straight. "I'll be seventeen, coming grass. And it's much more likely, sir, that I'll break you—as you'll find out when the bills come in after I've been to town."

With that she swung on her heel and vanished inside the house.

The proud, fond eyes of the cattleman followed her. It was an easy guess that she was the apple of his eye.

But when he turned to business again his manner was gruffer than usual. He was a trifle crisper to balance the effect of his new foreman having discovered that he was as putty in the hands of this slip of a girl.

"Well, you know where you're at, Roberts. Deliver that herd without any loss for strays, fat, an' in good condition, an' you won't need to go back to line-ridin'. Fall down on the job, an' you'll never get another chance to drive A T O cows."

"That's all I ask, Mr. Wadley," the cowboy answered. "An' much obliged for the chance."

"Don't thank me. Thank York's busted laig," snapped his chief. "We'll make the gather for the drive to-morrow an' Friday."

CHAPTER III

TEX TAKES AN INTEREST

Jack Roberts was in two minds whether to stop at the Longhorn saloon. He needed a cook in his trail outfit, and the most likely employment agency in Texas during that decade was the barroom of a gambling-house. Every man out of a job naturally drifted to the only place of entertainment.

The wandering eye of the foreman decided the matter for him. It fell upon a horse, and instantly ceased to rove. The cow-pony was tied to a hitching-rack worn shiny by thousands of reins. On the nose of the bronco was a splash of white. Stockings of the same color marked its legs. The left hind hoof was gashed and broken.

The rider communed with himself. "I reckon we'll 'light and take an interest, Jack. Them that looks for, finds."

He slid from the saddle and rolled a cigarette, after which he made friends with the sorrel and examined carefully the damaged foot.

"It's a li'l bit of a world after all," he commented. "You never can tell who you're liable to meet up with." The foreman drew from its scabbard a revolver and slid it back into place to make sure that it lay easy in its case. "You can't guess for sure what's likely to happen. I'd a heap rather be too cautious than have flowers sent me."

He sauntered through the open door into the gambling-house. It was a large hall, in the front part of which was the saloon. In the back the side wall to the next building had been ripped out to give more room. There was a space for dancing, as well as roulette, faro, chuckaluck, and poker tables. In one corner a raised stand for the musicians had been built.

The Longhorn was practically deserted. Not even a game of draw was in progress. The dance-girls were making up for lost sleep, and the patrons of the place were either at work or still in bed.

Three men were lined up in front of the bar. One was a tall, lank person, hatchet-faced and sallow. He had a cast in his eye that gave him a sinister expression. The second was slender and trim, black of hair and eye and mustache. His clothes were very good and up to date. The one farthest from the door was a heavy-set, unwieldy man in jeans, slouchy as to dress and bearing. Perhaps it was the jade eyes of the man that made Roberts decide instantly he was one tough citizen.

The line-rider ordered a drink.

"Hardware, please," said the bartender curtly.

"Enforcin' that rule, are they?" asked Roberts casually as his eyes swept over the other men.

"That's whatever. Y'betcha. We don't want no gay cowboys shootin' out our lights. No reflections, y'understand."

The latest arrival handed over his revolver, and the man behind the bar hung the scabbard on a nail. Half a dozen others were on a shelf beside it. For the custom on the frontier was that each rider from the range should deposit his weapons at the first saloon he entered. They were returned to him when he called for them just before leaving town. This tended to lessen the number of sudden deaths.

"Who you ridin' for, young fellow?" asked the sallow man of Roberts.

"For the A T O."

The dark young man turned and looked at the cowboy.

"So? How long have you been riding for Wadley?"

"Nine months."

"Don't think I've seen you before."

"I'm a line-rider—don't often get to the ranch-house."

"What ground do you cover?"

"From Dry Creek to the rim-rock, and south past Box Cañon."

Three pair of eyes were focused watchfully on Roberts. The sallow man squirted tobacco at a knot in the floor and rubbed his bristly chin with the palm of a hand.

"Kinda lonesome out there, ain't it?" he ventured.

"That's as how you take it. The country is filled with absentees," admitted Roberts.

"Reckoned it was. Never been up that way myself. A sort of a bad-lands proposition, I've heard tell—country creased with arroyos, packed with rocks an' rattlesnakes mostly."

The heavy-set man broke in harshly. "Anybody else run cattle there except old man Wadley?"

"Settlers are comin' in on the other side of the rim-rock. Cattle drift across. I can count half a dozen brands 'most any day."

"But you never see strangers."

"Don't I?"

"I'm askin', do you?" The voice of the older man was heavy and dominant. It occurred to Roberts that he had heard that voice before.

"Oh!" Unholy imps of mirth lurked in the alert eyes of the line-rider. "Once in a while I do—last Thursday, for instance."

The graceful, dark young man straightened as does a private called to attention. "A trapper, maybe?" he said.

The cowboy brought his level gaze back from a barefoot negro washing the floor. "Not this time. He was a rustler."

"How do you know?" The high voice of the questioner betrayed excitement.

"I caught him brandin' a calf. He waved me round. I beat him to the Box Cañon and saw him ridin' through."

"You saw him ridin' through? Where were you?" The startled eyes of the dark young man were fixed on him imperiously.

"From the bluff above."

"You don't say!" The voice of the heavy man cut in with jeering irony. The gleam of his jade eyes came through narrow-slitted lids. "Well, did you take him back to the ranch for a necktie party, or did you bury him in the gulch?"

The dark young man interrupted irritably. "I'm askin' these questions, Dinsmore. Now you, young fellow—what's your name?"

"Jack Roberts," answered the cowboy meekly.

"About this rustler—would you know him again?"

The line-rider smiled inscrutably. He did not intend to tell all that he did not know. "He was ridin' a sorrel with a white splash on its nose, white stockin's, an' a bad hoof, the rear one—"

"You're a damn' liar." The words, flung out from some inner compulsion, as it were, served both as a confession and a challenge.

There was a moment of silence, tense and ominous. This was fighting talk.

The lank man leaned forward and whispered some remonstrance in the ear of the young fellow, but his suggestion was waved aside. "I'm runnin' this, Gurley."

The rider for the A T O showed neither surprise nor anger. He made a business announcement without stress or accent. "I expect it's you or me one for a lickin'. Hop to it, Mr. Rustler!"

Roberts did not wait for an acceptance of his invitation. He knew that the first two rules of battle are to strike first and to strike hard. His brown fist moved forward as though it had been shot from a gun. The other man crashed back against the wall and hung there dazed for a moment. The knuckles of that lean fist had caught him on the chin.

"Give him hell, Ford. You can curry a li'l' shorthorn like this guy with no trouble a-tall," urged Dinsmore.

The young man needed no urging. He gathered himself together and plunged forward. Always he had prided himself on being an athlete. He was the champion boxer of the small town where he had gone to school. Since he had returned to the West, he had put on flesh and muscle. But he had dissipated a good deal too, and no man not in the pink of condition had any right to stand up to tough Jack Roberts.

While the fight lasted, there was rapid action. Roberts hit harder and cleaner, but the other was the better boxer. He lunged and sidestepped cleverly, showing good foot-work and a nice judgment of distance. For several minutes he peppered the line-rider with neat hits. Jack bored in for more. He drove a straight left home and closed one of his opponent's eyes. He smashed through the defense of his foe with a power that would not be denied.

"Keep a-comin', Ford. You shore have got him goin' south," encouraged Gurley.

But the man he called Ford knew it was not true. His breath was coming raggedly. His arms were heavy as though weighted with lead. The science upon which he had prided himself was of no use against this man of steel. Already his head was singing so that he saw hazily.

The finish came quickly. The cowboy saw his chance, feinted with his left and sent a heavy body blow to the heart. The knees of the other sagged. He sank down and did not try to rise again.

Presently his companions helped him to his feet. "He—he took me by surprise," explained the beaten man with a faint attempt at bluster.

"I'll bet I did," assented Jack cheerfully. "An' I'm liable to surprise you again if you call me a liar a second time."

"You've said about enough, my friend," snarled the man who had been spoken to as Dinsmore. "You get away with this because the fight was on the square, but don't push yore luck too far."

The three men passed out of the front door. Roberts turned to the barkeeper.

"I reckon the heavy-set one is Pete Dinsmore. The cock-eyed guy must be Steve Gurley. But who is the young fellow I had the mixup with?"

The man behind the bar gave information promptly. "He's Rutherford Wadley—son of the man who signs yore pay-checks. Say, I heard Buck Nelson needs a mule-skinner, in case you're lookin' for a job."

Jack felt a sudden sinking of the heart. He had as good as told the son of his boss that he was a rustler, and on top of that he had given him a first-class lacing. The air-castles he had been building came tumbling down with a crash. He had already dreamed himself from a trail foreman to the majordomo of the A T O ranch. Instead of which he was a line-rider out of a job.

"Where can I find Nelson?" he asked with a grin that found no echo in his heart. "Lead me to him."

CHAPTER IV

TEX GRANDSTANDS

Clint Wadley, massive and powerful, slouched back in his chair with one leg thrown over an arm of it. He puffed at a corncob pipe, and through the smoke watched narrowly with keen eyes from under heavy grizzled brows a young man standing on the porch steps.

"So now you know what I expect, young fellow," he said brusquely. "Take it or leave it; but if you take it, go through."

Arthur Ridley smiled. "Thanks, I'll take it."

The boy was not so much at ease as his manner suggested. He knew that the owner of the A T O was an exacting master. The old cattleman was game himself. Even now he would fight at the drop of the hat if necessary. In the phrase which he had just used, he would "go through" anything he undertook. Men who had bucked blizzards with him in the old days admitted that Clint would do to take along. But Ridley's awe of him was due less to his roughness and to the big place he filled in the life of the Panhandle than to the fact that he was the father of his daughter. It was essential to Arthur's plans that he stand well with the old-timer.

Though he did not happen to know it, young Ridley was a favorite of the cattle king. He had been wished on him by an old friend, but there was something friendly and genial about the boy that won a place for him. His smile was modest and disarming, and his frank face was better than any letter of recommendation.

But though Wadley was prepared to like him, his mind held its reservations. The boy had come from the East, and the standards of that section are not those of the West. The East asks of a man good family, pleasant manners, a decent reputation, and energy enough to carry a man to success along conventional lines. In those days the frontier West demanded first that a man be game, and second that he be one to tie to. He might be good or bad, but whichever he was, he, must be efficient to make any mark in the turbulent country of the border. Was there a hint of slackness in the jaw of this good-looking boy? Wadley was not sure, but he intended to find out.

"You'll start Saturday. I'll meet you at Tascosa two weeks from to-day. Understand?" The cattleman knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose. The interview was at an end.

Young Ridley nodded. "I'll be there, sir—with the six thousand dollars safe as if they were in a vault."

"H'm! I see you carry a six-shooter. Can you shoot?" Wadley flung at him abruptly.

Arthur Ridley had always fancied himself as a shot. He had belonged to a gun-club at home, and since coming to the Southwest he had practiced a good deal with the revolver.

"Pretty well, sir."

"Would you—if it was up to you?"

The youngster looked into the steel-gray eyes roofed by the heavy thatch of brow. "I think so. I never have had to yet. In the East—"

Wadley waved the East back to where it belonged. "Yes, I know. But we're talkin' about Texas. Still, I reckon you ought not to have any trouble on this trip. Don't let anybody know why you are at the fort. Don't gamble or drink. Get the money from Major Ponsford and melt away inconspicuous into the brush. Hit the trail hard. A day and a night ought to bring you to Tascosa."

The cattleman was leading the way with long strides into an open space back of the house. A pile of empty cans, symbol of the arid lands, lay beside the path. He picked up one and put it on a post. Then he stepped off fifteen paces.

"Ventilate it," he ordered.

The boy drew his revolver, took a long, steady aim, and fired. The bullet whistled past across the prairie. His second shot scored a clean hit. With pardonable pride he turned to the cattleman.

"Set up another can," commanded Wadley.

From the pile of empties the young man picked another and put it on the post. Wadley, known in Texas as a two-gun man, flashed into sight a pair of revolvers almost quicker than the eye could follow. Both shots came instantly and together. The cattleman had fired from the hips. Before the can had reached the ground the weapons barked again.

Ridley ran forward and picked up the can. It was torn and twisted with jagged holes, but the evidence was written there that all four bullets had pierced the tin. The Easterner could hardly believe his eyes. Such shooting was almost beyond human skill.

The owner of the A T O thrust into place his two forty-fives.

"If you're goin' to wear six-shooters, learn to use 'em, son. If you don't, some bad-man is liable to bump you off for practice."

As the two men stepped around the corner of the house a girl came down the steps of the porch. She was dressed in summer white, but she herself was spring. Slim and lissome, the dew of childhood was still on her lips, and the mist of it in her eyes. But when she slanted her long lashes toward Arthur Ridley, it was not the child that peeped shyly and eagerly out from beneath them. Her heart was answering the world-old call of youth to youth.

"I'm going downtown, Dad," she announced.

Ridley stepped forward and lifted his hat. "May I walk with you, Miss Ramona?"

"Stop at the post-office and see if the buckboard driver is in with the mail, 'Mona," her father said.

The boy and the girl made a couple to catch and hold the eye.

They went down the street together chattering gayly. One of the things young Ridley knew how to do well was to make himself agreeable to girls. He could talk nonsense charmingly and could hold his own in the jolly give-and-take of repartee. His good looks were a help. So too was the little touch of affectionate deference he used. He had the gift of being bold without being too bold.

It was a beautiful morning and life sang in the blood of Ramona. It seemed to her companion that the warm sun caressed the little curls at her temples as she moved down the street light as a deer. Little jets of laughter bubbled from her round, birdlike throat. In her freshly starched white dress, with its broad waistband of red and purple ribbon, the girl was sweet and lovely and full of mystery to Ridley.

A little man with a goatee, hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed, came down the street with jingling spurs to meet them. At sight of Ramona his eyes lighted. From his well-shaped gray head he swept in a bow a jaunty, broad-brimmed white hat.

The young girl smiled, because there were still a million unspent smiles in her warm and friendly heart.

"Good-morning, Captain Ellison," she called.

"Don't know you a-tall, ma'am." He shook his head with decision. "Never met up with you before."

"Good gracious, Captain, and you've fed me candy ever since I was a sticky little kid."

He burlesqued a business of recognizing her with much astonishment. "You ain't little 'Mona Wadley. No! Why, you are a young lady all dressed up in go-to-meet-him clothes. I reckon my little side-partner has gone forever."

"No, she hasn't, Uncle Jim," the girl cried. "And I want you to know I still like candy."

He laughed with delight and slapped his thigh with his broad-brimmed ranger hat. "By dog, you get it, 'Mona, sure as I'm a foot high."

Chuckling, he passed down the street.

