After an hour or two of travel the half-breed took Talpers's place in the lead, the trader bringing up the rear behind Helen and the pack-horses. Two bald mountain-peaks began to loom startlingly near. The stream ran between the peaks, being fed by the snows on either slope. As the altitude became more pronounced the horses struggled harder at their work. The white horse was showing the stamina that was in him. Helen urged him to his task, knowing the folly of attempting to thwart the wishes of her captors. They passed a slope where a forest fire had swept in years gone by. Wild raspberry bushes had grown in profusion among the black, sentinel-like trunks of dead trees. The bushes tore her riding-suit and scratched her hands, but she uttered no complaint.

Under any other circumstances Helen would have found much in the ride to overcome its discomforts. The majesty of the scenery impressed itself upon her mind, troubled as she was. Silence wrapped the two great peaks like a mantle. An eagle swung lazily in midair between the granite spires. Here was another plane of existence where the machinations of men seemed to matter little. Almost indifferent to her discomforts Helen struggled on, mechanically keeping her place in line. The half-breed looked back occasionally, and even went so far as to take her horse by the bridle and help the animal up an unusually hard slope.

When it became apparent that further progress was an impossibility unless the pack-horses were abandoned, the half-breed turned aside, and, after a final desperate scramble up the mountain-side, the party entered a fairly open, level glade. Helen dismounted with the others.

"We're goin' to camp here for a while," announced Talpers, after a short whispered conference with the half-breed. "You might as well make yourself as comfortable as you can, but remember one thing—you'll be shot if you try to get away or if you make any signals."

Helen leaned back against a tree-trunk, too weary to make answer, and Talpers went to the assistance of McFann, who was taking off the packs and saddles. The horses were staked out near at hand, where they could get their fill of the luxuriant grass that carpeted the mountain-side here. McFann brought water from a spring near at hand, and the trader set out some food from one of the packs, though it was decided not to build a fire to cook anything. Helen ate biscuits and bacon left from the previous meal. While she was eating, McFann put up the little tent. Then, after another conference with Talpers, the half-breed climbed a rock which jutted out of the shoulder of the mountain not far from them. His lithe figure was silhouetted against the reddening sky. Helen wondered, as she looked up at him, if the rock had been used for sentinel purposes in years gone by. Her reflections were broken in upon by Talpers.

"That tent is yours," said the trader, in a low voice. "But before you turn in I've got a few words to say to you. You haven't seemed to be as much afraid of me on this trip as you was the other night at your cabin."

"There's no reason why I should be," said Helen quietly. "You don't dare harm me for several reasons."

"What are they?" sneered Talpers.

"Well, one reason is—Jim McFann. All I have to do to cause your partnership to dissolve at once is to tell Jim that you found that money on the man who was murdered and didn't divide."

Talpers winced.

"Furthermore, this business has practically made an outlaw of you. It all depends on your treatment of me. I'm the collateral that may get you back into the good graces of society."

Talpers wiped the sweat beads off his forehead.

"You don't want to be too sure of yourself," he growled, though with so much lack of assurance that Helen was secretly delighted. "You want to remember," went on the trader threateningly, "that any time we want to put a bullet in you, we can make our getaway easy enough. The only thing for you to do is to keep quiet and see that you mind orders."

Talpers ended the interview hastily when McFann came down from the rock. The men talked together, after shutting Helen in the tent and reiterating that she would be watched and that the first attempt to escape would be fatal. Helen flung herself down on the blankets and watched the fading lights of evening as they were reflected on the canvas. She could hear the low voices of Talpers and McFann, hardly distinguishable from the slight noises made by the wind in the trees. The moon cast the shadows of branches on the canvas, and the noise of the stream, far below, came fitfully to Helen's ears. She was more at ease in mind than at any other time since Jim McFann had confronted her with his rifle over his arm. She felt that Talpers was the moving spirit in her kidnaping. She did not know how near her knowledge of the trader's implication in the Dollar Sign tragedy had brought her to death. Nor did she know that Talpers's rage over Jim McFann's weakening had been so great that the trader had nearly snatched up his rifle and shot his partner dead when the half-breed brought Helen into camp.

As a matter of fact, when Talpers had realized that Jim McFann had failed in his mission of assassination, the trader had been consumed with alternate rage and fear. A kidnaping had been the last thing in the world in the trader's thoughts. Assassination, with some one else doing the work, was much the better way. Running off with womenfolk could not be made a profitable affair, but here was the girl thrown into his hands by fate. It would not do to let her go. Perhaps a way out of the mess could be thought over. McFann could be made to bear the brunt in some way. Meantime the best thing to do was to get as far into the hills as possible. McFann could outwit the Indian police. He had been doing it right along. He had fooled them during long months of bootlegging. Since his escape from jail the police had redoubled their efforts to capture McFann, but he had gone right on fooling them. If worst came to worst, McFann and he could make their getaway alone, first putting the girl where she would never tell what she knew about them. Across the mountains there was a little colony of law-breakers that had long been after Talpers as a leader. He had helped them in a good many ways, these outlaws, particularly in rustling cattle from the reservation herds. It was Bill Talpers who had evolved the neat little plan of changing the ID brand of the Interior Department to the "two-pole pumpkin" brand, which was done merely by extending another semicircle to the left of the "I" and connecting that letter and the "D" at top and bottom, thus making two perpendicular lines in a flattened circle.

The returns from his interest in the gang's rustling operations had been far more than Bill had ever secured from his store. In fact, storekeeping was played out. Bill never would have kept it up except for the opportunity it gave him to find out what was going on. To be sure, he should have played safe and kept away from such things as that affair on the Dollar Sign road. But he could have come clear even there if it had not been for the uncanny knowledge possessed by that girl. The thought of what would happen if she took a notion to tell McFann how he had been "double-crossed" by his partner gave Talpers something approaching a chill. The half-breed was docile enough as long as he thought he was being fairly dealt with. But once let him find out that he had been unfairly treated, all the Indian in him would come to the surface with a rush! Fortunately the girl was proving herself to be close-mouthed. She had traveled for hours with the half-breed without telling him of Talpers's perfidy. Now Bill would see to it that she got no chance to talk with McFann. The half-breed was too tender-hearted where women were concerned. That much had been proved when he had fallen down in the matter of the work he had been sent out to do. If she had a chance the girl might even persuade him to let her escape, which was not going to do at all. If anybody was to be left holding the sack at the end of the adventure, it would not be Bill Talpers!

With various stratagems being brought to mind, only to be rejected one after another, Talpers watched the tent until midnight, the half-breed sleeping near at hand. Then Bill turned in while McFann kept watch. As for Helen, she slept the sleep of exhaustion until wakened by the touch of daylight on the canvas.

With senses preternaturally sharpened, as they generally are during one's first hours in the wilderness, Helen listened. She heard Talpers stirring about among the horses. It was evident that he was alarmed about something, as he was pulling the picket-pins and bringing the animals closer to the center of the glade. McFann had been looking down the valley from the sentinel rock. She did not hear him come into camp, as the half-breed always moved silently through underbrush that would betray the presence of any one less skilled in woodcraft. She heard his monosyllabic answers to Talpers's questions. Then Bill himself pushed his way through the underbrush and climbed the rock. When he returned to the camp he came to the tent.

"I don't mind tellin' you that Plenty Buffalo is out there on the trail, with an Injun policeman or two. That young agent don't seem to have had nerve enough to come along," said Talpers, producing a small rope. "I'll have to tie your hands awhile, just to make sure you don't try gittin' away. I'm goin' to tell 'em that at the first sign of rushin' the camp you're goin' to be shot. What's more I'm goin' to mean what I tell 'em."

Talpers tied Helen's hands behind her. He left the flaps of the tent open as he picked up his rifle and returned to McFann, who was sitting on a log, composedly enough, keeping watch of the other end of the glade where the trail entered. Helen sank to her knees, with her back to the rear of the tent, so she could command a better view. The tent had been staked down securely around the edges, so there was no opportunity for her to crawl under.

Apparently the two men in the glade, as Helen saw them through the inverted V of the open tent flaps, were most peacefully inclined. They sat smoking and talking, and, from all outward appearances, might have been two hunters talking over the day's prospects. Suddenly they sprang to their feet, and, with rifles in readiness, looked toward the trail, which was hidden from Helen's vision.

"Don't come any nearer, Plenty Buffalo," called Talpers, in Indian language. "If you try to rush the camp, the first thing we'll do is to kill this girl. The only thing for you to do is to go back."

Then followed a short colloquy, Helen being unable to hear Plenty Buffalo's voice.

Evidently he was well down the trail, hidden in the trees, and was making no further effort to approach. The men sat down again, watching the trail and evidently figuring out their plan of escape. There was no means of scaling the mountain wall behind them. Horses could not possibly climb that steep slope, covered with such a tangle of trees and undergrowth, but it was possible to proceed farther along the upper edge of the valley until finally timber-line was reached, after which the party could drop over the divide into the happy little kingdom just off the reservation where a capable man with the branding-iron was always welcome and where the authorities never interfered.

