"That'll take time."

"Yes. And time's one thing we haven't got any too much of. Whoever underwrites this for us will send an expert back with me and will wait for his report before making a loan. We'll have to talk it over with Crawford and find out how much treasury stock we'll have to sell locally to keep the business going till I make a raise."

"You and the old man decide that, Dave. I can't get away from here till we get Number Three roped and muzzled. I'll vote for whatever you two say."

An hour later Dave rode back to town.



CHAPTER XXVIII

DAVE MEETS A FINANCIER

On more careful consideration Crawford and Sanders decided against trying to float the Jackpot with local money except by the sale of enough stock to keep going until the company's affairs could be put on a substantial basis. To apply to the Malapi bank for a loan would be to expose their financial condition to Steelman, and it was certain that he would permit no accommodation except upon terms that would make it possible to wreck the company.

"I'm takin' the train for Denver to-morrow, Dave," the older man said. "You stay here for two-three days and sell enough stock to keep us off the rocks, then you hot-foot it for Denver too. By the time you get there I'll have it all fixed up with the Governor about a pardon."

Dave found no difficulty in disposing of a limited amount of stock in Malapi at a good price. This done, he took the stage for the junction and followed Crawford to Denver. An unobtrusive little man with large white teeth showing stood in line behind him at the ticket window. His destination also, it appeared, was the Colorado capital.

If Dave had been a believer in fairy tales he might have thought himself the hero of one. A few days earlier he had come to Malapi on this same train, in a day coach, poorly dressed, with no job and no prospects in life. He had been poor, discredited, a convict on parole. Now he wore good clothes, traveled in a Pullman, ate in the diner, was a man of consequence, and, at least on paper, was on the road to wealth. He would put up at the Albany instead of a cheap rooming-house, and he would meet on legitimate business some of the big financial men of the West. The thing was hardly thinkable, yet a turn of the wheel of fortune had done it for him in an hour.

The position in which Sanders found himself was possible only because Crawford was himself a financial babe in the woods. He had borrowed large sums of money often, but always from men who trusted him and held his word as better security than collateral. The cattleman was of the outdoors type to whom the letter of the law means little. A debt was a debt, and a piece of paper with his name on it did not make payment any more obligatory. If he had known more about capital and its methods of finding an outlet, he would never have sent so unsophisticated a man as Dave Sanders on such a mission.

For Dave, too, was a child in the business world. He knew nothing of the inside deals by which industrial enterprises are underwritten and corporations managed. It was, he supposed, sufficient for his purpose that the company for which he wanted backing was sure to pay large dividends when properly put on its feet.

But Dave had assets of value even for such a task. He had a single-track mind. He was determined even to obstinacy. He thought straight, and so directly that he could walk through subtleties without knowing they existed.

When he reached Denver he discovered that Crawford had followed the Governor to the western part of the State, where that official had gone to open a sectional fair. Sanders had no credentials except a letter of introduction to the manager of the stockyards.

"What can I do for you?" asked that gentleman. He was quite willing to exert himself moderately as a favor to Emerson Crawford, vice-president of the American Live Stock Association.

"I want to meet Horace Graham."

"I can give you a note of introduction to him. You'll probably have to get an appointment with him through his secretary. He's a tremendously busy man."

Dave's talk with the great man's secretary over the telephone was not satisfactory. Mr. Graham, he learned, had every moment full for the next two days, after which he would leave for a business trip to the East.

There were other wealthy men in Denver who might be induced to finance the Jackpot, but Dave intended to see Graham first. The big railroad builder was a fighter. He was hammering through, in spite of heavy opposition from trans-continental lines, a short cut across the Rocky Mountains from Denver. He was a pioneer, one who would take a chance on a good thing in the plunging, Western way. In his rugged, clean-cut character was much that appealed to the managers of the Jackpot.

Sanders called at the financier's office and sent in his card by the youthful Cerberus who kept watch at the gate. The card got no farther than the great man's private secretary.

After a wait of more than an hour Dave made overtures to the boy. A dollar passed from him to the youth and established a friendly relation.

"What's the best way to reach Mr. Graham, son? I've got important business that won't wait."

"Dunno. He's awful busy. You ain't got no appointment."

"Can you get a note to him? I've got a five-dollar bill for you if you can."

"I'll take a whirl at it. Jus' 'fore he goes to lunch."

Dave penciled a line on a card.

If you are not too busy to make $100,000 to-day you had better see me.

He signed his name.

Ten minutes later the office boy caught Graham as he rose to leave for lunch. The big man read the note.

"What kind of looking fellow is he?" he asked the boy.

"Kinda solemn-lookin' guy, sir." The boy remembered the dollar received on account and the five dollars on the horizon. "Big, straight-standin', honest fellow. From Arizona or Texas, mebbe. Looked good to me."

The financier frowned down at the note in doubt, twisting it in his fingers. A dozen times a week his privacy was assailed by some crazy inventor or crook promoter. He remembered that he had had a letter from some one about this man. Something of strength in the chirography of the note in his hand and something of simple directness in the wording decided him to give an interview.

"Show him in," he said abruptly, and while he waited in the office rated himself for his folly in wasting time.

Underneath bushy brows steel-gray eyes took Dave in shrewdly.

"Well, what is it?" snapped the millionaire.

"The new gusher in the Malapi pool," answered Sanders at once, and his gaze was as steady as that of the big state-builder.

"You represent the parties that own it?"

"Yes."

"And you want?"

"Financial backing to put it on its feet until we can market the product."

"Why don't you work through your local bank?"

"Another oil man, an enemy of our company, controls the Malapi bank."

Graham fired question after question at him, crisply, abruptly, and Sanders gave him back straight, short answers.

"Sit down," ordered the railroad builder, resuming his own seat. "Tell me the whole story of the company."

Dave told it, and in the telling he found it necessary to sketch the Crawford-Steelman feud. He brought himself into the narrative as little as possible, but the grizzled millionaire drew enough from him to set Graham's eye to sparkling.

"Come back to-morrow at noon," decided the great man. "I'll let you know my decision then."

The young man knew he was dismissed, but he left the office elated. Graham had been favorably impressed. He liked the proposition, believed in its legitimacy and its possibilities. Dave felt sure he would send an expert to Malapi with him to report on it as an investment. If so, he would almost certainly agree to put money in it.

A man with prominent white front teeth had followed Dave to the office of Horace Graham, had seen him enter, and later had seen him come out with a look on his face that told of victory. The man tried to get admittance to the financier and failed. He went back to his hotel and wrote a short letter which he signed with a fictitious name. This he sent by special delivery to Graham. The letter was brief and to the point. It said:

Don't do business with David Sanders without investigating his record. He is a horsethief and a convicted murderer. Some months ago he was paroled from the penitentiary at Canon City and since then has been in several shooting scrapes. He was accused of robbing a stage and murdering the driver less than a week ago.

Graham read the letter and called in his private secretary. "McMurray, get Canon City on the 'phone and find out if a man called David Sanders was released from the penitentiary there lately. If so, what was he in for? Describe the man to the warden: under twenty-five, tall, straight as an Indian, strongly built, looks at you level and steady, brown hair, steel-blue eyes. Do it now."

Before he left the office that afternoon Graham had before him a typewritten memorandum from his secretary covering the case of David Sanders.



CHAPTER XXIX

THREE IN CONSULTATION

The grizzled railroad builder fixed Sanders with an eye that had read into the soul of many a shirker and many a dishonest schemer.

"How long have you been with the Jackpot Company?"

"Not long. Only a few days."

"How much stock do you own?"

"Ten thousand shares."

"How did you get it?"

"It was voted me by the directors for saving Jackpot Number Three from an attack of Steelman's men."

Graham's gaze bored into the eyes of his caller. He waited just a moment to give his question full emphasis. "Mr. Sanders, what were you doing six months ago?"

"I was serving time in the penitentiary," came the immediate quiet retort.

"What for?"

"For manslaughter."

"You didn't tell me this yesterday."

"No. It has no bearing on the value of the proposition I submitted to you, and I thought it might prejudice you against it."

"Have you been in any trouble since you left prison?"

Dave hesitated. The blazer of railroad trails rapped out a sharp, explanatory question. "Any shooting scrapes?"

"A man shot at me in Malapi. I was unarmed."

"That all?"

"Another man fired at me out at the Jackpot. I was unarmed then."

"Were you accused of holding up a stage, robbing it, and killing the driver?"

"No. I was twenty miles away at the time of the hold-up and had evidence to prove it."

"Then you were mentioned in connection with the robbery?"

"If so, only by my enemies. One of the robbers was captured and made a full confession. He showed where the stolen gold was cached and it was recovered."

The great man looked with chilly eyes at the young fellow standing in front of him. He had a sense of having been tricked and imposed upon.

"I have decided not to accept your proposition to cooperate with you in financing the Jackpot Company, Mr. Sanders." Horace Graham pressed an electric button and a clerk appeared. "Show this gentleman out, Hervey."

But Sanders stood his ground. Nobody could have guessed from his stolid imperturbability how much he was depressed at this unexpected failure.

"Do I understand that you are declining this loan because I am connected with it, Mr. Graham?"

"I do not give a reason, sir. The loan does not appeal to me," the railroad builder said with chill finality.

"It appealed to you yesterday," persisted Dave.

"But not to-day. Hervey, I will see Mr. Gates at once. Tell McMurray so."

Reluctantly Dave followed the clerk out of the room. He had been checkmated, but he did not know how. In some way Steelman had got to the financier with this story that had damned the project. The new treasurer of the Jackpot Company was much distressed. If his connection with the company was going to have this effect, he must resign at once.

