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

But before noon he sent for him.

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

"Whatever's fair," agreed Dave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hello! Call me?" he asked.

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

"Bad, is it?"

"Broken."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A little ways down," said a brakeman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll not go with it."

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

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

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

"But he won't gimme one."

"Not my business."

"Whose business is it?"

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

He tramped back to the platform.

"All aboard," sang out the conductor.

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

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

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

The wire to the railroad official read:

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

DAVID SANDERS

Representing West Cattle Company

The other message was just as direct.

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

DAVE SANDERS

The conductor caught the eye of the agent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No?"

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

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

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

Beneath was the signature of the superintendent.

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

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

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

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

"Elbow grease."

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XI

THE NIGHT CLERK GETS BUSY PRONTO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You in charge here?"

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

"Are you in charge?" asked Dave evenly.

"Maybeso. What you want?"

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

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

The clerk's visitor sniggered.

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

"Consigned to us?"

"To the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company."

"Name of shipper?"

"West Cattle Company and Henry B. West."

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

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

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

"When?"

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

"When what?" he snapped.

"When you goin' to onload my stock?"

"In the morning."

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

"I'm not responsible for that."

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

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

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

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

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

"Say, is this my business or yours?"

"Mine and yours both."

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll see to it right away."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XII

THE LAW PUZZLES DAVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You was sayin'—" suggested the cowboy.

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

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

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

"Yes?"

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

"Yes, do. Jim Smith."

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

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

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

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

"Quarrelin'? What about?"

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

"Doble drunk?"

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

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

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

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

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

"How much?" he asked.

"Seven dollars. Dirt sheap, my frient."

"Got any telescope grips?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Some one steal a hawss from you?"

Dave told his story. West listened to a finish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first one his eyes fell on was Chiquito.



CHAPTER XIII

FOR MURDER

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

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

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

"Bet you hated to sell him."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave

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

Dave

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

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

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

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

"What's your name?" he demanded.

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

"Sanders—Dave Sanders."

"I want you."

"So? Who are you?"

"Sheriff of the county."

"Whadjawant me for?"

"Murder."

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

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

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



CHAPTER XIV

TEN YEARS

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

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

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

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

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

"Wisht I had," said Dave miserably.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The friends shook hands again.



CHAPTER XV

IN DENVER

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Well, wish you luck."

"Thanks."

The convict turned away, grave, unsmiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"At Canon City."

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

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

A moment's awkward embarrassment ensued.

"What were you in for?"

"Killing a man."

"Too bad. I'm afraid—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"At the penitentiary."

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

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

"What was the trouble?"

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

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

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

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

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

They went to the contractor. He reasoned with them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not because I want you to, Sanders."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XVI

DAVE MEETS TWO FRIENDS AND A FOE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In Denver, Bob."

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

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

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

"Thanks, Bob."

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

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

"I've rented a room."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They arranged an hour of meeting at the restaurant.

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

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

"Who—Dave?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you mean he's broken?"

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

"When can I see him?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He took one step—and stopped. He had recognized Sanders. His eyes narrowed. The head on his short, red neck was thrust forward.

"Goddlemighty!" he screamed, and next moment was plucking a revolver from under his left armpit.

Bob caught Joyce and swept her behind him, covering her with his body as best he could. At the same time Sanders plunged forward, arrow-straight and swift. The revolver cracked. It spat fire a second time, a third. The tiger-man, head low, his whole splendid body vibrant with energy, hurled himself across the road as though he had been flung from a catapult. A streak of fire ripped through his shoulder. Another shot boomed almost simultaneously. He thudded hard into the fat paunch of the gunman. They went down together.

The fingers of Dave's left hand closed on the fat wrist of the gambler. His other hand tore the revolver away from the slack grasp. The gun rose and fell. Miller went into unconsciousness without even a groan. The corrugated butt of the gun had crashed down on his forehead.

Dizzily Sanders rose. He leaned against a telephone pole for support. The haze cleared to show him the white, anxious face of a young woman.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

Dave looked at Joyce, wondering at her presence here. "He's the one that's hurt," he answered quietly.