Helen listened for another call from Plenty Buffalo, but the minutes dragged past and no summons came. The silence of the forest became almost unbearable. The men sat uneasily, casting occasional glances back at the tent, and making sure that Helen was remaining quiet. Finally Plenty Buffalo called again. There was another brief parley and Talpers renewed his threats. While the talk was going on, Helen heard a slight noise behind her. Turning her head, she saw the point of a knife cutting a long slit in the back of the tent. Then Fire Bear's dark face peered in through the opening. The Indian's long brown arm reached forth and the bonds at Helen's wrists were cut. The arm disappeared through the slit in the canvas, beckoning as it did so. Helen backed slowly toward the opening that had been made.

The talk between Plenty Buffalo and Talpers was still going on. Helen waited until both men had glanced around at her. Then, as they turned their heads once more toward Plenty Buffalo's hiding-place, she half leaped, half fell through the opening in the tent. A strong hand kept her from falling and guided her swiftly through the underbrush back of the tent. Her face was scratched by the bushes that swung back as the half-naked Indian glided ahead of her, but, in almost miraculous fashion, she found a traversable path opened. Torn and bleeding, she flung herself behind a rock, just as a shout from the camp told that her disappearance had been discovered. There was a crashing of pursuers through the underbrush, but a gun roared a warning, almost in Helen's ear.

The shot was fired by Lowell, who, hatless and with torn clothing, had followed Fire Bear within a short distance of the camp. Helen crouched against the rock, while Lowell stood over her firing into the forest tangle. Fire Bear stood nonchalantly beside Lowell. Helen noticed, wonderingly, that there was not a scratch on the Indian's naked shoulders, yet Lowell's clothes were torn, and blood dripped from his palms where he had followed Fire Bear along the seemingly impassable way back of the camp.

One or two answering shots were fired, but evidently Talpers and his companion were afraid of an attack by Plenty Buffalo, so no pursuit was attempted.

The Indian turned, and, motioning for Lowell and Helen to follow, disappeared in the undergrowth along the trail which he and the agent had made while Plenty Buffalo was attracting the attention of Talpers and the half-breed. Helen tried to rise, but the sudden ending of the mental strain proved unnerving. She leaned against the rock with her eyes closed and her body limp. Lowell lifted her to her feet, almost roughly. For a moment she stood with Lowell's arms about her and his kisses on her face. Her whiteness alarmed him.

"Tell me you haven't been harmed," he cried. "If you have—"

"Just these scratches and a good riding-suit in tatters," she answered, as she drew away from him with a reassuring smile.

Lowell's brow cleared, and he laughed gleefully, as he picked up his rifle.

"Well, there's just one more hard scramble ahead," he replied, "and perhaps some more tatters to add to what both of us have. I'd carry you, but the best I can do is to help you over some of the more difficult places. Fire Bear has started. Have you strength enough to try to follow?"

He led her along the trail taken by Fire Bear—a trail in name only. The Indian had waited for them a few yards away. How much he had seen and heard when Lowell held her in his arms Helen could only surmise, but the thought sent the blood into her cheeks with a rush.

It was as Lowell had said—another scramble. At times it seemed as if she could not go on, but always at the right time Lowell gave the necessary help that enabled her to surmount some seemingly impassable obstacle. As for Fire Bear, he made his way over huge rocks and along steep pitches of shale with the ease of a serpent. At last the way became somewhat less difficult to traverse, and, when they came out on the trail by the stream, Helen realized that the tax on her physical resources was ended.

A short distance down the trail they met Plenty Buffalo with two Indian policemen. One of the police had been wounded in the arm by a shot from Talpers. The trader and McFann had hurriedly packed and made their escape, leaving the white horse, which Plenty Buffalo had brought for Helen.

After a hasty examination of the Indian's arm it was decided to hurry back to the agency for aid.

"I've sent out a call for more of the Indian police," said Lowell. "They'll probably be there when we get back to the agency. We just picked up what help we could find when we got word of your disappearance."

When Helen looked around for Fire Bear, the Indian had disappeared.

"We never could have done anything without Fire Bear," said Lowell, as he swung into the saddle preparatory to the homeward ride. "He is the greatest trailer I ever saw. Probably he's gone back to his camp, now that this interruption in his religious ceremonies is over."

Plenty Buffalo led the way back to the agency with the wounded policeman. Lowell had examined the man's injury and was satisfied that it was only superficial. The policeman himself took matters with true Indian philosophy, and galloped on with Plenty Buffalo, the most unconcerned member of the party.

Lowell rode with Helen, letting the others go on ahead after they had reached the open country beyond the foothills. He explained the circumstances of the rescue—how Wong had brought a note signed "Willis Morgan," telling of Helen's disappearance. At the same time Fire Bear had come to the agency with the news that one of his young men had seen McFann and Helen riding toward the mountains. Fire Bear was convinced that something was wrong and had lost no time in telling Lowell. With Plenty Buffalo and one or two Indian policemen who happened to be at the agency, a posse was hurriedly made up. Fire Bear took the trail and followed it so swiftly and unerringly that the party was almost within striking distance of the fugitives by night-fall. A conference had been held, and it was decided to let Plenty Buffalo parley with Talpers and McFann from the trail, while Fire Bear attempted the seemingly impossible task of entering the camp from the side toward the mountain.

Helen was silent during most of the ride to the agency. Lowell ascribed her silence to a natural reaction from the physical and mental strain of recent hours. After reaching the agency he saw that the wounded policeman was properly taken care of. Then Lowell and Helen started for the Greek Letter Ranch in the agent's car, leaving her horse to be brought over by one of the agency employees.

"Do you intend to go back and take up the chase for Talpers and McFann?" asked Helen.

"Of course! Just as soon as I can get more of the Indian police together."

"But they'll hardly be taken alive, will they?"

"Perhaps not."

"That means that blood will be shed on my account," declared Helen. "I'll not have it! I don't want those men captured! What if I refuse to testify against them?"

Lowell looked at her in amazement. Then it came to him overwhelmingly that here was the murder mystery stalking between them once more, like a ghost. He recalled Talpers's broad hint that Helen knew something of the case, and that if Bill Talpers were dragged into the Dollar Sign affair the girl at the Greek Letter Ranch would be dragged in also.

"There is no need of the outside world knowing anything about this," went on Helen. "The Indian police do not report to any one but you, do they?"

"No. Their lips are sealed so far as their official duties are concerned."

"Fire Bear will have nothing to say?"

"He has probably forgotten it by this time in his religious fervor."

"Then I ask you to let these men go."

"If you will not appear against them," said Lowell, "I can't see that anything will be gained by bringing them in. But probably it would be a good thing to exterminate them on the tenable ground that they are general menaces to the welfare of society."

The girl's troubled expression returned.

"On one condition I will send word to Talpers that he may return," went on Lowell. "That condition is that you rescind your order excluding me from the Greek Letter Ranch. If Talpers comes back I've got to be allowed to drop around to see that you are not spirited away."



CHAPTER XII

Talpers was back in his store in two days. Lowell sent word that the trader might return. At first Talpers was hesitant and suspicious. There was a lurking fear in his mind that the agent had some trick in view, but, as life took its accustomed course, Bill resumed his domineering attitude about the store. A casual explanation that he had been buying some cattle was enough to explain his absence.

Bill's recent experiences had caused him to regard the agent with new hatred, not unmixed with fear. The obvious thing for Lowell to have done was to have rushed more men on the trail and captured Talpers and McFann before they crossed the reservation line. It could have been done, with Fire Bear doing the trailing. Even the half-breed admitted that much. But, instead of carrying out such a programme, the agent had sent Fire Bear and Plenty Buffalo with word that the trader might come back—that no prosecution was intended.

Clearly enough such an unusual proceeding indicated that the girl was still afraid on account of the letter, and had persuaded the agent to abandon the chase. There was the key to the whole situation—the letter! Bill determined to guard it more closely than ever. He opened his safe frequently to see that it was there.

As a whole, then, things were not breaking so badly, Bill figured. To be sure, it would have cleared things permanently if Jim McFann had done as he had been told, instead of weakening in such unexpected and absurd fashion. Bringing that girl into camp, as Jim had done, had given Talpers the most unpleasant surprise of his life. He had come out of the affair luckily. The letter was what had done it all. He would lie low and keep an eye on affairs from now on. McFann would have no difficulty in shifting for himself out in the sagebrush, now that he was alone. Bill would see that he got grub and even a little whiskey occasionally, but there would be no more assignments for him in which women were concerned, for the half-breed had too tender a heart for his own good!

The Indian agent stopped at Bill's store occasionally, on his way to and from the Greek Letter Ranch. Their conversation ran mostly to trade and minor affairs of life in general. Even the weather was fallen back upon in case some one happened to be within earshot, which was usually the case, as Bill's store was seldom empty. No one who heard them would suspect that the men were watching, weighing, and fathoming each other with all the nicety at individual command. Talpers was always wondering just how much the Indian agent knew, and Lowell was saying to himself:

"This scoundrel has some knowledge in his possession which vitally affects the young woman I love. Also he is concerned, perhaps deeply, in the murder on the Dollar Sign road. Yet he has fortified himself so well in his villainy that he feels secure."