He walked back to the hotel, and in the corridor of the Albany met a big bluff cattleman the memory of whose kindness leaped across the years to warm his heart.

"You don't remember me, Mr. West?"

The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle looked at the young man and gave a little whoop. "Damn my skin, if it ain't the boy who bluffed a whole railroad system into lettin' him reload stock for me!" He hooked an arm under Dave's and led him straight to the bar. "Where you been? What you doin'? Why n't you come to me soon as you ... got out of a job? What'll you have, boy?"

Dave named ginger ale. They lifted glasses.

"How?"

"How?"

"Now you tell me all about it," said West presently, leading the way to a lounge seat in the mezzanine gallery.

Sanders answered at first in monosyllables, but presently he found himself telling the story of his failure to enlist Horace Graham in the Jackpot property as a backer.

The cattleman began to rumple his hair, just as he had done years ago in moments of excitement.

"Wish I'd known, boy. I've been acquainted with Horace Graham ever since he ran a hardware store on Larimer Street, and that's 'most thirty years ago. I'd 'a' gone with you to see him. Maybe I can see him now."

"You can't change the facts, Mr. West. When he knew I was a convict he threw the whole thing overboard."

The voice of a page in the lobby rose in sing-song. "Mister Sa-a-anders. Mis-ter Sa-a-a-anders."

Dave stepped to the railing and called down. "I'm Mr. Sanders. Who wants me?"

A man near the desk waved a paper and shouted: "Hello, Dave! News for you, son. I'll come up." The speaker was Crawford.

He shook hands with Dave and with West while he ejaculated his news in jets. "I got it, son. Got it right here. Came back with the Governor this mo'nin'. Called together Pardon Board. Here 't is. Clean bill of health, son. Resolutions of regret for miscarriage of justice. Big story front page's afternoon's papers."

Dave smiled sardonically. "You're just a few hours late, Mr. Crawford. Graham turned us down cold this morning because I'm a penitentiary bird."

"He did?" Crawford began to boil inside. "Well, he can go right plumb to Yuma. Anybody so small as that—"

"Hold yore hawsses, Em," said West, smiling.

"Graham didn't know the facts. If you was a capitalist an' thinkin' of loanin' big money to a man you found out had been in prison for manslaughter and that he had since been accused of robbin' a stage an' killing the driver—"

"He was in a hurry," explained Dave. "Going East to-morrow. Some one must have got at him after I saw him. He'd made up his mind when I went back to-day."

"Well, Horace Graham ain't one of those who won't change his views for heaven, hell, and high water. All we've got to do is to get to him and make him see the light," said West.

"When are we going to do all that?" asked Sanders. "He's busy every minute of the time till he starts. He won't give us an appointment."

"He'll see me. We're old friends," predicted West confidently.

Crestfallen, he met the two officers of the Jackpot Company three hours later. "Couldn't get to him. Sent word out he was sorry, an' how was Mrs. West an' the children, but he was in conference an' couldn't break away."

Dave nodded. He had expected this and prepared for it. "I've found out he's going on the eight o'clock flyer. You going to be busy to-morrow, Mr. West?"

"No. I got business at the stockyards, but I can put it off."

"Then I'll get tickets for Omaha on the flyer. Graham will take his private car. We'll break in and put this up to him. He was friendly to our proposition before he got the wrong slant on it. If he's open-minded, as Mr. West says he is—"

Crawford slapped an open hand on his thigh. "Say, you get the best ideas, son. We'll do just that."

"I'll check up and make sure Graham's going on the flyer," said the young man. "If we fall down we'll lose only a day. Come back when we meet the night train. I reckon we won't have to get tickets clear through to Omaha."

"Fine and dandy," agreed West. "We'll sure see Graham if we have to bust the door of his car."



CHAPTER XXX

ON THE FLYER

West, his friends not in evidence, artfully waylaid Graham on his way to the private car.

"Hello, Henry B. Sorry I couldn't see you yesterday," the railroad builder told West as they shook hands. "You taking this tram?"

"Yes, sir. Got business takes me East."

"Drop in to see me some time this morning. Say about noon. You'll have lunch with me."

"Suits me. About noon, then," agreed West.

The conspirators modified their plans to meet a new strategic situation. West was still of opinion that he had better use his card of entry to get his friends into the railroad builder's car, but he yielded to Dave's view that it would be wiser for the cattleman to pave the way at luncheon.

Graham's secretary ate lunch with the two old-timers and the conversation threatened to get away from West and hover about financial conditions in New York. The cattleman brought it by awkward main force to the subject he had in mind.

"Say, Horace, I wanta talk with you about a proposition that's on my chest," he broke out.

Graham helped himself to a lamb chop. "Sail in, Henry B. You've got me at your mercy."

At the first mention of the Jackpot gusher the financier raised a prohibitive hand. "I've disposed of that matter. No use reopening it."

But West stuck to his guns. "I ain't aimin' to try to change yore mind on a matter of business, Horace. If you'll tell me that you turned down the proposition because it didn't look to you like there was money in it, I'll curl right up and not say another word."

"It doesn't matter why I turned it down. I had my reasons."

"It matters if you're doin' an injustice to one of the finest young fellows I know," insisted the New Mexican stanchly.

"Meaning the convict?"

"Call him that if you've a mind to. The Governor pardoned him yesterday because another man confessed he did the killin' for which Dave was convicted. The boy was railroaded through on false evidence."

The railroad builder was a fair-minded man. He did not want to be unjust to any one. At the same time he was not one to jump easily from one view to another.

"I noticed something in the papers about a pardon, but I didn't know it was our young oil promoter. There are other rumors about him too. A stage robbery, for instance, and a murder with it."

"He and Em Crawford ran down the robbers and got the money back. One of the robbers confessed. Dave hadn't a thing to do with the hold-up. There's a bad gang down in that country. Crawford and Sanders have been fightin' 'em, so naturally they tell lies about 'em."

"Did you say this Sanders ran down one of the robbers?"

"Yes."

"He didn't tell me that," said Graham thoughtfully. "I liked the young fellow when I first saw him. He looks quiet and strong; a self-reliant fellow would be my guess."

"You bet he is." West laughed reminiscently. "Lemme tell you how I first met him." He told the story of how Dave had handled the stock shipment for him years before.

Horace Graham nodded shrewdly. "Exactly the way I had him sized up till I began investigating him. Well, let's hear the rest. What more do you know about him?"

The Albuquerque man told the other of Dave's conviction, of how he had educated himself in the penitentiary, of his return home and subsequent adventures there.

"There's a man back there in the Pullman knows him like he was his own son, a straight man, none better in this Western country," West concluded.

"Who is he?"

"Emerson Crawford of the D Bar Lazy R ranch."

"I've heard of him. He's in this Jackpot company too, isn't he?"

"He's president of it. If he says the company's right, then it's right."

"Bring him in to me."

West reported to his friends, a large smile on his wrinkled face. "I got him goin' south, boys. Come along, Em, it's up to you now."

The big financier took one comprehensive look at Emerson Crawford and did not need any letter of recommendation. A vigorous honesty spoke in the strong hand-grip, the genial smile, the level, steady eyes.

"Tell me about this young desperado you gentlemen are trying to saw off on me," Graham directed, meeting the smile with another and offering cigars to his guests.

Crawford told him. He began with the story of the time Sanders and Hart had saved him from the house of his enemy into which he had been betrayed. He related how the boy had pursued the men who stole his pinto and the reasoning which had led him to take it without process of law. He told the true story of the killing, of the young fellow's conviction, of his attempt to hold a job in Denver without concealing his past, and of his busy week since returning to Malapi.

"All I've got to say is that I hope my boy will grow up to be as good a man as Dave Sanders," the cattleman finished, and he turned over to Graham a copy of the findings of the Pardon Board, of the pardon, and of the newspapers containing an account of the affair with a review of the causes that had led to the miscarriage of justice.

"Now about your Jackpot Company. What do you figure as the daily output of the gusher?" asked Graham.

"Don't know. It's a whale of a well. Seems to have tapped a great lake of oil half a mile underground. My driller Burns figures it at from twenty to thirty thousand barrels a day. I cayn't even guess, because I know so blamed little about oil."

Graham looked out of the window at the rushing landscape and tapped on the table with his finger-tips absentmindedly. Presently he announced a decision crisply.

"If you'll leave your papers here I'll look them over and let you know what I'll do. When I'm ready I'll send McMurray forward to you."

An hour later the secretary announced to the three men in the Pullman the decision of his chief.

"Mr. Graham has instructed me to tell you gentlemen he'll look into your proposition. I am wiring an oil expert in Denver to return with you to Malapi. If his report is favorable, Mr. Graham will cooperate with you in developing the field."



CHAPTER XXXI

TWO ON THE HILLTOPS

It was the morning after his return. Emerson Crawford helped himself to another fried egg from the platter and shook his knife at the bright-eyed girl opposite.

"I tell you, honey, the boy's a wonder," he insisted. "Knows what he wants and goes right after it. Don't waste any words. Don't beat around the bush. Don't let any one bluff him out. Graham says if I don't want him he'll give him a responsible job pronto."

The girl's trim head tilted at her father in a smile of sweet derision. She was pleased, but she did not intend to say so.

"I believe you're in love with Dave Sanders, Dad. It's about time for me to be jealous."

Crawford defended himself. "He's had a hard row to hoe, and he's comin' out fine. I aim to give him every chance in the world to make good. It's up to us to stand by him."

