An hour later, Kate, on the return trip, topped the rise where she had found the lamb. Pulling up her pony, to rest the horse from its climb, she gazed back across the river to the rolling ridges among which lay the C. F. ranch. Oddly enough, she had never seen Cass Fendrick. He had come to Papago County a few years before, and had bought the place from an earlier settler. In the disagreement that had fallen between the two men, she was wholly on the side of her father. Sometimes she had wondered what manner of man this Cass Fendrick might be; disagreeable, of course, but after precisely what fashion.

"Your property, I believe, Miss Cullison."

She turned at sound of the suave, amused drawl, and looked upon a dark, slim young man of picturesque appearance. He was bowing to her with an obvious intention of overdoing it. Voice and manner had the habit of the South rather than of the West. A kind of indolent irony sat easily upon the swarthy face crowned with a black sleek head of hair.

Her instinct told the girl who he was. She did not need to ask herself any longer what Cass Fendrick looked like.

He was holding out to her the bloodstained kerchief that had been tied to the lamb's leg.

"I didn't care to have it returned," she told him with cold civility.

"Now, if you'd only left a note to say so, it would have saved me a quite considerable climb," he suggested.

In spite of herself a flicker of amusement lit her eyes. She had a sense of humor, "I did not think of that, and since you have troubled to return it to me, I can only say thank you."

She held out her hand for the kerchief, but he did not move. "I don't know but what I'll keep it, after all, for a souvenir. Just to remind me that Luck Cullison's daughter went out of her way to help one of Cass Fendrick's sheep."

She ignored his sardonic mockery. "I don't let live creatures suffer when I can help it. Are you going to give me my handkerchief?"

"Haven't made up my mind yet. Perhaps I'll have it washed and bring it home to you."

She decided that he was trying to flirt with her, and turned the head of her horse to start.

"Now your father has pulled his freight, I expect it will be safe to call," he added.

The bridle rein tightened. "What nonsense are you saying about my father?"

"No news, Miss Cullison; just what everybody is saying, that he has gone to cover on account of the hold-up."

A chill fear drenched her heart. "Do you mean the hold-up of the Limited at Tin Cup?"

"No, I don't." He looked at her sharply. "Mean to say you haven't heard of the hold-up of the W.& S. Express Company at Saguache?"

"No. When was it?"

"Tuesday night. The man got away with twenty thousand dollars."

"And what has my father to do with that?" she demanded haughtily.

A satisfied spleen purred in his voice. "My dear young lady, that is what everyone is asking."

"What do you mean? Say it." There was fear as well as anger in her voice. Had her father somehow got into trouble trying to save Sam?

"Oh, I'm saying nothing. But what Sheriff Bolt means is that when he gets his handcuffs on Luck Cullison, he'll have the man that can tell him where that twenty thousand is."

"It's a lie."

He waved his hand airily, as one who declined responsibility in the matter, but his dark, saturnine face sparkled with malice.

"Maybe so. Seems to be some evidence, but I reckon he can explain that away—when he comes back. The hold-up dropped a hat with the initials L. C. in the band, since identified as his. He had lost a lot of money at poker. Next day he paid it. He had no money in the bank, but maybe he found it growing on a cactus bush."

"You liar!" she panted, eyes blazing.

"I'll take that from you, my dear, because you look so blamed pretty when you're mad; but I wouldn't take it from him—from your father, who is hiding out in the hills somewhere."

Anger uncurbed welled from her in an inarticulate cry. He had come close to her, and was standing beside the stirrup, one bold hand upon the rein. Her quirt went swiftly up and down, cut like a thin bar of red-hot iron across his uplifted face. He stumbled back, half blind with the pain. Before he could realize what had happened the spur on her little boot touched the side of the pony, and it was off with a bound. She was galloping wildly down the trail toward home.

He looked after her, fingers caressing the welt that burned his cheek.

"You'll pay for that, Kate Cullison," he said aloud to himself.

Anger stung him, but deeper than his rage was a growing admiration. How she had lashed out at him because he had taunted her of her father. By Jove, a girl like that would be worth taming! His cold eyes glittered as he put the bloodstained kerchief in his pocket. She was not through with him yet—not by a good deal.



CHAPTER V

"AIN'T SHE THE GAMEST LITTLE THOROUGHBRED?"

Kate galloped into the ranch plaza around which the buildings were set, slipped from her pony, and ran at once to the telephone. Bob was on a side porch mending a bridle.

"Have you heard anything from dad?" she cried through the open door.

"Nope," he answered, hammering down a rivet.

Kate called up the hotel where Maloney was staying at Saguache, but could not get him. She tried the Del Mar, where her father and his friends always put up when in town. She asked in turn for Mackenzie, for Yesler, for Alec Flandrau.

While she waited for an answer, the girl moved nervously about the room. She could not sit down or settle herself at anything. For some instinct told her that Fendrick's taunt was not a lie cut out of whole cloth.

The bell rang. Instantly she was at the telephone. Mackenzie was at the other end of the line.

"Oh, Uncle Mac." She had called him uncle ever since she could remember. "What is it they are saying about dad? Tell me it isn't true," she begged.

"A pack of lees, lassie." His Scotch idiom and accent had succumbed to thirty years on the plains, but when he became excited it rose triumphant through the acquired speech of the Southwest.

"Then is he there—in Saguache, I mean."

"No-o. He's not in town."

"Where is he?"

"Hoots! He'll just have gone somewhere on business."

He did not bluff well. Through the hearty assurance she pierced to the note of trouble in his voice.

"You're hiding something from me, Uncle Mac. I won't have it. You tell me the truth—the whole truth."

In three sentences he sketched it for her, and when he had finished he knew by the sound of her voice that she was greatly frightened.

"Something has happened to him. I'm coming to town."

"If you feel you'd rather. Take the stage in to-morrow."

"No. I'm coming to-night. I'll bring Bob. Save us two rooms at the hotel."

"Better wait till to-morrow. Forty miles is a long ride, lass."

"No, I can't wait. Have Curly Flandrau come to the Del Mar if he's in town—and Dick Maloney, too. That's all. Good-by."

She turned to her cousin, who was standing big-eyed at her elbow.

"What is it, Kate? Has anything happened to Uncle Luck?"

She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Dad's gone, Bob. Nobody knows where. They say—the liars—that he robbed the W. & S. Express Company."

Suddenly her face went down into her forearm on the table and sobs began to rack her body. The boy, staggered at this preposterous charge, could only lay his hand on her shoulder and beg her not to cry.

"It'll be all right, Kate. Wait till Uncle Luck comes back. He'll make 'em sick for talking about him."

"But suppose he—suppose he——" She dared not complete what was in her mind, that perhaps he had been ambushed by some of his enemies and killed.

"You bet they'll drop into a hole and pull it in after them when Uncle Luck shows up," the boy bragged with supreme confidence.

His cousin nodded, choking down her sobs. "Of course. It—it'll come out all right—as soon as he finds out what they're saying. Saddle two horses right away, Bob."

"Sure. We'll soon find where he is, I bet you."

The setting sun found their journey less than half done. The brilliant rainbow afterglow of sunset faded to colder tints, and then disappeared. The purple saw-toothed range softened to a violet hue. With the coming of the moon the hard, dry desert lost detail, took on a loveliness of tone and outline that made it an idealized painting of itself. Myriads of stars were out, so that the heavens seemed sown with them as an Arizona hillside is in spring with yellow poppies.

Kate was tortured with anxiety, but the surpassing beauty that encompassed them was somehow a comfort to her. Deep within her something denied that her father could be gone out of a world so good. And if he were alive, Curly Flandrau would find him—Curly and Dick between them. Luck Cullison had plenty of good friends who would not stand by and see him wronged.

Any theory of his disappearance that accepted his guilt did not occur to her mind for an instant. The two had been very close to each other. Luck had been in the habit of saying smilingly that she was his majordomo, his right bower. Some share of his lawless temperament she inherited, enough to feel sure that this particular kind of wrongdoing was impossible for him. He was reckless, sometimes passionate, but she did not need to reassure herself that he was scrupulously honest.

This brought her back to the only other tenable hypothesis—foul play. And from this she shrank with a quaking heart. For surely if his enemies wished to harm him they would destroy him, and this was a conclusion against which she fought desperately.

The plaza clock boomed ten strokes as they rode into Saguache. Mackenzie was waiting for them on the steps of the hotel.

"Have they—has anything been——?"

The owner of the Fiddleback shook his grizzled head. "Not yet. Didn't you meet Curly?"

"No."

"He rode out to come in with you, but if he didn't meet you by ten he was to come back. You took the north road, I reckon?"

"Yes."

His warm heart was wrung for the young woman whose fine eyes stared with dumb agony from a face that looked very white in the shining moonlight. He put an arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the hotel with cheerful talk.

"Come along, Bob. We're going to tuck away a good supper first off. While you're eating, I'll tell you all there is to be told."