For all his increased feeling of security, Talpers was wise enough to let the bottle alone and also to do no boasting. Likewise he stuck faithfully to his store—so faithfully that it became a matter of public comment.

"If Bill sticks much closer to this store he's goin' to fall into a decline," said Andy Wolters, who had been restored to favor in the circle of cowpunchers that lolled about Talpers's place. "He's gettin' a reg'lar prison pallor now. He used to be hittin' the trail once in a while, but nowadays he's hangin' around that post-office section as if he expected a letter notifyin' him that a rich uncle had died."

"Mebbe he's afraid of travelin' these parts since that feller was killed on the Dollar Sign," suggested another cowboy. "Doggoned if I don't feel a little shaky myself sometimes when I'm ridin' that road alone at night. Looks like some of them Injuns ought to have been hung for that murder, right off the reel, and then folks'd feel a lot easier in their minds."

The talk then would drift invariably to the subject of the murder and the general folly of the court in allowing Fire Bear to go on the Indian agent's recognizance. But Talpers, though he heard the chorus of denunciation from the back of the store, and though he was frequently called upon for an opinion, never could be drawn into the conversation. He bullied his clerk as usual, and once in a while swept down, in a storm of baseless anger, upon some unoffending Indian, just to show that Bill Talpers was still a man to be feared, but for the most part he waited silently, with the confidence of a man who holds a winning hand at cards.

The same days that saw Talpers's confidence returning were days of dissatisfaction to Lowell. He felt that he was being constantly thwarted. He would have preferred to give his entire attention to the murder mystery, but details of reservation management crowded upon him in a way that made avoidance impossible. Among his duties Lowell found that he must act as judge and jury in many cases that came up. There were domestic difficulties to be straightened out, and thieves and brawlers to be sentenced. Likewise there was occasional flotsam, cast up from the human sea outside the reservation, which required attention.

One of those reminders of the outer world was brought in by an Indian policeman. The stranger was a rough-looking individual, to all appearances a harmless tramp, who had been picked up "hoofing it" across the reservation.

The Indian policeman explained, through the interpreter, that he had found the wanderer near a sub-agency, several miles away—that he had shown a disposition to fight, and had only been cowed by the prompt presentation of a revolver at his head.

"Why, you 're no tramp—you're a yeggman," said Lowell to the prisoner, interrupting voluble protestations of innocence. "You're one of the gentry that live off small post-offices and banks. I'll bet you've stolen stamps enough in your career to keep the Post-Office Department going six months. And you've given heart disease to no end of stockholders in small banks—prosperous citizens who have had to make good the losses caused by your safe-breaking operations. Am I bringing an unjust indictment against you, pardner?"

A flicker of a smile was discernible somewhere in the tangle of beard that hid the lineaments of the prisoner's face.

"If I inventoried the contents of this bundle," continued Lowell, "I'd find a pretty complete outfit of the tools that keep the safe companies working overtime on replacements, wouldn't I?"

The prisoner nodded.

"There's no use of my dodgin', judge," he said. "The tools are there—all of 'em. But I'm through with the game. All I want now is enough of a stake to get me back home to Omaha, where the family is. That's why I was footin' it acrost this Injun country—takin' a short cut to a railroad where I wouldn't be watched for."

"I'll consider your case awhile," remarked Lowell after a moment's thought. "Perhaps we can speed you on your way to Omaha and the family."

The prisoner was taken back to the agency jail leaving his bundle on Lowell's desk. About midnight Lowell took the bundle and, going to the jail, roused the policeman who was on guard and was admitted to the prisoner's cell.

"Look here, Red," said Lowell. "Your name is Red, isn't it?"

"Red Egan."

"Well, Red Egan, did you ever hear of Jimmy Valentine?"

The prisoner scratched his head while he puffed at a welcome cigarette.

"No? Well, Red, this Jimmy Valentine was in the business you're quitting, and he opened a safe in a good cause. I want you to do the same for me. If you can do a neat job, with no noise, I'll see that you get across the reservation all right, with stake enough to get you to Omaha."

"You're on, judge! I'd crack one more for a good scout like you any day."

Three quarters of an hour later Red Egan was working professionally upon the safe in Bill Talpers's store. The door to Talpers's sleeping-room was not far away, but it was closed, and the trader was a thorough sleeper, so the cracksman might have been conducting operations a mile distant, so far as interruption from Bill was concerned.

As he worked, Red Egan told whispered stories to a companion—stories which related to barriers burned, pried, and blown away.

"I don't mind how close they sleep to their junk," observed Red, as he rested momentarily from his labors. "Unless a man's got insomnier and insists on makin' his bed on top of his safe, he ain't got a chance to make his iron doors stay shut if one of the real good 'uns takes a notion to make 'em fly apart. There she goes!" he added a moment later, as the safe door swung open.

"All right, Red," came the whispered reply, "but remember that I get whatever money's in sight, just for appearances' sake, though it's letters and such things I'm really after."

"It goes as you say, boss, and I hope you get what you want. There goes that inside door."

In the light of a flash-lamp Lowell saw a letter and a roll of bills. He took both, while Red Egan, his work done, packed up the kit of tools.

Lowell had recognized Helen's handwriting on the envelope, and knew he had found what he wanted.

"You've earned that trip to Omaha, Red," said Lowell, after they had gone back to their horses which had been standing in a cottonwood grove near by. "When we get back to the agency I'll put you in my car and drive you far enough by daybreak so that you can catch a train at noon."

"You're a square guy, judge, but if that's the letter you've been wantin' to get, why don't you read it? Or maybe you know what's in it without readin' it."

"No, I don't know what's in it, and I don't want to read it, Red."

Red's amazed whistle cut through the night silence.

"Well, if that ain't the limit! Havin' a safe-crackin' job done for a letter that you ain't ever seen and don't want to see the inside of!"

"It's all right, Red. Don't worry about it, because you've earned your money twice over to-night. Don't look on your last job as a failure, by any means."

* * * * *

A few hours later the Indian agent, not looking like a man who had been up all night, halted his car at Talpers's store, after he had received an excited hail from Andy Wolters.

"You're jest in time!" exclaimed Andy. "Bill Talpers's safe has been cracked and Bill is jest now tryin' to figger the damage. He says he's lost a roll of money and some other things."

Lowell found Talpers going excitedly through the contents of his broken safe. It was not the first time the trader had pawed over the papers. Nor were the oaths that fell on Lowell's ears the first that the trader had uttered since the discovery that he had been robbed as he slept.

It was plain enough that Talpers was suffering from a deeper shock than could come through any mere loss of money. Not even when Lowell contrived to drop the roll of bills, where the trader's clerk picked it up with a whoop of glee, did Talpers's expression change. His oaths were those of a man distraught, and the contumely he heaped upon Sheriff Tom Redmond moved that official to a spirited defense.

"I can't see why you hold me responsible for a safe that you've been keeping within earshot all these years," retorted Tom, in answer to Talpers's sneers about the lack of protection afforded the county's business men. "If you can't hear a yeggman working right next to your sleeping-quarters, how do you expect me to hear him, 'way over to White Lodge? I'll leave it to Lowell here if your complaint is reasonable. I'll do the best I can to get this man, but it looks to me as if he's made a clean getaway. What sort of papers was it you said you lost, Bill?"

"I didn't say."

"Well, then, I'm asking you. Was they long or short, rolled or flat, or tied with pink ribbon?"

"Never mind!" roared Talpers. "You round up this burglar and let me go through him. I'll get what's mine, all right."

Redmond made a gesture of despair. A man who had been robbed and had recovered his money, and was so keen after papers that he wouldn't or couldn't describe, was past all fooling with. The sheriff rode off, grumbling, without even questioning Lowell to ascertain if the Indian police had seen any suspicious characters on the reservation.

Bill Talpers's mental convolutions following the robbery reminded Lowell of the writhing of a wounded snake. Bill's fear was that the letter would be picked up and sent back to the girl at the Greek Letter Ranch. Suspicion of a plot in the affair did not enter his head. To him it was just a sinister stroke of misfortune—one of the chance buffets of fate. One tramp burglar out of the many pursuing that vocation had happened upon the Talpers establishment at a time when its proprietor was in an unusually sound sleep. Bill gave himself over to thoughts of the various forms of punishment he would inflict upon the wandering yeggman in case a capture were effected—thoughts which came to naught, as Red Egan had been given so generous a start toward his Omaha goal that he never was headed.

As the days went past and the letter was not discovered, Bill began to gather hope. Perhaps the burglar, thinking the letter of no value, had destroyed it, in natural disgust at finding that he had dropped the money which undoubtedly was the real object of his safe-breaking.

If Talpers had known what had really happened to the letter, all his self-comfortings would have vanished. Lowell had lost no time in taking the missive to Helen. He had found affairs at the Greek Letter Ranch apparently unchanged. Wong was at work in the kitchen. Two Indians, who had been hired to harvest the hay, which was the only crop on the ranch, were busy in a near-by field. Helen, looking charming in a house dress of blue, with white collar and cuffs, was feeding a tame magpie when Lowell drove into the yard.