"I thought—I was afraid—" Her voice died away. She felt her knees grow weak. To her this man had appeared to be plunging straight to death.

No excitement in him reached the surface. His remarkably steady eyes still held their grim, hard tenseness, but otherwise his self-control was perfect. He was absolutely imperturbable.

"He was shootin' wild. Sorry you were here, Miss Crawford." His eyes swept the gathering crowd. "You'd better go, don't you reckon?"

"Yes.... You come too, please." The girl's voice broke.

"Don't worry. It's all over." He turned to the crowd. "He began shootin 'at me. I was unarmed. He shot four times before I got to him."

"Tha's right. I saw it from up street," a stranger volunteered. "Where do you take out yore insurance, friend? I'd like to get some of the same."

"I'll be in town here if I'm wanted," Dave announced before he came back to where Bob and Joyce were standing. "Now we'll move, Miss Crawford."

At the second street corner he stopped, evidently intending to go no farther. "I'll say good-bye, for this time. I'll want to see Mr. Crawford right soon. How is little Keith comin' on?"

She had mentioned that the boy frequently spoke of him.

"Can you come up to see Father to-night? Or he'll go to your room if you'd rather."

"Maybe to-morrow—"

"He'll be anxious to see you. I want you and Bob to come to dinner Sunday."

"Don't hardly think I'll be here Sunday. My plans aren't settled. Thank you just the same, Miss Crawford."

She took his words as a direct rebuff. There was a little lump in her throat that she had to get rid of before she spoke again.

"Sorry. Perhaps some other time." Joyce gave him her hand. "I'm mighty glad to have seen you again, Mr. Sanders."

He bowed. "Thank you."

After she had gone, Dave turned swiftly to his friend. "Where's the nearest doctor's office? Miller got me in the shoulder."



CHAPTER XVII

OIL

"I'll take off my hat to Dave," said Hart warmly. "He's chain lightnin'. I never did see anything like the way he took that street in two jumps. And game? Did you ever hear tell of an unarmed man chargin' a guy with a gun spittin' at him?"

"I always knew he had sand in his craw. What does Doc Green say?" asked Crawford, lighting a corncob pipe.

"Says nothin' to worry about. A flesh wound in the shoulder. Ought to heal up in a few days."

Miss Joyce speaking, with an indignant tremor of the voice: "It was the most cowardly thing I ever saw. He was unarmed, and he hadn't lifted a finger when that ruffian began to shoot. I was sure he would be ... killed."

"He'll take a heap o' killin', that boy," her father reassured. "In a way it's a good thing this happened now. His enemies have showed their hand. They tried to gun him, before witnesses, while he was unarmed. Whatever happens now, Dave's got public sentiment on his side. I'm always glad to have my enemy declare himself. Then I can take measures."

"What measures can Dave take?" asked Joyce.

A faint, grim smile flitted across the old cattleman's face. "Well, one measure he'll take pronto will be a good six-shooter on his hip. One I'll take will be to send Miller back to the pen, where he belongs, soon as I can get court action. He's out on parole, like Dave is. All the State has got to do is to reach out and haul him back again."

"If it can find him," added Bob dryly. "I'll bet it can't. He's headed for the hills or the border right now."

Crawford rose. "Well, I'll run down with you to his room and see the boy, Bob. Wisht he would come up and stay with us. Maybe he will."

To the cattleman Dave made light of his wound. He would be all right in a few days, he said. It was only a scratch.

"Tha's good, son," Crawford answered. "Well, now, what are you aimin' to do? I got a job for you on the ranch if tha's what you want. Or I can use you in the oil business. It's for you to say which."

"Oil," said Dave without a moment of hesitation. "I want to learn that business from the ground up. I've been reading all I could get on the subject."

"Good enough, but don't you go to playin' geology too strong, Dave. Oil is where it's at. The formation don't amount to a damn. You'll find it where you find it."