Kate opened her lips to say that she was not hungry and could not possibly eat a bite, but she thought better of it. Bob had tasted nothing since noon, and of course he must be fed.

The lad fell to with an appetite grief had not dulled. His cousin could at first only pick at what was set before her. It seemed heartless to be sitting down in comfort to so good a supper while her father was in she knew not how great distress. Grief swelled in her throat, and forced back the food she was trying to eat.

Mackenzie broke off his story to remonstrate. "This won't do at all, Kate. If you're going to help find Luck, you've got to keep yourself fit. Now, you try this chicken, honey."

"I—just can't, Uncle Mac."

"But you need it."

"I know," the girl confessed, and as she said it broke down again into soft weeping.

Mac let her have her cry out, petting her awkwardly. Presently she dried her eyes, set at her supper in a businesslike way, heard the story to an end quietly, and volunteered one heartbroken comment.

"As if father could do such a thing."

The cattleman agreed eagerly. There were times when he was full of doubt on that point, but he was not going to let her know it.

Curly came into the room, and the girl rose to meet him. He took her little hand in his tanned, muscular one, and somehow from his grip she gathered strength. He would do all that could be done to find her father, just as he had done so much to save her brother.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said simply.

"I'm glad you're glad," he smiled cheerfully.

He knew she had been crying, that she was suffering cruelly, but he offered her courage rather than maudlin sympathy. Hope seemed to flow through her veins at the meeting of the eyes. Whatever a man could do for her would be done by Curly.

They talked the situation over together.

"As it looks to me, we've got to find out two things—first, what has become of your father, and, second, who did steal that money."

"Now you're talking," Mackenzie agreed. "I always did say you had a good head, Curly."

"I don't see it yet, but there's some link between the two things. I mean between the robbery and his disappearance."

"How do you mean?" Kate asked.

"We'll say the robbers were his enemies—some of the Soapy Stone outfit maybe. They have got him out of the way to satisfy their grudge and to make people think he did it. Unfortunately there is evidence that makes it look as if he might have done it—what they call corroborating testimony."

Billie Mackenzie scratched his gray poll. "Hold on, Curly. This notion of a link between the hold-up and Luck's leaving is what the other side is tying to. Don't we want to think different from them?"

"We do. They think he is guilty. We know he isn't."

"What does Sheriff Bolt think?"

Curly waved the sheriff aside. "It don't matter what he thinks, Miss Kate. He says he thinks Luck was mixed up in the hold-up. Maybe that's what he thinks, but we don't want to forget that Cass Fendrick made him sheriff and your father fought him to a fare-you-well."

"Then we can't expect any help from him."

"Not much. He ain't a bad fellow, Bolt ain't. He'll be square, but his notions are liable to be warped."

"I'd like to talk with him," the young woman announced.

"All right," Mackenzie assented. "To-morrow mo'ning——"

"No, to-night, Uncle Mac."

The cattleman looked at her in surprise. Her voice rang with decision. Her slight figure seemed compact of energy and resolution. Was this the girl who had been in helpless tears not ten minutes before?

"I'll see if he's at his office. Maybe he'll come up," Curly said.

"No. I'll go down to the courthouse if he's there."

Flandrau got Bolt on the telephone at his room. After a little grumbling he consented to meet Miss Cullison at his office.

"Bob, you must go to bed. You're tired out," his cousin told him.

"I ain't, either," he denied indignantly. "Tired nothing. I'm going with you."

Curly caught Kate's glance, and she left the boy to him.

"Look here, Bob. We're at the beginning of a big job. Some of us have to keep fresh all the time. We'll work in relays. To-night you sleep so as to be ready to-morrow."

This way of putting it satisfied the boy. He reluctantly consented to go to bed, and was sound asleep almost as soon as his head struck the pillow.

At the office of the sheriff, Kate cut to essentials as soon as introductions were over.

"Do you think my father robbed the W. & S. Express Company, Mr. Bolt?" she asked.

Her plainness embarrassed the officer.

"Let's took at the facts, Miss Cullison," he began amiably. "Then you tell me what you would think in my place. Your father needed money mighty bad. There's no doubt at all about that. Here's an envelope on which he had written a list of his debts. You'll notice they run to just a little more than twenty thousand. I found this in his bedroom the day he disappeared."

She took the paper, glanced at it mechanically, and looked at the sheriff again. "Well? Everybody wants money. Do they all steal it?"

"Turn that envelope over, Miss Cullison. Notice how he has written there half a dozen times in a row, '$20,000,' and just below it twice, 'W. & S. Ex. Co.' Finally, the one word, 'To-night.'"

She read it all, read it with a heart heavy as lead, and knew that there he had left in his own strong, bold handwriting convincing evidence against himself. Still, she did not doubt him in the least, but there could be no question now that he knew of the intended shipment, that absent-mindedly he had jotted down this data while he was thinking about it in connection with his own debts.

The sheriff went on tightening the chain of evidence in a voice that for all its kindness seemed to her remorseless as fate. "It turns out that Mr. Jordan of the Cattleman's National Bank mentioned this shipment to your father that morning. Mr. Cullison was trying to raise money from him, but he couldn't let him have it. Every bank in the city refused him a loan. Yet next morning he paid off two thousand dollars he owed from a poker game."

"He must have borrowed the money from some one," she said weakly.

"That money he paid in twenty-dollar bills. The stolen express package was in twenties. You know yourself that this is a gold country. Bills ain't so plentiful."

The girl's hand went to her heart. Faith in her father was a rock not to be washed away by any amount of evidence. What made her wince was the amount of circumstantial testimony falling into place so inexorably against him.

"Is that all?" she asked despairingly.

"I wish it were, Miss Cullison. But it's not. A man came round the corner and shot at the robber as he was escaping. His hat fell off. Here it is."

As Kate took the hat something seemed to tighten around her heart. It belonged to her father. His personality was stamped all over it. She even recognized a coffee stain on the under side of the brim. There was no need of the initials L. C. to tell her whose it had been. A wave of despair swept over her. Again she was on the verge of breaking down, but controlled herself as with a tight curb.

Bolt's voice went on. "Next day your father disappeared, Miss Cullison. He was here in town all morning. His friends knew that suspicion was fastening on him. The inference is that he daren't wait to have the truth come out. Mind, I don't say he's guilty. But it looks that way. Now, that's my case. If you were sheriff in my place, what would you do?"

Her answer flashed back instantly. "If I knew Luck Cullison, I would be sure there was a mistake somewhere, and I would look for foul play. I would believe anything except that he was guilty—anything in the world. You know he has enemies."

The sheriff liked her spirited defense no less because he could not agree with her. "Yes, I know that. The trouble is that these incriminating facts don't come in the main from his enemies."

"You say the robber had on his hat, and that somebody shot at him. Whoever it was must know the man wasn't father."

Gently Bolt took this last prop from her hope. "He is almost sure the man was your father."

A spark of steel came into her dark eyes. "Who is the man?"

"His name is Fendrick."

"Cass Fendrick?" She whipped the word at him, leaning forward in her chair rigidly with her hands clenched on the arms of it. One could have guessed that the sound of the name had unleashed a dormant ferocity in her.

"Yes. I know he and your father aren't friends. They have had some trouble. For that reason he was very reluctant to give your father's name."

The girl flamed. "Reluctant! Don't you believe it? He hates Father like poison." A flash of inspiration came to her. She rose, slim and tall and purposeful. "Cass Fendrick is the man you want, and he is the man I want. He robbed the express company, and he has killed my father or abducted him. I know now. Arrest him to-night."

"I have to have evidence," Bolt said quietly.

"I can give you a motive. Listen. Father expected to prove up yesterday on his Del Oro claim. If he had done so Cass Fendrick's sheep would have been cut off from the water. Father had to be got out of the way not later than Wednesday, or that man would have been put out of business. He was very bitter about it. He had made threats."

"It would take more than threats to get rid of the best fighting man in Arizona, right in the middle of the day, in the heart of the town, without a soul knowing about it." The officer added with a smile: "I'd hate to undertake the contract, give me all the help I wanted."

"He was trapped somehow, of course," Curly cut in. For he was sure that in no other way could Luck Cullison have been overcome.

"If you'll only tell me how, Flandrau," Bolt returned.

"I don't know how, but we'll find out."

"I hope so."

Kate felt his doubt, and it was like a spark to powder.

"Fendrick is your friend. You were elected by his influence. Perhaps you want to prove that Father did this."

"The people elected me, Miss Cullison," answered Bolt, with grave reproach. "I haven't any friends or any enemies when it comes to doing what I've sworn to do."

"Then you ought to know Father couldn't have done this. There is such a thing as character. Luck Cullison simply couldn't be a thief."

Mackenzie's faith had been strengthened by the insistent loyalty of the girl. "That's right, Nick. Let me tell you something else. Fendrick knew Luck was going to prove up on Thursday. He heard him tell us at the Round-Up Club Tuesday morning."