"Moving picture entitled 'The Metamorphosis of Miss Tatters,'" said Lowell, amusedly surveying her.

"The scratches still survive, but the riding-suit will take a lot of mending," said Helen, showing her scratched hands and wrists.

"Well, if this very becoming costume has a pocket, here's something to put in it," remarked Lowell, handing her the letter.

Helen's smile was succeeded by a startled, anxious look, as she glanced at the envelope and then at Lowell.

"No need for worry," Lowell assured her. "Nobody has read that letter since it passed out of the possession of our esteemed postmaster, Bill Talpers, sometime after one o'clock this morning."

"But how did he come to give it up?" asked Helen, her voice wavering.

"He did not do so willingly. It might be said he did not give it up knowingly. As a matter of fact, our friend Talpers had no idea he had lost his precious possession until it had been gone several hours."

"But how—"

"'How' is a word to be flung at Red Egan, knight of the steel drill and the nitro bottle and other what-nots of up-to-date burglary," said Lowell. "Though I saw the thing done, I can't tell you how. I only hope it clears matters for you."

"It does in a way. I cannot tell you how grateful I am," said Helen, her trembling hands tightly clutching the letter.

"Only in a way? I am sorry it does not do more."

"But it's a very important way, I assure you!" exclaimed Helen. "It eliminates this man—this Talpers—as a personal menace. But when you are so eager to get every thread of evidence, how is it that you can give this letter to me, unread? You must feel sure it has some bearing on the awful thing—the tragedy that took place back there on the hill."

"That is where faith rises superior to a very human desire to look into the details of mystery," said Lowell. "If I were a real detective, or spy, as you characterized me, I would have read that letter at the first opportunity. But I knew that my reading it would cause you grave personal concern. I have faith in you to the extent that I believe you would do nothing to bring injustice upon others. Consequently, from now on I will proceed to forget that this letter ever existed."

"You may regret that you have acted in this generous manner," said the girl. "What if you find that all your faith has been misplaced—that I am not worthy of the trust—"

"Really, there is nothing to be gained by saying such things," interposed Lowell. "As I told you, I am forgetting that the letter ever existed."

"Do you know," she said, "I wish this letter could have come back to me from any one but you?"

"Why?"

"Because, coming as it has, I am more or less constrained to act as fairly as you believe I shall act."

"You might give it back to Talpers and start in on any sort of a deal you chose."

"Impossible! For fear Talpers may get it, here is what I shall do to the letter."

Here Helen tore it in small pieces and tossed them high in the air, the breeze carrying them about the yard like snow.

"In which event," laughed Lowell, "it seems that I win, and my faith in you is to be justified."

"I wish I could assure you of as much," answered Helen sadly. "But if it happens that your trust is not justified, I hope you will not think too harshly of me."

"Harshly!" exclaimed Lowell. "Harshly! Why, if you practiced revolver shooting on me an hour before breakfast every morning, or if you used me for a doormat here at the Greek Letter Ranch, I couldn't think anything but lovingly of you."

"Oh!" cried Helen, clapping her hands over her ears and running up the porch steps, as Lowell turned to his automobile. "You've almost undone all the good you've accomplished to-day."

"Thanks for that word 'almost,'" laughed Lowell.

"Then I'll make it 'quite,'" flung Helen, but her words were lost in the shifting of gears as Lowell started back to the agency.

That night Helen dreamed that Bill Talpers, on hands and knees, was moving like a misshapen shadow about the yard in the moonlight picking up the letter which she had torn to pieces.



CHAPTER XIII

Sheriff Tom Redmond sat in Lowell's office at the agency, staring grimly across at the little park, where the down from the cottonwood trees clung to the grass like snow. The sheriff had just brought himself to a virtual admission that he had been in the wrong.

"I was going to say," remarked Tom, "that, in case you catch Jim McFann, perhaps the best thing would be for you to sort o' close-herd him at the agency jail here until time for trial."

Lowell looked at the sheriff inquiringly.

"I'll admit that I've been sort of clamoring for you to let me bring a big posse over here and round up McFann in a hurry. Well, I don't believe that scheme would work."

"I'm glad we agree on that point."

"You've been taking the ground that unless we brought a lot of men over, we couldn't do any better than the Injun police in the matter of catching this half-breed. Also you've said that if we did bring a small army of cattlemen, it would only be a lynching party, and Jim McFann'd never live to reach the jail at White Lodge."

"I don't think anything could stop a lynching."

"Well, I believe you're right. The boys have been riding me, stronger and stronger, to get up a posse and come over here. In fact, they got so strong that I suspected they had something up their sleeves. When I sort o' backed up on the proposition, a lot of them began pulling wires at Washington, so's to make you get orders that'd let us come on the reservation and get both of these men."

"I know it," said Lowell, "but they've found they can't make any headway, even with their own Congressmen, because Judge Garford's stand is too well known. He's let everybody know that he's against anything that may bring about a lynching. So far as the Department is concerned, I've put matters squarely up to it and have been advised to use my own judgment."

"Well, I never seen people so wrought up, and I'm free to admit now that if Jim McFann hadn't broke jail he'd have been lynched on the very day that he made his getaway. The only question is—do you think you can get him before the trial, and are you sure the Injun'll come in?"

"I'm not sure of anything, of course," replied Lowell, "but I've staked everything on Fire Bear making good his word. If he doesn't, I'm ready to quit the country. McFann's a different proposition. He has been too clever for the police, but I have rather hesitated about having Plenty Buffalo risk the lives of his men, because I have had a feeling that McFann might be reached in a different way. I'm sure he's been getting supplies from the man who has been using him in bootlegging operations."

"You mean Talpers?"

"Yes. If McFann is mixed up in anything, from bootlegging to bigger crimes, he is only a tool. He can be a dangerous tool—that's admitted—but I'd like to gather in the fellow who does the planning."

"By golly! I wish I had you working with me on this murder case," said Redmond, in a burst of confidence. "I'll admit I never had anything stump me the way this case has. I'm bringing up against a blank wall at every turn."

"Haven't you found out anything new about Sargent?"

"Not a thing worth while. He lived alone—had lots of money that he made by inventing mining machinery."

"Any relatives?"

"None that we can find out about."

"Have you learned anything through his bank?"

"He had plenty of money on deposit; that's all."

"Did he have any lawyers?"

"Not that we've heard from."

"Does any one know why he came on this trip?"

"No; but he was in the habit of making long jaunts alone through the West."

"What sort of a home did he have?"

"A big house in the suburbs. Lived there alone with two servants. They haven't been able to tell a thing about him that's worth a cuss."

"Would anything about his home indicate what sort of a man he was?"

"The detectives wrote something about his having a lot of Indian things—Navajo blankets and such."

"Indians may have been his hobby. Perhaps he intended to visit this reservation."

"If that was so, why should he drive through the agency at night and be killed going away from the reservation? No, he was going somewhere in a hurry or he wouldn't have traveled at night."

"But automobile tourists sometimes travel that way."

"Not in this part of the country. In the Southwest, perhaps, to avoid the heat of the day."

"Well, what do you think about it all, Tom?"

"That this feller was a pilgrim, going somewhere in a hurry. He was held up by some of your young bucks who were off the reservation and feeling a little too full of life for their own good. A touch of bootleg whiskey might have set them going. Mebbe that's where Jim McFann came in. They might have killed the man when he resisted. The staking-out was probably an afterthought—a piece of Injun or half-breed devilment."

"How about the sawed-off shotgun? I doubt if there's one on the reservation."

"Probably that was Sargent's own weapon. He had traveled in the West a good many years. Mebbe he had used sawed-off shotguns as an express messenger or something of the sort in early days. It's a fact that there ain't any handier weapon of deefense than a sawed-off shotgun, no matter what kind of a wheeled outfit you're traveling in."

"It's all reasonable enough, Tom," said Lowell reflectively. "It may work out just as you have figured, but frankly I don't believe the Indians and McFann are in it quite as far as you think."

"Well, if they didn't do it, who could have? You've been over the ground more than any one else. Have you found anything to hang a whisper of suspicion on?"

Lowell shook his head.

"Nothing to talk about, but there are some things, indefinite enough, perhaps, that make me hesitate about believing the Indians to be guilty."

"How about McFann? He's got the nerve, all right."

"Yes, McFann would kill if it came to a showdown. There's enough Indian in him, too, to explain the staking-down."

"He admits he was on the scene of the murder."

"Yes, and his admission strengthens me in the belief that he's telling the truth, or at least that he had no part in the actual killing. If he were guilty, he'd deny being within miles of the spot."

"Mebbe you're right," said the sheriff, rising and turning his hat in his hand and methodically prodding new and geometrically perfect indentations in its high crown, "but you've got a strong popular opinion to buck. Most people believe them Injuns and the breed have a guilty knowledge of the murder."

"When you get twelve men in the jury box saying the same thing," replied Lowell, "that's going to settle it. But until then I'm considering the case open."