"Mr. Crawford ain't strong for the scientific sharps since a college professor got him to drill a nice straight hole on Round Top plumb halfway to China," drawled Bob with a grin.

"I suppose it's a gamble," agreed Sanders.

"Worse'n the cattle market, and no livin' man can guess that," said the owner of the D Bar Lazy R dogmatically. "Bob, you better put Dave with the crew of that wildcat you're spuddin' in, don't you reckon?"

"I'll put him on afternoon tower in place of that fellow Scott. I've been intendin' to fire him soon as I could get a good man."

"Much obliged to you both. Hope you've found that good man," said Sanders.

"We have. Ain't either of us worryin' about that." With a quizzical smile Crawford raised a point that was in his mind. "Say, son, you talk a heap more like a book than you used to. You didn't slip one over on us and go to college, did you?"

"I went to school in the penitentiary," Dave said.

He had been immured in a place of furtive, obscene whisperings, but he had found there not only vice. There was the chance of an education. He had accepted it at first because he dared not let himself be idle in his spare time. That way lay degeneration and the loss of his manhood. He had studied under competent instructors English, mathematics, the Spanish grammar, and mechanical drawing, as well as surveying and stationary engineering. He had read some of the world's best literature. He had waded through a good many histories. If his education in books was lopsided, it was in some respects more thorough than that of many a college boy.

Dave did not explain all this. He let his simple statement of fact stand without enlarging on it. His life of late years had tended to make him reticent.

"Heard from Burns yet about that fishin' job on Jackpot Number Three?" Bob asked Crawford.

"Only that he thinks he hooked the tools and lost 'em again. Wisht you'd run out in the mo'nin', son, and see what's doin'. I got to go out to the ranch."

"I'll drive out to-night and take Dave with me if he feels up to it. Then we'll know the foreman keeps humpin'."

"Fine and dandy." The cattleman turned to Sanders. "But I reckon you better stay right here and rest up. Time enough for you to go to work when yore shoulder's all right."

"Won't hurt me a bit to drive out with Bob. This thing's going to keep me awake anyhow. I'd rather be outdoors."

They drove out in the buckboard behind the half-broken colts. The young broncos went out of town to a flying start. They raced across the plain as hard as they could tear, the light rig swaying behind them as the wheels hit the high spots. Not till they had worn out their first wild energy was conversation possible.

Bob told of his change of occupation.

"Started dressin' tools on a wildcat test for Crawford two years ago when he first begun to plunge in oil. Built derricks for a while. Ran a drill. Dug sump holes. Shot a coupla wells. Went in with a fellow on a star rig as pardner. Went busted and took Crawford's offer to be handy man for him. Tha's about all, except that I own stock in two-three dead ones and some that ain't come to life yet."

The road was full of chuck holes and very dusty, both faults due to the heavy travel that went over it day and night. They were in the oil field now and gaunt derricks tapered to the sky to right and left of them. Occasionally Dave could hear the kick of an engine or could see a big beam pumping.

"I suppose most of the D Bar Lazy R boys have got into oil some," suggested Sanders.

"Every man, woman, and kid around is in oil neck deep," Bob answered. "Malapi's gone oil crazy. Folks are tradin' and speculatin' in stock and royalty rights that never could amount to a hill o' beans. Slick promoters are gettin' rich. I've known photographers to fake gushers in their dark-rooms. The country's full of abandoned wells of busted companies. Oil is a big man's game. It takes capital to operate. I'll bet it ain't onct in a dozen times an investor gets a square run for his white alley, at that."

"There are crooks in every game."

"Sure, but oil's so darned temptin' to a crook. All the suckers are shovin' money at a promoter. They don't ask his capitalization or investigate his field. Lots o' promoters would hate like Sam Hill to strike oil. If they did they'd have to take care of it. That's a lot of trouble. They can make more organizin' a new company and rakin' in money from new investors."

Bob swung the team from the main road and put it at a long rise.