The sheriff summed up. "You've proved Cass had interests that would be helped if Mr. Cullison were removed. But you haven't shaken the evidence against Luck."

"We've proved Cass Fendrick had to get Father out of the way on the very day he disappeared. One day later would have been too late. We've shown his enmity. Any evidence that rests on his word is no good. The truth isn't in the man."

"Maybe not, but he didn't make this evidence."

Kate had another inspirational flash. "He did—some of it. Somehow he got hold of father's hat, and he manufactured a story about shooting it from the robber's head. But to make his story stick he must admit he was on the ground at the time of the hold-up. So he must have known the robbery was going to take place. It's as plain as old Run-A-Mile's wart that he knew of it because he planned it himself."

Bolt's shrewd eyes narrowed to a smile. "You prove to me that Cass had your father's hat before the hold-up, and I'll take some stock in the story."

"And in the meantime," suggested Curly.

"I'll keep right on looking for Luck Cullison, but I'll keep an eye on Cass Fendrick, too."

Kate took up the challenge confidently. "I'll prove he had the hat—at least I'll try to pretty hard. It's the truth, and it must come out somehow."

After he had left her at the hotel, Curly walked the streets with a sharp excitement tingling his blood. He had lived his life among men, and he knew little about women and their ways. But his imagination seized avidly upon this slim, dark girl with the fine eyes that could be both tender and ferocious, with the look of combined delicacy and strength in every line of her.

"Ain't she the gamest little thoroughbred ever?" he chuckled to himself. "Stands the acid every crack. Think of her standing pat so game—just like she did for me that night out at the ranch. She's the best argument Luck has got."



CHAPTER VI

TWO HATS ON A RACK

One casual remark of Mackenzie had given Kate a clew. Even before she had explained it, Curly caught the point and began to dig for the truth. For though he was almost a boy, the others leaned on him with the expectation that in the absence of Maloney he would take the lead. Before they separated for the night he made Mackenzie go over every detail he could remember of the meeting between Cullison and Fendrick at the Round-Up Club. This was the last time the two men had been seen together in public, and he felt it important that he should know just what had taken place.

In the morning he and Kate had a talk with his uncle on the same subject. Not content with this, he made the whole party adjourn to the club rooms so that he might see exactly where Luck had sat and the different places the sheepman had stood from the time he entered until the poker players left.

Together Billie Mackenzie and Alec Flandrau dramatized the scene for the young people. Mac personated the sheepman, came into the room, hung up his hat, lounged over to the poker table, said his little piece as well as he could remember it, and passed into the next room. Flandrau, Senior, taking the role of Cullison, presently got up, lifted his hat from the rack, and went to the door.

With excitement trembling in her voice, the girl asked an eager question. "Were their hats side by side like that on adjoining pegs?"

Billie turned a puzzled face to his friend. "How about that, Alec?"

"That's how I remember it."

"Same here, my notion is."

"Both gray hats?" Curly cut in.

His uncle looked helplessly at the other man. "Can't be sure of that. Luck's was gray all right."

"Cass wore a gray hat too, seems to me," Mackenzie contributed, scratching his gray hair.

"Did Father hesitate at all about which one to take?"

"No-o. I don't reckon he did. He had turned to ask me if I was coming—wasn't looking at the hats at all."

Curly looked at Kate and nodded. "I reckon we know how Cass got Mr. Cullison's hat. It was left on the rack."

"How do you mean?" his uncle asked.

"Don't you see?" the girl explained, her eyes shining with excitement. "Father took the wrong hat. You know how absent-minded he is sometimes."

Mackenzie slapped his knee. "I'll bet a stack of blues you've guessed it."

"There's a way to make sure," Curly said.

"I don't get you."

"Fendrick couldn't wear Mr. Cullison's hat around without the risk of someone remembering it later. What would he do then?"

Kate beamed. "Buy another at the nearest store."

"That would be my guess. And the nearest store is the New York Emporium. We've got to find out whether he did buy one there on Tuesday some time after nine o'clock in the morning."

The girl's eyes were sparkling. She bustled with businesslike energy. "I'll go and ask right away."

"Don't you think we'd better let Uncle Alec find out? He's not so likely to stir up curiosity," Curly suggested.

"That's right. Let me earn my board and keep," the owner of the Map of Texas volunteered.

Within a quarter of an hour Alec Flandrau joined the others at the hotel. He was beaming like a schoolboy who has been given an unexpected holiday.

"You kids are right at the head of the class in the detective game. Cass bought a brown hat, about 9:30 in the mo'ning. Paid five dollars for it. Wouldn't let them deliver the old one but took it with him in a paper sack."

With her lieutenants flanking her Kate went straight to the office of the sheriff. Bolt heard the story out and considered it thoughtfully.

"You win, Miss Cullison. You haven't proved Fendrick caused your father's disappearance by foul play, and you haven't proved he committed the robbery. Point of fact I don't think he did either one. But it certainly looks like he may possibly have manufactured evidence."

Curly snorted scornfully. "You're letting your friend down easy, Mr. Bolt. By his own story he was on the ground a minute after the robbery took place. How do we know he wasn't there a minute before? For if he didn't know the hold-up was going to occur why did he bring Mr. Cullison's hat with him punctured so neatly with bullet holes?"

"I'll bet a thousand dollars he is at the bottom of this whole thing," Mackenzie added angrily.

The sheriff flushed. "You gentlemen are entitled to your opinions just as I'm entitled to mine. You haven't even proved he took Mr. Cullison's hat; you've merely showed he may have done it."

"We've given you a motive and some evidence. How much more do you want?" Curly demanded.

"Hold your hawses a while, Flandrau, and look at this thing reasonable. You're all prejudiced for Cullison and against Fendrick. Talk about evidence! There's ten times as much against your friend as there is against Cass."

"Then you'll not arrest Fendrick?"

"When you give me good reason to do it," Bolt returned doggedly.

"That's all right, Mr. Sheriff. Now we know where you stand," Flandrau, Senior, said stiffly.

The harassed official mopped his face with a bandanna. "Sho! You all make me tired. I'm not Fendrick's friend while I'm in this office any more than I'm Luck's, But I've got to use my judgment, ain't I?"

The four adjourned to meet at the Del Mar for a discussion of ways and means.

"We'll keep a watch on Fendrick—see where he goes, who he talks to, what he does. Maybe he'll make a break and give himself away," Curly said hopefully.

"But my father—we must rescue him first."

"As soon as we find where he is. Me, I'm right hopeful all's well with him. Killing him wouldn't help Cass any, because you and Sam would prove up on the claim. But if he could hold your father a prisoner and get him to sign a relinquishment to him he would be in a fine position."

"But Father wouldn't sign. He ought to know that."

"Not through fear your father wouldn't. But if Fendrick could get at him some way he might put down his John Hancock. With this trouble of Sam still unsettled and the Tin Cup hold-up to be pulled off he might sign."

"If we could only have Fendrick arrested—"

"What good would that do? If he's guilty he wouldn't talk. And if he is holding your father somewhere in the hills it would only be serving notice that we were getting warm. No, I'm for a still hunt. Let Cass ride around and meet his partners in this deal. We'll keep an eye on him all right."

"Maybe you're right," Kate admitted with a sigh.



CHAPTER VII

ANONYMOUS LETTERS

Sheriff Bolt, though a politician, was an honest man. It troubled him that Cullison's friends believed him to be a partisan in a matter of this sort. For which reason he met more than half way Curly's overtures. Young Flandrau was in the office of the sheriff a good deal, because he wanted to be kept informed of any new developments in the W. & S. robbery case.

It was on one of those occasions that Bolt tossed across to him a letter he had just opened.

"I've been getting letters from the village cut-up or from some crank, I don't know which. Here's a sample."

The envelope, addressed evidently in a disguised hand, contained one sheet of paper. Upon this was lettered roughly,

"Play the Jack of Hearts."

Flandrau looked up with a suggestion of eagerness in his eyes.

"What do you reckon it means?" he asked.

"Search me. Like as not it don't mean a thing. The others had just as much sense as that one."

"Let's see the others."

"I chucked them into the waste paper basket. One came by the morning mail yesterday and one by the afternoon. I'm no mind reader, and I've got no time to guess fool puzzles."

Curly observed that the waste paper basket was full. Evidently it had not been emptied for two or three days.

"Mind if I look for the others?" he asked.

Bolt waved permission. "Go to it."

The young man emptied the basket on the floor and went over its contents carefully. He found three communications from the unknown writer. Each of them was printed by hand on a sheet of cheap lined paper torn from a scratch pad. He smoothed them out and put them side by side on the table. This was what he read:

HEARTS ARE TRUMPS WHEN IN DOUBT PLAY TRUMPS PLAY TRUMPS NOW

There was only the one line to each message, and all of them were plainly in the same hand. He could make out only one thing, that someone was trying to give the sheriff information in a guarded way.