"If he'll let us." Joyce jumped up and ran round the table to him. They were alone, Keith having departed with a top to join his playmates. She sat on the arm of his chair, a straight, slim creature very much alive, and pressed her face of flushed loveliness against his head. "It won't be your fault, old duck, if things don't go well with him. You're good—the best ever—a jim-dandy friend. But he's so—so—Oh, I don't know—stiff as a poker. Acts as if he doesn't want to be friends, as if we're all ready to turn against him. He makes me good and tired, Dad. Why can't he be—human?"

"Now, Joy, you got to remember—"

"—that he was in prison and had an awful time of it. Oh, yes, I remember all that. He won't let us forget it. It's just like he held us off all the time and insisted on us not forgetting it. I'd just like to shake the foolishness out of him." A rueful little laugh welled from her throat at the thought.

"He cayn't be gay as Bob Hart all at onct. Give him time."

"You're so partial to him you don't see when he's doing wrong. But I see it. Yesterday he hardly spoke when I met him. Ridiculous. It's all right for him to hold back and be kinda reserved with outsiders. But with his friends—you and Bob and old Buck Byington and me—he ought not to shut himself up in an ice cave. And I'm going to tell him so."

The cattleman's arm slid round her warm young body and drew her close. She was to him the dearest thing in the world, a never-failing, exquisite wonder and mystery. Sometimes even now he was amazed that this rare spirit had found the breath of life through him.

"You wanta remember you're a li'l lady," he reproved. "You wouldn't want to do anything you'd be sorry for, honeybug."

"I'm not so sure about that," she flushed, amusement rippling her face. "Someone's got to blow up that young man like a Dutch uncle, and I think I'm elected. I'll try not to think about being a lady; then I can do my full duty, Dad. It'll be fun to see how he takes it."

"Now—now," he remonstrated.

"It's all right to be proud," she went on. "I wouldn't want to see him hold his head any lower. But there's no sense in being so offish that even his friends have to give him up. And that's what it'll come to if he acts the way he does. Folks will stand just so much. Then they give up trying."

"I reckon you're right about that, Joy."

"Of course I'm right. You have to meet your friends halfway."

"Well, if you talk to him don't hurt his feelin's."

There was a glint of mirth in her eyes, almost of friendly malice. "I'm going to worry him about my feelings, Dad. He'll not have time to think of his own."

Joyce found her chance next day. She met David Sanders in front of a drug-store. He would have passed with a bow if she had let him.

"What does the oil expert Mr. Graham sent think about our property?" she asked presently, greetings having been exchanged.

"He hasn't given out any official opinion yet, but he's impressed. The report will be favorable, I think."

"Isn't that good?"

"Couldn't be better," he admitted.

It was a warm day. Joyce glanced in at the soda fountain and said demurely, "My, but it's hot! Won't you come in and have an ice-cream soda on me?"

Dave flushed. "If you'll go as my guest," he said stiffly.

"How good of you to invite me!" she accepted, laughing, but with a tint of warmer color in her cheeks.

Rhythmically she moved beside him to a little table in the corner of the drug-store. "I own stock in the Jackpot. You've got to give an accounting to me. Have you found a market yet?"

"The whole Southwest will be our market as soon as we can reach it."

"And when will that be?" she asked.

"I'm having some hauled to relieve the glut. The railroad will be operating inside of six weeks. We'll keep Number Three capped till then and go on drilling in other locations. Burns is spudding in a new well to-day."

The clerk took their order and departed. They were quite alone, not within hearing of anybody. Joyce took her fear by the throat and plunged in.

"You mad at me, Mr. Sanders?" she asked jauntily.

"You know I'm not."

"How do I know it?" she asked innocently. "You say as little to me as you can, and get away from me as quick as you can. Yesterday, for instance, you'd hardly say 'Good-morning.'"

"I didn't mean to be rude. I was busy." Dave felt acutely uncomfortable. "I'm sorry if I didn't seem sociable."

"So was Mr. Hart busy, but he had time to stop and say a pleasant word." The brown eyes challenged their vis-a-vis steadily.

The young man found nothing to say. He could not explain that he had not lingered because he was giving Bob a chance to see her alone, nor could he tell her that he felt it better for his peace of mind to keep away from her as much as possible.

"I'm not in the habit of inviting young men to invite me to take a soda, Mr. Sanders," she went on. "This is my first offense. I never did it before, and I never expect to again.... I do hope the new well will come in a good one." The last sentence was for the benefit of the clerk returning with the ice-cream.

"Looks good," said Dave, playing up. "Smut's showing, and you know that's a first-class sign."

"Bob said it was expected in to-day or to-morrow.... I asked you because I've something to say to you, something I think one of your friends ought to say, and—and I'm going to do it," she concluded in a voice modulated just to reach him.

The clerk had left the glasses and the check. He was back at the fountain polishing the counter.

Sanders waited in silence. He had learned to let the burden of conversation rest on his opponent, and he knew that Joyce just now was in that class.

She hesitated, uncertain of her opening. Then, "You're disappointing your friends, Mr. Sanders," she said lightly.

He did not know what an effort it took to keep her voice from quavering, her hand from trembling as it rested on the onyx top of the table.

"I'm sorry," he said a second time.

"Perhaps it's our fault. Perhaps we haven't been ... friendly enough." The lifted eyes went straight into his.

He found an answer unexpectedly difficult. "No man ever had more generous friends," he said at last brusquely, his face set hard.

The girl guessed at the tense feeling back of his words.

"Let's walk," she replied, and he noticed that the eyes and mouth had softened to a tender smile. "I can't talk here, Dave."

They made a pretense of finishing their sodas, then walked out of the town into the golden autumn sunlight of the foothills. Neither of them spoke. She carried herself buoyantly, chin up, her face a flushed cameo of loveliness. As she took the uphill trail a small breath of wind wrapped the white skirt about her slender limbs. He found in her a new note, one of unaccustomed shyness.

The silence grew at last too significant. She was driven to break it.

"I suppose I'm foolish," she began haltingly. "But I had been expecting—all of us had—that when you came home from—from Denver—the first time, I mean—you would be the old Dave Sanders we all knew and liked. We wanted our friendship to—to help make up to you for what you must have suffered. We didn't think you'd hold us off like this."

His eyes narrowed. He looked away at the cedars on the hills painted in lustrous blues and greens and purples, and at the slopes below burnt to exquisite color lights by the fires of fall. But what he saw was a gray prison wall with armed men in the towers.

"If I could tell you!" He said it in a whisper, to himself, but she just caught the words.

"Won't you try?" she said, ever so gently.

He could not sully her innocence by telling of the furtive whisperings that had fouled the prison life, made of it an experience degrading and corrosive. He told her, instead, of the externals of that existence, of how he had risen, dressed, eaten, worked, exercised, and slept under orders. He described to her the cells, four by seven by seven, barred, built in tiers, faced by narrow iron balconies, each containing a stool, a chair, a shelf, a bunk. In his effort to show her the chasm that separated him from her he did not spare himself at all. Dryly and in clean-cut strokes he showed her the sordidness of which he had been the victim and left her to judge for herself of its evil effect on his character.

When he had finished he knew that he had failed. She wept for pity and murmured, "You poor boy.... You poor boy!"

He tried again, and this time he drew the moral. "Don't you see, I'm a marked man—marked for life." He hesitated, then pushed on. "You're fine and clean and generous—what a good father and mother, and all this have made you." He swept his hand round in a wide gesture to include the sun and the hills and all the brave life of the open. "If I come too near you, don't you see I taint you? I'm a man who was shut up because—"

"Fiddlesticks! You're a man who has been done a wrong. You mustn't grow morbid over it. After all, you've been found innocent."

"That isn't what counts. I've been in the penitentiary. Nothing can wipe that out. The stain of it's on me and can't be washed away."

She turned on him with a little burst of feminine ferocity. "How dare you talk that way, Dave Sanders! I want to be proud of you. We all do. But how can we be if you give up like a quitter? Don't we all have to keep beginning our lives over and over again? Aren't we all forever getting into trouble and getting out of it? A man is as good as he makes himself. It doesn't matter what outside thing has happened to him. Do you dare tell me that my dad wouldn't be worth loving if he'd been in prison forty times?"

The color crept into his face. "I'm not quitting. I'm going through. The point is whether I'm to ask my friends to carry my load for me."

"What are your friends for?" she demanded, and her eyes were like stars in a field of snow. "Don't you see it's an insult to assume they don't want to stand with you in your trouble? You've been warped. You're eaten up with vain pride." Joyce bit her lip to choke back a swelling in her throat. "The Dave we used to know wasn't like that. He was friendly and sweet. When folks were kind to him he was kind to them. He wasn't like—like an old poker." She fell back helplessly on the simile she had used with her father.

"I don't blame you for feeling that way," he said gently. "When I first came out I did think I'd play a lone hand. I was hard and bitter and defiant. But when I met you-all again—and found you were just like home folks—all of you so kind and good, far beyond any claims I had on you—why, Miss Joyce, my heart went out to my old friends with a rush. It sure did. Maybe I had to be stiff to keep from being mushy."

"Oh, if that's it!" Her eager face, flushed and tender, nodded approval.

"But you've got to look at this my way too," he urged. "I can't repay your father's kindness—yes, and yours too—by letting folks couple your name, even in friendship, with a man who—"

She turned on him, glowing with color. "Now that's absurd, Dave Sanders. I'm not a—a nice little china doll. I'm a flesh-and-blood girl. And I'm not a statue on a pedestal. I've got to live just like other people. The trouble with you is that you want to be generous, but you don't want to give other folks a chance to be. Let's stop this foolishness and be sure-enough friends—Dave."