"There ain't nothin' easier than to drop money into a hole in the ground and call it an oil well," he went on. "Even if the proposition is absolutely on the level, the chances are all against the investor. It's a fifty-to-one shot. Tools are lost, the casin' collapses, the cable breaks, money gives out, shootin' is badly done, water filters in, or oil ain't there in payin' quantities. In a coupla years you can buy a deskful of no-good stock for a dollar Mex."

"Then why is everybody in it?"

"We've all been bit by this get-rich-quick bug. If you hit it right in oil you can wear all the diamonds you've a mind to. That's part of it, but it ain't all. The West always did like to take a chance, I reckon. Well, this is gamblin' on a big scale and it gets into a fellow's blood. We're all crazy, but we'd hate to be cured."

The driver stopped at the location of Jackpot Number Three and invited his friend to get out.

"Make yoreself to home, Dave. I reckon you ain't sorry that fool team has quit joltin' yore shoulder."

Sanders was not, but he did not say so. He could stand the pain of his wound easily enough, but there was enough of it to remind him pretty constantly that he had been in a fight.

The fishing for the string of lost tools was going on by lamplight. With a good deal of interest Dave examined the big hooks that had been sent down in an unsuccessful attempt to draw out the drill. It was a slow business and a not very interesting one. The tools seemed as hard to hook as a wily old trout. Presently Sanders wandered to the bunkhouse and sat down on the front step. He thought perhaps he had not been wise to come out with Hart. His shoulder throbbed a good deal.

After a time Bob joined him. Faintly there came to them the sound of an engine thumping.

"Steelman's outfit," said Hart gloomily. "His li'l' old engine goes right on kickin' all the darned time. If he gets to oil first we lose. Man who makes first discovery on a claim wins out in this country."

"How's that? Didn't you locate properly?"

"Had no time to do the assessment work after we located. Dug a sump hole, maybe. Brad jumps in when the field here began to look up. Company that shows oil first will sure win out."

"How deep has he drilled?"

"We're a li'l' deeper—not much. Both must be close to the sands. We were showin' driller's smut when we lost our string." Bob reached into his hip pocket and drew out "the makings." He rolled his cigarette and lit it. "I reckon Steelman's a millionaire now—on paper, anyhow. He was about busted when he got busy in oil. He was lucky right off, and he's crooked as a dawg's hind laig—don't care how he gets his, so he gets it. He sure trimmed the suckers a-plenty."

"He and Crawford are still unfriendly," Dave suggested, the inflection of his voice making the statement a question.

"Onfriendly!" drawled Bob, leaning back against the step and letting a smoke ring curl up. "Well, tha's a good, nice parlor word. Yes, I reckon you could call them onfriendly." Presently he went on, in explanation: "Brad's goin' to put Crawford down and out if it can be done by hook or crook. He's a big man in the country now. We haven't been lucky, like he has. Besides, the ol' man's company's on the square. This business ain't like cows. It takes big money to swing. You make or break mighty sudden."

"Yes."

"And Steelman won't stick at a thing. Wouldn't trust him or any one of his crowd any further than I could sling a bull by the tail. He'd blow Crawford and me sky high if he thought he could get away with it."

Sanders nodded agreement. He hadn't a doubt of it.

With a thumb jerk toward the beating engine, Bob took up again his story. "Got a bunch of thugs over there right now ready for business if necessary. Imported plug-uglies and genuwine blown-in-the-bottle home talent. Shorty's still one of the gang, and our old friend Dug Doble is boss of the rodeo. I'm lookin' for trouble if we win out and get to oil first."

"You think they'll attack."

A gay light of cool recklessness danced in the eyes of the young oilman. "I've a kinda notion they'll drap over and pay us a visit one o' these nights, say in the dark of the moon. If they do—well, we certainly aim to welcome them proper."



CHAPTER XVIII

DOBLE PAYS A VISIT

"Hello, the Jackpot!"

Out of the night the call came to the men at the bunkhouse.

Bob looked at his companion and grinned. "Seems to me I recognize that melojious voice."