* * * * *

Jim McFann's camp was in the loneliest of many lonely draws in the sage-gray uplands where the foothills and plains meet. It was not a camp that would appeal to the luxury-loving. In fact, one might almost fall over it in the brush before knowing that a camp was there. A "tarp" bed was spread on the hard, sun-cracked soil. A saddle was near by. There was a frying-pan or two at the edge of a dead fire. A pack-animal and saddle horse stood disconsolately in the greasewood, getting what slender grazing was available, but not being allowed to wander far. It was the camp of one who "traveled light" and was ready to go at an instant's notice.

So well hidden was the half-breed that, in spite of explicit directions that had been given by Bill Talpers, Andy Wolters had a difficult time in finding the camp. Talpers had sent Andy as his emissary, bearing grub and tobacco and a bottle of whiskey to the half-breed. Andy had turned and twisted most of the morning in the monotony of sage. Song had died upon his lips as the sun had beaten upon him with all its unclouded vigor.

Andy did not know it, but for an hour he had been under the scrutiny of the half-breed, who had been quick to descry the horseman moving through the brush. McFann had been expecting Talpers, and he was none too pleased to find that the trader had sent the gossiping cowpuncher in his stead. Andy, being one of those ingenuous souls who never can catch the undercurrents of life, rattled on, all unconscious of the effect of light words, lightly flung.

"You dig the grub and other stuff out o' that pack," said Andy, "while I hunt an inch or two of shade and cool my brow. When it comes to makin' a success of hidin' out in the brush, you can beat one of them renegade steers that we miss every round-up. I guess you ain't heard about the robbery that's happened in our metropolis of Talpersville, have you?"

The half-breed grunted a negative.

"Of course not, seein' as you ain't gettin' the daily paper out here. Well, an expert safe-buster rode Bill Talpers's iron treasure-chest to a frazzle the other night. Took valuable papers that Bill's all fussed up about, but dropped a wad of bills, big enough to choke one of them prehistoric bronks that used to romp around in these hills."

McFann looked up scowlingly from his task of estimating the amount of grub that had been sent.

"Seems to me," went on Andy, "that if I got back my money, I wouldn't give a durn about papers—not unless they was papers that established my rights as the long-lost heir of some feller with about twenty million dollars. That roll had a thousand-dollar bill wrapped around the outside."

The half-breed straightened up.

"How do you know there was a thousand-dollar bill in that roll?" he demanded, with an intensity that surprised the cowboy.

"Bill told me so himself. He had took a few snifters, and was feelin' melancholy over them papers, and I tried to cheer him up by tellin' him jest what I've told you, that as long as I had my roll back, I wouldn't care about all the hen-tracks that spoiled nice white paper. He chirked up a bit at that, and got confidential and told me about this thousand-dollar bill. They say it ain't the only one he had. The story is that he sprung one on an Injun the other day in payment for a bunch o' steers. There must be lots more profit in prunes and shawls and the other things that Bill handles than most people have been thinkin', with thousand-dollar bills comin' so easy."

The half-breed was listening intently now. He had ceased his work about the camp, and was standing, with hands clenched and head thrust forward, eyeing Andy so narrowly that the cowboy paused in his narrative.

"What's the matter, Jim?" he asked; "Bill didn't take any of them thousand-dollar things from you, did he?"

"Mebbe not, and mebbe so," enigmatically answered the half-breed. "Go on and tell me the rest."

When he had completed his story of the robbery at Talpers's store, Andy tilted his enormous sombrero over his eyes, and, leaning back in the shade, fell asleep. The half-breed worked silently about the camp, occasionally going to a near-by knoll and looking about for some sign of life in the sagebrush. He made some biscuits and coffee and fried some bacon, after which he touched Andy none too gently with his moccasined foot and told the cowboy to sit up and eat something.

After one or two ineffectual efforts to start conversation, the visitor gave up in disgust. The meal was eaten in silence. Even the obtuse Andy sensed that something was wrong, and made no effort to rouse the half-breed, who ate grimly and immediately busied himself with the dish-washing as soon as the meal was over. Andy soon took his departure, the half-breed directing him to a route that would lessen the chances of his discovery by the Indian police.

After Andy had gone the half-breed turned his attention to the bottle which had been sent by Talpers. He visited the knoll occasionally, but nothing alive could be discerned in the great wastes of sage. When the shadows deepened and the chill of evening came down from the high altitudes of the near-by peaks, McFann staked out his ponies in better grazing ground. Then he built a small camp-fire, and, sitting cross-legged in the light, he smoked and drank, and meditated upon the perfidy of Bill Talpers.

McFann was astir at dawn, and there was determination in every move as he brought in the horses and began to break camp.

The half-breed owned a ranch which had come down to him from his Indian mother. Shrewdly suspecting that the police had ceased watching the ranch, Jim made his way homeward. His place was located in the bottom-land along a small creek. There was a shack on it, but no attempt at cultivation. As he looked the place over, Jim's thoughts became more bitter than ever. If he had farmed this land, the way the agent wanted him to, he could have been independent by now, but instead of that he had listened to Talpers's blandishments and now had been thrown down by his professed friend!

Jim took off his pack and threw his camping equipment inside the shack. Then he turned his pack-animal into the wild hay in the pasture he had fenced off in the creek bottom. He had some other live stock roaming around in the little valley—enough steers and horses to make a beginning toward a comfortable independence, if he had only had sense enough to start in that way. Also there was good soil on the upland. He could run a ditch from the creek to the nearest mesa, where the land was red and sandy and would raise anything. The reservation agriculturist had been along and had shown him just how the trick could be done, but Bill Talpers's bootlegging schemes looked a lot better then!

The half-breed slammed his shack door shut and rode away with his greasy hat-brim pulled well over his eyes. He paid little attention to the demands he was making on horseflesh, and he rode openly across the country. If the Indian police saw him, he could outdistance them. The thing that he had set out to do could be done quickly. After that, nothing mattered much.

Skirting the ridge on which Helen and Lowell had stood, Jim made a detour as he approached the reservation line and avoided the Greek Letter Ranch. He swung into the road well above the ranch, and, breasting the hill where the murder had taken place on the Dollar Sign, he galloped down the slope toward Talpers's store.

The trader was alone in his store when the half-breed entered. Talpers had seen McFann coming, some distance down the road. Something in the half-breed's bearing in the saddle, or perhaps it was some inner stir of guilty fear, made Talpers half-draw his revolver. Then he thrust it back into its holster, and, swinging around in his chair, awaited his partner's arrival. He even attempted a jaunty greeting.

"Hello, Jim," he called, as the half-breed's lithe figure swung in through the outer doorway; "ain't you even a little afraid of the Injun police?"

McFann did not answer, but flung open the door into Bill's sanctum. It was no unusual thing for the men to confer there, and two or three Indians on the front porch did not even turn their heads to see what was going on inside. Talpers's clerk was out and Andy Wolters had just departed, after reporting to the trader that the half-breed had seemed "plumb uneasy out there in the brush." Andy had not told Bill the cause of McFann's uneasiness, but on that point the trader was soon to be enlightened.

"Bill," said the half-breed purringly, "I hear you've been having your safe cracked."

Something in the half-breed's voice made the trader wish he had not shoved back that revolver. It would not do to reach for it now. McFann's hands were empty, but he was lightning in getting them to his guns.

The trader's lips seemed more than usually dry and cracked. His voice wheezed at the first word, as he answered.

"Yes, Jim, I was robbed," he said. Then he added, propitiatingly: "But I've got a new safe. Ain't she a beauty?"

"She sure is," replied McFann, though he did not take his eyes off Talpers. "Got your name on, and everything. Let's open her up, and see what a real safe looks like inside."

Talpers turned without question and began fumbling at the combination. His hands trembled, and once he dropped them at his side. As he did so McFann's hands moved almost imperceptibly. Their movement was toward the half-breed's hips, and Talpers brought his own hands quickly back to the combination. The tumblers fell, and the trader swung the door open.

"Purtier 'n a new pair of boots," approved the half-breed, as a brave array of books and inner drawers came in view. "Now them inside boxes. The one with the thousand-dollar bill in it."

"Why, what's gittin' into you, Jim?" almost whined Talpers. "You know I ain't got any thousand-dollar bill."

"Don't lie to me," snapped the half-breed, a harsh note coming into his voice. "You've made your talk about a thousand-dollar bill. I want to see it—that's all."

Slowly Talpers unlocked the inner strong box and took therefrom a roll of money.

"There it is," he said, handing it to McFann. A thousand-dollar bill was on the outside of the roll.

"I ain't going to ask where you got that," said McFann steadily, "because you'd lie to me. But I know. You took it from that man on the hill. You told me you'd jest found him there when I come on you prowling around his body. You said you didn't take anything from him, and I was fool enough to believe you. But you didn't get these thousand-dollar bills anywhere else. You double-crossed me, and if things got too warm for you, you was going to saw everything off on me. Easy enough when I was hiding out there in the sagebrush, living on what you wanted to send out to me. I've done all this bootlegging work for you, and I covered up for you in court, about this murder, all because I thought you was on the square. And all the time you had took your pickings from this man on the hill and had fooled me into thinking you didn't find a thing on him. Here's the money, Bill. I wouldn't take it away from you. Lock it in your safe again—if you can!"