"Captain Jim Ellison of the Rangers," explained Ramona to her companion. "He isn't really my uncle, but I've known him always. He's a good old thing and we're great friends."

Her soft, smiling eyes met those of Arthur. He thought that it was no merit in Ellison to be fond of her. How could he help it?

"He's in luck," was all the boy said.

A little flag of color fluttered in her cheek. She liked his compliments, but they embarrassed her a little.

"Did you fix it all up with Dad?" she asked, by way of changing the subject.

"Yes. I'm to go to Fort Winston to get the money for the beeves, and if I fall down on the job I'll never get another from him."

"I believe you're afraid of Dad," she teased.

"Don't you believe it—know it. I sure enough am," he admitted promptly.

"Why? I can twist him round my little finger," she boasted.

"Yes, but I'm not his only daughter and the prettiest thing in West Texas."

She laughed shyly. "Are you sure you're taking in enough territory?"

"I'll say south of Mason and Dixon's line, if you like."

"Really, he likes you. I can tell when Dad is for any one."

A sound had for some minutes been disturbing the calm peace of the morning. It was the bawling of thirsty cattle. The young people turned a corner into the main street of the town. Down it was moving toward them a cloud of yellow dust stirred up by a bunch of Texas longhorns. The call of the cattle for drink was insistent. Above it rose an occasional sharp "Yip yip!" of a cowboy.

Ramona stopped, aghast. The cattle blocked the road, their moving backs like the waves of a sea. The dust would irreparably soil the clean frock fresh from the hands of her black mammy. She made as if to turn, and knew with a flash of horror that it was too late.

Perhaps it was the gleam of scarlet in her sash that caught the eye of the bull leading the van. It gave a bellow of rage, lowered its head, and dashed at her.

Ramona gave a horror-stricken little cry of fear and stood motionless. She could not run. The fascination of terror held her paralyzed. Her heart died away in her while the great brute thundered toward her.

Out of the dust-cloud came a horse and rider in the wake of the bull. Frozen in her tracks, Ramona saw with dilated eyes all that followed. The galloping horse gained, was at the heels of the maddened animal, drew up side by side. It seemed to the girl that in another moment she must be trampled underfoot. Nothing but a miracle from God's blue could save her.

For what registered as time without end to the girl's fear-numbed brain, horse and bull raced knee to knee. Then the miracle came. The rider leaned far out from the saddle, loosened his feet from the stirrups, and launched himself at the crazed half-ton of charging fury.

His hands gripped the horns of the bull. He was dragged from the saddle into the dust, but his weight deflected the course of the animal. With every ounce of strength given by his rough life in the open the cowboy hung on, dragging the head of the bull down with him toward the ground. Man and beast came to a slithering halt together in a great cloud of dust not ten feet from Ramona.

Even now terror held her a prisoner. The brute would free itself and stamp the man to death. A haze gathered before her eyes. She swayed, then steadied herself. Man and bull were fighting desperately, one with sheer strength, the other with strength plus brains and skill. The object of the animal was to free itself. The bull tossed wildly in frantic rage to shake off this incubus that had fastened itself to its horns. The man hung on for life. All his power and weight were centered in an effort to twist the head of the bull sideways and back. Slowly, inch by inch, by the steady, insistent pressure of muscles as well packed as any in Texas, the man began to gain. The bull no longer tossed and flung him at will. The big roan head went down, turned backward, yielded to the pressure on the neck-muscles that never relaxed.

The man put at the decisive moment his last ounce of strength into one last twist. The bull collapsed, went down heavily to its side.

A second cowboy rode up, roped the bull, and deftly hogtied it.

The bulldogger rose and limped forward to the girl leaning whitely against a wall.

"Sorry, Miss Wadley. I hadn't ought to have brought the herd through town. We was drivin' to water."

"Are you hurt?" Ramona heard her dry, faint voice ask.

"Me!" he said in surprise. "Why, no, ma'am."

He was a tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by surprise and beaten him so cruelly only yesterday.

"It threw you around so," she murmured.

"Sho! I reckon I can curry a li'l ol' longhorn when I have it to do, ma'am," he answered, a bit embarrassed.

"Are—are you hurt?" another voice quavered.

With a pang of pain Ramona remembered Arthur Ridley. Where had he been when she so desperately needed help?

"No. Mr. Roberts saved me." She did not look at Ridley. A queer feeling of shame for him made her keep her eyes averted.

"I—went to get help for you," the boy explained feebly.

"Thank you," she said.

The girl was miserably unhappy. For the boy to whom she had given the largesse of her friendship had fled in panic; the one she hated for bullying and mistreating her brother had flung himself in the path of the furious bull to save her.

Captain Ellison came running up. He bristled at the trail foreman like a bantam. "What do you mean by drivin' these wild critters through town? Ain't you got a lick o' sense a-tall? If anything had happened to this little girl—"

The Ranger left his threat suspended in midair. His arms were round Ramona, who was sobbing into his coat.

The red-headed foreman shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was acutely uncomfortable at having made this young woman weep. "I ain't got a word to say, Captain. It was plumb thoughtless of me," he apologized.

"You come to my office this mo'nin' at twelve o'clock, young fellow. Hear me? I've got a word to say to you."

"Yes," agreed the bulldogger humbly. "I didn't go for to scare the young lady. Will you tell her I'm right sorry, Captain?"

"You eat yore own humble pie. You've got a tongue, I reckon," snorted Ellison, dragging at his goatee fiercely.

The complexion of Roberts matched his hair. "I—I—I'm turrible sorry, miss. I'd ought to be rode on a rail."

With which the range-rider turned, swung to the saddle of his pony without touching the stirrups, and fairly bolted down the street after his retreating herd.

CHAPTER V

CAPTAIN ELLISON HIRES A HAND

Captain Ellison was preparing for the Adjutant-General a report of a little affair during which one of his men had been obliged to snuff out the lives of a couple of Mexican horsethieves and seriously damage a third. Writing was laborious work for the Captain of Rangers, though he told no varnished tale. His head and shoulders were hunched over the table and his fingertips were cramped close to the point of the pen. Each letter as it was set down had its whispered echo from his pursed lips.

"Doggone these here reports," he commented in exasperation. "Looks like a man hadn't ought to make out one every time he bumps off a rustler."

He tugged at his goatee and read again what he had just written:

Then this José Barela and his gang of skoundrels struck out for the Brazos with the stolen stock. Ranger Cullom trailed them to Goose Creek and recovered the cattle. While resisting arrest Barela and another Mexican were killed and a third wounded. Cullom brought back the wounded man and the rustled stock.

A short noontime shadow darkened the sunny doorway of the adobe office. Ellison looked up quickly, his hand falling naturally to the handle of his forty-five. Among the Rangers the price of life was vigilance. A tall, lean, young man with a sardonic eye and a sunburned face jingled up the steps.

"Come in," snapped the Captain. "Sit down. With you in a minute."

The cowboy lounged in, very much at his ease. Roberts had been embarrassed before Ramona Wadley that morning, but he was not in the least self-conscious now. In the course of a short and turbid life he had looked too many tough characters in the eye to let any mere man disturb his poise.

"Do you spell scoundrel with a k?" the Ranger chief fired abruptly at him.

"Nary a k, Captain. I spell it b-a-d m-a-n."

"H'mp!" snorted the little man. "Ain't you got no education? A man's got to use a syllogism oncet in a while, I reckon."

"Mebbeso. What kind of a gun is it?" drawled Jack Roberts.

"A syllogism is a word meanin' the same as another word, like as if I was to say caballo for horse or six-shooter for revolver."

"I see—or tough guy for Texas ranger."

"Or durn fool for Jack Roberts," countered Ellison promptly.

"Now you're shoutin', Cap. Stomp on me proper. I certainly need to be curried."

Again the Ranger snorted. "H'mp! Been scarin' any more young ladies to death?"

"No more this mo'nin', Captain," answered Jack equably.

"Nor grandstandin' with any more ladino steers?"

"I exhibit only once a day."

"By dog, you give a sure-enough good show," exploded Ellison. "You got yore nerve, boy. Wait around till the prettiest girl in Texas can see you pull off the big play—run the risk of havin' her trampled to death, just so's you can grin an' say, 'Pleased to meet you, ma'am.' When I call you durn fool, I realize it's too weak a name."

"Hop to it, Captain. Use up some real language on me. Spill out a lot of those syllogisms you got bottled up inside you. I got it comin'," admitted Roberts genially as he rolled a cigarette.

The Captain had been a mule-skinner once, and for five glorious minutes he did himself proud while the graceless young cowpuncher beamed on him.

"You sure go some, Cap," applauded the young fellow. "I'd admire to have your flow of talk."

Ellison subsided into anticlimax. "Well, don't you ever drive yore wild hill-critters through town again. Hear me, young fellow?"

"You'll have to speak to Wadley about that. I'm not his trail boss any longer."

"Since when?"

"Since five o'clock yesterday evenin'. I was turnin' over the herd this mo'nin' when the little lady showed up an' I had to pull off the bulldoggin'."

"Wadley fire you?"

"That's whatever."

"Why?"

"Didn't like the way I mussed up son Rutherford, I kind o' gathered."

"Another of yore fool plays. First you beat up Wadley's boy; then you 'most massacree his daughter. Anything more?"

"That's all up to date—except that the old man hinted I was a brand-burner."

"The deuce he did!"

"I judge that son Rutherford had told him I was one of the Dinsmore gang. Seems I'm all right except for bein' a rowdy an' a bully an' a thief an' a bad egg generally."

"H'mp! Said you was a rustler, did he?" The Ranger caressed his goatee and reflected on this before he pumped a question at the line-rider. "Are you?"

"No more than Rutherford Wadley."

The Captain shot a swift slant look at this imperturbable young man. Was there a hidden meaning in that answer?

"What's the matter with Wadley? Does he expect you to let Ford run it over you? That ain't like Clint."

"He's likely listened to a pack o' lies."

"And you haven't heard from him since?"

"Yes, I have. He sent me my check an' a hundred-dollar bill."

Ellison sat up. "What for?"

"For my fancy bulldoggin'." The hard eyes of the young fellow smouldered with resentment.

"By dog, did Clint send you money for savin' 'Mona?"

"He didn't say what it was for—so I rolled up the bill an' lit a cigarette with it."

"You take expensive smokes, young man," chuckled the officer.

"It was on Wadley. I burned only half the bill. He can cash in the other half, for I sent it back to him. When he got it, he sent for me."

"And you went?"

"You know damn well I didn't. When he wants me, he knows where to find me."

"Most young hill-billies step when Clint tells 'em to."

"Do they?" asked the range-rider indifferently.

"You bet you. They jump when he whistles. What are you figurin' to do?"

"Haven't made up my mind yet. Mebbe I'll drift along the trail to the Pecos country."

"What was Clint payin' you?"

"Sixty a month an' found."

"How'd you like to have yore wages lowered?"

"Meanin'—"

"That I'll give you a job."

Young Roberts had a capacity for silence. He asked no questions now, but waited for Ellison to develop the situation.

"With the Rangers. Dollar a day an' furnish yore own bronc," explained the Captain.

"The State of Texas is liberal," said the cowboy with dry sarcasm.

"That's as you look at it. If you're a money-grubber, don't join us. But if you'd like to be one of the finest fightin' force in the world with somethin' doin' every minute, then you'd better sign up. I'll promise that you die young an' not in yore bed."

"Sounds right attractive," jeered the red-haired youngster with amiable irony.

"It is, for men with red blood in 'em," retorted the gray-haired fire-eater hotly.

"All right. I'll take your word for it, Captain. You've hired a hand."

CHAPTER VI

CLINT WADLEY'S MESSENGER

Outside the door of the commandant's office Arthur Ridley stood for a moment and glanced nervously up and down the dirt road. In a hog-leather belt around his waist was six thousand dollars just turned over to him by Major Ponsford as the last payment for beef steers delivered at the fort according to contract some weeks earlier.

Arthur had decided not to start on the return journey until next morning, but he was not sure his judgment had been good. It was still early afternoon. Before nightfall he might be thirty miles on his way. The trouble with that was that he would then have to spend two nights out, and the long hours of darkness with their flickering shadows cast by the camp-fires would be full of torture for him. On the other hand, if he should stay till morning, word might leak out from the officers' quarters that he was carrying a large sum of money.

A drunken man came weaving down the street. He stopped opposite Ridley and balanced himself with the careful dignity of the inebriate. But the gray eyes, hard as those of a gunman, showed no trace of intoxication. Nor did the steady voice.

"Friend, are you Clint Wadley's messenger?"

The startled face of Ridley flew a flag of confession. "Why—what do you mean?" he stammered. Nobody was to have known that he had come to get the money for the owner of the A T O.

"None of my business, you mean," flung back the man curtly. "Good enough! It ain't. What's more, I don't give a damn. But listen: I was at the Buffalo Hump when two fellows came in. Me, I was most asleep, and they sat in the booth next to me. I didn't hear all they said, but I got this—that they're aimin' to hold up some messenger of Clint Wadley after he leaves town to-morrow. You're the man, I reckon. All right. Look out for yourself. That's all."

"But—what shall I do?" asked Ridley.

"Do? I don't care. I'm tellin' you—see? Do as you please."

"What would you do?" The danger and the responsibility that had fallen upon him out of a sky of sunshine paralyzed the young man's initiative.

The deep-set, flinty eyes narrowed to slits. "What I'd do ain't necessarily what you'd better do. What are you, stranger—high-grade stuff, or the run o' the pen?"

"I'm no gun-fighter, if that's what you mean."

"Then I'd make my get-away like a jackrabbit hell-poppin' for its hole. I got one slant at these fellows in the Buffalo Hump. They're bully-puss kind o' men, if you know what I mean."

"I don't. I'm from the East."

"They'll run it over you, bluff you off the map, take any advantage they can."

"Will they fight?"

"They'll burn powder quick if they get the drop on you."

"What are they like?"

The Texan considered. "One is a tall, red-headed guy; the other's a sawed-off, hammered-down little runt—but gunmen, both of 'em, or I'm a liar."

"They would probably follow me," said the messenger, worried.

"You better believe they will, soon as they hear you've gone."

Arthur kicked a little hole in the ground with the toe of his shoe. What had he better do? He could stay at the fort, of course, and appeal to Major Ponsford for help. But if he did, he would probably be late for his appointment with Wadley. It happened that the cattleman and the army officer had had a sharp difference of opinion about the merits of the herd that had been delivered, and it was not at all likely that Ponsford would give him a military guard to Tascosa. Moreover, he had a feeling that the owner of the A T O would resent any call to the soldiers for assistance. Clint Wadley usually played his own hand, and he expected the same of his men.

But the habit of young Ridley's life had not made for fitness to cope with a frontier emergency. Nor was he of stiff enough clay to fight free of his difficulty without help.