He was still puzzling over the thing when a boy came with a special delivery letter for the sheriff. Bolt glanced at it and handed the note to Curly.

"Another billy doo from my anxious friend."

This time the sender had been in too much of a hurry to print the words. They were written in a stiff hand by some uneducated person.

The Jack of Trumps, to-day

"Mind if I keep these?" Curly asked.

"Take 'em along."

Flandrau walked out to the grandstand at the fair grounds and sat down by himself there to think out what connection, if any, these singular warnings might have with the vanishing of Cullison or the robbery of the W. & S. He wasted three precious hours without any result. Dusk was falling before he returned.

"Guess I'll take them to my little partner and give her a whack at the puzzle," he decided.

Curly strolled back to town along El Molino street and down Main. He had just crossed the old Spanish plaza when his absorbed gaze fell on a sign that brought him up short. In front of a cigar store stretched across the sidewalk a painted picture of a jack of hearts. The same name was on the window.

Fifty yards behind him was the Silver Dollar saloon, where Luck Cullison had last been seen on his way to the Del Mar one hundred and fifty yards in front of him. Somewhere within that distance of two hundred yards the owner of the Circle C had vanished from the sight of men. The evidence showed he had not reached the hotel, for a cattle buyer had been waiting there to talk with him. His testimony, as well as that of the hotel clerk, was positive.

Could this little store, the Jack of Hearts, be the central point of the mystery? In his search for information Curly had already been in it, had bought a cigar, and had stopped to talk with Mrs. Wylie, the proprietor. She was a washed-out little woman who had once been pretty. Habitually she wore a depressed, hopeless look, the air of pathetic timidity that comes to some women who have found life too hard for them. It had been easy to alarm her. His first question had evidently set her heart a-flutter, but Flandrau had reassured her cheerfully. She had protested with absurd earnestness that she had seen nothing of Mr. Cullison. A single glance had been enough to dismiss her from any possible suspicion.

Now Curly stepped in a second time. The frightened gaze of Mrs. Wylie fastened upon him instantly. He observed that her hand moved instinctively to her heart. Beyond question she was in fear. A flash of light clarified his mind. She was a conspirator, but an unwilling one. Possibly she might be the author of the anonymous warnings sent Bolt.

The young vaquero subscribed for a magazine and paid her the money. Tremblingly she filled out the receipt. He glanced at the slip and handed it back.

"Just write below the signature 'of the Jack of Hearts,' so that I'll remember where I paid the money if the magazine doesn't come," he suggested.

She did so, and Curly put the receipt in his pocket carelessly. He sauntered leisurely to the hotel, but as soon as he could get into a telephone booth his listlessness vanished. Maloney had returned to town and he telephoned him to get Mackenzie at once and watch the Jack of Hearts in front and rear. Before he left the booth Curly had compared the writing of Mrs. Wylie with that on the sheet that had come by special delivery. The loop of the J's, the shape of the K's, the formation of the capital H in both cases were alike. So too was the general lack of character common to both, the peculiar hesitating drag of the letters. Beyond question the same person had written both.

Certainly Mrs. Wylie was not warning the sheriff against herself. Then against whom? He must know her antecedents, and at once. There was no time for him to mole them out himself. Calling up a local detective agency, he asked the manager to let him know within an hour or two all that could be found out about the woman without alarming her.

"Wait a moment I think we have her on file. Hold the 'phone." The detective presently returned. "Yes. We can give you the facts. Will you come to the office for them?"

Fifteen minutes later Curly knew that Mrs. Wylie was the divorced wife of Lute Blackwell. She had come to Saguache from the mountains several years before. Soon after there had been an inconspicuous notice in the Sentinel to the effect that Cora Blackwell was suing for divorce from Lute Blackwell, then a prisoner in the penitentiary at Yuma. Another news item followed a week later stating that the divorce had been granted together with the right to use her maiden name. Unobtrusively she had started her little store. Her former husband, paroled from the penitentiary a few months before the rustling episode, had at intervals made of her shop a loafing place since that time.

Curly returned to the Del Mar and sent his name up to Miss Cullison. With Kate and Bob there was also in the room Alec Flandrau.

The girl came forward lightly to meet him with the lance-straight poise that always seemed to him to express a brave spirit ardent and unafraid.

"Have you heard something?" she asked quickly.

"Yes. Tell me, when did your father last meet Lute Blackwell so far as you know?"

"I don't know. Not for years, I think. Why?"

The owner of the Map of Texas answered the question of his nephew. "He met him the other day. Let's see. It was right after the big poker game. We met him downstairs here. Luck had to straighten out some notions he had got."

"How?"

Flandrau, Senior, told the story of what had occurred in the hotel lobby.

"And you say he swore to get even?"

"That's what he said. And he looked like he meant it too."

"What is it? What have you found out?" Kate implored.

The young man told about the letters and Mrs. Wylie.

"We've got to get a move on us," he concluded. "For if Lute Blackwell did this thing to your father it's mighty serious for him."

Kate was white to the lips, but in no danger of breaking down. "Yes, if this man is in it he would not stop at less than murder. But I don't believe it. I know Father is alive. Cass Fendrick is the man we want. I'm sure of it."

Curly had before seen women hard as nails, gaunt strong mountaineers as tough as hickory withes. But he had never before seen that quality dwelling in a slim girlish figure of long soft curves, never seen it in a face of dewy freshness that could melt to the tenderest pity. She was like flint, and yet she could give herself with a passionate tenderness to those she loved. He had seen animals guard their young with that same alert eager abandon. His conviction was that she would gladly die for her father if it were necessary. As he looked at her with hard unchanging eyes, his blood quickened to a fierce joy in her it had known for no other woman.

"First thing is to search the Jack of Hearts and see what's there. Are you with me, Uncle Alec?"

"I sure am, Curly;" and he reached for his hat.

Bob too was on his feet. "I'm going. You needn't any of you say I ain't, for I am."

Curly nodded. "If you'll do as you're told, Bob."

"I will. Cross my heart."

"May I come too?" Kate pleaded.

She was a strongwilled impulsive young woman, and her deference to Curly flattered him; but he shook his head none the less.

"No. You may wait in the parlor downstairs and I'll send Bob to you with any news. There's just a chance this may be a man's job and we want to go to it unhampered." He turned at the door with his warm smile. "By the way, I've got some news I forgot. I know where your father got the money to pay his poker debts. Mr. Jordan of the Cattlemen's National made him a personal loan. He figured it would not hurt the bank because the three men Luck paid it to would deposit it with the bank again."

"By George, that's what we did, too, every last one of us," his uncle admitted.

"Every little helps," Kate said; and her little double nod thanked Curly.

The young man stopped a moment after the others had gone. "I'm not going to let Bob get into danger," he promised.

"I knew you wouldn't," was her confident answer.

At the corner of the plaza Curly gave Bob instructions.

"You stay here and keep an eye on everyone that passes. Don't try to stop anybody. Just size them up."

"Ain't I to go with you? I got a gun."

"You're to do as I say. What kind of a soldier would you make if you can't obey orders? I'm running this. If you don't like it trot along home."

"Oh, I'll stay," agreed the crestfallen youth.

Maloney met them in front of the Jack of Hearts.

"Dick, you go with me inside. Uncle Alec, will you keep guard outside?"

"No, bub, I won't. I knew Luck before you were walking bowlegged," the old cattleman answered brusquely.

Curly grinned. "All right. Don't blame me if you get shot up."

Mrs. Wylie's startled eyes told tales when she saw the three men. Her face was ashen.

"I'm here to play trumps, Mrs. Wylie. What secret has the Jack of Hearts got hidden from us?" young Flandrau demanded, his hard eyes fastened to her timorous ones.

"I—I—I don't know what you mean."

"No use. We're here for business. Dick, you stay with her. Don't let her leave or shout a warning."

He passed into the back room, which was a kind of combination living room, kitchen and bedroom. A door led from the rear into a back yard littered with empty packing cases, garbage cans and waste paper. After taking a look around the yard he locked the back door noiselessly. There was no other apparent exit from the kitchen-bedroom except the one by which he and his uncle had entered from the shop. But he knew the place must have a cellar, and his inspection of the yard had showed no entrance there. He drew back the Navajo rug that covered the floor and found one of the old-fashioned trap doors some cheap houses have. Into this was fitted an iron ring with which to lift it.

From the darkness below came no sound, but Curly's imagination conceived the place as full of shining eyes glaring up at him. Any bad men down there already had the drop on them. Therefore neither Curly nor his uncle made the mistake of drawing a weapon.

"I'm coming down, boys," young Flandrau announced in a quiet confident voice. "The place is surrounded by our friends and it won't do you a whole lot of good to shoot me up. I'd advise you not to be too impulsive"

He descended the steps, his face like a stone wall for all the emotion it recorded. At his heels came the older man. Curly struck a match, found an electric bulb above his head, and turned the button. Instantly the darkness was driven from the cellar.