The half-breed flung the roll of bills in Talpers's face. The trader, made desperate by fear, flung himself toward McFann. If he could pinion the half-breed's arms to his side, there could be but one outcome to the struggle that had been launched. The trader's great weight and grizzly-like strength would be too much for the wiry half-breed to overcome. But McFann slipped easily away from Talpers's clutching hands. The trader brought up against the mailing desk with a crash that shook the entire building. The heat of combat warmed his chilled veins. Courage returned to him with a rush. He roared oaths as he righted himself and dragged his revolver from the holster on his hip.

Before the trader's gun could be brought to a shooting level, paralysis seemed to seize his arm. Fire seared his side and unbearable pain radiated therefrom. Only the fighting man's instinct kept him on his feet. His knees sagged and his arm drooped slowly, despite his desperate endeavors to raise that blue-steel weapon to its target. He saw the half-breed, smiling and defiant, not three paces away, but seemingly in another world. There was a revolver in McFann's hand, and faint tendrils of smoke came from the weapon.

Grimly setting his jaws and with his lips parted in a mirthless grin, Talpers crossed his left hand to his right. With both hands he tried to raise the revolver, but it only sank lower. His knees gave way and he slid to the floor, his back to his new safe and his swarthy skin showing a pale yellow behind his sparse, curling black beard.

"Put the money away, Bill, put it away, quick," said McFann's mocking voice. "There it is, under your knee. You sold out your pardner for it—now hide it in your new safe!"

Talpers's cracked lips formed no reply, but his little black eyes glowed balefully behind their dark, lowering brows.

"You're good at shooting down harmless Indians, Bill," jeered McFann, "but you're too slow in a real fight. Any word you want to send to the Indian agent? I'm going to tell him I believe you did the murder on the Dollar Sign road."

A last flare of rage caused Talpers to straighten up. Then the paralysis came again, stronger than before. The revolver slipped from the trader's grasp, and his head sank forward until his chin rested on his broad chest.

McFann looked contemptuously at the great figure, helpless in death. Then he lighted a cigarette, and, laughing at the terror of the Indians, who had been peeping in the window at the last of the tragedy, the half-breed walked out of the store, and, mounting his horse, rode to the agency and gave himself up to Lowell.



CHAPTER XIV

Lowell consulted with Judge Garford and Sheriff Tom Redmond, and it was decided to keep Jim McFann in jail at the agency until time for his trial for complicity in the first murder on the Dollar Sign road.

Sheriff Redmond admitted that, owing to the uncertainty of public sentiment, he could not guarantee the half-breed's safety if McFann were lodged in the county jail. Consequently the slayer of Bill Talpers remained in jail at the agency, under a strong guard of Indian police, supplemented by trustworthy deputies sent over by Redmond.

The killing of Talpers was the excuse for another series of attacks on Lowell by the White Lodge paper. Said the editor:

The murder of our esteemed neighbor, William Talpers, by James McFann, a half-breed, is another evidence of the necessity of opening the reservation to white settlement.

This second murder on the Dollar Sign road is not a mystery. Its perpetrator was seen at this bloody work. Furthermore, he is understood to have coolly confessed his crime. But, like the first murder, which is still shrouded in mystery, this was a crime which found its inception on the Indian reservation. Are white residents adjacent to the reservation to have their lives snuffed out at the pleasure of Government wards and reservation offscourings in general? Has not the time come when the broad acres of the Indian reservation, which the redskins are doing little with, should be thrown open to the plough of the white man?

"'Plough of the white man' is good," cynically observed Ed Rogers, after calling Lowell's attention to the article. "If those cattlemen ever get the reservation opened, they'll keep the nesters out for the next forty years, if they have to kill a homesteader for every hundred and sixty acres. So far as Bill Talpers's killing is concerned, I can't see but what it is looked upon as a good thing for the peace of the community."

It seemed to be a fact that Jim McFann's act had appealed irresistibly to a large element. Youthful cowpunchers rode for miles and waited about the agency for a glimpse of the gun-fighter who had slain the redoubtable Bill Talpers in such a manner. None of them could get near the jail, but they stood in picturesque groups about the agency, listening to the talk of Andy Wolters and others who had been on more or less intimate terms with the principals in the affair.

"And there was me a-snoozin' in that breed's camp the very day before he done this shootin'," said Andy to an appreciative circle. "He must have had this thing stewin' in his head at the time. It's a wonder he didn't throw down on me, jest for a little target practice. But I guess he figgered he didn't need no practice to get Bill Talpers, and judgin' from the way things worked out, his figgerin' was right. Some artist with the little smoke machine, that boy, 'cause Bill Talpers wasn't no slouch at shootin'! I remember seein' Bill shoot the head off a rattlesnake at the side of the road, jest casual-like, and when it come to producin' the hardware he was some quick for a big man. He more than met his match this time, old Bill did. And, by gosh! you can bet that nobody after this ever sends me out to any dry camps in the brush to take supplies to any gunman who may be hid out there. Next time I might snooze and never wake up."

All was not adulation for Jim McFann. Because of the Indian strain in his blood a minor undercurrent of prejudice had set in against him, more particularly among the white settlers and the cattlemen who were casting covetous eyes on reservation lands. While McFann was not strictly a ward of the Government, he had land on the reservation. His lot was cast with the Indians, chiefly because he found few white men who would associate with him on account of his Indian blood. Talpers was not loved, but the killing of any white man by some one of Indian ancestry was something to fan resentment without regard to facts. Bets were made that McFann would not live to be tried on the second homicide charge against him, many holding the opinion that he would be hanged, with Fire Bear, for the first murder. Also wagers were freely made that Fire Bear would not be produced in court by the Indian agent, and that it would be necessary to send a force of officers to get the accused Indian.

Lowell apparently paid no attention to the rumors that were flying about. A mass of reservation detail had accumulated, and he worked hard to get it out of the way before the trial. He had made changes in the boarding-school system, and had established an experimental farm at the agency. He had supervised the purchase of livestock for the improvement of the tribal flocks and herds. In addition there had been the personal demands that shower incessantly upon every Indian agent who is interested in his work.

Reports from the reservation agriculturists, whose work was to help the Indians along farming lines, were not encouraging. Drought was continuing without abatement.

"The last rain fell the day before the murder on the Dollar Sign road," said Rogers. "Remember how we splashed through mud the day we ran out there and found that man staked down on the prairie?"

"And now the Indians are saying that the continued drought is due to Fire Bear's medicine," observed Lowell. "Even some of the more conservative Indians believe there is no use trying to raise crops until the charge against Fire Bear is dismissed and the evil spell is lifted."

In spite of the details of reservation management that crowded upon him, Lowell found time for occasional visits to the Greek Letter Ranch to see Helen Ervin. He told her the details of the Talpers shooting, so far as he knew them.

"There isn't much that I can tell about the cause of the shooting," said Lowell, in answer to one of her questions. "I could have had all the details, but I cautioned Jim McFann to say nothing in advance of his trial. But from what I have gathered here and there, Jim and Talpers fell out over money matters. A thousand-dollar bill was found on the floor under Talpers's body. It had evidently been taken from the safe, and might have been what they fought over."

Helen nodded in comprehension of the whole affair, though she did not tell Lowell that he had made it clear to her. She guessed that in some way Jim McFann had come into possession of the facts of his partner's perfidy. She wondered how the half-breed had found out that Talpers had taken money from the murdered man and had not divided. She had held that knowledge over Talpers's head as a club. She could see that he feared McFann, and she wondered if, in his last moments, Talpers had wrongfully blamed her for giving the half-breed the information which turned him into a slayer.

"Anyway, it doesn't make much difference what the fight was over," declared Lowell. "Talpers had been playing a double game for a long time. He tried just once too often to cheat his partner—something dangerous when that partner is a fiery-tempered half-breed."

"Is this shooting of Talpers going to have any effect on McFann's trial for the other murder?" asked Helen.

"It may inflame popular sentiment against both men still further—something that never seems to be difficult where Indians are concerned."

Lowell tried in vain to lead the talk away from the trial.

"Look here," he exclaimed finally, "you're worrying yourself unnecessarily over this! I don't believe you're getting much of any sleep, and I'll bet Wong will testify that you are eating very little. You mustn't let matters weigh on your mind so. Talpers is gone, and you have the letter that was in his safe and that he used as a means of worrying you. Your stepfather is getting better right along—so much so that you can leave here at any time. Pretty soon you'll have this place of tragedy off your mind and you'll forget all about the Indian reservation and everything it contains. But until that time comes, I prescribe an automobile ride for you every day. Some of the roads around here will make it certain that you will be well shaken before the prescription is taken."

Lowell regretted his light words as soon as he had uttered them.

"This trial is my whole life," declared the girl solemnly. "If those men are convicted, there can never be another day of happiness for me!"