A man stepped from the gloom with masterful, arrogant strides.

"'Lo, Hart," he said. "Can you lend me a reamer?"

Bob knew he had come to spy out the land and not to borrow tools.

"Don't seem to me we've hardly got any reamers to spare, Dug," drawled the young man sitting on the porch floor. "What's the trouble? Got a kink in yore casin'?"

"Not so you could notice it, but you never can tell when you're goin' to run into bad luck, can you?" He sat down on the porch and took a cigar from his vest pocket. "What with losin' tools and one thing an' 'nother, this oil game sure is hell. By the way, how's yore fishin' job comin' on?"

"Fine, Dug. We ain't hooked our big fish yet, but we're hopeful."

Dave was sitting in the shadow. Doble nodded carelessly to him without recognition. It was characteristic of his audacity that Dug had walked over impudently to spy out the camp of the enemy. Bob knew why he had come, and he knew that Bob knew. Yet both ignored the fact that he was not welcome.

"I've known fellows angle a right long time for a trout and not catch him," said Doble, stretching his long legs comfortably.

"Yes," agreed Bob. "Wish I could hire you to throw a monkey wrench in that engine over there. Its chuggin' keeps me awake."

"I'll bet it does. Well, young fellow, you can't hire me or anybody else to stop it," retorted Doble, an edge to his voice.

"Well, I just mentioned it," murmured Hart. "I don't aim to rile yore feelin's. We'll talk of somethin' else.... Hope you enjoyed that reunion this week with yore old friend, absent far, but dear to memory ever."

"Referrin' to?" demanded Doble with sharp hostility.

"Why, Ad Miller, Dug."

"Is he a friend of mine?"

"Ain't he?"

"Not that I ever heard tell of."

"Glad of that. You won't miss him now he's lit out."

"Oh, he's lit out, has he?"

"A li'l bird whispered to me he had."

"When?"

"This evenin', I understand."

"Where'd he go?"

"He didn't leave any address. Called away on sudden business."

"Did he mention the business?"

"Not to me." Bob turned to his friend. "Did he say anything to you about that, Dave?"

In the silence one might have heard a watch tick, Doble leaned forward, his body rigid, danger written large in his burning eyes and clenched fist.

"So you're back," he said at last in a low, harsh voice.

"I'm back."

"It would 'a' pleased me if they had put a rope round yore neck, Mr. Convict."

Dave made no comment. Nobody could have guessed from his stillness how fierce was the blood pressure at his temples.

"It's a difference of opinion makes horse-races, Dug," said Bob lightly.

The big ex-foreman rose snarling. "For half a cent I'd gun you here and now like you did George."

Sanders looked at him steadily, his hands hanging loosely by his sides.

"I wouldn't try that, Dug," warned Hart. "Dave ain't armed, but I am. My hand's on my six-shooter right this minute. Don't make a mistake."

The ex-foreman glared at him. Doble was a strong, reckless devil of a fellow who feared neither God nor man. A primeval savagery burned in his blood, but like most "bad" men he had that vein of caution in his make-up which seeks to find its victim at disadvantage. He knew Hart too well to doubt his word. One cannot ride the range with a man year in, year out, without knowing whether the iron is in his arteries.

"Declarin' yoreself in on this, are you?" he demanded ominously, showing his teeth.

"I've always been in on it, Dug. Took a hand at the first deal, the day of the race. If you're lookin' for trouble with Dave, you'll find it goes double."

"Not able to play his own hand, eh?"

"Not when you've got a six-shooter and he hasn't. Not after he has just been wounded by another gunman he cleaned up with his bare hands. You and yore friends are lookin' for things too easy."

"Easy, hell! I'll fight you and him both, with or without guns. Any time. Any place."

Doble backed away till his figure grew vague in the darkness. Came the crack of a revolver. A bullet tore a splinter from the wall of the shack in front of which Dave was standing. A jeering laugh floated to the two men, carried on the light night breeze.

Bob whipped out his revolver, but he did not fire. He and his friend slipped quietly to the far end of the house and found shelter round the corner.