He took her outstretched hand in his brown palm, smiling down at her. "All right. I know when I'm beaten."

She beamed. "That's the first honest-to-goodness smile I've seen on your face since you came back."

"I've got millions of 'em in my system," he promised. "I've been hoarding them up for years."

"Don't hoard them any more. Spend them," she urged.

"I'll take that prescription, Doctor Joyce." And he spent one as evidence of good faith.

The soft and shining oval of her face rippled with gladness as a mountain lake sparkles with sunshine in a light summer breeze. "I've found again that Dave boy I lost," she told him.

"You won't lose him again," he answered, pushing into the hinterland of his mind the reflection that a man cannot change the color of his thinking in an hour.

"We thought he'd gone away for good. I'm so glad he hasn't."

"No. He's been here all the time, but he's been obeying the orders of a man who told him he had no business to be alive."

He looked at her with deep, inscrutable eyes. As a boy he had been shy but impulsive. The fires of discipline had given him remarkable self-restraint. She could not tell he was finding in her face the quality to inspire in a painter a great picture, the expression of that brave young faith which made her a touchstone to find the gold in his soul.

Yet in his gravity was something that disturbed her blood. Was she fanning to flame banked fires better dormant?

She felt a compunction for what she had done. Maybe she had been unwomanly. It is a penalty impulsive people have to pay that later they must consider whether they have been bold and presumptuous. Her spirits began to droop when she should logically have been celebrating her success.

But Dave walked on mountain-tops tipped with mellow gold. He threw off the weight that had oppressed his spirits for years and was for the hour a boy again. She had exorcised the gloom in which he walked. He looked down on a magnificent flaming desert, and it was good. To-day was his. To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows of the world were in his hand. He refused to analyze the causes of his joy. It was enough that beside him moved with charming diffidence the woman of his dreams, that with her soft hands she had torn down the barrier between them.

"And now I don't know whether I've done right," she said ruefully. "Dad warned me I'd better be careful. But of course I always know best. I 'rush in.'"

"You've done me a million dollars' worth of good. I needed some good friend to tell me just what you have. Please don't regret it."

"Well, I won't." She added, in a hesitant murmur, "You won't—misunderstand?"

His look turned aside the long-lashed eyes and brought a faint flush of pink to her cheeks.

"No, I'll not do that," he said.



CHAPTER XXXII

DAVE BECOMES AN OFFICE MAN

From Graham came a wire a week after the return of the oil expert to Denver. It read:

Report satisfactory. Can you come at once and arrange with me plan of organization?

Sanders was on the next train. He was still much needed at Malapi to look after getting supplies and machinery and to arrange for a wagon train of oil teams, but he dropped or delegated this work for the more important call that had just come.

His contact with Graham uncovered a new side of the state builder, one that was to impress him in all the big business men he met. They might be pleasant socially and bear him a friendly good-will, but when they met to arrange details of a financial plan they always wanted their pound of flesh. Graham drove a hard bargain with him. He tied the company fast by legal control of its affairs until his debt was satisfied. He exacted a bonus in the form of stock that fairly took the breath of the young man with whom he was negotiating. Dave fought him round by round and found the great man smooth and impervious as polished agate.

Yet Dave liked him. When they met at lunch, as they did more than once, the grizzled Westerner who had driven a line of steel across almost impassable mountain passes was simple and frank in talk. He had taken a fancy to this young fellow, and he let him know it. Perhaps he found something of his own engaging, dogged youth in the strong-jawed range-rider.

"Does a financier always hogtie a proposition before he backs it?" Dave asked him once with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

"Always."

"No matter how much he trusts the people he's doing business with?"

"He binds them hard and fast just the same. It's the only way to do. Give away as much money as you want to, but when you loan money look after your security like a hawk."

"Even when you're dealing with friends?"

"Especially when you're dealing with friends," corrected the older man. "Otherwise you're likely not to have your friends long."

"Don't believe I want to be a financier," decided Sanders.

"It takes the hot blood out of you," admitted Graham. "I'm not sure, if I had my life to live over again, knowing what I know now, that I wouldn't choose the outdoors like West and Crawford."

Sanders was very sure which choice he would like to make. He was at present embarked on the business of making money through oil, but some day he meant to go back to the serenity of a ranch. There were times when he left the conferences with Graham or his lieutenants sick at heart because of the uphill battle he must fight to protect his associates.

From Denver he went East to negotiate for some oil tanks and material with which to construct reservoirs. His trip was a flying one. He entrained for Malapi once more to look after the loose ends that had been accumulating locally in his absence. A road had to be built across the desert. Contracts must be let for hauling away the crude oil. A hundred details waited his attention.

He worked day and night. Often he slept only a few hours. He grew lean in body and curt of speech. Lines came into his face that had not been there before. But at his work apparently he was tireless as steel springs.

Meanwhile Brad Steelman moled to undermine the company. Dave's men finished building a bridge across a gulch late one day. It was blown up into kindling wood by dynamite that night. Wagons broke down unexpectedly. Shipments of supplies failed to arrive. Engines were mysteriously smashed.

The sabotage was skillful. Steelman's agents left no evidence that could be used against them. More than one of them, Hart and Sanders agreed, were spies who had found employment with the Jackpot. One or two men were discharged on suspicion, even though complete evidence against them was lacking.

The responsibility that had been thrust on Dave brought out in him unsuspected business capacity. During his prison days there had developed in him a quality of leadership. He had been more than once in charge of a road-building gang of convicts and had found that men naturally turned to him for guidance. But not until Crawford shifted to his shoulders the burdens of the Jackpot did he know that he had it in him to grapple with organization on a fairly large scale.

He worked without nerves, day in, day out, concentrating in a way that brought results. He never let himself get impatient with details. Thoroughness had long since become the habit of his life. To this he added a sane common sense.

Jackpot Number Four came in a good well, though not a phenomenal one like its predecessor. Number Five was already halfway down to the sands. Meanwhile the railroad crept nearer. Malapi was already talking of its big celebration when the first engine should come to town. Its council had voted to change the name of the place to Bonanza.

The tide was turning against Steelman. He was still a very rich man, but he seemed no longer to be a lucky one. He brought in a dry well. On another location the cable had pulled out of the socket and a forty-foot auger stem and bit lay at the bottom of a hole fifteen hundred feet deep. His best producer was beginning to cough a weak and intermittent flow even under steady pumping. And, to add to his troubles, a quiet little man had dropped into town to investigate one of his companies. He was a Government agent, and the rumor was that he was gathering evidence.

Sanders met Thomas on the street. He had not seen him since the prospector had made his wild ride for safety with the two outlaws hard on his heels.

"Glad you made it, Mr. Thomas," said Dave. "Good bit of strategy. When they reached the notch, Shorty and Doble never once looked to see if we were around. They lit out after you on the jump. Did they come close to getting you?"

"It looked like bullets would be flyin'. I won't say who would 'a' got who if they had," he said modestly. "But I wasn't lookin' for no trouble. I don't aim to be one of these here fire-eaters, but I'll fight like a wildcat when I got to." The prospector looked defiantly at Sanders, bristling like a bantam which has been challenged.

"We certainly owe you something for the way you drew the outlaws off our trail," Dave said gravely.

"Say, have you heard how the Government is gettin' after Steelman? He's a wily bird, old Brad is, but he slipped up when he sent out his advertisin' for the Great Mogul. A photographer faked a gusher for him and they sent it out on the circulars."

Sanders nodded, without comment.

"Steelman can make 'em flow, on paper anyhow," Thomas chortled. "But he's sure in a kettle of hot water this time."

"Mr. Steelman is enterprising," Dave admitted dryly.

"Say, Mr. Sanders, have you heard what's become of Shorty and Doble?" the prospector asked, lapsing to ill-concealed anxiety. "I see the sheriff has got a handbill out offerin' a reward for their arrest and conviction. You don't reckon those fellows would bear me any grudge, do you?"

"No. But I wouldn't travel in the hills alone if I were you. If you happened to meet them they might make things unpleasant."

"They're both killers. I'm a peaceable citizen, as the fellow says. O' course if they crowd me to the wall—"

"They won't," Dave assured him.

He knew that the outlaws, if the chance ever came for them, would strike at higher game than Thomas. They would try to get either Crawford or Sanders himself. The treasurer of the Jackpot did not fool himself with any false promises of safety. The two men in the hills were desperate characters, game as any in the country, gun-fighters, and they owed both him and Crawford a debt they would spare no pains to settle in full. Some day there would come an hour of accounting.



CHAPTER XXXIII

ON THE DODGE

Up in the hills back of Bear Canon two men were camping. They breakfasted on slow elk, coffee, and flour-and-water biscuits. When they had finished, they washed their tin dishes with sand in the running brook.

"Might's well be hittin' the trail," one growled.

The other nodded without speaking, rose lazily, and began to pack the camp outfit. Presently, when he had arranged the load to his satisfaction, he threw the diamond hitch and stood back to take a chew of tobacco while he surveyed his work. He was a squat, heavy-set man with a Chihuahua hat. Also he was a two-gun man. After a moment he circled an arrowweed thicket and moved into the chaparral where his horse was hobbled.

The man who had spoken rose with one lithe twist of his big body. His eyes, hard and narrow, watched the shorter man disappear in the brush. Then he turned swiftly and strode toward the shoulder of the ridge.

In the heavy undergrowth of dry weeds and grass he stopped and tested the wind with a bandanna handkerchief. The breeze was steady and fairly strong. It blew down the canon toward the foothills beyond.