"What about you?" he asked the other man. "Can I hire you to ride with me to Tascosa?"

"As a tenderfoot-wrangler?" sneered the Texan.

Arthur flushed. "I've never been there. I don't know the way."

"You follow a gun-barrel road from the fort. But I'll ride with you—if the pay is right."

"What do you say to twenty dollars for the trip?"

"You've hired me."

"And if we're attacked?"

"I pack a six-shooter."

The troubled young man looked into the hard, reckless face of this stranger who had gone out of his way to warn him of the impending attack. No certificate was necessary to tell him that this man would fight.

"I don't know your name," said Ridley, still hesitating.

"Any more than I know yours," returned the other. "Call me Bill Moore, an' I'll be on hand to eat my share of the chuck."

"We'd better leave at once, don't you think?"

"You're the doc. Meet you here in an hour ready for the trail."

The man who called himself Bill Moore went his uncertain way down the street. To the casual eye he was far gone in drink. Young Ridley went straight to the corral where he had put up his horse. He watered and fed the animal, and after an endless half-hour saddled the bronco.

Moore joined him in front of the officers' quarters, and together they rode out of the post. As the Texan had said, the road to Tascosa ran straight as a gun-barrel. At first they rode in silence, swiftly, leaving behind them mile after mile of dusty trail. It was a brown, level country thickly dotted with yucca. Once Moore shot a wild turkey running in the grass. Prairie-chicken were abundant, and a flight of pigeons numbering thousands passed at one time over their heads and obscured the sky.

"Goin' down to the encinal to roost," explained Moore.

"A man could come pretty near living off his rifle in this country," Arthur remarked.

"Outside o' flour an' salt, I've done it many a time. I rode through the Pecos Valley to Fort Sumner an' on to Denver oncet an' lived off the land. Time an' again I've done it from the Brazos to the Canadian. If he gets tired of game, a man can jerk the hind quarters of a beef. Gimme a young turkey fed on sweet mast an' cooked on a hackberry bush fire, an' I'll never ask for better chuck," the Texan promised.

In spite of Ridley's manifest desire to push on far into the night, Moore made an early camp.

"No use gauntin' our broncs when we've got all the time there is before us. A horse is a man's friend. He don't want to waste it into a sorry-lookin' shadow. Besides, we're better off here than at Painted Rock. It's nothin' but a whistlin'-post in the desert."

"Yes, but I'd like to get as far from the fort as we can. I—I'm in a hurry to reach Tascosa," the younger man urged.

Moore opened a row of worn and stained teeth to smile. "Don't worry, young fellow. I'm with you now."

After they had made camp and eaten, the two men sat beside the flickering fire, and Moore told stories of the wild and turbulent life he had known around Dodge City and in the Lincoln County War that was still waging in New Mexico. He had freighted to the Panhandle from El Moro, Colorado, from Wichita Falls, and even from Dodge. The consummate confidence of the man soothed the unease of the young fellow with the hogskin belt. This plainsman knew all that the Southwest had to offer of danger and was equal to any of it.

Presently Arthur Ridley grew drowsy. The last that he remembered before he fell asleep was seeing Moore light his pipe again with a live coal from the fire. The Texan was to keep the first watch.

It was well along toward morning when the snapping of a bush awakened Ridley. He sat upright and reached quickly for the revolver by his side.

"Don't you," called a voice sharply from the brush.

Two men, masked with slitted handkerchiefs, broke through the shin-oak just as Arthur whipped up his gun. The hammer fell once—twice, but no explosion followed. With two forty-fives covering him, Ridley, white to the lips, dropped his harmless weapon.

Moore came to life with sleepy eyes, but he was taken at a disadvantage, and with a smothered oath handed over his revolver.

"Wha-what do you want?" asked Ridley, his teeth chattering.

The shorter of the two outlaws, a stocky man with deep chest and extraordinarily broad shoulders, growled an answer.

"We want that money of Clint Wadley's you're packin'."

The camp-fire had died to ashes, and the early-morning air was chill. Arthur felt himself trembling so that his hands shook. A prickling of the skin went goose-quilling down his back. In the dim light those masked figures behind the businesslike guns were sinister with the threat of mystery and menace.

"I—haven't any money," he quavered.

"You'd better have it, young fellow, me lad!" jeered the tall bandit. "We're here strictly for business. Dig up."

"I don't reckon he's carryin' any money for Clint," Moore argued mildly. "Don't look reasonable that an old-timer like Clint, who knocked the bark off'n this country when I was still a kid, would send a tenderfoot to pack gold 'cross country for him."

The tall man swung his revolver on Moore. "'Nuff from you," he ordered grimly.

The heavy-set outlaw did not say a word. He moved forward and pressed the cold rim of his forty-five against the forehead of the messenger. The fluttering heart of the young man beat hard against his ribs. His voice stuck in his throat, but he managed to gasp a surrender.

"It's in my belt. For God's sake, don't shoot."

"Gimme yore belt."

The boy unbuckled the ribbon of hogskin beneath his shirt and passed it to the man behind the gun. The outlaw noticed that his fingers were cold and clammy.

"Stand back to back," commanded the heavy man.

Deftly he swung a rope over the heads of his captives, jerked it tight, wound it about their bodies, knotted it here and there, and finished with a triple knot where their heels came together.

"That'll hold 'em hitched a few minutes," the lank man approved after he had tested the rope.

"I'd like to get a lick at you fellows. I will, too, some day," mentioned Moore casually.

"When you meet up with us we'll be there," retorted the heavy-weight. "Let's go, Steve."

The long man nodded. "Adiós, boys."

"See you later, and when I meet up with you, it'll be me 'n' you to a finish," the Texan called.

The thud of the retreating, hoofs grew faint and died. Already Moore was busy with the rope that tied them together.

"What's the matter, kid? You shakin' for the drinks? Didn't you see from the first we weren't in any danger? If they'd wanted to harm us, they could have shot us from the brush. How much was in that belt?"

"Six thousand dollars," the boy groaned.

"Well, it doesn't cost you a cent. Cheer up, son."

By this time Moore had both his arms free and was loosening one of the knots.

"I was in charge of it. I'll never dare face Mr. Wadley."

"Sho! It was his own fault. How in Mexico come he to send a boy to market for such a big stake?"

"Nobody was to have known what I came for. I don't see how it got out."

"Must 'a' been a leak somewhere. Don't you care. Play the hand that's dealt you and let the boss worry. Take it from me, you're lucky not to be even powder-burnt when a shot from the chaparral might have done yore business."

"If you only hadn't fallen asleep!"

"Reckon I dozed off. I was up 'most all last night." Moore untied the last knot and stepped out from the loop. "I'm goin' to saddle the broncs. You ride in to Tascosa and tell Wadley. I'll take up the trail an' follow it while it's warm. We'll see if a pair of shorthorns can run a sandy like that on me." He fell suddenly into the violent, pungent speech of the mule-skinner.

"I'll go with you," announced Ridley. He had no desire to face Clint Wadley with such a lame tale.

The cold eyes of the Texan drilled into his. "No, you won't. You'll go to town an' tell the old man what's happened. Tell him to send his posse across the malpais toward the rim-rock. I'll meet him at Two Buck Crossin' with any news I've got."

A quarter of an hour later the hoofs of his horse flung back faint echoes from the distance. The boy collapsed. His head sank into his hands and his misery found vent in sobs.

CHAPTER VII

THE DANCE

Long since the sun had slid behind the horizon edge and given place to a desert night of shimmering moonlight and far stars. From the enchanted mesa Rutherford Wadley descended to a valley draw in which were huddled a score of Mexican jacals, huts built of stakes stuck in a trench, roofed with sod and floored with mud. Beyond these was a more pretentious house. Originally it had been a log "hogan," but a large adobe addition had been constructed for a store. Inside this the dance was being held.

Light filtered through the chinks in the mud. From door and windows came the sounds of scraping fiddles and stamping feet. The singsong voice of the caller and the occasional whoop of a cowboy punctuated the medley of noises.

A man whose girth would have put Falstaff to shame greeted Rutherford wheezily. "Fall off and 'light, Ford. She's in full swing and the bridle's off."

The man was Jumbo Wilkins, line-rider for the A T O.

Young Wadley swung to the ground. He did not trouble to answer his father's employee. It was in little ways like this that he endeared himself to those at hand, and it was just this spirit that the democratic West would not tolerate. While the rider was tying his horse to the hitch-rack, Jumbo Wilkins, who was a friendly soul, made another try at conversation.

"Glad you got an invite. Old man Cobb hadn't room for everybody, so he didn't make his bid wide open."

The young man jingled up the steps. "That so? Well, I didn't get an invite, as you call it. But I'm here." He contrived to say it so offensively that Jumbo flushed with anger.

Wadley sauntered into the room and stood for a moment by the door. His trim, graceful figure and dark good looks made him at once a focus of eyes. Nonchalantly he sunned himself in the limelight, with that little touch of swagger that captures the imagination of girls. No man in the cow-country dressed like Rutherford Wadley. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed are kings, and to these frontier women this young fellow was a glass of fashion. There was about him, too, a certain dash, a spice of the devil more desirable in a breaker of hearts than any mere beauty.

His bold, possessive eyes ranged over the room to claim what they might desire. He had come to the dance at Tomichi Creek to make love to Tony Alviro's betrothed sweetheart Bonita.

She was in the far corner with her little court about her. If Bonita was a flirt, it must be admitted she was a charming one. No girl within a day's ride was so courted as she. Compact of fire and passion, brimming with life and health, she drew men to her as the flame the moth.

Presently the music started. Bonita, in the arms of Tony, floated past Rutherford, a miracle of supple lightness. A flash of soft eyes darted at the heir of the A T O ranch. In them was a smile adorable and provocative.

As soon as the dance was over, Wadley made his way indolently toward her. He claimed the next waltz.

She had promised it to Tony, the girl said—and the next.

"Tony can't close-herd you," laughed Rutherford. "His title ain't clear yet—won't be till the priest has said so. You'll dance the second one with me, Bonita."

"We shall see, señor," she mocked.

But the Mexican blood in the girl beat fast. In her soft, liquid eyes lurked the hunger for sex adventure. And this man was a prince of the blood—the son of Clint Wadley, the biggest cattleman in West Texas.

There were challenging stars of deviltry in Bonita's eyes when they met those of Rutherford over the shoulder of Alviro while she danced, but the color was beating warm through her dark skin. The lift of her round, brown throat to an indifferent tilt of the chin was mere pretense. The languorous passion of the South was her inheritance, and excitement mounted in her while she kept time to the melodious dance.

Alviro was master of ceremonies, and Wadley found his chance while the young Mexican was of necessity away from Bonita. Rutherford bowed to her with elaborate mockery.

"Come. Let us walk in the moonlight, sweetheart," he said.

Bonita turned to him with slow grace. The eyes of the man and the woman met and fought. In hers there was a kind of savage fierceness, in his an insolent confidence.

"No," she answered.

"Ah! You're afraid of me—afraid to trust yourself with me," he boasted.

She was an untutored child of the desert, and his words were a spur to her quick pride. She rose at once, her bosom rising and falling fast. She would never confess that—never.

The girl walked beside him with the fluent grace of youth, beautiful as a forest fawn. In ten years she would be fat and slovenly like her Mexican mother, but now she carried her slender body as a queen is supposed to but does not. Her heel sank into a little patch of mud where some one had watered a horse. Under the cottonwoods she pulled up her skirt a trifle and made a moue of disgust at the soiled slipper.

"See what you've done!" Small, even teeth, gleamed in a coquettish smile from the ripe lips of the little mouth. He understood that he was being invited to kneel and clean the mud-stained shoe.

"If you're looking for a doormat to wipe your feet on, I'll send for Tony," he jeered.

The father of Bonita was Anglo-Saxon. She flashed anger at his presumption.

"Don't you think it. Tony will never be a doormat to anybody. Be warned, señor, and do not try to take what is his."

Again their eyes battled. Neither of them saw a man who had come out from the house and was watching them from the end of the porch.

"I take what the gods give, my dear, and ask leave of no man," bragged Wadley.

"Or woman?"

"Ah! That is different. When the woman is Bonita, muchacha, I am her slave."

He dropped to one knee and with his handkerchief wiped the mud from the heel of her slipper. For a moment his fingers touched lightly the trim little ankle; then he rose quickly and caught her in his arms.

"Sometime—soon—it's going to be me and you, sweetheart," he whispered.

"Don't," she begged, struggling against herself and him. "If Tony sees—"

His passion was too keen-edged to take warning. He kissed her lips and throat and eyes. The eyes of the watcher never wavered. They were narrowed to shining slits of jet.

"Why do you come and—and follow me?" the girl cried softly. "It is not that you do not know Tony is jealous. This is not play with him. He loves me and will fight for me. You are mad."

"For love of you!" he laughed triumphantly.

She knew he lied. The instinct that served her for a conscience had long since told her as much. But her vanity, and perhaps something deeper, craved satisfaction. She wanted to believe he meant it. Under his ardent gaze the long lashes of the girl drooped to her dusky cheeks. It was Tony she loved, but Tony offered her only happiness and not excitement.

A moment later she gave a startled little cry and pushed herself free. Her dilated eyes were fixed on something behind the cattleman.

Rutherford, warned by her expression, whirled on his heel.

Tony Alviro, knife in hand, was close upon him. Wadley lashed out hard with his left and caught the Mexican on the point of the chin.

The blow lifted Tony from his feet and flung him at full length to the ground. He tried to rise, groaned—rolled over.

Bonita was beside him in an instant. From where she knelt, with Tony's dark head in her arms pressed close to her bosom, she turned fiercely on Wadley.

"I hate you, dog of a gringo! You are all one big lie through and through—what they call bad egg—no good!"

Already half a dozen men were charging from the house. Jumbo pinned Wadley's arms by the elbows to prevent him from drawing a revolver.

"What's the rumpus?" he demanded.

"The fellow tried to knife me in the back," explained Rutherford. "Jealous, because I took his girl."

"So?" grunted Wilkins. "Well, you'd better light a shuck out o' here. You came on yore own invite. You can go on mine."

"Why should I go? I'll see you at Tombstone first."

"Why?" Jumbo's voice was no longer amiable and ingratiating. "Because you gave Tony a raw deal, an' he's got friends here. Have you?"

Wadley looked round and saw here and there Mexican faces filled with sullen resentment. It came to him swiftly that this was no place for his father's son to linger.

"I don't push my society on any one," he said haughtily. "If I ain't welcome, I'll go. But I serve notice right here that any one who tries to pull a knife on me will get cold lead next time."

Jumbo, with his arm tucked under that of Wadley, led the way to the house. He untied the rein of Rutherford's horse and handed it to the son of his boss.

"Vamos!" he said.