The two Flandraus were quite alone in the room. For furniture there was a table, a cot which had been slept in and not made up, and a couple of rough chairs. The place had no windows, no means of ventilation except through the trap door. Yet there were evidences to show that it had recently been inhabited. Half smoked cigars littered the floor. A pack of cards lay in disorder on the table. The Sentinel with date line of that day lay tossed in a corner.

The room told Curly this at least: There had been a prisoner here with a guard or guards. Judging by the newspaper they had been here within a few hours. The time of sending the special delivery letter made this the more probable. He had missed the men he wanted by a very little time. If he had had the gumption to understand the hints given by the letters Cullison might now be eating supper with his family at the hotel.

"Make anything out of it?" the older Flandrau asked.

"He's been here, but they've taken him away. Will you cover the telephoning? Have all the ranches notified that Luck is being taken into the hills so they can picket the trails."

"How do you know he is being taken there?"

"I don't know. I guess. Blackwell is in it. He knows every nook of the hills. The party left here not two hours since, looks like."

Curly put the newspaper in his pocket and led the Way back to the store.

"The birds have flown, Dick, Made their getaway through the alley late this afternoon, probably just after it got dark." He turned to the woman. "Mrs. Wylie, murder is going to be done, I shouldn't wonder. And you're liable to be held guilty of it unless you tell us all you know."

She began to weep, helplessly, but with a sort of stubbornness too. Frightened she certainly was, but some greater fear held her silent as to the secret. "I don't know anything about it," she repeated over and over.

"Won't do. You've got to speak. A man's life hangs on it."

But his resolution could not break hers, incomparably stronger than she though he was. Her conscience had driven her to send veiled warnings to the sheriff. But for very fear of her life she dared not commit herself openly.

Maloney had an inspiration. He spoke in a low voice to Curly. "Let's take her to the hotel. Miss Kate will know how to get it out of her better than we can."

Mrs. Wylie went with them quietly enough. She was shaken with fears but still resolute not to speak. They might send her to prison. She would tell them nothing—nothing at all. For someone who had made terror the habit of her life had put the fear of death into her soul.



CHAPTER VIII

A MESSAGE IN CIPHER

While Kate listened to what Curly had to tell her the dark eyes of the girl were fastened upon the trembling little woman standing near the door.

"Do you mean that she is going to let my father be killed rather than tell what she knows?" Her voice was sharply incredulous, touched with a horror scarcely realized.

"So she says."

Mrs. Wylie wrung her hands in agitation. Her lined face was a mirror of distress.

"But that's impossible. She must tell. What has Father ever done to hurt her?"

"I—I don't know anything about it," the harassed woman iterated.

"What's the use of saying that when we know you do? And you'll not get out of it by sobbing. You've got to talk."

Kate had not moved. None the less her force, the upblaze of feminine energy in her, crowded the little storekeeper to the wall. "You've got to tell—you've just got to," she insisted.

The little woman shrank before the energy of a passion so vital. No strength was in her to fight. But she could and did offer the passive resistance of obstinate silence.

Curly had drawn from his pocket the newspaper found in the cellar. His eyes had searched for the date line to use as cumulative evidence, but they had remained fastened to one story. Now he spoke imperatively.

"Come here, Miss Kate."

She was beside him in an instant. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure yet, but—— Look here. I believe this is a message to us."

"A message?"

"From your father perhaps."

"How could it be?"

"I found the paper in the cellar where he was. See how some of these words are scored. Done with a finger nail, looks like."

"But how could he know we would see the paper, and if we did see it would understand?"

"He couldn't. It would be one chance in a million, but all his life he's been taking chances. This couldn't do any harm."

Her dark head bent beside his fair one with the crisp sun-reddened curls.

"I don't see any message. Where is it?"

"I don't see it myself—not much of it. Gimme time."

This was the paragraph upon which his gaze had fastened, and the words and letters were scored sharply as shown below, though in the case of single letters the mark ran through them instead of underneath, evidently that no mistake might be made as to which was meant.

J. P. Kelley of the ranger force reports

over the telephone that by unexpected good

luck he has succeeded in taking prisoner —— ———— the notorious Jack Foster of Hermosilla —— — — - and the Rincons notoriety and is now - - - —- bringing him to Saguache where he will be ———— locked up pending a disposition of his case. —————————————————————- Kelley succeeded in surprising him while —————————————- he was eating dinner at a Mexican road-house

just this side of the border.

"Do you make it out?" Maloney asked, looking over their shoulders.

Curly took a pencil and an envelope from his pocket. On the latter he jotted down some words and handed the paper to his friend. This was what Maloney read:

........................................ .......................................... luck............................prisoner the notorious Jack Foster of Hermosilla ..............Jack........of.He.......a ........R.........t............s.now ................Saguache................. locked up pending a disposition of his case. .......succeeded in surprising him...... ............................................ .............................

"Read that right ahead."

Dick did not quite get the idea, but Kate, tense with excitement, took the envelope and read aloud.

"Luck——prisoner——Jack of Hearts——now Saguache——locked up pending a disposition of his case——succeeded in surprising him." She looked up with shining eyes. "He tells us everything but the names of the people who did it. Perhaps somewhere else in the paper he may tell that too."

But though they went over it word for word they found no more. Either he had been interrupted, or he had been afraid that his casual thumb nail pressures might arouse the suspicion of his guards if persisted in too long.

"He's alive somewhere. We'll save him now." Kate cried it softly, all warm with the joy of it.

"Seems to let our friend Fendrick out," Maloney mused.

"Lets him out of kidnapping Uncle Luck but maybe not out of the robbery," Bob amended.

"Doesn't let him out of either. Somebody was in this with Blackwell. If it wasn't Cass Fendrick then who was it?" Kate wanted to know.

"Might have been Soapy Stone," Dick guessed.

"Might have been, but now Sam has gone back into the hills to join Soapy; the gang would have to keep it from Sam. He wouldn't stand for it."

"No, not for a minute," Kate said decisively.

Curly spoke to her in a low voice. "You have a talk with Mrs. Wylie alone. We'll pull our freights. She'll tell you what she knows." He smiled in his gentle winning way. "She's sure had a tough time of it if ever a woman had. I reckon a little kindness is what she needs. Let her see we're her friends and will stand by her, that we won't let her come to harm because she talks. Show her we know everything anyhow but want her to corroborate details."

It was an hour before Kate joined them, and her eyes, though they were very bright, told tales, of tears that had been shed.

"That poor woman! She has told me everything. Father has been down in that cellar for days under a guard. They took him away to-night. She doesn't know where. It was she sent the warnings to Sheriff Bolt. She wanted him to raid the place, but she dared not go to him."

"Because of Blackwell?"

"Yes. He came straight to her as soon as he was freed from the penitentiary. He had her completely terrorized. It seems she has been afraid to draw a deep breath ever since he returned. Even while he was in the hills she was always looking for him to come. The man used to keep her in a hell and he began bullying her again. So she gave him money, and he came for more—and more."

Curly nodded. He said nothing, but his strong jaw clamped.

"He was there that day," the girl continued. "She plucked up courage to refuse him what little she had left because she needed it for the rent. He got hold of her arm and twisted it. Father heard her cry and came in. Blackwell was behind the door as it opened. He struck with a loaded cane and Father fell unconscious. He raised it to strike again, but she clung to his arm and called for help. Before he could shake her off another man came in. He wrenched the club away."

"Fendrick?" breathed Curly.

"She doesn't know. But the first thing he did was to lock the outer door and take the key. They carried Father down into the cellar. Before he came to himself his hands were tied behind his back."

"And then?"

"They watched him day and night. Fendrick himself did not go near the place—if it was Fendrick. Blackwell swore to kill Mrs. Wylie if she told. They held him there till to-night. She thinks they were trying to get Father to sign some paper."

"The relinquishment of course. That means the other man was Fendrick."

Kate nodded. "Yes."

Curly rose. The muscles stood out in his jaw; hard as steel ropes.

"We'll rake the Rincons with a fine tooth comb. Don't you worry. I've already wired for Bucky O'Connor to come and help. We'll get your Father out of the hands of those hell hounds. Won't we, Dick?"

The girl's eyes admired him, a lean hard-bitten Westerner with eyes as unblinking as an Arizona sun and with muscles like wire springs. His face still held its boyishness, but it had lost forever the irresponsibility of a few months before. She saw in him an iron will, shrewdness, courage and resource. All of these his friend Maloney also had. But Curly was the prodigal son, the sinner who had repented. His engaging recklessness lent him a charm from which she could not escape. Out of ten thousand men there were none whose voice drummed on her heart strings as did that of this youth.