The man stripped from a scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp foliage. Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs, dry as powder from a four-months' drought, crackled like miniature fireworks. The grass caught, and a small line of fire ran quickly out.

The man rose. On his brown face was an evil smile, in his hard eyes something malevolent and sinister. The wind would do the rest.

He walked back toward the camp. At the shoulder crest he turned to look back. From out of the chaparral a thin column of pale gray smoke was rising.

His companion stamped out the remains of the breakfast fire and threw dirt on the ashes to make sure no live ember could escape in the wind. Then he swung to the saddle.

"Ready, Dug?" he asked.

The big man growled an assent and followed him over the summit into the valley beyond.

"Country needs a rain bad," the man in the Chihuahua hat commented. "Don't know as I recollect a dryer season."

The big hawk-nosed man by his side cackled in his throat with short, splenetic mirth. "It'll be some dryer before the rains," he prophesied.

They climbed out of the valley to the rim. The short man was bringing up the rear along the narrow trail-ribbon. He turned in the saddle to look back, a hand on his horse's rump. Perhaps he did this because of the power of suggestion. Several times Doble had already swung his head to scan with a searching gaze the other side of the valley.

Mackerel clouds were floating near the horizon in a sky of blue. Was that or was it not smoke just over the brow of the hill?

"Cayn't be our camp-fire," the squat man said aloud. "I smothered that proper."

"Them's clouds," pronounced Doble quickly. "Clouds an' some mist risin' from the gulch."

"I reckon," agreed the other, with no sure conviction. Doble must be right, of course. No fire had been in evidence when they left the camping-ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had cooked the biscuits. Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like smoke. He hung in the wind, half of a mind to go back and make sure. Fire in the chaparral now might do untold damage.

Shorty looked at Doble. "If tha's fire, Dug—"

"It ain't. No chance," snapped the ex-foreman. "We'll travel if you don't feel called on to go back an' stomp out the mist, Shorty," he added with sarcasm.

The cowpuncher took the trail again. Like many men, he was not proof against a sneer. Dug was probably right, Shorty decided, and he did not want to make a fool of himself. Doble would ride him with heavy jeers all day.

An hour later they rested their horses on the divide. To the west lay Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long, bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It was the bed of the new road already spiked with shining rails.

"I'm goin' to town," announced Doble.

Shorty looked at him in surprise. "Wanta see yore picture, I reckon. It's on a heap of telegraph poles, I been told," he said, grinning.

"To-day," went on the ex-foreman stubbornly.

"Big, raw-boned guy, hook nose, leather face, never took no prize as a lady's man, a wildcat in a rough-house, an' sudden death on the draw," extemporized the rustler, presumably from his conception of the reward poster.

"I'll lie in the chaparral till night an' ride in after dark."

With the impulsiveness of his kind, Shorty fell in with the idea. He was hungry for the fleshpots of Malapi. If they dropped in late at night, stayed a few hours, and kept under cover, they could probably slip out of town undetected. The recklessness of his nature found an appeal in the danger.

"Damfidon't trail along, Dug."

"Yore say-so about that."

"Like to see my own picture on the poles. Sawed-off li'l runt. Straight black hair. Some bowlegged. Wears two guns real low. Doncha monkey with him onless you're hell-a-mile with a six-shooter. One thousand dollars reward for arrest and conviction. Same for the big guy."

"Fellow that gets one o' them rewards will earn it," said Doble grimly.

"Goes double," agreed Shorty. "He'll earn it even if he don't live to spend it. Which he's liable not to."

They headed their horses to the west. As they drew down from the mountains they left the trail and took to the brush. They wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus, bearing gradually to the north and into the foothills above the town. When they reached Frio Canon they swung off into a timbered pocket debouching from it. Here they unsaddled and lay down to wait for night.



CHAPTER XXXIV

A PLEASANT EVENING

Brad Steelman sat hunched before a fire of pinon knots, head drooped low between his high, narrow shoulders. The restless black eyes in the dark hatchet face were sunk deeper now than in the old days. In them was beginning to come the hunted look of the gray wolf he resembled. His nerves were not what they had been, and even in his youth they were not of the best. He had a way of looking back furtively over his shoulder, as though some sinister shadow were creeping toward him out of the darkness.

Three taps on the window brought his head up with a jerk. His lax fingers crept to the butt of a Colt's revolver. He waited, listening.

The taps were repeated.

Steelman sidled to the door and opened it cautiously. A man pushed in and closed the door. He looked at the sheepman and he laughed shortly in an ugly, jeering way.

"Scared, Brad?"

The host moistened his lips. "What of, Dug?"

"Don't ask me," said the big man scornfully. "You always had about as much sand in yore craw as a rabbit."

"Did you come here to make trouble, Dug?"

"No, I came to collect a bill."

"So? Didn't know I owed you any money right now. How much is it?"

Steelman, as the leader of his gang, was used to levies upon his purse when his followers had gone broke. He judged that he would have to let Doble have about twenty-five dollars now.

"A thousand dollars."

Brad shot a quick, sidelong look at him. "Wha's wrong now, Dug?"

The ex-foreman of the D Bar Lazy R took his time to answer. He enjoyed the suspense under which his ally was held. "Why, I reckon nothin' a-tall. Only that this mo'nin' I put a match to about a coupla hundred thousand dollars belongin' to Crawford, Sanders, and Hart."

Eagerly Steelman clutched his arm. "You did it, then?"

"Didn't I say I'd do it?" snapped Doble irritably. "D'ya ever know me rue back on a bargain?"

"Never."

"Wha's more, you never will. I fired the chaparral above Bear Canon. The wind was right. Inside of twenty-four hours the Jackpot locations will go up in smoke. Derricks, pumps, shacks, an' oil; the whole caboodle's doomed sure as I'm a foot high."

The face of the older man looked more wolfish than ever. He rubbed his hands together, washing one over the other so that each in turn was massaged. "Hell's bells! I'm sure glad to hear it. Fire got a good start, you say?"

"I tell you the whole country'll go up like powder."

If Steelman had not just reached Malapi from a visit to one of his sheep camps he would have known, what everybody else in town knew by this time, that the range for fifty miles was in danger and that hundreds of volunteers were out fighting the menace.

His eyes glistened. "I'll not wear mournin' none if it does just that."

"I'm tellin' you what it'll do," Doble insisted dogmatically.

"Shorty with you?"

"He was, an' he wasn't. I did it while he wasn't lookin'. He was saddlin' his horse in the brush. Don't make any breaks to him. Shorty's got a soft spot in him. Game enough, but with queer notions. Some time I'm liable to have to—" Doble left his sentence suspended in air, but Steelman, looking into his bleak eyes, knew what the man meant.

"What's wrong with him now, Dug?"

"Well, he's been wrong ever since I had to bump off Tim Harrigan. Talks about a fair break. As if I had a chance to let the old man get to a gun. No, I'm not so awful sure of Shorty."

"Better watch him. If you see him make any false moves—"

Doble watched him with a taunting, scornful eye.

"What'll I do?"

The other man's gaze fell. "Why, you got to protect yoreself, Dug, ain't you?"

"How?"

The narrow shoulders lifted. For a moment the small black eyes met those of the big man.

"Whatever way seems best to you, Dug," murmured Steelman evasively.

Doble slapped his dusty hat against his thigh. He laughed, without mirth or geniality. "If you don't beat Old Nick, Brad. I wonder was you ever out an' out straightforward in yore life. Just once?"

"I don't reckon you sure enough feel that way, Dug," whined the older man ingratiatingly. "Far as that goes, I'm not making any claims that I love my enemies. But you can't say I throw off on my friends. You always know where I'm at."

"Sure I know," retorted Doble bluntly. "You're on the inside of a heap of rotten deals. So am I. But I admit it and you won't."

"Well, I don't look at it that way, but there's no use arguin'. What about that fire? Sure it got a good start?"

"I looked back from across the valley. It was travelin' good."

"If the wind don't change, it will sure do a lot of damage to the Jackpot. Liable to spoil some of Crawford's range too."

"I'll take that thousand in cash, Brad," the big man said, letting himself down into the easiest chair he could find and rolling a cigarette.

"Soon as I know it did the work, Dug."

"I'm here tellin' you it will make a clean-up."

"We'll know by mornin'. I haven't got the money with me anyhow. It's in the bank."

"Get it soon as you can. I expect to light out again pronto. This town's onhealthy for me."

"Where will you stay?" asked Brad.

"With my friend Steelman," jeered Doble. "His invitation is so hearty I just can't refuse him."

"You'd be safer somewhere else," said the owner of the house after a pause.

"We'll risk that, me 'n' you both, for if I'm taken it's liable to be bad luck for you too.... Gimme something to eat and drink."

Steelman found a bottle of whiskey and a glass, then foraged for food in the kitchen. He returned with the shank of a ham and a loaf of bread. His fear was ill-disguised. The presence of the outlaw, if discovered, would bring him trouble; and Doble was so unruly he might out of sheer ennui or bravado let it be known he was there.

"I'll get you the money first thing in the mornin'," promised Steelman.

Doble poured himself a large drink and took it at a swallow. "I would, Brad."

"No use you puttin' yoreself in unnecessary danger."

"Or you. Don't hand me my hat, Brad. I'll go when I'm ready."

Doble drank steadily throughout the night. He was the kind of drinker that can take an incredible amount of liquor without becoming helpless. He remained steady on his feet, growing uglier and more reckless every hour.