The young man pulled himself to the saddle. "You're a hell of a friend," he snarled.

"Who said anything about bein' a friend? I'm particular about when I use that word," replied Wilkins evenly, with hard eyes.

Wadley's quirt burned the flank of the cow-pony and it leaped for the road.

When five minutes later some one inquired for Tony he too had disappeared.

CHAPTER VIII

RUTHERFORD MAKES A MISTAKE

Rutherford Wadley struck across country toward the rim-rock. Anger burned high in him, and like the bully he was he took it out of his good horse by roweling its sides savagely. He plunged into the curly mesquite, driving forward straight as an arrow. Behind him in the darkness followed a shadow, sinister and silent, out of sight, but within sound of the horse's footfall. It stopped when Wadley stopped; when he moved, it moved.

Midnight found young Wadley still moving straight forward, the moon on his left. Painted Rock was ten miles to the west. Except for the stage station there, and the settlement he had left, there was no other habitation for fifty miles. It was a wilderness of silence.

Yet in that waste of empty space Rutherford "jumped up" a camper. The man was a trader, carrying honey and pecans to Fort Worth. He was awakened by the sound of a raucous curse, he testified later, and in the bright moonlight saw the young cattleman beating his horse. Evidently the young animal had been startled at sight of his white-topped wagon.

An angry sentence or two passed between the men before the cattleman moved over the hill-brow. As the trader rolled up again in his sugun, there came to him faintly the sound of another horse. He was not able to explain later why this struck him as ominous, beyond the strangeness of the fact that two men, not in each other's company, should be traveling so close together in the desert. At any rate, he rose, crept forward to a clump of Spanish bayonet, and from behind it saw a young Mexican pass along the swale. He was close enough almost to have touched him, and in the rich moonlight saw the boyish face clearly.

By the time Wadley reached the rough country of the cap-rock, the young day was beginning to awaken. A quail piped its morning greeting from the brush. A gleam of blue in the dun sky flashed warning of a sun soon to rise. He had struck the rim-rock a little too far to the right, and deflected from his course to find the pocket he was seeking. For half a mile he traveled parallel to the ridge, then turned into a break in the wall. At the summit of a little rise he gave a whistle.

Presently, from above a big boulder, a head appeared cautiously.

"Hello, out there! Who is it?"

"Ford."

The rider swung to the ground stiffly and led his horse forward down a sharply descending path to a little draw. A lank, sallow man with a rifle joined him. With his back to a flat rock, a heavy-set, broad-shouldered fellow was lounging.

"'Lo, Ford. Didn't expect you to-night," he grumbled.

"Drifted over from the dance at Tomichi Creek. Beat up a young Mexican and had to get out."

"You're such a sullen brute! Why can't you let folks alone?" Pete Dinsmore wanted to know.

He was annoyed. Rutherford Wadley was not a partner in the business on hand to-night, and he would rather the man had been a hundred miles away.

"He got jealous and tried to knife me," explained the heir of the A T O sulkily.

"You durn fool! Won't you ever learn sense? Who was it this time?"

"Tony Alviro. His girl's crazy about me."

The keen, hard eyes of Dinsmore took in the smug complacency of the handsome young cad. He knew that this particular brand of fool would go its own way, but he wasted a word of advice.

"I don't guess you want any pearls o' wisdom from me, but I'll onload some gratis. You let Bonita Menendez alone or Tony will camp on yore trail till he gits you."

"Sure will," agreed Gurley, setting down his rifle. "Them Mexicans hang together, too. We need their friendship in our business. Better lay off them."

"I don't remember askin' your advice, Gurley."

"Well, I'm givin' it. See?"

Another sharp whistle cut the air. Gurley picked up the rifle again and climbed the lookout rock. Presently he returned with a dismounted horseman. The man was the one who had introduced himself to Arthur Ripley a few hours earlier as Bill Moore.

"Howdy, boys. Got the stuff all safe?" he asked cheerfully.

From behind Wadley Pete Dinsmore was making a series of facial contortions. Unfortunately the new arrival did not happen to be looking at him, and so missed the warning.

"Never saw anything work prettier," Moore said with a grin as he put down his saddle on a boulder. "Ridley hadn't ought to be let out without a nurse. He swallowed my whole yarn—gobbled down bait, sinker an' line. Where's the gold, Pete?"

"In a sack back of the big rock." Pete was disgusted with his brother Homer, alias Bill Moore. They would probably have to divide with young Wadley now, to keep his mouth shut.

Rutherford jumped at the truth. His father had told him that he was going to give Art Ridley a try-out by sending him to the fort for a payment of gold. Probably he, Rutherford, had mentioned this to one of the gang when he was drunk. They had held up the messenger, intending to freeze him out of any share of the profits. All right—he would show them whether he was a two-spot.

"Bring out the sack. Let's have a look at it," he ordered.

Gurley handed the sack to Pete Dinsmore, and the men squatted in a circle tailor-fashion.

"Smooth work, I call it," said Homer Dinsmore. He explained to Wadley why he was of this opinion. "Steve heard tell of a wagon-train goin' to Tascosa to-day. If Ridley slept overnight at the fort he would hear of it an' stay with the freight outfit till he had delivered the gold to yore dad. We had to get him started right away. So I pulled on him a story about hearin' the boys intended to hold him up. He hired me as a guard to help him stand off the bad men. Whilst I was keepin' watch I fixed up his six-shooter so's it wouldn't do any damage if it went off. Best blamed piece of work I ever did pull off. I'd ought to get a half of what we took off'n him instead of a third."

"A third! Who says you get a third?" asked Wadley.

"Three of us did this job, didn't we?" cut in Gurley.

"Sure. You took what belongs to me—or at least to my dad," protested young Wadley. "Tried to slip one over on me. Guess again, boys. I won't stand for it."

The jade eyes of the older brother narrowed. "Meanin' just what, Ford?"

"What do you take me for, Pete? Think I'm goin' to let you rob me of my own money an' never cheep? I'll see you all in blazes first," cried Wadley wildly.

"Yes, but—just what would you do about it?"

"Do? I'll ride to town an' tell Cap Ellison. I'll bust you up in business, sure as hell's hot."

There was a moment of chill silence. Three of the four men present knew that Rutherford Wadley had just passed sentence of death upon himself. They had doubted him before, vaguely, and without any definite reason. But after this open threat the fear that he would betray them would never lift until he was where he could no longer tell tales.

"How much of this money do you think is comin' to you, Ford?" asked Pete quietly.

"It's all mine, anyhow. You boys know that." Rutherford hesitated; then his greed dominated. He had them where they had to eat out of his hand. "Give me two thirds, an' you fellows divide the other third for your trouble. That's fair."

"Goddlemighty, what's eatin' you?" Gurley exploded. "Think we're plumb idjits? You 'n' me will mix bullets first, you traitor!"

The Dinsmores exchanged one long, significant look. Then Pete spoke softly.

"Don't get on the prod, Steve. Ford sure has got us where the wool's short, but I reckon he aims to be reasonable. Let's say half for you, Ford, an' the other half divided among the rest of us."

Wadley had refreshed himself out of a bottle several times during the night. Ordinarily he would have accepted the proposed compromise, but the sullen and obstinate side of him was uppermost.

"You've heard my terms, Pete. I stand pat."

Again a significant look passed, this time between Pete Dinsmore and Gurley.

"All right," said Homer Dinsmore shortly. "It's a raw deal you're givin' us, but I reckon you know yore own business, Wadley."

The money was emptied from the pigskin belt and divided. Rutherford repacked his two thirds in the belt and put it on next his shirt.

"I don't know what you fellows are goin' to do, but I'm goin' to strike for town," he said. "I aim to get back in time to join one of the posses in their hunt for the outlaws."

His jest did not win any smiles. The men grimly watched him saddle and ride away. A quarter of an hour later they too were in the saddle.

CHAPTER IX

MURDER IN THE CHAPARRAL

To Jack Roberts, engaged at the Delmonico restaurant in the serious business of demolishing a steak smothered in onions, came Pedro Menendez with a strange story of a man lying dead in the rim-rock, a bullet-hole in the back of his head.

The Mexican vaquero came to his news haltingly. He enveloped it in mystery. There was a dead man lying at the foot of Battle Butte, out in the rim-rock country, and there was this wound in the back of his head. That was all. Pedro became vague at once as to detail. He took refuge in shrugs and a poor memory when the Ranger pressed him in regard to the source of his information.

Roberts knew the ways of the Mexicans. They would tell what they wanted to tell and no more. He accepted the news given him and for the moment did not push his questions home.

For twenty-four hours the Ranger had been in the saddle, and he was expecting to turn in for a round-the-clock sleep. But Pedro's tale changed his mind. Captain Ellison was at Austin, Lieutenant Hawley at Tascosa. Regretfully Roberts gave up his overdue rest and ordered another cup of strong coffee. Soon he was in the saddle again with a fresh horse under him.

The Panhandle was at its best. Winter snows and spring rains had set it blooming. The cacti were a glory of white, yellow, purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms. The white, lilylike flowers of the Spanish bayonet flaunted themselves everywhere. Meadowlarks chirruped gayly and prairie-hens fluttered across the path in front of the rider.

Battle Butte had received its name from an old tradition of an Indian fight. Here a party of braves had made a last stand against an overwhelming force of an enemy tribe. It was a flat mesa rising sharply as a sort of bastion from the rim-rock. The erosions of centuries had given it an appearance very like a fort.

Jack skirted the base of the butte. At the edge of a clump of prickly pear he found the evidence of grim tragedy which the circling buzzards had already warned him to expect. He moved toward it very carefully, in order not to obliterate any footprints. The body lay face down in a huddled heap, one hand with outstretched finger reaching forth like a sign-post. A bullet-hole in the back of the head showed how the man had come to his death. He had been shot from behind.

The Ranger turned the body and recognized it as that of Rutherford Wadley. The face was crushed and one of the arms broken. It was an easy guess that the murder had been done on the butte above and the body flung down.

Jack, on all fours, began to quarter over the ground like a bloodhound seeking a trail. Every sense in him seemed to quicken to the hunt. His alert eyes narrowed in concentration. His fingertips, as he crept forward, touched the sand soft as velvet. His body was tense as a coiled spring. No cougar stalking its prey could have been more lithely wary.

For the Ranger had found a faint boot-track, and with amazing pains he was following this delible record of guilt. Some one had come here and looked at the dead body. Why? To make sure that the victim was quite dead? To identify the victim? Roberts did not know why, but he meant to find out.

The footprint was alone. Apparently none led to it or led from it. On that one impressionable spot alone had been written the signature of a man's presence.

But "Tex" Roberts was not an old plainsman for nothing. He knew that if he were patient enough he would find other marks of betrayal.

He found a second track—a third, and from them determined a course to follow. It brought him to a stretch of soft ground at the edge of a wash. The footprints here were sharp and distinct. They led up an arroyo to the bluff above.

The Ranger knelt dose to the most distinct print and studied it for a long time. All its details and peculiarities were recorded in his mind. The broken sole, the worn heel, the beveled edge of the toe-cap—all these fastened themselves in his memory. With a tape-line he measured minutely the length of the whole foot, of the sole and of the heel. These he jotted down in his notebook, together with cross-sections of width. He duplicated this process with the best print he could find of the left foot.

His investigation led him next to the summit of the bluff. A little stain of blood on a rock showed him where Wadley had probably been standing when he was shot. The murder might have been done by treachery on the part of one of his companions. If so, probably the bullet had been fired from a revolver. In that case the man who did it would have made sure by standing close behind his victim. This would have left powder-marks, and there had been none around the wound. The chances were that the shooting had been done from ambush, and if this was a true guess, it was a fair deduction that the assassin had hidden behind the point of rocks just back of the bluff. For he could reach that point by following the rim-rock without being seen by his victim.

Roberts next studied the ground just back of the point of rocks. The soil here was of disintegrated granite, so that there were no footprints to betray anybody who might have been hidden there. But Jack picked up something that was in its way as decisive as what he had been seeking. It was a cartridge that had been ejected from a '73[1] rifle. The harmless bit of metal in his hand was the receptacle from which death had flashed across the open toward Ford Wadley.

At the foot of the rim-rock the Ranger found signs where horses had been left. He could not at first make sure whether there were three or four. From that spot he back-tracked for miles along the edge of the rim-rock till he came to the night-camp where Wadley had met the outlaws. This, too, he studied for a long time.

He had learned a good deal, but he did not know why Ford Wadley had been shot. The young fellow had not been in Texas more than six or eight months, and he could not have made many enemies. If he had nothing about him worth stealing—and in West Texas men were not in the habit of carrying valuables—the object could not have been robbery.

He rode back to Battle Butte and carried to town with him the body of the murdered man. There he heard two bits of news, either of which might serve as a cause for the murder: Young Wadley had quarreled with Tony Alviro at a dance and grossly insulted him; Arthur Ridley had been robbed of six thousand dollars by masked men while on his way to Tascosa.

Ranger Roberts decided that he would like to have a talk with Tony.

1. The '73 rifle was not a seventy-three-caliber weapon, but was named from the year it was got out. Its cartridges could be used for a forty-four revolver. [1]

CHAPTER X

"A DAMNED POOR APOLOGY FOR A MAN"

The big cattleman from New Mexico who was talking with the owner of the A T O threw his leg across the arm of the chair. "The grass is good on the Pecos this year. Up in Mexico [2] the cattle look fine."

"Same here," agreed Wadley. "I'm puttin' ten thousand yearlin's on the Canadian."

A barefoot negro boy appeared at his elbow with a note. The owner of the A T O ripped open the envelope and read:

Dear Mr. Wadley:

I was held up last night by masked men and robbed. They took the gold. I'm too sick to go farther.

Arthur Ridley.

The jaw of the Texas cattleman clamped. He rose abruptly. "I got business on hand. A messenger of mine has been robbed of six thousand dollars." He turned to the colored boy. "Where's the man who gave you this?"

"At the Buffalo Corral, sah."

Wadley strode from the hotel, flung himself on a horse, and galloped down the street toward the corral.

Young Ridley was lying on a pile of hay when his employer entered. His heart was sick with fear and worry. For he knew now that his lack of boldness had led him into a serious mistake. He had by his indecision put himself in the power of Moore, and the chances were that the man was in collusion with the gang that had held him up. He had made another mistake in not going directly to Wadley with the news. The truth was that he had not the nerve to face his employer. It was quite on the cards that the old-timer might use a blacksnake whip on him. So he had taken refuge in a plea of illness.

The cattleman took one look at him and understood. He reached down and jerked the young fellow from the hay as if he had been a child. The stomach muscles of the boy contracted with fear and the heart died within him. Clint Wadley in anger was dangerous. In his youth he had been a gun-fighter and the habit had never entirely been broken.