* * * * *

On the morning set for the opening of the trial, Lowell left his automobile in front of his residence while he ate breakfast. To all appearances there was nothing unusual about this breakfast. It was served at the customary time and in the customary way. Apparently the young Indian agent was interested only in the meal and in some letters which had been sent over from the office, but finally he looked up and smiled at the uneasiness of his housekeeper, who had cast frequent glances out of the window.

"What is it, Mrs. Ruel?" asked Lowell.

"The Indian—Fire Bear. Has he come?"

"Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it? Well, don't let it do so any more. He will be here all right."

Mrs. Ruel looked doubtful as she trotted to the kitchen. Returning, she stood in the window, a steaming coffee-pot in her hands.

"Tell me what you see, Sister Annie," said Lowell smilingly.

"Nawthin' but the kids assemblin' for school. There's old Pete, the blacksmith, purtendin' to be lookin' your machine over, when he's just come to rubber the way I am, f'r that red divvle. They're afraid, most of the agency folks, that Fire Bear won't show up. I wouldn't take an Injun's word f'r annythin' myself—me that lost an uncle in the Fetterman massacree. You're too good to 'em, Mister Lowell. You should have yanked this Fire Bear here in handcuffs—him and McFann together."

"Your coffee is fine—and I'll be obliged if you'll pour me some—but your philosophy is that of the dark ages, Mrs. Ruel. Thanks. Now tell me what traveler approaches on the king's highway."

Mrs. Ruel trotted to the window, with the coffee-pot still in her hands.

"It's some one of them educated loafers that's always hangin' around the trader's store. I c'n tell by the hang of the mail-order suit. No, it ain't! He's climbin' off his pony, and now he's jumped into the back of your automobile, and is settin' there, bold as brass, smokin' a cigarette. It's Fire Bear himself!"

"I thought so," observed Lowell. "Now another cup of coffee, please, and a little more of that toast, and we'll be off to the trial."

Mrs. Ruel returned to the kitchen, declaring that it really didn't prove anything in general, because no other agent could make them redskins do the things that Mister Lowell hypnotized 'em into doin'.

Lowell finished his breakfast and climbed into his automobile, after a few words with Fire Bear. The young Indian had started the day before from his camp in the rocks. He had traveled alone, and had not rested until he reached the agency. Lowell knew there would be much dancing in the Indian camp until the trial was over.

Driving to the agency jail, Lowell had McFann brought out. The half-breed, unmanacled and without a guard, sat beside Fire Bear in the back seat. Lowell decided to take no policemen from the reservation. He was certain that Fire Bear and McFann would not try to escape from him. The presence of Indian policemen might serve only to fan the very uncertain public sentiment into disastrous flames.

White Lodge was crowded with cattlemen and homesteaders and their families, who had come to attend the trial. A public holiday was made of the occasion, and White Lodge had not seen such a crowd since the annual bronco-busting carnival.

As he drove through the streets, Lowell was conscious of a change in public feeling. The prisoners in the automobile were eyed curiously, but without hatred. In fact, Jim McFann's killing of Talpers, which had been given all sorts of dramatic renditions at camp-fires and firesides, had raised that worthy to the rank of hero in the eyes of the majority. Also the coming of Fire Bear, as he had promised, sent up the Indian's stock. As Lowell took his men to the court-room he saw bets paid over by men who had wagered that Fire Bear would not keep his word and that he would have to be brought to the court-room by force.

The court-house yard could not hold the overflow of spectators from the court-room. The crowd was orderly, though there was a tremendous craning of necks when the prisoners were brought in, to see the man who had killed so redoubtable a gunman as Bill Talpers. Getting a jury was merely a matter of form, as no challenges were made. The trial opened with Fire Bear on the stand.

The young Indian added nothing to the testimony he had given at his preliminary hearing. He told, briefly, how he and his followers had found the body beside the Dollar Sign road. The prosecuting attorney was quick to sense a difference in the way the Indian's story was received. When he had first told it, disbelief was evident. Today it seemed to be impressing crowd and jury as the truth.

The same sentiment seemed to be even more pronounced when Jim McFann took the stand, after Fire Bear's brief testimony was concluded without cross-examination. Audience and jury sat erect. Word was passed out to the crowd that the half-breed was testifying. In the court-room there was such a stir that the bailiff was forced to rap for order.

The prosecuting attorney, seeing the case slipping away from him, was moved to frantic denunciations. He challenged McFann's every statement.

"You claim that you had lost your lariat and were looking for it. Also that you came upon this dead body, with your rope used to fasten the murdered man to stakes that had been driven into the prairie?" sneered the attorney.

"Yes;" said McFann.

"And you claim that you were frightened away by the arrival of Fire Bear and his Indians before you had a chance to remove the rope?"

"Yes; but I want to add something to that statement," said the half-breed.

"All right—what is it?"

"There was another man by the body when I came there looking for my rope."

"Who was that man?"

"Talpers."

A thrill ran through the court-room as the half-breed went on and described how he had found the trader stooping over the murdered man, and how Talpers had shown him a watch which he had taken from the victim, but claimed that was all the valuables that had been found. Also he described how Talpers had prevailed upon him to keep the trader's presence a secret, which McFann had done in his previous testimony.

"Why do you come in with this story, at this late day?" asked the attorney.

"Because Talpers was lying to me all the time. He had taken money from that man—some of it in thousand-dollar bills. I did not care for the money. It was just that this man had lied to me, after I had done all his bootlegging work. He was playing safe at my expense. If it had been found that the dead man was robbed, he was ready to lay the blame on me. When I heard of the money he had hidden, I knew the game he had played. I walked in on him, and made him take the dead man's money from his safe. I threw the money in his face and dared him to fight. When he tried to shoot me, I killed him. It was better that he should die. I don't care what you do with me, but how are you going to hang Fire Bear or hang me for being near that body, when Bill Talpers was there first?"

Jim McFann's testimony remained unshaken. Cast doubt upon it as he would, the prosecuting attorney saw that the half-breed's new testimony had given an entirely new direction to the trial. He ceased trying to stem the tide and let the case go to the jury.

The crowd filed out, but waited around the court-house for the verdict. The irrepressible cowpunchers, who had a habit of laying wagers on anything and everything, made bets as to the number of minutes the jury would be out.

"Whichever way it goes, it'll be over in a hurry," said Tom Redmond to Lowell, "but hanged if I don't believe your men are as good as free this minute. Talpers's friends have been trying to stir up a lot of sentiment against Jim McFann, but it has worked the other way. The hull county seems to think right now that McFann done the right sort of a job, and that Talpers was not only a bootlegger, but was not above murder, and was the man who committed that crime on the Dollar Sign road. Of course, if Talpers done it, Fire Bear couldn't have. Furthermore, this young Injun has made an awful hit by givin' himself up for trial the way he has. To tell you the truth, I didn't think he'd show up."

Lowell escaped as soon as he could from the excited sheriff and sought Helen Ervin, whom he had seen in the court-room.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come to get you, on account of having to bring in the prisoners," said Lowell, "but I imagine this is the last ride to White Lodge you will have to take. The jury is going to decide quickly—or such is the general feeling."

Lowell had hardly spoken when a shout from the crowd on the court-house steps announced to the others that the jury had come in.

Lowell and Helen found places in the court-room. Judge Garford had not left his chambers. As soon as the crowd had settled down, the foreman announced the verdict.

"Not guilty!" was the word that was passed to those outside the building. There was a slight ripple of applause in the court-room which the bailiff's gavel checked. Lowell could not help but smile bitterly as he thought of the different sentiment at the close of the preliminary hearing, such a short time before. He wondered if the same thought had come to Judge Garford. But if the aged jurist had made any comparisons, they were not reflected in his benign features. A lifetime among scenes of turbulence, and watching justice gain steady ascendancy over frontier lawlessness, had made the judge indifferent to the manifestations of the moment.

"It's just as though we were a lot of jumping-jacks," thought Lowell, "and while we're doing all sorts of crazy things, the judge is looking far back behind the scenes studying the forces that are making us go. And he must be satisfied with what he sees or our illogical actions wouldn't worry him so little."

Fire Bear and McFann took the verdict with customary calm. The Indian was released from custody and took his place in Lowell's automobile. The half-breed was remanded to jail for trial for the Talpers slaying. Lowell, after saying good-bye to the half-breed, lost no time in starting for the agency. On the way he caught up with Helen, who was riding leisurely homeward. As he stopped the machine she reined up her horse beside him and extended her hand in congratulation.

"You're not the only one who is glad of the acquittal," she exclaimed. "I am glad—oh, I cannot tell you how much!"

Lowell noticed that her expression of girlishness had returned. The shadow which had fallen upon her seemed to have been lifted miraculously.

"Wasn't it strange the way things turned out?" she went on. "A little while ago every one seemed to believe these men were guilty, and now there's not a one who doesn't seem to think that Talpers did it."

"There's one who doesn't subscribe to the general belief," answered Lowell.

"What do you mean?"

Lowell was conscious that she was watching him narrowly.

"I mean that I don't believe Bill Talpers had anything to do with murdering that man on the Dollar Sign road!"