Tied to Doble because he dared not break away from him, Steelman's busy brain began to plot a way to take advantage of this man's weakness for liquor. He sat across the table from him and adroitly stirred up his hatred of Crawford and Sanders. He raked up every grudge his guest had against the two men, calling to his mind how they had beaten him at every turn.

"O' course I know, Dug, you're a better man than Sanders or Crawford either, but Malapi don't know it—yet. Down at the Gusher I hear they laugh about that trick he played on you blowin' up the dam. Luck, I call it, but—"

"Laugh, do they?" growled the big man savagely. "I'd like to hear some o' that laughin'."

"Say this Sanders is a wonder; that nobody's got a chance against him. That's the talk goin' round. I said any day in the week you had him beat a mile, and they gave me the laugh."

"I'll show 'em!" cried the enraged bully with a furious oath.

"I'll bet you do. No man livin' can make a fool outa Dug Doble, rustle the evidence to send him to the pen, snap his fingers at him, and on top o' that steal his girl. That's what I told—"

Doble leaned across the table and caught in his great fist the wrist of Steelman. His bloodshot eyes glared into those of the man opposite. "What girl?" he demanded hoarsely.

Steelman looked blandly innocent. "Didn't you know, Dug? Maybe I ought n't to 'a' mentioned it."

Fingers like ropes of steel tightened on the wrist, Brad screamed.

"Don't do that, Dug! You're killin' me! Ouch! Em Crawford's girl."

"What about her and Sanders?"

"Why, he's courtin' her—treatin' her to ice-cream, goin' walkin' with her. Didn't you know?"

"When did he begin?" Doble slammed a hamlike fist on the table. "Spit it out, or I'll tear yore arm off."

Steelman told all he knew and a good deal more. He invented details calculated to infuriate his confederate, to inflame his jealousy. The big man sat with jaw clamped, the muscles knotted like ropes on his leathery face. He was a volcano of outraged vanity and furious hate, seething with fires ready to erupt.

"Some folks say it's Hart she's engaged to," purred the hatchet-faced tempter. "Maybeso. Looks to me like she's throwin' down Hart for this convict. Expect she sees he's gonna be a big man some day."

"Big man! Who says so?" exploded Doble.

"That's the word, Dug. I reckon you've heard how the Governor of Colorado pardoned him. This town's crazy about Sanders. Claims he was framed for the penitentiary. Right now he could be elected to any office he went after." Steelman's restless black eyes watched furtively the effect of his taunting on this man, a victim of wild and uncurbed passions. He was egging him on to a rage that would throw away all caution and all scruples.

"He'll never live to run for office!" the cattleman cried hoarsely.

"They talk him for sheriff. Say Applegate's no good—too easy-going. Say Sanders'll round up you an' Shorty pronto when he's given authority."

Doble ripped out a wild and explosive oath. He knew this man was playing on his vanity, jealousy, and hatred for some purpose not yet apparent, but he found it impossible to close his mind to the whisperings of the plotter. He welcomed the spur of Steelman's two-edged tongue because he wanted to have his purpose of vengeance fed.

"Sanders never saw the day he could take me, dead or alive. I'll meet him any time, any way, an' when I turn my back on him he'll be ready for the coroner."

"I believe you, Dug. No need to tell me you're not afraid of him, for—"

"Afraid of him!" bellowed Doble, eyes like live coals. "Say that again an' I'll twist yore head off."

Steelman did not say it again. He pushed the bottle toward his guest and said other things.



CHAPTER XXXV

FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL

A carpenter working on the roof of a derrick for Jackpot Number Six called down to his mates:

"Fire in the hills, looks like. I see smoke."

The contractor was an old-timer. He knew the danger of fire in the chaparral at this season of the year.

"Run over to Number Four and tell Crawford," he said to his small son.

Crawford and Hart had just driven out from town.

"I'll shag up the tower and have a look," the younger man said.

He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an expert at reading such news as the landscape had written on it.

"Fire in Bear Canon!" he shouted down. "Quite a bit of smoke risin'."

"I'll ride right up and look it over," the cattleman called back. "Better get a gang together to fight it, Bob. Hike up soon as you're ready."

Crawford borrowed without permission of the owner the nearest saddle horse and put it to a lope. Five minutes might make all the difference between a winning and a losing fight.

From the tower Hart descended swiftly. He gathered together all the carpenters, drillers, enginemen, and tool dressers in the vicinity and equipped them with shovels, picks, brush-hooks, saws, and axes. To each one he gave also a gunnysack.

The foot party followed Crawford into the chaparral, making for the hills that led to Bear Canon. A wind was stirring, and as they topped a rise it struck hot on their cheeks. A flake of ash fell on Bob's hand.

Crawford met them at the mouth of the canon.

"She's rip-r'arin', Bob! Got too big a start to beat out. We'll clear a fire-break where the gulch narrows just above here and do our fightin' there."

The sparks of a thousand rockets, flung high by the wind, were swept down the gulch toward them. Behind these came a curtain of black smoke.

The cattleman set his crew to work clearing a wide trail across the gorge from wall to wall. The undergrowth was heavy, and the men attacked with brush-hooks, shovels, and axes. One man, with a wet gunnysack, was detailed to see that no flying sparks started a new blaze below the safety zone. The shovelers and grubbers cleared the grass and roots off to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches were crackling like fireworks.

"I'll scout round over the hill and have a look above," Bob said. "We've got to keep it from spreading out of the gulch."

"Take the horse," Crawford called to him.

One good thing was that the fire was coming down the canon. A downhill blaze moves less rapidly than one running up.

Runners of flame, crawling like snakes among the brush, struck out at the fighters venomously and tried to leap the trench. The defenders flailed at these with the wet gunnysacks.

The wind was stiffer now and the fury of the fire closer. The flames roared down the canon like a blast furnace. Driven back by the intense heat, the men retreated across the break and clung to their line. Already their lungs were sore from inhaling smoke and their throats were inflamed. A pine, its pitchy trunk ablaze, crashed down across the fire-trail and caught in the fork of a tree beyond. Instantly the foliage leaped to red flame.

Crawford, axe in hand, began to chop the trunk and a big Swede swung an axe powerfully on the opposite side. The rest of the crew continued to beat down the fires that started below the break. The chips flew at each rhythmic stroke of the keen blades. Presently the tree crashed down into the trail that had been hewn. It served as a conductor, and along it tongues of fire leaped into the brush beyond. Glowing branches, flung by the wind and hurled from falling timber, buried themselves in the dry undergrowth. Before one blaze was crushed half a dozen others started in its place. Flails and gunnysacks beat these down and smothered them.

Bob galloped into the canon and flung himself from the horse as he pulled it up in its stride.

"She's jumpin' outa the gulch above. Too late to head her off. We better get scrapers up and run a trail along the top o' the ridge, don't you reckon?" he said.

"Yes, son," agreed Crawford. "We can just about hold her here. It'll be hours before I can spare a man for the ridge. We got to get help in a hurry. You ride to town and rustle men. Bring out plenty of dynamite and gunnysacks. Lucky we got the tools out here we brought to build the sump holes."

"Betcha! We'll need a lot o' grub, too."

The cattleman nodded agreement. "And coffee. Cayn't have too much coffee. It's food and drink and helps keep the men awake."

"I'll remember."

"And for the love o' Heaven, don't forget canteens! Get every canteen in town. Cayn't have my men runnin' around with their tongues hangin' out. Better bring out a bunch of broncs to pack supplies around. It's goin' to be one man-sized contract runnin' the commissary."

The canon above them was by this time a sea of fire, the most terrifying sight Bob had ever looked upon. Monster flames leaped at the walls of the gulch, swept in an eyebeat over draws, attacked with a savage roar the dry vegetation. The noise was like the crash of mountains meeting. Thunder could scarce have made itself heard.

Rocks, loosened by the heat, tore down the steep incline of the walls, sometimes singly, sometimes in slides. These hit the bed of the ravine with the force of a cannon-ball. The workers had to keep a sharp lookout for these.

A man near Bob was standing with his weight on the shovel he had been using. Hart gave a shout of warning. At the same moment a large rock struck the handle and snapped it off as though it had been kindling wood. The man wrung his hands and almost wept with the pain.

A cottontail ran squealing past them, driven from its home by this new and deadly enemy. Not far away a rattlesnake slid across the hot rocks. Their common fear of man was lost in a greater and more immediate one.

Hart did not like to leave the battle-field. "Lemme stay here. You can handle that end of the job better'n me, Mr. Crawford."

The old cattleman, his face streaked with black, looked at him from bloodshot eyes. "Where do you get that notion I'll quit a job I've started, son? You hit the trail. The sooner the quicker."

The young man wasted no more words. He swung to the saddle and rode for town faster than he had ever traveled in all his hard-riding days.



CHAPTER XXXVI

FIGHTING FIRE

Sanders was in the office of the Jackpot Company looking over some blue-prints when Joyce Crawford came in and inquired where her father was.

"He went out with Bob Hart to the oil field this morning. Some trouble with the casing."

"Thought Dad wasn't giving any of his time to oil these days," she said. "He told me you and Bob were running the company."

"Every once in a while he takes an interest. I prod him up to go out and look things over occasionally. He's president of the company, and I tell him he ought to know what's going on. So to-day he's out there."

"Oh!" Miss Joyce, having learned what she had come in to find out, might reasonably have departed. She declined a chair, said she must be going, yet did not go. Her eyes appeared to study without seeing a field map on the desk. "Dad told me something last night, Mr. Sanders. He said I might pass it on to you and Bob, though it isn't to go farther. It's about that ten thousand dollars he paid the bank when it called his loan. He got the money from Buck Byington."