"Ain't that like Dug, the damned double-crosser?" whispered Bob. "I reckon he didn't try awful hard to hit you. Just sent his compliments kinda casual to show good-will."

"I reckon he didn't try very hard to miss me either," said Dave dryly. "The bullet came within a foot of my head."

"He's one bad citizen, if you ask me," admitted Hart, without reluctance. "Know how he came to break with the old man? He had the nerve to start beauin' Miss Joyce. She wouldn't have it a minute. He stayed right with it—tried to ride over her. Crawford took a hand and kicked him out. Since then Dug has been one bitter enemy of the old man."

"Then Crawford had better look out. If Doble isn't a killer, I've never met one."

"I've got a fool notion that he ain't aimin' to kill him; that maybe he wants to help Steelman bust him so as he can turn the screws on him and get Miss Joyce. Dug must 'a' been makin' money fast in Brad's company. He's on the inside."

Dave made no comment.

"I expect you was some surprised when I told Dug who was roostin' on the step so clost to him," Hart went on. "Well, I had a reason. He was due to find it out anyhow in about a minute, so I thought I'd let him know we wasn't tryin' to keep him from knowin' who his neighbor was; also that I was good and ready for him if he got red-haided like Miller done."

"I understood, Bob," said his friend quietly.



CHAPTER XIX

AN INVOLUNTARY BATH

Jackpot Number Three hooked its tools the second day after Sanders's visit to that location. A few hours later its engine was thumping merrily and the cable rising and falling monotonously in the casing. On the afternoon of the third day Bob Hart rode up to the wildcat well where Dave was building a sump hole with a gang of Mexicans.

He drew Sanders to one side. "Trouble to-night, Dave, looks like. At Jackpot Number Three. We're in a layer of soft shale just above the oil-bearin' sand. Soon we'll know where we're at. Word has reached me that Doble means to rush the night tower and wreck the engine."

"You'll stand his crowd off?"

"You're whistlin'."

"Sure your information is right?"

"It's c'rect." Bob added, after a momentary hesitation: "We got a spy in his camp."

Sanders did not ask whether the affair was to be a pitched battle. He waited, sure that Bob would tell him when he was ready. That young man came to the subject indirectly.

"How's yore shoulder, Dave?"

"Doesn't trouble me any unless something is slammed against it."

"Interfere with you usin' a six-shooter?"

"No."

"Like to take a ride with me over to the Jackpot?"

"Yes."

"Good enough. I want you to look the ground over with me. Looks now as if it would come to fireworks. But we don't want any Fourth-of-July stuff if we can help it. Can we? That's the point."

At the Jackpot the friends walked over the ground together. Back of the location and to the west of it an arroyo ran from a canon above.

"Follow it down and it'll take you right into the location where Steelman is drillin'," explained Bob. "Dug's gonna lead his gang up the arroyo to the mesquite here, sneak down on us, and take our camp with a rush. At least, that's what he aims to do. You can't always tell, as the fellow says."

"What's up above?"

"A dam. Steelman owns the ground up there. He's got several acres of water backed up there for irrigation purposes."

"Let's go up and look it over."

Bob showed a mild surprise. "Why, yes, if you want to take some exercise. This is my busy day, but—"

Sanders ignored the hint. He led the way up a stiff trail that took them to the mouth of the canon. Across the face of this a dam stretched. They climbed to the top of it. The water rose to within about six feet from the rim of the curved wall.

"Some view," commented Bob with a grin, looking across the plains that spread fanlike from the mouth of the gorge. "But I ain't much interested in scenery to-day somehow."

"When were you expectin' to shoot the well, Bob?"

"Some time to-morrow. Don't know just when. Why?"

"Got the nitro here yet?"

"Brought it up this mo'nin' myself."

"How much?"

"Twelve quarts."

"Any dynamite in camp?"

"Yes. A dozen sticks, maybe."

"And three gallons of nitro, you say."

"Yep."