CHAPTER IX

"THE FRIENDS OF L. C. SERVE NOTICE"

Two men sat in a log cabin on opposite sides of a cheap table. One of them was immersed in a newspaper. His body was relaxed, his mind apparently at ease. The other watched him malevolently. His fingers caressed the handle of a revolver that protruded from the holster at his side. He would have liked nothing better than to have drawn it and sent a bullet crashing into the unperturbed brain of his prisoner.

There were reasons of policy why it were better to curb this fascinating desire, but sometimes the impulse to kill surged up almost uncontrollably. On these occasions Luck Cullison was usually "deviling" him, the only diversion that had been open to the ranchman for some days past. Because of its danger—for he could never be quite sure that Blackwell's lust for swift vengeance would not over-power discretion—this pastime made a peculiar appeal to the audacious temper of the owner of the Circle C.

From time to time as Luck read he commented genially on the news.

"I see Tucson is going to get the El Paso & Southwestern extension after all. I'll bet the boys in that burg will be right tickled to hear it. They sure have worked steady for it."

Blackwell merely scowled. He never relaxed to the give and take of casual talk with his captive. Given his way, Cullison would not be here to read the Sentinel. But the brains of the conspiracy had ruled otherwise and had insisted too upon decent treatment. With one ankle securely tied to a leg of the table there was no danger in freeing the hands of the cattleman, but his hosts saw that never for an instant were hands and feet at liberty together. For this man was not the one with whom to take chances.

"Rudd has been convicted of forgery and taken to Yuma. Seems to me you used to live there, didn't you?" asked the cattleman with cool insolence, looking up from his paper to smile across at the furious convict.

Blackwell was livid. The man who had sent him to the territorial prison at Yuma dared to sit there bound and unarmed and taunt him with it.

"Take care," he advised hoarsely.

Cullison laughed and went back to the paper.

"'Lieutenant O'Connor of the Arizona Rangers left town to-day for a short trip into the hills where he expects to spend a few days hunting.' Hunting what, do you reckon? Or hunting who, I should say. Ever meet Bucky O'Connor, Blackwell? No, I reckon not. He's since your time. A crackerjack too! Wonder if Bucky ain't after some friends of mine."

"Shut up," growled the other.

"Sure you'll be shut up—when Bucky lands you," retorted Luck cheerfully. Then, with a sudden whoop: "Hello, here's a personal to your address. Fine! They're getting ready to round you up, my friend. Listen. 'The friends of L. C. serve notice that what occurred at the Jack of Hearts is known. Any violence hereafter done to him will be paid for to the limit. No guilty man will escape.' So the boys are getting busy. I figured they would be. Looks like your chance of knocking me on the head has gone down Salt River. I tell you nowadays a man has to grab an opportunity by the tail when it's there."

The former convict leaned forward angrily. "Lemme see that paper."

His guest handed it over, an index finger pointing out the item. "Large as life, Blackwell. No, sir. You ce'tainly didn't ride herd proper on that opportunity."

"Don't be too sure it's gone, Mr. Sheriff."

The man's face was twisted to an ugly sneer back of which lurked cruel menace. The gray eyes of Cullison did not waver a hair's breadth.

"It's gone. I'm as safe as if I were at the Circle C."

"Don't you think it."

"They've got you dead to rights. Read that personal again. Learn it by heart. 'The friends of L. C. give warning.' You better believe they're rounding up your outfit. They know I'm alive. They know all about the Jack of Hearts. Pretty soon they'll know where you've got me hidden."

"You'd better pray they won't. For if they find the nest it will be empty."

"Yes?" Luck spoke with ironical carelessness, but he shot an alert keen glance at the other.

"That's what I said. Want to know where you will be?" the other triumphed.

"I see you want to tell me. Unload your mind."

Triumph overrode discretion. "Look out of that window behind you."

Luck turned. The cabin was built on a ledge far up on the mountain side. From the back wall sloped for a hundred feet an almost perpendicular slide of rock.

"There's a prospect hole down there," Blackwell explained savagely. "You'd go down the Devil's Slide—what's left of you, I mean—deep into that prospect hole. The timberings are rotted and the whole top of the working ready to cave in. When your body hits it there will be an avalanche—with Mr. Former-sheriff Cullison at the bottom of it. You'll be buried without any funeral expenses, and I reckon your friends will never know where to put the headstone."

The thing was devilishly simple and feasible. Luck, still looking out of the window, felt the blood run cold down his spine, for he knew this fellow would never stick at murder if he felt it would be safe. No doubt he was being well paid, and though in this workaday world revenge has gone out of fashion there was no denying that this ruffian would enjoy evening the score. But his confederate was of another stripe, a human being with normal passions and instincts. The cattleman wondered how he could reconcile it to his conscience to go into so vile a plot with a villain like the convict.

"So you see I'm right; you'd better pray your friends won't find you. They can't reach here without being heard. If they get to hunting these hills you sure want to hope they'll stay cold, for just as soon as they get warm it will be the signal for you to shoot the chutes."

Luck met his triumphant savagery with an impassive face. "Interesting if true. And where will you be when my friends arrive. I reckon it won't be a pleasant meeting for Mr. Blackwell."

"I'll be headed for Mexico. I tell you because you ain't liable to go around spreading the news. There's a horse saddled in the dip back of the hill crest. Get it?"

"Fine," Cullison came back. "And you'll ride right into some of Bucky O'Connor's rangers. He's got the border patroled. You'd never make it."

"Don't worry. I'd slip through. I'm no tenderfoot."

"What if you did? Bucky would drag you back by the scruff of the neck in two weeks. Remember Chavez."

He referred to a murderer whom the lieutenant of rangers had captured and brought back to be hanged later.

"Chavez was a fool."

"Was he? You don't get the point. The old days are gone. Law is in the saddle. Murder is no longer a pleasant pastime." And Cullison stretched his arms and yawned.

From far below there came through the open window the faint click of a horse's hoofs ringing against the stones in the dry bed of a river wash. Swiftly Blackwell moved to the door, taking down a rifle from its rack as he did so. Cullison rose noiselessly in his chair. If it came to the worst he meant to shout aloud his presence and close with this fellow. Hampered as he was by the table, the man would get him without question. But if he could only sink his fingers into that hairy throat while there was still life in him he could promise that the Mexican trip would never take place.

Blackwell, from his place by the door, could keep an eye both on his prisoner and on a point of the trail far below where horsemen must pass to reach the cabin.

"Sit down," he ordered.

Cullison's eyes were like finely-tempered steel. "I'd rather stand."

"By God, if you move from there——" The man did not finish his sentence, but the rifle was already half lifted. More words would have been superfluous.

A rider came into sight and entered the mouth of the canyon. He was waving a white handkerchief. The man in the doorway answered the signal.

"Not your friends this time, Mr. Sheriff," Blackwell jeered.

"I get a stay of execution, do I?" The cool drawling voice of the cattleman showed nothing of the tense feeling within.

He resumed his seat and the reading of the newspaper. Presently, to the man that came over the threshold he spoke with a casual nod.

"Morning, Cass."

Fendrick mumbled a surly answer. The manner of ironical comradeship his captive chose to employ was more than an annoyance. To serve his ends it was necessary to put the fear of death into this man's heart, which was a thing he had found impossible to do. His foe would deride him, joke with him, discuss politics with him, play cards with him, do anything but fear him. In the meantime the logic of circumstances was driving the sheepman into a corner. He had on impulse made the owner of the Circle C his prisoner. Seeing him lie there unconscious on the floor of the Jack of Hearts, it had come to him in a flash that he might hold him and force a relinquishment of the Del Oro claim. His disappearance would explain itself if the rumor spread that he was the W. & S. express robber. Cass had done it to save himself from the ruin of his business, but already he had regretted it fifty times. Threats could not move Luck in the least. He was as hard as iron.

So the sheepman found himself between the upper and the nether millstones. He could not drive his prisoner to terms and he dared not release him. For if Cullison went away unpledged he would surely send him to the penitentiary. Nor could he hold him a prisoner indefinitely. He had seen the "personal" warning in both the morning and the afternoon papers. He guessed that the presence of the ranger Bucky O'Connor in Saguache was not a chance. The law was closing in on him. Somehow Cullison must be made to come through with a relinquishment and a pledge not to prosecute. The only other way out would be to let Blackwell wreak his hate on the former sheriff. From this he shrank with every instinct. Fendrick was a hard man. He would have fought it out to a finish if necessary. But murder was a thing he could not do.

He had never discussed the matter with Blackwell. The latter had told him of this retreat in the mountains and they had brought their prisoner here. But the existence of the prospect hole at the foot of the Devil's Slide was unknown to him. From the convict's revenge he had hitherto saved Luck. Blackwell was his tool rather than his confederate, but he was uneasily aware that if the man yielded to the elemental desire to kill his enemy the law, would hold him, Cass Fendrick, guilty of the crime.

"Price of sheep good this week?" Cullison asked amiably.