"I—I'm ill," the young fellow pleaded.

"You'll be sure enough ill if you don't watch out. I'll gamble on that. Onload yore tale like shot off'n a shovel. Quit yore whinin'. I got no time for it."

Arthur told his story. The cattleman fired at him crisp, keen questions. He dragged from the trembling youth the when, where, and how of the robbery. What kind of pilgrim was this fellow Moore? Was he tall? Short? Dark? Bearded? Young? Old? What were the masked men like? Did they use any names? Did he see their horses? Which way did they go?

The messenger made lame answers. Mostly he could only say, "I don't know."

"You're a damned poor apology for a man—not worth the powder to blow you up. You hadn't the sand to fight for the money entrusted to you, nor the nerve to face me after you had lost it. Get out of here. Vamos! Don't ever let me hear yore smooth, glib tongue again."

The words of Wadley stung like hail. Arthur was thin-skinned; he wanted the good opinion of all those with whom he came in contact, and especially that of this man. Like a whipped cur he crept away and hid himself in the barn loft, alone with his soul-wounds.

From its window he watched the swift bustle of preparation for the pursuit. Wadley himself, big and vigorous to the last masculine inch of him, was the dominant figure. He gave curt orders to the members of the posse, arranged for supplies to be forwarded to a given point, and outlined plans of action. In the late afternoon the boy in the loft saw them ride away, a dozen lean, long-bodied men armed to the limit. With all his heart the watcher wished he could be like one of them, ready for any emergency that the rough-and-tumble life of the frontier might develop.

In every fiber of his jarred being he was sore. He despised himself for his failure to measure up to the standard of manhood demanded of him by his environment. Twice now he had failed. The memory of his first failure still scorched his soul. During ghastly hours of many nights he had lived over that moment when he had shown the white feather before Ramona Wadley. He had run for his life and left her alone to face a charging bull. It was no excuse to plead with himself that he could have done nothing for her if he had stayed. At least he could have pushed her to one side and put himself in the path of the enraged animal. The loss of the money was different. It had been due not wholly to lack of nerve, but in part at least to bad judgment. Surely there was something to be said for his inexperience. Wadley ought not to have sent him alone on such an errand, though of course he had sent him because he was the last man anybody was likely to suspect of carrying treasure....

Late that night Ridley crept out, bought supplies, saddled his horse, and slipped into the wilderness. He was still writhing with self-contempt. There was a futile longing in his soul for oblivion to blot out his misery.

1. In western Texas when one speaks of Mexico he means New Mexico. If he refers to the country Mexico, he says Old Mexico. [2]

CHAPTER XI

ONE TO FOUR

Through the great gray desert with its freakish effects of erosion a rider had moved steadily in the hours of star-strewn darkness. He had crossed the boundary of that No Man's Land which ran as a neutral strip between Texas and its neighbor and was claimed by each. Since the courts had as yet recognized the rights of neither litigant there was properly no State jurisdiction here. Therefore those at outs with the law fled to this strip and claimed immunity.

In the Panhandle itself law was a variable quantity. Its counties had been laid out and named, but not organized. For judicial purposes they were attached to Wheeler County. Even the Rangers did not pretend to police this district. When they wanted a man they went in and got him.

The rider swung at last from his saddle and dropped the bridle reins to the ground. He crept forward to some long, flat sheep-sheds that bulked dimly in the night shadows. Farther back, he could just make out the ghost of a dwelling-hut. Beyond that, he knew, was a Mexican village of three or four houses. A windmill reared its gaunt frame in the corral. A long trough was supplied by it with water for the sheep.

The night-rider dipped a bucket of water from the tank that fed the trough. He carried it to the gate of the corral and poured it slowly into the fine dust made by the sharp feet of the sheep, mixing the water and dust to a thick paste with the end of an old branding-iron. He brought bucket after bucket of water until he had prepared a bed of smooth mud of the proper consistency.

Before he had quite finished his preparation a dog inside the adobe hut began to bark violently. The interloper slipped over the fence and retreated to the darkness of the barranca.

From the direction of the hut men poured. The one crouching in the chaparral heard voices. He made out a snatch or two of talk in Spanish. The men were explaining to themselves that the dog must have been barking at a wolf or a coyote. Presently they trooped back into the house. Silence fell again over the night.

The man in the chaparral once more crept forward and climbed the fence. He made straight for the entrance of the corral. Carefully he examined the footprints written in the bed of mud he had prepared. One after another he studied them. Some had been crossed out or blotted by subsequent prints, but a few were perfect. One of these he scrutinized for a long time, measuring its dimensions with a tape-line from toe to heel, across the ball of the foot, the instep, and the heel. When at last he straightened up his eyes were shining with satisfaction. He had found what he wanted.

Once more the dog was uneasy with growlings. The man retreated from the corral, returned to his horse, and rode away across the mesa. A quarter of an hour later he unsaddled, hobbled his horse, and rolled up in a blanket. Immediately he fell into sound sleep.

It was broad day when he wakened. The young morning sun bathed him in warmth. He lighted a fire of mesquite and boiled coffee. In his frying-pan he cooked flapjacks, after he had heated the jerked beef which he carried in his saddlebags. When he had eaten, he washed his pan with clean, fine sand, repacked his supplies, and rode forward past the sheep-corral to the village.

In front of a mud-and-log tendejón two Mexicans lounged. They watched him with silent hostility as he dismounted, tied his horse to a snubbing-post worn shiny as a razor-strap, and sauntered into the tendejón. This stranger wore the broad-rimmed felt hat and the buckskin suit of a Ranger, and none of that force was welcome here.

Back of a flimsy counter was a shelf upon which were half a dozen bottles and some glasses. One could buy here mescal, American whiskey, and even wine of a sort. The owner of the place, a white man, was talking to a young Mexican at the time the Ranger entered. The proprietor looked hard at the Ranger with dislike he did not try to veil. The Mexican in front of the bar was a slim young man with quick eyes and an intelligent face. The Ranger recognized him at once as Tony Alviro.

"Buenos!" the Ranger said with the most casual of nods. "I've come to take you back with me, Tony."

The other two Mexicans had followed the Ranger into the room. The Texan stood sideways at the end of the bar, quite at his ease, the right forearm resting on the counter lightly. Not far from his fingers the butt of a revolver projected from a holster. In his attitude was no threat whatever, but decidedly a warning.

The four men watched him steadily.

"No, Señor Roberts," answered Alviro. "You can touch me not. I'm out of Texas."

"Mebbeso, Tony. But till I get further orders, this is Texas for me. You're goin' back with me."

Rangers and outlaws held different views about this strip of land. To the latter it was a refuge; law ended at its border; they could not be touched here by State constabulary. But the Ranger did not split hairs. He was law in the Panhandle, and if the man he wanted fled to disputed territory the Ranger went after him.

"Not so," argued Alviro. "If you arrest me in Texas, I say 'Bad luck,' but I go wiz you. There you are an offizer, an' I am oblige' surrender. But in thees No Man's Land, we are man to man. I refuse."

The lift of excitement was in the voice of the young Mexican. He knew the record of the Texas Rangers. They took their men in dead or alive. This particular member of the force was an unusually tough nut to crack. In the heart of Tony was the drench of a chill wave. He was no coward, but he knew he had no such unflawed nerve as this man. Through his mind there ran a common laconic report handed in by Rangers returning from an assignment—"Killed while resisting arrest." Alviro did not want Ranger Roberts to write that about him.

"Better not, Alviro. I have a warrant for your arrest."

The Texan did not raise his voice. He made no movement to draw a gun. But to Tony, fascinated by his hard, steel-gray eyes, came the certainty that he must go or fight. They were four to one against the Ranger, but that would not make the least difference. In the curt alternative of this clean-jawed young officer was cold finality.

The worried eyes of the fugitive referred to his companions. They had agreed to stand by him, and he knew that if it came to a fight they would. But he wanted more than that. His glance was an appeal for one of them to make his decision for him.

The voice of the tendejón-keeper interjected itself smoothly. "You've played yore hand out, friend. We're four to one. You go back an' report nothin' doin'."

Roberts looked at the man, and a little shiver ran down the barkeeper's spine. "There won't be four of you when we get through arguin' this, amigo, if we ever start," the Ranger suggested gently.

The proprietor of the place dropped his hand to the butt of his gun. But he did not draw. Some deep, wise instinct warned him to go slow. He knew the others would take their cue from him. If he threw down the gage of battle the room would instantly become a shambles. How many of them would again pass alive through the door nobody knew. He was a man who had fought often, but he could not quite bring himself to such a decision while those chilled-steel eyes bored into his. Anyhow, the game was not worth the candle.

"What is it you want Tony for?" he temporized, playing for time and any chance that might arise.

"For killin' Rutherford Wadley last month."

"A mistake. Tony has been here since the full of the moon."

"Oh, no. He was at the dance on Tomichi Creek. He tried to knife young Wadley. He left the house right after him."

"I left—sí, señor—but to come here," cried the accused man.

"To follow Wadley, Tony. You jumped a camper that night an' didn't know it. He saw you."

"Wadley was a dog, but I did not kill him," Alviro said gloomily.

"That so? You were on the spot. You left tracks. I measured 'em. They were the same tracks you left out in the corral five hours ago."

Tony's eyes flashed with a sudden discovery. "The mud—you meex it to get my footprints."

"You're a good guesser."

Alviro threw up his hands. "I was there. It iss true. But I did not kill the gringo dog. I was too late."

"You can tell me all about that on the way back."

"If I go back they will hang me."

"You'll get a fair trial."

"By a gringo jury before a gringo judge." The tone of Alviro was more than skeptical. It was bitter with the sense of racial injustice.

"I can't argue that with you, Tony. My business is to take you to Tascosa. That's what I'm here for."

The American behind the bar spoke again. "Listens fine! He's a Mexican, ain't he? They claim he killed a white man. Well, then, the mob would take him from you an' lynch him sure."

"The Rangers don't give up their prisoners, my friend. They take 'em an' they keep 'em. You'd ought to know that."

The tendejón-keeper flushed. He had been dragged to justice once by one of the force.

The eyes of the four consulted again. They were still hesitant. The shame of letting this youth take from them their companion without a fight was like a burr under a saddle-blanket to a bronco. But after all, the Ranger stood for law. If they killed him, other Rangers would come to avenge his death.

When men are in doubt the one who is sure dominates the situation. The eye of Roberts carried the compulsion of a deadly weapon. His voice was crisp.

"Come here, Tony," he ordered, and his fingers slipped into the pocket of his coat.

Alviro looked at him for a long second—swore to himself that he would not come—and came.

"Hold out yore hands."

The Mexican set his will to refuse. There was still time to elect to fight. He told himself that was what he was going to do. But he could not hold his own in that steady battle of the eyes. His hands moved forward—empty.

A moment, and the Ranger had slipped and fastened the handcuffs on his wrists.

Roberts had won. Psychologically it was now too late for the others to resort to arms. The tendejón-keeper recognized this with a shrug that refused responsibility for the outcome. After all, Tony had made his own decision. He had chosen to take his chances in Tascosa rather than on the spot with the Ranger.

"Saddle Tony's horse," ordered Roberts, looking at one of the Mexicans.

The man growled something in his native tongue, but none the less he moved toward the corral.

Within a quarter of an hour the Ranger and his prisoner were on their way. Two days later Roberts delivered his man to the deputy sheriff who had charge of the sod-house jail in the little town.

"There's a message here for you from Cap Ellison," the deputy said. "He wants you to go to Clarendon. Says you were to jog on down soon as you show up here."

"All right, Snark."

He rode down next day, changed horses at the halfway station, and reached Clarendon early in the morning. Ellison had been called to Mobeetie, but left instructions for him to await his return.

The semi-weekly stage brought two days later a letter, to Captain Ellison from Snark. Jack Roberts, obeying office instructions, opened the mail. The letter said:

Dere Cap,

They are aiming to lynch that Mexican Roberts brought in. The Dinsmore outfit is stirring up the town. Send a company of your Rangers, for God's sake, quick.

Respectably yours
Jim Snark

Jack Roberts was the only Ranger in town. He glanced at the clock. There was just time to catch the stage to Tascosa. He reached for his guns and his hat.

CHAPTER XII

TEX REARRANGES THE SEATING

The Tascosa stage was full. Its passengers were "packed like Yanks at Libby Prison," according to one of them, an ex-Confederate who had drifted West after the war. They were of the varied types common to the old Southwest—a drover, a cattle-buyer, a cowpuncher looking for a job, a smart salesman from St. Louis, and one young woman. Beside the driver on the box sat a long-bodied man in buckskin with a clean brown jaw and an alert, sardonic eye.

The salesman, a smooth, good-looking fellow whose eye instinctively rested on attractive women, made inquiries of Joe Johnson's old trooper.

"Who's the damsel?"

"Which?"

"The girl. She's a pippin." His possessive eye gloated on the young woman in front. "She didn't learn how to dress in this neck of the woods, either. Betcha she's from New Orleans or St. Louis."

The old warrior helped himself to a chew of tobacco. "You lose. She's Clint Wadley's daughter, an' he's an old-timer. Knocked the bark off'n this country, Clint did. I used to know him when he was takin' the hides off the buffaloes. Got his start that way, I reckon. Clint's outfit got six thousand tongues in six months oncet. Pickled the tongues an' sold 'em for three cents apiece, by gum. Delivered the hides at Clarendon for one-fifty straight on contract."

"I've heard of Wadley," the salesman said. "What's the kid going to Tascosa for?"

"Goin' to stay awhile with her aunt, I 'low. Her brother was killed recent."

"I've heard about that, too. They caught the fellow, didn't they—the one that did it?"

"They got a Mexican jailed for it. I dunno whether he done it or not. That young Ranger on the box run him down."

"That kid in buckskin?" sneered the city man.

The ex-Confederate bristled at the tone rather than the words. He happened to be a friend of the youth mentioned.

"I'll follow Jack's dust any day of the week. He's one hell-poppin' rooster. No better man rides leather. When I druv a wagon oncet gatherin' bones—"

"Gathering bones?"

"Sure—buffalo-bones, for fertilizer. Well, that same Jack Roberts yanked me out o' the Canadian when I was drowndin'. Took a big chance, too."

"What about this Mexican? Are they going to hang him?"

"I reckon. He's in a soddy up at Tascosa. I done heard they're aimin' to tear it down and hang him to a wagon-tongue."[3]

The black-haired traveling man caressed his little mustache and watched the girl boldly. Her face was a little wan, and in the deep eyes was shadowed a heartache. But it had been impossible even for grief to submerge the sweet youth in her. There were lights in her soft, wavy hair, and the line of her exquisite throat would have delighted a sculptor. The slim figure was exquisitely poised, though just now it suggested weariness.