"Buck!" exclaimed the young man. He was thinking that the Buck he used to know never had ten dollars saved, let alone ten thousand.

"I know," she explained. "That's it. The money wasn't his. He's executor or something for the children of his dead brother. This money had come in from the sale of a farm back in Iowa and he was waiting for an order of the court for permission to invest it in a mortgage. When he heard Dad was so desperately hard up for cash he let him have the money. He knew Dad would pay it back, but it seems what he did was against the law, even though Dad gave him his note and a chattel mortgage on some cattle which Buck wasn't to record. Now it has been straightened out. That's why Dad couldn't tell where he got the money. Buck would have been in trouble."

"I see."

"But now it's all right." Joyce changed the subject. There were teasing pinpoints of mischief in her eyes. "My school physiology used to say that sleep was restful. It builds up worn-out tissue and all. One of these nights, when you can find time, give it a trial and see whether that's true."

Dave laughed. The mother in this young woman would persistently out. "I get plenty of sleep, Miss Joyce. Most people sleep too much."

"How much do you sleep?"

"Sometimes more, sometimes less. I average six or seven hours, maybe."

"Maybe," she scoffed.

"Hard work doesn't hurt men. Not when they're young and strong."

"I hear you're trying to work yourself to death, sir," the girl charged, smiling.

"Not so bad as that." He answered her smile with another for no reason except that the world was a sunshiny one when he looked at this trim and dainty young woman. "The work gets fascinating. A fellow likes to get things done. There's a satisfaction in turning out a full day and in feeling you get results."

She nodded sagely, in a brisk, business-like way. "I know. Felt it myself often, but we have to remember that there are other days and other people to lend a hand. None of us can do it all. Dad thinks you overdo. So he told me to ask you to supper for to-morrow night. Bob will be there too."

"I say thanks, Miss Joyce, to your father and his daughter."

"Which means you'll be with us to-morrow."

"I'll be with you."

But he was not. Even as he made the promise a shadow darkened the doorsill and Bob Hart stepped into the office.

His first words were ominous, but before he spoke both of those looking at him knew he was the bearer of bad news. There was in his boyish face an unwonted gravity.

"Fire in the chaparral, Dave, and going strong."

Sanders spoke one word. "Where?"

"Started in Bear Canon, but it's jumped out into the hills."

"The wind must be driving it down toward the Jackpot!"

"Yep. Like a scared rabbit. Crawford's trying to hold the mouth of the canon. He's got a man's job down there. Can't spare a soul to keep it from scootin' over the hills."

Dave rose. "I'll gather a bunch of men and ride right out. On what side of the canon is the fire running?"

"East side. Stop at the wells and get tools. I got to rustle dynamite and men. Be out soon as I can."

They spoke quietly, quickly, decisively, as men of action do in a crisis.

Joyce guessed the situation was a desperate one. "Is Dad in danger?" she asked.

Hart answered. "No—not now, anyhow."

"What can I do to help?"

"We'll have hundreds of men in the field probably, if this fire has a real start," Dave told her. "We'll need food and coffee—lots of it. Organize the women. Make meat sandwiches—hundreds of them. And send out to the Jackpot dozens of coffee-pots. Your job is to keep the workers well fed. Better send out bandages and salve, in case some get burnt."

Her eyes were shining. "I'll see to all that. Don't worry, boys. You fight this fire, and we women will 'tend to feeding you."

Dave nodded and strode out of the room. During the fierce and dreadful days that followed one memory more than once came to him in the fury of the battle. It was a slim, straight girl looking at him, the call to service stamped on her brave, uplifted face.

Sanders was on the road inside of twenty minutes, a group of horsemen galloping at his heels. At the Jackpot locations the fire-fighters equipped themselves with shovels, sacks, axes, and brush-hooks. The party, still on horseback, rode up to the mouth of Bear Canon. Through the smoke the sun was blood-red. The air was heavy and heated.

From the fire line Crawford came to meet these new allies. "We're holdin' her here. It's been nip an' tuck. Once I thought sure she'd break through, but we beat out the blaze. I hadn't time to go look, but I expect she's just a-r'arin' over the hills. I've had some teams and scrapers taken up there, Dave. It's yore job. Go to it."

The old cattleman showed that he had been through a fight. His eyes were red and inflamed, his face streaked with black, one arm of his shirt half torn from the shoulder. But he wore the grim look of a man who has just begun to set himself for a struggle.

The horsemen swung to the east and rode up to the mesa which lies between Bear and Cattle Canons. It was impossible to get near Bear, since the imprisoned fury had burst from its walls and was sweeping the chaparral. The line of fire was running along the level in an irregular, ragged front, red tongues leaping ahead with short, furious rushes.

Even before he could spend time to determine the extent of the fire, Dave selected his line of defense, a ridge of rocky, higher ground cutting across from one gulch to the other. Here he set teams to work scraping a fire-break, while men assisted with shovels and brush-hooks to clear a wide path.

Dave swung still farther east and rode along the edge of Cattle Canon. Narrow and rock-lined, the gorge was like a boiler flue to suck the flames down it. From where he sat he saw it caging with inconceivable fury. The earth rift seemed to be roofed with flame. Great billows of black smoke poured out laden with sparks and live coals carried by the wind. It was plain at the first glance that the fire was bound to leap from the canon to the brush-covered hills beyond. His business now was to hold the ridge he had chosen and fight back the flames to keep them from pouring down upon the Jackpot property. Later the battle would have to be fought to hold the line at San Jacinto Canon and the hills running down from it to the plains.

The surface fire on the hills licked up the brush, mesquite, and young cedars with amazing rapidity. If his trail-break was built in time, Dave meant to back-fire above it. Steve Russell was one of his party. Sanders appointed him lieutenant and went over the ground with him to decide exactly where the clearing should run, after which he galloped back to the mouth of Bear.

"She's running wild on the hills and in Cattle Canon," Dave told Crawford. "She'll sure jump Cattle and reach San Jacinto. We've got to hold the mouth of Cattle, build a trail between Bear and Cattle, another between Cattle and San Jacinto, cork her up in San Jacinto, and keep her from jumping to the hills beyond."

"Can we back-fire, do you reckon?"

"Not with the wind there is above, unless we have check-trails built first. We need several hundred more men, and we need them right away. I never saw such a fire before."

"Well, get yore trail built. Bob oughtta be out soon. I'll put him over between Cattle and San Jacinto. Three-four men can hold her here now. I'll move my outfit over to the mouth of Cattle."

The cattleman spoke crisply and decisively. He had been fighting fire for six hours without a moment's rest, swallowing smoke-filled air, enduring the blistering heat that poured steadily at them down the gorge. At least two of his men were lying down completely exhausted, but he contemplated another such desperate battle without turning a hair. All his days he had been a good fighter, and it never occurred to him to quit now.

Sanders rode up as close to the west edge of Bear Canon as he could endure. In two or three places the flames had jumped the wall and were trying to make headway in the scant underbrush of the rocky slope that led to a hogback surmounted by a bare rimrock running to the summit. This natural barrier would block the fire on the west, just as the burnt-over area would protect the north. For the present at least the fire-fighters could confine their efforts to the south and east, where the spread of the blaze would involve the Jackpot. A shift in the wind would change the situation, and if it came in time would probably save the oil property.

Dave put his horse to a lope and rode back to the trench and trail his men were building. He found a shovel and joined them.

From out of Cattle Canon billows of smoke rolled across the hill and settled into a black blanket above the men. This was acrid from the resinous pitch of the pines. The wind caught the dark pall, drove it low, and held it there till the workers could hardly breathe. The sun was under entire eclipse behind the smoke screen.

The heat of the flames tortured Dave's face and hands, just as the smoke-filled air inflamed his nostrils and throat. Coals of fire pelted him from the river of flame, carried by the strong breeze blowing down. From the canons on either side of the workers came a steady roar of a world afire. Occasionally, at some slight shift of the wind, the smoke lifted and they could see the moving wall of fire bearing down upon them, wedges of it far ahead of the main line.

The movements of the workers became automatic. The teams had to be removed because the horses had become unmanageable under the torture of the heat. When any one spoke it was in a hoarse whisper because of a swollen larynx. Mechanically they dug, shoveled, grubbed, handkerchiefs over their faces to protect from the furnace glow.

A deer with two fawns emerged from the smoke and flew past on the way to safety. Mice, snakes, rabbits, birds, and other desert denizens appeared in mad flight. They paid no attention whatever to their natural foe, man. The terror of the red monster at their heels wholly obsessed them.

The fire-break was from fifteen to twenty feet wide. The men retreated back of it, driven by the heat, and fought with wet sacks to hold the enemy. A flash of lightning was hurled against Dave. It was a red-hot limb of a pine, tossed out of the gorge by the stiff wind. He flung it from him and tore the burning shirt from his chest. An agony of pain shot through his shoulder, seared for half a foot by the blazing branch.

He had no time to attend to the burn then. The fire had leaped the check-trail at a dozen points. With his men he tried to smother the flames in the grass by using saddle blankets and gunnysacks, as well as by shoveling sand upon it. Sometimes they cut down the smouldering brush and flung it back across the break into the inferno on the other side. Blinded and strangling from the smoke, the fire-fighters would make short rushes into the clearer air, swallow a breath or two of it, and plunge once more into the line to do battle with the foe.