"I didn't come here to discuss the price of sheep with you." Fendrick spoke harshly. A dull anger against the scheme of things burned in him. For somehow he had reached an impasse from which there was neither advance nor retreat.

"No. Well, you're right there. What I don't know about sheep would fill several government reports. Of course I've got ideas. One of them is——"

"I don't care anything about your ideas. Are you going to sign this relinquishment?"

Luck's face showed a placid surprise. "Why no, Cass. Thought I mentioned that before."

"You'd better." The sheepman's harassed face looked ugly enough for anything.

"Can't figure it out that way."

"You've got to sign it. By God, you've no option."

"No?" Still with pleasant incredulity.

"Think I'm going to let you get away from here now. You'll sign and you'll promise to tell nothing you know against us."

"No, I don't reckon I will."

Cullison was looking straight at him with his fearless level gaze. Fendrick realized with a sinking heart that he could not drive him that way to surrender. He knew that in the other man's place he would have given way, that his enemy was gamer than he was.

He threw up his hand in a sullen gesture that disclaimed responsibility. "All right. It's on your own head. I've done all I can for you."

"What's on my head?"

"Your life. Damn you, don't you see you're driving me too far?"

"How far?"

"I'm not going to let you get away to send us to prison. What do you expect?"

Luck's frosty eyes did not release the other for a moment. "How are you going to prevent it, Cass?"

"I'll find a way."

"Blackwell's way—the Devil's Slide?"

The puzzled look of the sheepman told Cullison that Blackwell's plan of exit for him had not been submitted to the other.

"Your friend from Yuma has been explaining how he has arranged for me to cross the divide," he went on. "I'm to be plugged full of lead, shot down that rock, and landed in a prospect hole at the bottom."

"First I've heard of it." Fendrick wheeled upon his accomplice with angry eyes. He was in general a dominant man, and not one who would stand much initiative from his assistants.

"He's always deviling me," complained the convict surlily. Then, with a flash of anger: "But I stand pat. He'll get his before I take chances of getting caught. I'm nobody's fool."

Cass snapped him up. "You'll do as I say. You'll not lift a finger against him unless he tries to escape."

"Have you seen the Sentinel? I tell you his friends know everything. Someone's peached. They're hot on our trail. Bucky O'Connor is in the hills. Think I'm going to be caught like a rat in a trap?"

"We'll talk of that later. Now you go look after my horse while I keep guard here."

Blackwell went, protesting that he was no "nigger" to be ordered about on errands. As soon, as he was out of hearing Fendrick turned his thin lip-smile on the prisoner.

"It's up to you, Cullison. I saved your life once. I'm protecting you now. But if your friends show up he'll do as he says. I won't be here to stop him. Sign up and don't be a fool."

Luck's answer came easily and lightly. "My friend, we've already discussed that point."

"You won't change your mind?"

"Your arguments don't justify it, Cass."

The sheepman looked at him with a sinister significance. "Good enough. I'll bring you one that will justify it muy pronto."

"It will have to be a mighty powerful one. Sorry I can't oblige you and your friend, the convict."

"It'll be powerful enough." Fendrick went to the door and called Blackwell. "Bring back that horse. I'm going down to the valley."



CHAPTER X

CASS FENDRICK MAKES A CALL

Kate was in her rose garden superintending the stable boy as he loosened the dirt around the roots of some of the bushes. She had returned to the Circle C for a day or two to give some directions in the absence of her father. Buck and the other riders came to her for orders and took them without contempt. She knew the cattle business, and they knew she knew it. To a man they were proud of her, of her spirit, her energy, and her good looks.

This rose garden was one evidence of her enterprise. No ranch in the county could show such a riot of bloom as the Circle C. The American Beauty, the Duchess, the La France bowed gracefully to neighbors of a dozen other choice varieties. Kate had brought this glimpse of Eden into the desert. She knew her catalogues by heart and she had the loving instinct that teaches all gardeners much about growing things.

The rider who cantered up to the fence, seeing her in her well-hung corduroy skirt, her close-fitting blouse, and the broad-rimmed straw hat that shielded her dark head from the sun, appreciated the fitness of her surroundings. She too was a flower of the desert, delicately fashioned, yet vital with the bloom of health.

At the clatter of hoofs she looked up from the bush she was trimming and at once rose to her feet. With the change in position she showed slim and tall, straight as a young poplar. Beneath their long lashes her eyes grew dark and hard. For the man who had drawn to a halt was Cass Fendrick.

From the pocket of his shirt he drew a crumpled piece of stained linen.

"I've brought back your handkerchief, Miss Cullison."

"What have you done with my father?"

He nodded toward the Mexican boy and Kate dismissed the lad. When he had gone she asked her question again in exactly the same words.

"If we're going to discuss your father you had better get your quirt again," the sheepman suggested, touching a scar on his face.

A flush swept over her cheeks, but she held her voice quiet and even. "Where is Father? What have you done with him?"

He swung from the horse and threw the rein to the ground. Then, sauntering to the gate, he let himself in.

"You've surely got a nice posy garden here. Didn't know there was one like it in all sunbaked Arizona."

She stood rigid. Her unfaltering eyes, sloe-black in the pale face, never lifted from him.

"There's only one thing you can talk to me about Where have you hidden my father?"

"I've heard folks say he did himself all the hiding that was done."

"You know that isn't true. That convict and you have hidden him somewhere. We have evidence enough to convict you both."

"Imagination, most of it, I expect." He was inspecting the roses and inhaling their bloom.

"Fact enough to send you to the penitentiary."

"I ought to be scared. This is a La France, ain't it?"

"I want you to tell me what you have done with my father."

He laughed a little and looked at her with eyes that narrowed like those of a cat basking in the sun. He had something the look of the larger members of the cat family—the soft long tread, the compact rippling muscles of a tame panther, and with these the threat that always lies behind its sleepy wariness.

"You're a young lady of one idea. No use arguing with you, I reckon."

"Not the least use. I've talked with Mrs. Wylie."

He raised his eyebrows. "Do I know the lady?"

"She will know you. That is more to the point."

"Did she say she knew me?" he purred.

"She will say it in court—if it ever comes to that."

"Just what will she say, if you please."

Kate told him in four sentences with a stinging directness that was the outstanding note of her, that and a fine self-forgetful courage.

"Is that all? Comes to this then, that she says I heard her scream, ran in, and saved your father's life. Is that a penitentiary offense? I don't say it oughtn't to be, but is it?"

"You helped the villain take his body into the cellar. You plotted with him to hold Father a prisoner there."

"Says that, does she—that she overheard us plotting?"

"Of course she did not overhear what you said. You took good care of that. But she knew you were conspiring."

"Just naturally knew it without overhearing," he derided. "And of course if I was in a plot I must have been Johnny-on-the-spot a good deal of the time. Hung round there a-plenty, I expect?"

He had touched on the weak spot of Mrs. Wylie's testimony. The man who had saved Cullison's life, after a long talk with Blackwell, had gone out of the Jack of Hearts and had not returned so far as she knew. For her former husband had sent her on an errand just before the prisoner was taken away and she did not know who had helped him.

Kate was silent.

"How would this do for an explanation?" he suggested lazily. "We'll say just for the sake of argument that Mrs. Wylie's story is true, that I did save your father's life. We'll put it that I did help carry him downstairs where it was cooler and that I did have a long talk with the fellow Blackwell. What would I be talking to him about, if I wasn't reading the riot act to him? Ain't it likely too that he would be sorry for what he did while he was angry at your father for butting in as he was having trouble with his wife? And after he had said he was sorry why shouldn't I hit the road out of there? There's no love lost between me and Luck Cullison. I wasn't under any obligations to wrap him up in cotton and bring him back this side up with care to his anxious friends. If he chose later to take a hike out of town on p.d.q. hurry up business I ain't to blame. And I reckon you'll find a jury will agree with me."

She had to admit to herself that he made out a plausible case. Not that she believed it for a moment. But very likely a jury would. As for his subsequent silence that could be explained by his desire not to mix himself in the affairs of one with whom he was upon unfriendly terms. The irrefutable fact that he had saved the life of Cullison would go a long way as presumptive proof of his innocence.

"I see you are wearing your gray hat again? What have you done with the brown one?"

She had flashed the question at him so unexpectedly that he was startled, but the wary mask fell again over the sardonic face.

"You take a right friendly interest in my hats, seems to me."

"I know this much. Father took your hat by mistake from the club. You bought a brown one half an hour later. You used Father's to manufacture evidence against him. If it isn't true that he is your prisoner how does it come that you have your gray hat again? You must have taken it from him."

He laughed uneasily. She had guessed the exact truth.

"In Arizona there are about forty thousand gray hats like this. Do you figure you can identify this one, Miss Cullison? And suppose your fairy tale of the Jack of Hearts is true, couldn't I have swapped hats again while he lay there unconscious?"

She brushed his explanation aside with a woman's superb indifference to logic.