"That's enough to do the job," Sanders said, as though talking aloud to himself.

"Yep. Tha's what we usually use."

"I'm speaking of another job. Let's get down from here. We might be seen."

"They couldn't hit us from the Steelman location. Too far," said Bob. "And I don't reckon any one would try to do that."

"No, but they might get to wondering what we're doing up here."

"I'm wonderin' that myself," drawled Hart. "Most generally when I take a pasear it's on the back of a bronc. I ain't one of them that believes the good Lord made human laigs to be walked on, not so long as any broomtails are left to straddle."

Screened by the heavy mesquite below, Sanders unfolded his proposed plan of operations. Bob listened, and as Dave talked there came into Hart's eyes dancing imps of deviltry. He gave a subdued whoop of delight, slapped his dusty white hat on his thigh, and vented his enthusiasm in murmurs of admiring profanity.

"It may not work out," suggested his friend. "But if your information is correct and they come up the arroyo—"

"It's c'rect enough. Lemme ask you a question. If you was attacktin' us, wouldn't you come that way?"

"Yes."

"Sure. It's the logical way. Dug figures to capture our camp without firin' a shot. And he'd 'a' done it, too, if we hadn't had warnin'."

Sanders frowned, his mind busy over the plan. "It ought to work, unless something upsets it," he said.

"Sure it'll work. You darned old fox, I never did see yore beat. Say, if we pull this off right, Dug's gonna pretty near be laughed outa the county."

"Keep it quiet. Only three of us need to know it. You stay at the well to keep Doble's gang back if we slip up. I'll give the signal, and the third man will fire the fuse."

"Buck Byington will be here pretty soon. I'll get him to set off the Fourth-of-July celebration. He's a regular clam—won't ever say a word about this."

"When you hear her go off, you'd better bring the men down on the jump."

Byington came up the road half an hour later at a cowpuncher's jog-trot. He slid from the saddle and came forward chewing tobacco. His impassive, leathery face expressed no emotion whatever. Carelessly and casually he shook hands. "How, Dave?"

"How, Buck?" answered Sanders.

The old puncher had always liked Dave Sanders. The boy had begun work on the range as a protege of his. He had taught him how to read sign and how to throw a rope. They had ridden out a blizzard together, and the old-timer had cared for him like a father. The boy had repaid him with a warm, ingenuous affection, an engaging sweetness of outward respect. A certain fineness in the eager face had lingered as an inheritance from his clean youth. No playful pup could have been more friendly. Now Buck shook hands with a grim-faced man, one a thousand years old in bitter experience. The eyes let no warmth escape. In the younger man's consciousness rose the memory of a hundred kindnesses flowing from Buck to him. Yet he could not let himself go. It was as though the prison chill had encased his heart in ice which held his impulses fast.

After dusk had fallen they made their preparations. The three men slipped away from the bunkhouse into the chaparral. Bob carried a bulging gunnysack, Dave a lantern, a pick, a drill, and a hammer. None of them talked till they had reached the entrance to the canon.

"We'd better get busy before it's too dark," Bob said. "We picked this spot, Buck. Suit you?"

Byington had been a hard-rock Colorado miner in his youth. He examined the dam and came back to the place chosen. After taking off his coat he picked up the hammer. "Le's start. The sooner the quicker."

Dave soaked the gunnysack in water and folded it over the top of the drill to deaden the sound. Buck wielded the hammer and Bob held the drill.

After it grew dark they worked by the light of the lantern. Dave and Bob relieved Buck at the hammer. They drilled two holes, put in the dynamite charges, tamped them down, and filled in again the holes. The nitroglycerine, too, was prepared and set for explosion.

Hart straightened stiffly and looked at his watch. "Time to move back to camp, Dave. Business may get brisk soon now. Maybe Dug may get in a hurry and start things earlier than he intended."

"Don't miss my signal, Buck. Two shots, one right after another," said Dave.

"I'll promise you to send back two shots a heap louder. You sure won't miss 'em," answered Buck with a grin.