For hours the desperate battle went on. Dave lost count of time. One after another of his men retreated to rest. After a time they drifted back to help make the defense good against the plunging fire devil. Sanders alone refused to retire. His parched eyebrows were half gone. His clothes hung about him in shredded rags. He was so exhausted that he could hardly wield a flail. His legs dragged and his arms hung heavy. But he would not give up even for an hour. Through the confused, shifting darkness of the night he led his band, silhouetted on the ridge like gnomes of the nether world, to attack after attack on the tireless, creeping, plunging flames that leaped the trench in a hundred desperate assaults, that howled and hissed and roared like ravenous beasts of prey.

Before the light of day broke he knew that he had won. His men had made good the check-trail that held back the fire in the terrain between Bear and Cattle Canons. The fire, worn out and beaten, fell back for lack of fuel upon which to feed.

Reinforcements came from town. Dave left the trail in charge of a deputy and staggered down with his men to the camp that had been improvised below. He sat down with them and swallowed coffee and ate sandwiches. Steve Russell dressed his burn with salve and bandages sent out by Joyce.

"Me for the hay, Dave," the cowpuncher said when he had finished. He stretched himself in a long, tired, luxurious yawn. "I've rid out a blizzard and I've gathered cattle after a stampede till I 'most thought I'd drop outa the saddle. But I give it to this here li'l' fire. It's sure enough a stemwinder. I'm beat. So long, pardner."

Russell went off to roll himself up in his blanket.

Dave envied him, but he could not do the same. His responsibilities were not ended yet. He found his horse in the remuda, saddled, and rode over to the entrance to Cattle Canon.

Emerson Crawford was holding his ground, though barely holding it. He too was grimy, fire-blackened, exhausted, but he was still fighting to throw back the fire that swept down the canon at him.

"How are things up above?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Good. We held the check-line."

"Same here so far. It's been hell. Several of my boys fainted."

"I'll take charge awhile. You go and get some sleep," urged Sanders.

The cattleman shook his head. "No. See it through. Say, son, look who's here!" His thumb hitched toward his right shoulder.

Dave looked down the line of blackened, grimy fire-fighters and his eye fell on Shorty. He was still wearing chaps, but his Chihuahua hat had succumbed long ago. Manifestly the man had been on the fighting line for some hours.

"Doesn't he know about the reward?"

"Yes. He was hidin' in Malapi when the call came for men. Says he's no quitter, whatever else he is. You bet he ain't. He's worth two of most men at this work. Soon as we get through he'll be on the dodge again, I reckon, unless Applegate gets him first. He's a good sport, anyhow. I'll say that for him."

"I reckon I'm a bad citizen, sir, but I hope he makes his getaway before Applegate shows up."

"Well, he's one tough scalawag, but I don't aim to give him away right now. Shorty is a whole lot better proposition than Dug Doble."

Dave came back to the order of the day. "What do you want me to do now?"

The cattleman looked him over. "You damaged much?"

"No."

"Burnt in the shoulder, I see."

"Won't keep me from swinging a sack and bossing a gang."

"Wore out, I reckon?"

"I feel fine since breakfast—took two cups of strong coffee."

Again Crawford's eyes traveled over his ally. They saw a ragged, red-eyed tramp, face and hands and arms blackened with char and grimed with smoke. Outside, he was such a specimen of humanity as the police would have arrested promptly on suspicion. But the shrewd eyes of the cattleman saw more—a spirit indomitable that would drive the weary, tormented body till it dropped in its tracks, a quality of leadership that was a trumpet call to the men who served with him, a soul master of its infirmities. His heart went out to the young fellow. Wherefore he grinned and gave him another job. Strong men to-day were at a premium with Emerson Crawford.

"Ride over and see how Bob's comin' out. We'll make it here."

Sanders swung to the saddle and moved forward to the next fire front, the one between Cattle and San Jacinto Canons. Hart himself was not here. There had come a call for help from the man in charge of the gang trying to hold the fire in San Jacinto. He had answered that summons long before daybreak and had not yet returned.

The situation on the Cattle-San Jacinto front was not encouraging. The distance to be protected was nearly a mile. Part of the way was along a ridge fairly easy to defend, but a good deal of it lay in lower land of timber and heavy brush.

Dave rode along the front, studying the contour of the country and the chance of defending it. His judgment was that it could not be done with the men on hand. He was not sure that the line could be held even with reinforcements. But there was nothing for it but to try. He sent a man to Crawford, urging him to get help to him as soon as possible.

Then he took command of the crew already in the field, rearranged the men so as to put the larger part of his force in the most dangerous locality, and in default of a sack seized a spreading branch as a flail to beat out fire in the high grass close to San Jacinto.

An hour later half a dozen straggling men reported for duty. Shorty was one of them.

"The ol' man cayn't spare any more," the rustler explained. "He had to hustle Steve and his gang outa their blankets to go help Bob Hart. They say Hart's in a heluva bad way. The fire's jumped the trail-check and is spreadin' over the country. He's runnin' another trail farther back."

It occurred to Dave that if the wind changed suddenly and heightened, it would sweep a back-fire round him and cut off the retreat of his crew. He sent a weary lad back to keep watch on it and report any change of direction in that vicinity.

After which he forgot all about chances of danger from the rear. His hands and mind were more than busy trying to drive back the snarling, ravenous beast in front of him. He might have found time to take other precautions if he had known that the exhausted boy sent to watch against a back-fire had, with the coming of night, fallen asleep in a draw.



CHAPTER XXXVII

SHORTY ASKS A QUESTION

When Shorty separated from Doble in Frio Canon he rode inconspicuously to a tendejon where he could be snugly hidden from the public gaze and yet meet a few "pals" whom he could trust at least as long as he could keep his eyes on them. His intention was to have a good time in the only way he knew how. Another purpose was coupled with this; he was not going to drink enough to interfere with reasonable caution.

Shorty's dissipated pleasures were interfered with shortly after midnight. A Mexican came in to the drinking-place with news. The world was on fire, at least that part of it which interested the cattlemen of the Malapi district. The blaze had started back of Bear Canon and had been swept by the wind across to Cattle and San Jacinto. The oil field adjacent had been licked up and every reservoir and sump was in flames. The whole range would probably be wiped out before the fire spent itself for lack of fuel. Crawford had posted a rider to town calling for more man power to build trails and wield flails. This was the sum of the news. It was not strictly accurate, but it served to rouse Shorty at once.

He rose and touched the Mexican on the arm. "Where you say that fire started, Pedro?"

"Bear Canon, senor."

"And it's crossed San Jacinto?"

"Like wildfire." The slim vaquero made a gesture all-inclusive. "It runs, senor, like a frightened jackrabbit. Nothing will stop it—nothing. It iss sent by heaven for a punishment."

"Hmp!" Shorty grunted.

The rustler fell into a somber silence. He drank no more. The dark-lashed eyes of the Mexican girls slanted his way in vain. He stared sullenly at the table in front of him. A problem had pushed itself into his consciousness, one he could not brush aside or ignore.

If the fire had started back of Bear Canon, what agency had set it going? He and Doble had camped last night at that very spot. If there had been a fire there during the night he must have known it. Then when had the fire started? And how? They had seen the faint smoke of it as they rode away, the filmy smoke of a young fire not yet under much headway. Was it reasonable to suppose that some one else had been camping close to them? This was possible, but not likely. For they would probably have seen signs of the other evening camp-fire.

Eliminating this possibility, there remained—Dug Doble. Had Dug fired the brush while his companion was saddling for the start? The more Shorty considered this possibility, the greater force it acquired in his mind. Dug's hatred of Crawford, Hart, and especially Sanders would be satiated in part at least if he could wipe their oil bonanza from the map. The wind had been right. Doble was no fool. He knew that if the fire ran wild in the chaparral only a miracle could save the Jackpot reservoirs and plant from destruction.

Other evidence accumulated. Cryptic remarks of Doble made during the day. His anxiety to see Steelman immediately. A certain manner of ill-repressed triumph whenever he mentioned Sanders or Crawford. These bolstered Shorty's growing opinion that the man had deliberately fired the chaparral from a spirit of revenge.

Shorty was an outlaw and a bad man. He had killed, and might at any time kill again. To save the Jackpot from destruction he would not have made a turn of the hand. But Shorty was a cattleman. He had been brought up in the saddle and had known the whine of the lariat and the dust of the drag drive all his days. Every man has his code. Three things stood out in that of Shorty. He was loyal to the hand that paid him, he stood by his pals, and he believed in and after his own fashion loved cattle and the life of which they were the central fact. To destroy the range feed wantonly was a crime so nefarious that he could not believe Doble guilty of it. And yet—

He could not let the matter lie in doubt. He left the tendejon and rode to Steelman's house. Before entering he examined carefully both of his long-barreled forty-fives. He made sure that the six-shooters were in perfect order and that they rested free in the holsters. That sixth sense acquired by "bad men," by means of which they sniff danger when it is close, was telling him that smoke would rise before he left the house.

He stepped to the porch and knocked. There came a moment's silence, a low-pitched murmur of whispering voices carried through an open window, the shuffling of feet. The door was opened by Brad Steelman. He was alone in the room.

"Where's Dug?" asked Shorty bluntly.

"Why, Dug—why, he's here, Shorty. Didn't know it was you. 'Lowed it might be some one else. So he stepped into another room."

The short cowpuncher walked in and closed the door behind him. He stood with his back to it, facing the other door of the room.

"Did you hire Dug to fire the chaparral?" he asked, his voice ominously quiet.

A flicker of fear shot to the eyes of the oil promoter. He recognized signs of peril and his heart was drenched with an icy chill. Shorty was going to turn on him, had become a menace.