When the stage stopped at noon for dinner the salesman made it a point to sit beside her at the long table. His persistent attentions to the girl made the delicate color of her cheek deepen. She was too shy, too unused to the world, to know how to suppress his audacities effectively. But it was plain to one young man sitting at the opposite end of the table that the familiarities of the man were unwelcome.

While they were waiting outside for the change-horses to be hitched, the Ranger made a request of the old soldier.

"Wish you'd swap places with me, Sam."

"Sure. I'd a heap ruther sit outside. Say, that drummer hadn't ought to worry Miss Ramona. She's not feelin' very peart, anyhow. I reckon she set the world an' all by that scalawag brother of hers."

"He's not goin' to trouble her any more, Sam."

The ex-Confederate looked at the narrow-flanked young man with an alert question in his eye. If "Tex" Roberts was going to take a hand, the salesman was certainly riding for a fall.

The salesman had made up his mind to sit beside Miss Wadley for the rest of the journey. He emerged from the dining-room at her heels and was beside her to offer a hand into the stage.

Ramona gave him a look of reproach and entreaty. She was near tears. The man from St. Louis smiled confidently.

"I know a good thing when I see it," he whispered. "I'll ride beside you and keep off the rough-necks, Miss Wadley."

A heavy heel smashed down on the toes of his neat shoe and crunched round. A hard elbow bumped up forcefully against his chin as if by accident. A muscular hand caught the loose fat of his plump stomach and tightened like a vise. The dapper salesman opened his mouth in a shriek of pain.

"Indigestion?" asked the Ranger sympathetically, and his sinewy fingers twisted in the cushion of flesh they gripped. "I'll get you somethin' good for it in a minute."

Roberts flung the man back and rearranged the seating inside so that the drover sat beside Ramona as before dinner. Then he tucked an arm under that of the St. Louis man and led him back into the stage station. The salesman jerked along beside him unhappily. His wrist, wrenched by Roberts in a steady pressure of well-trained muscles, hurt exquisitely. When at last he was flung helplessly into a chair, tears of pain and rage filled his eyes. Never in the course of a cushioned and pampered life had he been so manhandled.

"My God, you brute, you've killed me!" he sobbed.

"Sho! I haven't begun yet. If you take the stage to-day to Tascosa I'm goin' to sit beside you real friendly, an' we'll play like we been doin' all the way in to town. It's just my way of bein' neighborly."

"I'll have the law of you for this," the city man howled, uncertain which of his injuries to nurse first.

"I would," agreed the Texan. "Well, so long, if you ain't comin'."

Roberts moved back with long, easy stride to the stage. He nodded to the driver.

"All ready, Hank. The drummer ain't feelin' well. He'll stay here overnight. I reckon I'll keep my own seat outside, Sam." And Roberts swung himself up.

The old soldier climbed in, chuckling to himself. It had been the neatest piece of work he had ever seen. The big body of the cowboy had been between Ramona and her tormentor, so that she did not know what had taken place. She did know, however, that the woman-killer had been obliterated swiftly from her path.

"Did you ever see anything like the way he got shet o' that drummer?" Sam asked his neighbor in a whisper. "I'll bet that doggoned masher will be hard to find when Jack's on the map. He's some go-getter boy, Jack Roberts is."

Meanwhile Jack was flagellating himself. It was his bad luck always to be associated in the mind of Miss Wadley with violence. He had beaten up the brother whom she was now mourning. He had almost been the cause of her own death. Now a third time she saw him in the role of a trouble-maker. To her, of course, he could be nothing but a bully and a bad lot. The least he could do was to make himself as inconspicuous as possible for the rest of the journey.

Man may shuffle the pack, but when all is done woman is likely to cut the cards. The driver stopped at Tin Cup Creek to water the horses. To Jack, sitting on the box, came the cattle-drover with orders.

"The young lady has somethin' to say to you, Tex. You're to swap seats with me."

The lean, bronzed young man swung down. He had, when he wished, a wooden face that told no tales. It said nothing now of a tide of blood flushing his veins.

By a little gesture the girl indicated the seat beside her. Not till the creaking of the moving stage drowned her words did she speak. Her eyes were dilated with excitement.

"I overheard them talking in the back seat," she said. "They think there's going to be a lynching at Tascosa—that the mob is going to hang the Mexican who killed my brother. Are you going to let them do it?"

"Not in this year of our Lord, Miss Wadley," he answered evenly.

"Can you stop them?"

"That's what I draw a dollar a day for."

"You mustn't let them do it!" she cried, a little wildly. "Let the law punish him!"

"Suits me. I'll try to persuade the boys to look at it that way."

"But what can you do? You're only a boy."

With a grim little smile he paraphrased Roy Bean's famous phrase: "I'm law east of the Pecos right now, Miss Wadley. Don't you worry. The Dinsmores won't get him if I can help it."

"I might speak to my father," she went on, thinking aloud. "But he's so bitter I'm afraid he won't do anything."

"He will after I've talked with him."

Her anxious young eyes rested in his clear, steady gaze. There was something about this youth that compelled confidence. His broad-shouldered vigor, the virile strength so confidently reposeful, were expressions of personality rather than accidentals of physique.

The road dipped suddenly into a deep wash that was almost a little gulch. There was a grinding of brakes, then a sudden lurch that threw Ramona against the shoulder of the Ranger.

"The brake's done bust," she heard the ex-Confederate say.

Another violent swing flung Ramona outward. The horses were off the road, and the coach swayed ominously on two wheels. The girl caught at the Ranger's hand and clung to it. Gently he covered her hand with his other one, released his fingers, and put a strong arm round her shoulders.

Hank's whip snaked out across the backs of the wheelers. He flung at his horses a torrent of abuse. The stage reached the bottom of the wash in a succession of lurches. Then, as suddenly as the danger had come upon them, it had passed; the stage was safely climbing the opposite side of the ravine.

The Ranger's arm slipped from the shoulders of the girl. Her hand crept from under his. He did not look at her, but he knew that a shell-pink wave had washed into the wan face.

The slim bosom of the girl rose and fell fast. Already she was beginning to puzzle over the difficulties of a clear-cut right and wrong, to discover that no unshaded line of cleavage differentiates them sometimes. Surely this young fellow could not be all bad. Of course she did not like him. She was quite sure of that. He was known as a tough citizen. He had attacked and beaten brutally her brother Rutherford—the wild brother whose dissipations she had wept and prayed over, and whose death she was now mourning. Yet Fate kept throwing him in her way to do her services. He had saved her life. He had adroitly—somehow, she did not quite know in what way—rid her of an offensive fellow traveler. She had just asked a favor of him, and there was yet another she must ask.

Ramona put off her request to the last moment. At Tascosa she left her purse in the stage seat and discovered it after the coach had started to the barn.

"My purse. I left it in the seat," she cried.

The announcement was made to the world at large, but it was intended for a particular pair of ears set close to a small head of wavy, sun-reddened hair. The owner of them ran to the stage and recovered the purse. By the time he reached Ramona, the rest of the party were inside the post-office.

She thanked him, then looked at him quickly with an effect of shy daring.

"You travel a good deal, don't you—about the country?"

"Considerable."

"I—I wonder if—" She took courage from his friendly smile. "I'm worried about Mr. Ridley—for fear something has happened to him."

"You mean an accident?" he asked gently.

"I don't know." Her cheeks flew color-signals of embarrassment. "My father was harsh to him. He's very sensitive. I feel—sort of responsible. He might do something foolish."

"I don't reckon he will. But I'll sure keep an eye out for him."

She gave him her little hand gratefully, then remembered what he had done to her brother and withdrew it hastily from his grip. In another moment she had passed into the post-office and left him alone.

1. There was no timber in the Panhandle. The first man ever hanged in the short-grass country was suspended from a propped-up wagon-tongue. [3]

CHAPTER XIII

"ONLY ONE MOB, AIN'T THERE?"

After Miss Wadley had disappeared in the post-office a man touched Roberts on the shoulder.

"Where are the Rangers I sent for?" he asked.

"Here I am, Snark."

"You didn't come alone?"

"Captain Ellison was out of town. The rest of the force was away on assignment. I couldn't reach any of 'em."

The deputy sheriff broke out in excited annoyance. "All right! I wash my hands of it. They can lynch the Mexican soon as they've a mind to. Let 'em go to it. Here I send for a company of Rangers, an' one kid shows up. What in Mexico can you do alone?"

"I wouldn't say alone. You're here, Snark."

"I'm not goin' to lift a hand—not a hand."

"Sure it's necessary? What makes you think they're goin' to lynch Alviro?"

"They don't make any bones of it. Everybody knows it. The Dinsmore gang is in town stirrin' up feelin'. You might as well have stayed away. There's not a thing you can do."

"I reckon mebbe we can figure a way to save Tony," answered the Ranger easily.

The deputy voiced his impatience. "Yore talk sounds plumb foolish to me. Don't you get it? We're not dealin' with one or two men. Half the town is in this thing."

"I promised Tony there would be nothin' of that sort."

"You can't handle a mob all by yoreself, can you?" asked Snark sarcastically. "There's only one of you, I reckon."

The little flicker in the Ranger's eye was not wholly amusement. "There's goin' to be only one mob, too, ain't there?" he drawled.

"You can't slip him out unnoticed, if that's yore idee. They've got watchers round the jail," the deputy went on.

"I shan't try."

"Then you'll let 'em hang him?"

"Oh, no!"

"What in hell do you mean to do, then?"

Roberts told him, in part. The deputy shook his head vehemently.

"Can't be done. First place, you can't get Wadley to do it. He won't lift a hand to stop this hangin'. Second place, he couldn't stop it if he wanted to. Folks in Tascosa ain't a bit gun-shy, an' right now they've got their necks bowed. An' this Dinsmore gang—they'll eat you alive if you get in their way."

"Mebbeso. You can't always be sure. I've got one card up my sleeve I haven't mentioned to you."

"If you want my opinion—"

The Ranger cut him off short. "I don't, Snark. Not right now. I'm too busy to listen to it. I want to know just one thing of you. Will you have the horses right where I want 'em when I want 'em?"

"You're the doc," acknowledged the deputy grudgingly. "They'll be there, but just the same I think it's a fool play. You can't get away with it."

Jack asked a question. "Where am I most likely to find Wadley?"

"At McGuffey's store. It's a block this-a-way and a block that-a-way." He indicated directions with his hand.

Wadley was not among those who sat on the porch of the general store known as McGuffey's Emporium. He had just gone to his sister's house to meet his daughter Ramona, of whose arrival he had received notice by a boy. Roberts followed him.

In answer to the Ranger's "Hello, the house!" the cattleman came out in his shirt-sleeves.

Jack cut straight to business.

"I've come to see you about that Mexican Alviro, Mr. Wadley. Is it true they're goin' to lynch him?"

The hard eyes of the grizzled Texan looked full at Roberts. This young fellow was the one who had beaten his son and later had had the impudence to burn as a spill for a cigarette the hundred-dollar bill he had sent him.

"Whyfor do you ask me about it?" he demanded harshly.

"Because you've got to help me stop this thing."

The cattleman laughed mirthlessly. "They can go as far as they like for me. Suits me fine. Hangin' is too good for him. That's all I've got to say."

Already he had refused the pleadings of his daughter, and he had no intention of letting this young scalawag change his mind.

"Are you sure this Mexican is guilty—sure he's the man who killed yore son, Mr. Wadley?"

"He's as guilty as hell."

"I don't think it. Hasn't it ever struck you as strange that yore son was killed an' yore messenger Ridley held up the same night, an' that the two things happened not many miles from each other?"

"Of course it has. I'm no fool. What of it?"

"I've always thought the same men did both."

"Young fellow, have you ever thought that Ridley never was held up, that it was a fake robbery pulled off to deceive me? Where is Ridley? He lit out mighty sudden when he saw how I took it. He couldn't even tell me where the hold-up happened. I never did hit the trail of the robbers."

"It wasn't a fake. I can prove that."

"I'm here to be shown," said the cattleman skeptically.

"But first about Tony. It looks bad for him on the surface. I'll admit that. But—"

"Don't talk to me about my boy's murderer, Roberts!" cried Wadley, flushing angrily. "I'll not do a thing for him. I'll help those that aim to do justice on him."

"He didn't kill yore son."

"What! Didn't you arrest him yoreself for it?"

"When I arrested him, I didn't believe he had done it. I know it now. He's my star witness, an' I knew he would skip across the border if I let him out."

"You can't convince me, but let's hear yore fairy tale. I got to listen, I reckon."

Jack told his story in few words. He explained what he had found at the scene of the murder and how he had picked up the trail of the three horsemen who had followed Rutherford to the place of his death. He had back-tracked to the camp of the rendezvous at the rim-rock, and he had found there corroborative evidence of the statement Tony Alviro had made to him.

"What was it he told you, and what did you find?"

The big cattleman looked at him with a suspicion that was akin to hostility. His son had been a ne'er-do-well. In his heart Wadley was not sure he had not been worse. But he was ready to fight at the drop of the hat any man who dared suggest it. He did not want to listen to any evidence that would lead him to believe ill of the son who had gone wrong.

"Tony admits all the evidence against him. He did follow Rutherford intendin' to kill him. But when he saw yore son strike straight across country to the cap-rock, he trailed him to see where he was goin'. Alviro had heard stories."

"You can't tell me anything against my boy. I won't stand for it," broke out the tortured father.

The Ranger looked straight at him. "I'm goin' to tell you no harm of him except that he kept bad company," he said gently. "I reckon you know that already."

"Go on," commanded the father hoarsely.

"Tony followed him to the rim-rock, an' on the way they jumped up the camper, though Alviro did not know it. At the rim-rock Rutherford met two men. Presently another man joined them."

"Who were they?"

"Alviro isn't dead sure. He climbed up to a rock bluff back of them, but it was still dark an' he couldn't make them out. Pretty soon Rutherford found out they had a sack of gold. He must have found out where they got it, too."

Underneath the deep tan of his cheeks the old-timer whitened. "So you're tryin' to tell me that my boy was one of the gang that robbed my messenger! An' you're askin' me to believe it on the word of a greaser with a rope around his neck. Is that it?"

"No. They had a quarrel, but yore son bluffed 'em out. They gave the gold to him. He saddled an' rode away with it. On his way back to town he was murdered. So he never got a chance to turn it back to you."

The father of the man who had been killed drew a long, sobbing breath of relief. His clenched fists slowly opened.

"Tony saw all this, did he?"

"Not all of it. Day was comin' on, an' he couldn't follow Rutherford right away. Before he got goin' the three men saddled. They trailed along after yore son, an' Tony a mile or so behind 'em. After awhile he heard a shot. He took his time investigatin', because he didn't want to stop any bullets himself. At the foot of Battle Butte he found Rutherford. He had been shot from behind an' flung over the bluff."