"You can talk of course. I don't care. It is all lies—lies. You have kidnapped Father and are holding him somewhere. Don't you dare to hurt him. If you should—Oh, if you should—you will wish you had never been born." The fierceness of her passion beat upon him like sudden summer hail.

He laughed slowly, well pleased. A lazy smoldering admiration shone in his half shuttered eyes.

"So you're going to take it out of me, are you?"

A creature of moods, there came over her now a swift change. Every feature of her, the tense pose, the manner of defiant courage, softened indescribably. She was no longer an enemy bent on his destruction but a girl pleading for the father she loved.

"Why do you do it? You are a man. You want to fight fair. Tell me he is well. Tell me you will set him free."

He forgot for the moment that he was a man with the toils of the law closing upon him, forgot that his success and even his liberty were at stake. He saw only a girl with the hunger of love in her wistful eyes, and knew that it lay in his power to bring back the laughter and the light into them.

"Suppose I can't fight fair any longer. Suppose I've let myself get trapped and it isn't up to me but to somebody else."

"How do you mean?"

"Up to your father, say."

"My father?"

"Yes. How could I turn him loose when the first thing he did would be to swear out a warrant for my arrest?"

"But he wouldn't—not if you freed him."

He laughed harshly. "I thought you knew him. He's hard as nails."

She recognized the justice of this appraisal. "But he is generous too. He stands by his friends."

"I'm not his friend, not so you could notice it." He laughed again, bitterly. "Not that it matters. Of course I was just putting a case. Nothing to it really."

He was hedging because he thought he had gone too far, but she appeared not to notice it. Her eyes had the faraway look of one who communes with herself.

"If I could only see him and have a talk with him."

"What good would that do?" he pretended to scoff.

But he watched her closely nevertheless.

"I think I could get him to do as I ask. He nearly always does." Her gaze went swiftly back to him. "Let me talk with him. There's a reason why he ought to be free now, one that would appeal to him."

This was what he had come for, but now that she had met him half way he hesitated. If she should not succeed he would be worse off than before. He could neither hold her a prisoner nor free her to lead the pack of the law to his hiding place. On the other hand if Cullison thought they intended to keep her prisoner he would have to compromise. He dared not leave her in the hands of Lute Blackwell. Fendrick decided to take a chance. At the worst he could turn them both free and leave for Sonora.

"All right. I'll take you to him. But you'll have to do as I say."

"Yes," she agreed.

"I'm taking you to back my play. I tell you straight that Blackwell would like nothing better than to put a bullet through your father. But I've got a hold on the fellow that ties him. He's got to do as I say. But if I'm not there and it comes to a showdown—if Bucky O'Connor for instance happens to stumble in—then it's all off with Luck Cullison. Blackwell won't hesitate a second. He'll kill your father and make a bolt for it. That's one reason why I'm taking you. I want to pile up witnesses against the fellow so as to make him go slow. But that's not my main object. You've got to persuade Luck to come through with an agreement to let go of that Del Oro homestead and to promise not to prosecute us. He won't do it to save his own life. He's got to think you come there as my prisoner. See? He's got to wrestle with the notion that you're in the power of the damnedest villain that ever went unhung. I mean Blackwell. Let him chew on that proposition a while and see what he makes of it."

She nodded, white to the lips. "Let us go at once, please. I don't want to leave Father alone with that man." She called across to the corral. "Manuel, saddle the pinto for me. Hurry!"

They rode together through the wind-swept sunlit land. From time to time his lazy glance embraced her, a supple graceful creature at perfect ease in the saddle. What was it about her that drew the eye so irresistibly? Prettier girls he had often seen. Her features were irregular, mouth and nose too large, face a little thin. Her contour lacked the softness, the allure that in some women was an unconscious invitation to cuddle. Tough as whipcord she might be, but in her there flowed a life vital and strong; dwelt a spirit brave and unconquerable. She seemed to him as little subtle as any woman he had ever met. This directness came no doubt from living so far from feminine influences. But he had a feeling that if a man once wakened her to love, the instinct of sex would spring full-grown into being.

They talked of the interests common to the country, of how the spring rains had helped the range, of Shorty McCabe's broken leg, of the new school district that was being formed. Before she knew it Kate was listening to his defense of himself in the campaign between him and her father. He found her a partisan beyond chance of conversion. Yet she heard patiently his justification.

"I didn't make the conditions that are here. I have to accept them. The government establishes forest reserves on the range. No use ramming my head against a stone wall. Uncle Sam is bigger than we are. Your father and his friends got stubborn. I didn't."

"No, you were very wise," she admitted dryly.

"You mean because I adapted myself to the conditions and made the best of them. Why shouldn't I?" he flushed.

"Father's cattle had run over that range thirty years almost. What right had you to take it from him?"

"Conditions change. He wouldn't see it. I did. As for the right of it—well, Luck ain't king of the valley just because he thinks he is."

She began to grow angry. A dull flush burned through the tan of her cheeks.

"So you bought sheep and brought them in to ruin the range, knowing that they would cut the feeding ground to pieces, kill the roots of vegetation with their sharp hoofs, and finally fill the country with little gullies to carry off the water that ought to sink into the ground."

"Sheep ain't so bad if they are run right."

"It depends where they run. This is no place for them."

"That's what you hear your father say. He's prejudiced."

"And you're not, I suppose."

"I'm more reasonable than he is."

"Yes, you are," she flung back at him irritably.

Open country lay before them. They had come out from a stretch of heavy underbrush. Catclaw had been snatching at their legs. Cholla had made the traveling bad for the horses. Now she put her pony to a canter that for the time ended conversation.



CHAPTER XI

A COMPROMISE

Luck lay stretched full length on a bunk, his face, to the roof, a wreath of smoke from his cigar traveling slowly toward the ceiling into a filmy blue cloud which hung above him. He looked the personification of vigorous full-blooded manhood at ease. Experience had taught him to take the exigencies of his turbulent life as they came, nonchalantly, to the eye of an observer indifferently, getting all the comfort the situation had to offer.

By the table, facing him squarely, sat Jose Dominguez, a neatly built Mexican with snapping black eyes, a manner of pleasant suavity, and an ever-ready smile that displayed a double row of shining white teeth. That smile did not for an instant deceive Luck. He knew that Jose had no grudge against him, that he was a very respectable citizen, and that he would regretfully shoot him full of holes if occasion called for so drastic a termination to their acquaintanceship. For Dominguez had a third interest in the C. F. ranch, and he was the last man in the world to sacrifice his business for sentiment. Having put the savings of a lifetime into the sheep business, he did not propose to let anybody deprive him of his profits either legally or illegally.

Luck was talking easily, in the most casual and amiable of voices.

"No, Dominguez, the way I look at it you and Cass got in bad this time. Here's the point. In this little vendetta of ours both sides were trying to keep inside the law and win out. When you elected Bolt sheriff that was one to you. When you took out that grazing permit and cut me off the reserve that was another time you scored heavy. A third time was when you brought 'steen thousand of Mary's little lambs baaing across the desert. Well, I come back at you by deeding the Circle C to my girl and taking up the Del Oro homestead. You contest and lose. Good enough. It's up to you to try another move."

"Si, Senor, and we move immediate. We persuade you to visit us at our summer mountain home where we can talk at leisure. We suggest a compromise."

Luck grinned. "Your notion of a compromise and mine don't tally, Jose. Your idea is for me to give you the apple and stand by while you eat it. Trouble is that both parties to this quarrel are grabbers."

"True, but Senor Cullison must remember his hands are tied behind him. He will perhaps not find the grabbing good," his opponent suggested politely.

"Come to that, your hands are tied too, my friend. You can't hold me here forever. Put me out of business and the kid will surely settle your hash by proving up on the claim. What are you going to do about it?"

"Since you ask me, I can only say that it depends on you. Sign the relinquishment, give us your word not to prosecute, and you may leave in three hours."

Cullison shook his head. "That's where you get in wrong. Buck up against the law and you are sure to lose."

"If we lose you lose too," Dominguez answered significantly.

The tinkle of hoofs from the river bed in the gulch below rose through the clear air. The Mexican moved swiftly to the door and presently waved a handkerchief.

"What gent are you wig-wagging to now?" Luck asked from the bed. "Thought I knew all you bold bad bandits by this time. Or is it Cass back again?"

"Yes, it's Cass. There's someone with him too. It is a woman," the Mexican discovered in apparent surprise.

"A woman!" Luck took the cigar from his mouth in vague unease. "What is he doing here with a woman?"

The Mexican smiled behind his open hand. "Your question anticipates mine, Senor. I too ask the same."

The sight of his daughter in the doorway went through the cattleman with a chilling shock. She ran forward and with a pathetic cry of joy threw herself upon him where he stood. His hands were tied behind him. Only by the turn of his head and by brushing his unshaven face against hers could he answer her caresses. There was a look of ineffable tenderness on his face, for he loved her more than anything else on earth.