The face of the cattleman twitched. "If I can lay my hands on the man or men that did it—"

"Mebbe you can, if you'll give me time. I checked up Tony's story, an' everywhere there was evidence to back it. He had no rifle with him, but I picked up a shell back of some rocks a hundred yards from where yore son must have been standin' when he was shot. The shell came from a '73. I back-tracked to the night-camp, an' it was just like Tony had said. Four men had been there. One left before the others. You could see the signs where they had trailed him. Once or twice they missed his tracks an' found 'em again. Same way with the single man followin' them. He had taken short-cuts too. Sometimes he blotted out the hoofprints of the three in front, so I know he was not ahead of 'em."

"You think the Dinsmores did this, Jack?"

"I want more evidence before I say so publicly. But Tony didn't. Here's another point in his favor. If Tony shot him on the bluff an' flung the body over, why did he have to go down below an' look at it? No need a-tall of that. No; Tony went down to make sure who it was that had been killed. Soon as he knew that he guessed he would be accused of it, an' he lit out for No Man's Land. I found him there three weeks later."

The cattleman apologized after a fashion for some hard things he had said and thought about his former employee. "I don't spend any of my time likin' yore style, Roberts. You're too high-heeled for me. But I'll say this for you: Ellison picked a good man when he got you. You're a straight-up rider, an' you'll do to take along. What's yore programme?"

He told it. The cattleman looked at him with increased respect. He gave a short, barking laugh.

"If it was anybody else I'd say it was crazy, but you're such a doggoned hellion of a go-getter mebbe you can put it over."

"Looks to me like a good bet," said Roberts mildly.

"Well, I an' my friends will be right there if we're needed. I'll see you through. Can't afford to have my best witness strung up to a wagon-tongue yet awhile."

They talked over the details; then the Ranger started for the jail, and the cattleman breezed around to give a little tip to some reliable friends. Wadley was quite of a mind with Roberts. There was going to be no lynching at Tascosa if he could help it.

CHAPTER XIV

JACK SERVES NOTICE

Jack Roberts liked to get his information first hand. On his way to the jail he deflected, passed up the wide, dusty main street, and stopped at a log "hogan" made of bois d'arc timber and cedar from the brakes. Across the front of it was printed roughly a sign:

THE SILVER DOLLAR

The Ranger took a little hitch at his guns to make sure they would slide easily from the holsters in case of need, then strolled into the saloon, a picture of negligent indifference.

A tall man, lank as a shad, was master of ceremonies. Steve Gurley was in high feather. He was treating the crowd and was availing himself of his privilege as host to do the bulk of the talking. His theme was the righteousness of mob law, with particular application to the case of Tony Alviro. He talked loudly, as befits one who is a leader of public opinion.

Some wandering of attention in his audience brought him to a pause. He turned, to see the Ranger leaning indolently against the door-jamb. Jack was smiling in the manner of one quietly amused.

"Who invited you here?" demanded Gurley, taken aback, but unwilling to show it.

"Me, I just dropped in to hear yore big talk. Reminds me of old Geronimo. Like you, he gets all filled up with words about every so often and has to steam off. Go ahead, Gurley. Don't let me interrupt you. Make heap oration."

But Gurley's fluency was gone. His cross-eyed glance slid round the room to take stock of his backers. Was this fellow Roberts alone, or had he a dozen Rangers in town with him? He decided to bluff, though with no very great confidence. For into the picture had walked a man, a personality, dynamic and forceful. The outlaw had seen him in action once, and he had been on that occasion as easy to handle as a cageful of panthers.

"Come to see the hangin', have you, Mr. Ranger?"

"Is there goin' to be a hangin'?"

"You betcha—to-night! Git around early, an' you can have a front seat." Gurley added a word of explanation. "No greaser can git biggity an' shoot up our friends without hangin' from the end of a wagon-tongue pronto."

"We'll see what a judge an' jury say about it," suggested the Ranger mildly.

"That so? No brindle-thatched guy in buckskin can interfere without sleepin' in smoke. Understand?" The long, sallow man nervously stroked his hair, which was flattened down on his forehead in a semicircle in the absurd fashion of the day.

"Don't pull on yore picket-pin, Gurley," observed Roberts. "What I say goes. There's goin' to be no hangin' till the courts say so."

A man had come into the saloon by the back door. He was a heavy-set, slouchy man in jeans, broad-shouldered and bowlegged. He laughed grimly. "I don't reckon you can put that over on folks of the short-grass country, young fellow, me lad. We grow man-size, an' I don't expect we'll ask yore say-so when we're ready for business."

Pete Dinsmore had the advantage of his colleague. He knew that Roberts was the only Ranger in town. Also he was of tougher stuff. The leader of the Dinsmore gang would go through.

Into the gray-blue eye of the young man came a look that chilled. "Dinsmore, I'm not here to get into a rookus with you. But I'll serve notice on you right now to keep yore mind off Alviro. He's in the hands of the Texas Rangers. You know what that means."

Dinsmore met the warning with a sneer. "I was hittin' my heels on this range when you was knee-high to a duck, kid. Don't make a mistake. Folks don't make 'em with me twice." He thrust the head on his bull neck forward and dropped a hand to the gun by his side.

The Ranger shook his head. "Not just now, Pete. You're a bad hombre; I know that. Some day we're liable to tangle. But it will be in the way of business. While I'm workin' for the State I've got no private feuds."

Jack turned and walked out of the place as casually as he had entered. He knew now that Snark was right. Tascosa meant to hang the Mexican within a few hours.

Evidently Tony had heard the news. He looked up with quick apprehension when Snark opened the door of his cell to admit the Ranger.

"You promise' me fair trial, señor. Yet to-day they mean to hang me. Not so?" he cried. The young Mexican was sweating drops of fear.

"That's why I'm here, Tony," answered Jack cheerfully. "The hangin' programme won't go through if you do exactly as I say. I'll stand by you. They'll not get you unless they get me. Is that fair?"

Confidence is born of confidence. Alviro felt himself buttressed by the quiet strength of this vigorous youth. Broader shoulders than his had assumed the responsibility.

"What is it that I am to do?" he asked, his liquid eyes filled with the dumb worship of a dog.

"You're to walk right beside me. No matter how the crowd presses—no matter what it does—stick right there. If you try to run, you're gone. I can't save you. Understand?"

"Sí, señor."

Roberts looked at his watch. "'Most time for the fireworks to begin. You'll wait here till I come back, Tony. I'm goin' to give a little exhibition first. Be with you pronto."

Little beads of sweat gathered again on the forehead of the prisoner. The palms of his hands were hot and moist. He glanced nervously out of the window. Ten minutes before there had been a few lookouts in sight; now there were a hundred men or more. The mob was beginning to gather for the storming of the sod-house. Soon the affairs of Tony Alviro would reach a crisis.

"I—I'll nev' get out alive," said the Mexican in a dry whisper.

The Ranger grinned at him. "Don't worry. If the luck breaks right we'll camp to-night under the stars. If it doesn't they'll bury us both, Tony."

In that smile was life for Alviro. It expressed a soul unperturbed, ready for anything that might come up. With this man beside him Tony felt courage flowing back into his heart.

CHAPTER XV

A CLOSE SHAVE

The Ranger opened the door of the "soddy," stepped through, and closed it behind him. Jeers, threats, bits of advice greeted him from those in front of the jail.

"Better p'int for the hills, Mr. Ranger." ... "A whole passel of sheriffs can't save the greaser." ... "Don't you-all try an' stop us if you know what's good for you." ... "Skedaddle while yore skin's whole." ... "It's the Mexican, anyhow; it's him an' you too, if you show fight."

The lean-flanked young Ranger looked them over coolly. Men were coming in driblets from the main street. Already perhaps there were a hundred and fifty men and boys in sight. They were the advance guard of the gathering mob.

Never in his gusty lifetime had Jack Roberts been more master of himself. He had that rare temperament which warms to danger. He stood there bareheaded, his crisp, curly bronze hair reflecting the glow of the setting sun, one hand thrust carelessly into his trousers pocket.

"Give up yore prisoner, an' we won't hurt you. We got nothin' against you," a voice cried.

Jack did not answer. His left hand came out of the pocket bringing with it half a dozen silver dollars. Simultaneously the nose of his revolver flashed into sight. A dollar went up into the air. The revolver cracked. The coin, struck by the bullet in its descent, was flung aside at an angle. Dollar after dollar went up and was hurled from its course as the weapon barked. Out of six shots the Ranger missed only one.

It was marvelous marksmanship, but it did not in the least cow those who saw the exhibition. They were frontiersmen themselves, many of them crack shots, and they knew that one man could do nothing against several hundred. Their taunts followed Roberts as he stepped back into the sod-house.

Jack reloaded his revolver and joined the Mexican. "All ready, Tony. We're off soon as I've put the cuffs on you," he said briskly.

"Don' handcuff me, señor. Give me a gun an' a chance for my life," begged Alviro. He was trembling like an aspen leaf in a summer breeze.

The Ranger shook his head. "No, Tony. If you weren't wearin' cuffs they'd think I meant to turn you loose. You wouldn't have a chance. I'm the law, an' you're my prisoner. That's goin' to help pull us through. Brace up, boy. I've got an ace up my sleeve you don't know about."

A minute later a great yell of triumph rose in the air. The door of the sod-house had opened, and the Ranger and his prisoner stood in front of it. The mob pushed closer, uncertain as to what its next move would be. Had Roberts brought out the Mexican with the intention of making a merely formal resistance?

Pete Dinsmore, just arrived on the scene at the head of a group from the saloons, shouldered his way to the front.

"We'll take care of yore prisoner now, Mr. Ranger. Much obliged for savin' us the trouble of tearin' down the soddy," he called jubilantly.

"You got more sense an' less grit than I figured you had," jeered Gurley. "Now light a shuck back to Mobeetie an' write a report on it."

Roberts waited, silent and motionless, for the tumult to die. Only his eyes and his brain were active. Homer Dinsmore was in the crowd, well to the front. So were Jumbo Wilkins, Clint Wadley, and half a dozen other line-riders and cowmen, all grouped together to the left. Fifty yards back of them a group of saddled horses waited.

The shouting spent itself. The motionless figure beside the pallid Mexican excited curiosity. Did he mean to give up his prisoner without a fight? That was not the usual habit of the Texas Ranger.

With his left hand Jack drew from a coat-pocket some dark sticks a few inches long. A second time his six-shooter leaped from its scabbard.

"Look out for his cutter!"[4] yelled Gurley.

The voice of Wadley boomed out harsh and strong, so that every man present heard what he said. "Gad, he's got dynamite!"

The revolvers of the two Dinsmores were already out. They had moved forward a step or two, crouching warily, eyes narrowed and steady. If this brash young Ranger wanted a fight he could have it on the jump. But at Wadley's shout they stopped abruptly. The owner of the A T O was right. The fool officer had several sticks of dynamite in his hand tied together loosely by a string.

The crowd had been edging forward. There was no break in it now, but one could see a kind of uneasy ripple, almost as though it held its mob breath tensely and waited to see what was to come.

"He's got no fuse!" screamed Gurley.

"Here's my fuse," retorted the Ranger. He held up his revolver so that all could see. "I'm goin' to fling this dynamite at the first man who tries to stop me an' hit it while it's in the air close to his head. Come on, Tony. We're on our way."

He moved slowly forward. The Dinsmores stood fast, but the crowd sagged. As the Ranger got closer there was a sudden break. Men began to scramble for safety.

"Look out, Dinsmore," an excited voice cried. It belonged to Jumbo Wilkins. "He'll blow you to hell an' back."

Both of the Dinsmores had a reputation for gameness in a country where the ordinary citizen was of proved courage. With revolvers or rifles they would have fought against odds, had done it more than once. But dynamite was a weapon to which they were not used. It carried with it the terror of an instant death which would leave them no chance to strike back. Very slowly at first, a step at a time, they gave ground.

Roberts, as he moved with his prisoner, edged toward Wadley and his group. He knew he had won, that the big cattleman and his friends would close behind him in apparent slow pursuit, so adroitly as to form a shield between him and the mob and thus prevent a rifle-shot from cutting him down. The horses were in sight scarce half a hundred yards away.

And in the moment of victory he shaved disaster. From the right there came the pad of light, running feet and the rustle of skirts.

"Goddlemighty, it's 'Mona!" cried Wadley, aghast.

It was. Ramona had known that something was in the air when the Ranger and her father held their conference in front of the house. Her aunt had commented on the fact that Clint had taken from the wall a sawed-off shotgun he sometimes carried by his saddle. The girl had waited, desperately anxious, until she could stand suspense no longer. Bareheaded, she had slipped out of the house and hurried toward the jail in time to see the Ranger facing alone an angry mob. Without thought of danger to herself she had run forward to join him.

Homer Dinsmore gave a whoop of triumph and rushed forward. The Ranger could not play with dynamite when the life of Wadley's daughter was at stake. His brother, Gurley, a dozen others, came close at his heels, just behind Ramona.

The Ranger dropped the black sticks into his pocket and backed away, screening his prisoner as he did so. The ex-Confederate who had come up on the stage was standing beside Wadley. He let out the old yell of his war days and plunged forward.

The Dinsmores bumped into the surprise of their lives. Somehow the man upon whom they had almost laid clutches was out of reach. Between him and them was a line of tough old-timers with drawn guns.

The owner of the A T O handed his sawed-off shotgun to Jumbo Wilkins, caught Ramona round the shoulders with one arm, and ran her hurriedly out of the danger-zone.

Joe Johnston's old trooper pushed the end of his rifle urgently against Homer Dinsmore's ribs. "Doggone it, don't be so rampageous! Keep back ther! This gun's liable to go off."

"What's ailin' you?" snarled Gurley. "Ain't you goin' to help us string up the Mexican?"

"No, Steve. Our intentions is otherwise," replied Jumbo with a grin. "An' don't any of you-all come closeter. This sawed-off shotgun of Clint's is loaded with buckshot, an' she spatters all over the State of Texas."

The little posse round the prisoner backed steadily to the left. Not till they were almost at the horses did Dinsmore's mob guess the intentions of the Ranger.

Pete gave a howl of rage and let fly a bullet at Alviro. Before the sound of the shot had died away, the outlaw dropped his revolver with an oath. The accurate answering fire of Roberts had broken his wrist.

"No use, Pete," growled his brother. "They've got the deadwood on us to-day. But I reckon there are other days comin'."

Homer Dinsmore was right. The mob had melted away like a small snowbank in a hot sun. It was one thing to help lynch a defenseless Mexican; it was quite another to face nine or ten determined men backing the law. Scarce a score of the vigilantes remained, and most of them were looking for a chance to save their faces "without starting anything," as Jumbo put it later.

The lynching-party stood sullenly at a distance and watched the Ranger, his prisoner, and three other men mount the horses. The rest of the posse covered the retreat of the horsemen.

Just before the riders left, Jumbo asked a question that had been disturbing him. "Say, Tex, honest Injun, would you 'a' fired off that dynamite if it had come to a showdown?"

Roberts laughed. He drew from his pocket the sticks, tossed them into the air, and took a quick shot with his revolver.

For a moment not a soul in the posse nor one of Dinsmore's watching vigilantes drew a breath. Not one had time to move in self-defense.

The bullet hit its mark. All present saw the little spasmodic jerk of the bundle in the air. But there was no explosion. The dynamite fell harmlessly to the ground.

The old Confederate stepped forward and picked up the bundle. He examined it curiously, then let out a whoop of joyous mirth.

"Nothin' but painted sticks! Son, you're sure a jim-dandy! Take off yore hats, boys, to the man that ran a bluff on the Dinsmore outfit an' made a pair of deuces stick against a royal flush."

He tossed the bits of wood across to Pete Dinsmore, who caught the bundle and looked down at it with a sinister face of evil. This boy had out-maneuvered, outgamed, and outshot him. Dinsmore was a terror in the land, a bad-man known and feared widely. Mothers, when they wanted to frighten their children, warned them to behave, or the Dinsmore gang would get them. Law officers let these outlaws alone on one pretext or another. But lately a company of the Texas Rangers had moved up into the Panhandle. This young cub had not only thrown down the gauntlet to him; he had wounded him, thwarted him, laughed at him, and made a fool of him. The prestige he had built up so carefully was shaken.

The black eyes of the outlaw blazed in their deep sockets. "By God, young fellow, it's you or me next time we meet. I'll learn you that no scrub Ranger can cross Pete Dinsmore an' get away with it. This ain't the first time you've run on the rope with me. I've had more 'n plenty of you."

The riders were moving away, but Jack Roberts turned in the saddle, one hand on the rump of the bronco.

"It won't be the last time either, Dinsmore. You look like any other cheap cow-thief to me. The Rangers are going to bring law to this country. Tell yore friends they'll live longer if they turn honest men."

The Ranger put spurs to his horse and galloped after his posse.

1. In the early days in Texas a revolver was sometimes called a "cutter." [4]

CHAPTER XVI

WADLEY GOES HOME IN A BUCKBOARD

Clint Wadley took his daughter to the end of the street where his sister lived, blowing her up like a Dutch uncle every foot of the way. The thing she had done had violated his sense of the proprieties and he did not hesitate to tell her so. He was the more unrestrained in his scolding because for a few moments his heart had stood still at the danger in which she had placed herself.

"If you was just a little younger I'd sure enough paddle you. Haven't you been brought up a-tall? Did you grow up like Topsy, without any folks? Don't you know better than to mix up in men's affairs an' git yoreself talked about?" he spluttered.

Ramona hung her head and accepted his reproaches humbly. It was easy for her to believe that she had been immodest and forward in her solicitude. Probably Mr. Roberts—and everybody else, for that matter—thought she could not be a nice girl, since she had been so silly.

"You go home an' stay there," continued Clint severely. "Don't you poke yore head outside the door till I come back. I'll not have you traipsing around this-a-way. Hear me, honey?"

"Yes, Dad," she murmured through the tears that were beginning to come.

"I reckon, when it comes to standin' off a crowd o' hoodlums, I don't need any help from a half-grown little squab like you. I been too easy on you. That's what ails you."

Ramona had not a word to say for herself. She crept into the house and up to her room, flung herself on the bed and burst into a passion of weeping. Why had she made such an exhibition of herself? She was ashamed in every fiber of her being. Not only had she disgraced herself, but also her father and her aunt.

Meanwhile her father was on his way back downtown. In spite of his years the cattleman was hot-headed. He had something to say to Pete Dinsmore. If it led to trouble Wadley would be more than content, for he believed now that the Dinsmore gang—or some one of them acting in behalf of all—had murdered his son, and he would not rest easy until he had avenged the boy.

The Dinsmores were not at the Silver Dollar nor at the Bird Cage. A lounger at the bar of the latter told the owner of the A T O that they had gone to the corral for their horses. He had heard them say they were going to leave town.

The cattleman followed them to the corral they frequented. Pete Dinsmore was saddling his horse in front of the stable. The others were not in sight, but a stable boy in ragged jeans was working over some harness near the door.

Dinsmore sulkily watched Wadley approach. He was in a sour and sullen rage. One of the privileges of a "bad-man" is to see others step softly and speak humbly in his presence. But to-day a young fellow scarcely out of his teens had made him look like a fool. Until he had killed Roberts, the chief of the outlaws would never be satisfied, nor would his prestige be what it had been. It had been the interference of Wadley and his crowd that had saved the Ranger from him, and he was ready to vent his anger on the cattleman if he found a good chance.

The outlaw knew well enough that he could not afford to quarrel with the owner of the A T O. There was nothing to gain by it and everything to lose, for even if the cattleman should be killed in a fair fight, the Rangers would eventually either shoot the Dinsmores or run them out of the country. But Pete was beyond reason just now. He was like a man with a toothache who grinds on his sore molar in the intensity of his pain.

"I've come to tell you somethin', Dinsmore," said Wadley harshly.

"Come to apologize for throwin' me down, I reckon. You needn't. I'm through with you."

"I'm not through with you. What I want to say is that you're a dog. No, you're worse than any hound I ever knew; you're a yellow wolf."

"What's that?" cried the bad-man, astounded. His uninjured hand crept to a revolver-butt.

"I believe in my soul that you murdered my boy."

"You're crazy, man—locoed sure enough. The Mexican—"

"Is a witness against you. When you heard that he had followed Ford that night, you got to worryin'. You didn't know how much he had seen. So you decided to play safe an' lynch him, you hellhound."

"Where did you dream that stuff, Wadley?" demanded Dinsmore, eyes narrowed wrathfully.

"I didn't dream it, any more than I dreamed that you followed Ford from the cap-rock where you hole up, an' shot him from behind at Battle Butte."

"That's war talk, Wadley. I've just got one word to say to it. You're a liar. Come a-shootin', soon as you're ready."

"That's now."

The cattleman reached for his forty-five, but before he could draw, a shot rang out from the corral. Wadley staggered forward a step or two and collapsed.

Pete did not relax his wariness. He knew that one of the gang had shot Wadley, but he did not yet know how badly the man was hurt. From his place behind the horse he took a couple of left-handed shots across the saddle at the helpless man. The cattleman raised himself on an elbow, but fell back with a grunt.

The position of Dinsmore was an awkward one to fire from. Without lifting his gaze from the victim, he edged slowly round the bronco.

There was a shout of terror, a sudden rush of hurried feet. The stableboy had flung himself down on Wadley in such a way as to protect the prostrate body with his own.

"Git away from there!" ordered the outlaw, his face distorted with the lust for blood that comes to the man-killer.

"No. You've done enough harm. Let him alone!" cried the boy wildly.

The young fellow was gaunt and ragged. A thin beard straggled over the boyish face. The lips were bloodless, and the eyes filled with fear. But he made no move to scramble for safety. It was plain that in spite of his paralyzing horror he meant to stick where he was.

Dinsmore's lip curled cruelly. He hesitated. This boy was the only witness against him. Why not make a clean job of it and wipe him out too? He fired—and missed; Pete was not an expert left-hand shot.

"Look out, Pete. Men comin' down the road," called the other Dinsmore from the gate of the corral.

Pete looked and saw two riders approaching. It was too late now to make sure of Wadley or to silence the wrangler. He shoved his revolver back into its place and swung to the saddle.

"Was it you shot Wadley?" he asked his brother.

"Yep, an none too soon. He was reachin' for his six-shooter."

"The fool would have it. Come, let's burn the wind out of here before a crowd gathers."

Gurley and a fourth man joined them. The four galloped down the road and disappeared in a cloud of white dust.

A moment later Jumbo Wilkins descended heavily from his horse. Quint Sullivan, another rider for the A T O, was with him.

The big line-rider knelt beside his employer and examined the wound. "Hit once—in the side," he pronounced.

"Will—will he live?" asked the white-faced stableboy.

"Don't know. But he's a tough nut, Clint is. He's liable to be cussin' out the boys again in a month or two."

Wadley opened his eyes. "You're damn' whistlin', Jumbo. Get me to my sister's."

Quint, a black-haired youth of twenty, gave a repressed whoop. "One li'l' bit of a lead pill can't faze the boss. They took four or five cracks at him an' didn't hit but once. That's plumb lucky."

"It would 'a' been luckier if they hadn't hit him at all, Quint," answered Jumbo dryly. "You fork yore hawss, son, an' go git Doc Bridgman. An' you—whatever they call you, Mr. Hawss—rustler—harness a team to that buckboard."

Jumbo, with the expertness of an old-timer who had faced emergencies of this kind before, bound up the wound temporarily. The stable-rustler hitched a team, covered the bottom of the buckboard with hay, and helped Wilkins lift the wounded man to it.

Clint grinned faintly at the white-faced boy beside him. A flicker of recognition lighted his eyes. "You look like you'd seen a ghost, Ridley. Close call for both of us, eh? Lucky that Ranger plugged Dinsmore in the shootin' arm. Pete's no two-gun man. Can't shoot for sour apples with his left hand. Kicked up dust all around us, an' didn't score once."

"Quit yore talkin', Clint," ordered Jumbo.

"All right, Doc." The cattleman turned to Ridley. "Run ahead, boy, an' prepare' Mona so's she won't be scared plumb to death. Tell her it's only a triflin' flesh-wound. Keep her busy fixin' up a bed for me—an' bandages. Don't let her worry. See?"

Ridley had come to town only two days before. Ever since the robbery he had kept a lone camp on Turkey Creek. There was plenty of game for the shooting, and in that vast emptiness of space he could nurse his wounded self-respect. But he had run out of flour and salt. Because Tascosa was farther from the A T O ranch than Clarendon he had chosen it as a point to buy supplies. The owner of the corral had offered him a job, and he had taken it. He had not supposed that Ramona was within a hundred miles of the spot. The last thing in the world he wanted was to meet her, but there was no help for it now.

Her aunt carried to Ramona the word that a man was waiting outside with a message from her father. When she came down the porch steps, there were still traces of tear-stains on her cheeks. In the gathering dusk she did not at first recognize the man at the gate. She moved forward doubtfully, a slip of a slender-limbed girl, full of the unstudied charm and grace of youth.

Halfway down the path she stopped, her heart beating a little faster. Could this wan and ragged man with the unkempt beard be Art Ridley, always so careful of his clothes and his personal appearance? She was a child of impulse. Her sympathy went out to him with a rush, and she streamed down the path to meet him. A strong, warm little hand pressed his. A flash of soft eyes irradiated him. On her lips was the tender smile that told him she was still his friend.

"Where in the world have you been?" she cried. "And what have you been doing to yourself?"

His blood glowed at the sweetness of her generosity.

"I've been—camping."

With the shyness and the boldness of a child she pushed home her friendliness. "Why don't you ever come to see a fellow any more?"

He did not answer that, but plunged at his mission. "Miss Ramona, I've got bad news for you. Your father has been hurt—not very badly, I think. He told me to tell you that the wound was only a slight one."

'Mona went white to the lips. "How?" she whispered.

"The Dinsmores shot him. The men are bringing him here."

He caught her in his arms as she reeled. For a moment her little head lay against his shoulder and her heart beat against his.

"A trifling flesh-wound, your father called it," went on Ridley. "He said you were to get a bed ready for him, and fix bandages."

She steadied herself and beat back the wave of weakness that had swept over her.

"Yes," she said. "I'll tell Aunt. Have they sent for the doctor?"

"Quint Sullivan went."

A wagon creaked. 'Mona flew into the house to tell her aunt, and out again to meet her father. Her little ankles flashed down the road. Agile as a boy, she climbed into the back of the buckboard.

"Oh, Dad!" she cried in a broken little voice, and her arms went round him in a passion of love.

He was hurt worse than he was willing to admit to her.

"It's all right, honeybug. Doc Bridgman will fix me up fine. Yore old dad is a mighty live sinner yet."

Ridley helped Jumbo carry the cattleman into the house. As he came out, the doctor passed him going in.

Ridley slipped away in the gathering darkness and disappeared.

CHAPTER XVII

OLD-TIMERS

As soon as Captain Ellison heard of what had happened at Tascosa, he went over on the stage from Mobeetie to look at the situation himself. He dropped in at once to see his old friends the Wadleys. Ramona opened the door to him.

"Uncle Jim!" she cried, and promptly disappeared in his arms for a hug and a kiss.

The Ranger Captain held her off and examined the lovely flushed face.

"Dog it, you get prettier every day you live. I wisht I was thirty years younger. I'd make some of these lads get a move on 'em."

"I wish you were," she laughed. "They need some competition to make them look at me. None of them would have a chance then—even if they wanted it."

"I believe that. I got to believe it to keep my self-respect. It's all the consolation we old-timers have got. How's Clint?"

"Better. You should hear him swear under his breath because the doctor won't let him smoke more than two pipes a day, and because we won't let him eat whatever he wants to. He's worse than a sore bear," said Ramona proudly.

"Lead me to him."

A moment later the Ranger and the cattleman were shaking hands. They had been partners in their youth, had fought side by side in the Civil War, and had shot plains Indians together at Adobe Walls a few years since. They were so close to each other that they could quarrel whenever they chose, which they frequently did.

"How, old-timer!" exclaimed the Ranger Captain.

"Starved to death. They feed me nothin' but slops—soup an' gruel an' custard an' milk-toast. Fine for a full-grown man, ain't it? Jim, you go out an' get me a big steak an' cook it in boilin' grease on a camp-fire, an' I'll give you a deed to the A T O."

"To-morrow, Clint. The Doc says—"

"Mañana! That's what they all say. Is this Mexico or God's country? What I want, I want now."

"You always did—an' you 'most always got it too," said Ellison, his eyes twinkling reminiscently.

'Mona shook a warning finger at her father. "Well, he won't get it now. He'll behave, too, or he'll not get his pipe to-night."

The sick man grinned. "See how she bullies a poor old man, Jim. I'm worse than that Lear fellow in the play—most henpecked father you ever did see."

"Will she let you talk?"

"He may talk to you, Uncle Jim."

"What did I tell you?" demanded the big cattleman from the bed with the mock bitterness that was a part of the fun they both enjoyed. "You see, I got to get her permission. I'm a slave."

"That's what a nurse is for, Clint. You want to be glad you got the sweetest one in Texas." The Captain patted Ramona affectionately on the shoulder before he passed to the business of the day. "I want to know about all these ructions in Tascosa. Tell me the whole story."

They told him. He listened in silence till they had finished, asked a question or two, and made one comment.

"That boy Roberts of mine is sure some go-getter."