CHAPTER XV

"There's one thing sure in all cases of crime: If people would only depend more on Nature and less on themselves, they'd get results sooner."

Lowell and his chief clerk were finishing one of their regular evening discussions of the crime which most people were forgetting, but which still occupied the Indian agent's mind to the complete exclusion of all reservation business.

"What do you mean?" asked Rogers, from behind smoke clouds.

"Just the fact that, if we can only find it, Nature has tagged every crime in a way that makes it possible to get an answer."

"But there are lots of crimes in which no manifestation of Nature is possible."

"Not a one. What are finger-prints but manifestations of Nature? And yet for ages we couldn't see the sign that Nature hung out for us. No doubt we're just as obtuse about a lot of things that will be just as simple and just as plain when their meaning is finally driven home."

"But Nature hasn't given a hint about that Dollar Sign road crime. Yet it took place outdoors, right in Nature's haunts."

"You simply mean that we haven't been able to comprehend Nature's signals."

"But you've been over the ground a dozen times, haven't you?"

"Fifty times—but all that merely proves what I contend. If I go over that ground one hundred times, and don't find anything, what does it prove? Merely that I am ninety-nine times stupider than I should be. I should get the answer the first time over."

Rogers laughed.

"I prefer the most comfortable theory. I've settled down in the popular belief that Bill Talpers did the killing. Think how easy that makes it for me—and the chances are that I'm right at that."

"You are hopeless, Ed! But remember, if this thing goes unsolved it will only be because we haven't progressed beyond the first-reader stage in interpreting what Mother Nature has to teach us."

For several days following the acquittal of Fire Bear and McFann, Lowell had worked almost unceasingly in the hope of getting new evidence in the case which nearly everybody else seemed willing to forget. A similar persistency had marked Lowell's career as a newspaper reporter. He had turned up several sensations when rival newspaper men had abandoned certain cases as hopeless so far as new thrills were concerned.

Lowell had not exaggerated when he told Rogers he had gone over the scene of the murder fifty times. He had not gone into details with his clerk. Rogers would have been surprised to know that his chief had even blocked out the scene of the murder in squares like a checkerboard. Each one of these squares had been examined, slowly and painfully. The net result had been some loose change which undoubtedly had been dropped by Talpers in robbing the murdered man; an eagle feather, probably dropped from a coup stick which some one of Fire Bear's followers had borrowed from an elder; a flint arrowhead of great antiquity, and a belt buckle and some moccasin beads.

Far from being discouraged at the unsuccessful outcome of his checkerboarding plan, Lowell took his automobile, on the morning following his talk with Rogers, and again visited the scene of the crime.

For six weeks the hill had been bathed daily in sunshine. The drought, which the Indians had ascribed to evil spirits called down by Fire Bear, had continued unbroken. The mud-holes in the road, through which Lowell had plunged to the scene of the murder when he had first heard of the crime, had been churned to dust. Lowell noticed that an old buffalo wallow at the side of the road was still caked in irregular formations which resembled the markings of alligator hide. The first hot winds would cause these cakes of mud to disintegrate, but the weather had been calm, and they had remained just as they had dried.

As he glanced about him at the peaceful panorama, it occurred to the agent that perhaps too much attention had been centered upon the exact spot of the murder. Yet, it seemed reasonable enough to suppose, no murderer would possibly lie in wait for a victim in such an open spot. If the murder had been deliberately planned, as Lowell believed, and if the victim's approach were known, there could have been no waiting here on the part of the murderer.

Getting into his automobile, Lowell drove carefully up the hill, studying both sides of the road as he went. Several hundred yards from the scene of the murder, he found a clump of giant sagebrush and greasewood, close to the road. Lowell entered the clump and found that from its eastern side he could command a good view of the Dollar Sign road for miles. Here a man and horse might remain hidden until a traveler, coming up the hill, was almost within hailing distance. The brush had grown in a circle, leaving a considerable hollow which was devoid of vegetation. Examining this hollow closely, Lowell paused suddenly and uttered a low ejaculation. Then he walked slowly to his automobile and drove in the direction of the Greek Letter Ranch.

When he arrived at the ranch house Lowell was relieved to find that Helen was not at home. Wong, who opened the door a scant six inches, told him she had taken the white horse and gone for a ride.

"Well, tell Mister Willis Morgan I want to see him," said Lowell.

Wong was much alarmed. Mister Morgan could not be seen. The Chinese combination of words for "impossible" was marshaled in behalf of Wong's employer.

Lowell, putting his shoulder against the Greek letter brand which was burnt in the panel, pushed the door open and stepped into the room which served as a library.

"Now tell Mister Morgan I wish to see him, Wong," said the agent firmly.

The door to the adjoining room opened, and Lowell faced the questioning gaze of a gray-haired man who might have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty. One hand was in the pocket of a velvet smoking-jacket, and the other held a pipe. The man's eyes were dark and deeply set. They did not seem to Lowell to be the contemplative eyes of the scholar, but rather to belong to a man of decisive action—one whose interests might be in building bridges or tunnels, but whose activities were always concerned with material things. His face was lean and bronzed—the face of a man who lived much in the outdoors. His nose was aquiline, and his lips, though thin and firm, were not unkindly. In fact, here was a man who, in the class-room, might be given to quips with his students, rather than to sternness. Yet this was the man of whom it was said.... Lowell's face grew stern as the long list of indictments against Willis Morgan, recluse and "squaw professor," came to his mind.

The gray-haired man sat down at the table, and Lowell, in response to a wave of the hand that held the pipe, drew up opposite.

"You and I have been living pretty close together a long time," said Lowell bluntly, "and if we'd been a little more neighborly, this call might not be so difficult in some ways."

"My fault entirely." Again the hand waved—this time toward the ceiling-high shelves of books. "Library slavery makes a man selfish, I'll admit."

The voice was cold and hard. It was such a voice that had extended a mocking welcome to Helen Ervin when she had stood hesitatingly on the threshold of the Greek Letter Ranch-house. Lowell sneered openly.

"You haven't always been so tied up to your books that you couldn't get out," he said. "I want to take you back to a little horseback ride which you took just six weeks ago."

"I don't remember such a trip."

"You will remember it, as I particularize."

"Very well. You are beginning to interest me."

"You rode from here to the top of the hill on the Dollar Sign road. Do you remember?"

"What odds if I say yes or no? Go on. I want to hear the rest of this story."

"When you reached a clump of tall sage and grease wood, not far below the crest of the hill, you entered it and remained hidden. You had a considerable time to wait, but you were patient—very patient. You knew the man you wanted to meet was somewhere on the road—coming toward you. From the clump of bushes you commanded a view of the Dollar Sign road for miles. As I say, it was long and tedious waiting. It had rained in the night. The sun came out, strong and warm, and the atmosphere was moist. Your horse, that old white horse which has been on the ranch so many years, was impatiently fighting flies. Though you are not any kinder to horseflesh than you are to human beings who come within your blighting influence, you took the saddle off the animal. Perhaps the horse had caught his foot in a stirrup as he kicked at a buzzing fly."

The keen, strong features into which Lowell gazed were mask-like in their impassiveness.

"Soon you saw something approaching on the road over the prairie," went on the agent. "It must be the automobile driven by the man you had come to meet. You saddled quickly and rode out of the sagebrush. You met the man in the automobile as he was climbing the hill. He stopped and you talked with him. You had violent words, and then you shot him with a sawed-off shotgun which you had carried for that purpose. You killed the man, and then, to throw suspicion on others, conceived the idea of staking him down to the prairie. It would look like an Indian trick. Besides, you knew that there had been some trouble on the reservation with Indians who were dancing and generally inclined to oppose Government regulations. You had found a rope which had been dropped on the road by the half-breed, Jim McFann. You took that rope from your saddle and cut it in four pieces and tied the man's hands and wrists to his own tent-stakes, which you found in his automobile.

"Your plans worked out well. It was a lonely country and comparatively early in the day. There was nobody to disturb you at your work. Apparently you had thought of every detail. You had left a few tracks, and these you obliterated carefully. You knew you would hardly be suspected unless something led the world to your door. You had been a recluse for years, hated by white men and feared by red. Few had seen your face. You could retire to this lonely ranch and live your customary life, with no fear of suffering for the crime you had committed. To be sure, an Indian or two might be hanged, but a matter like that would rest lightly on your conscience.

"Apparently your plans were perfect, but you overlooked one small thing. Most clever scoundrels do. You did not think that perhaps Nature might lay a trap to catch you—a trap in the brush where you had been hidden. Your horse rolled in the mud to rid himself of the pest of flies. You were so intent on the approach of your victim that you did not notice the animal. Yet there in the mud, and visible to-day, was made the imprint of your horse's shoulder, bearing the impression of the Greek Letter brand!"

As Lowell finished, he rose slowly, his hands on the table and his gaze on the unflinching face in front of him. The gray-haired man rose also.

"I suppose," he said, in a voice from which all trace of harshness had disappeared, "you have come to give me over to the authorities on account of this crime."

"Yes."

"Very well. I committed the murder, much as you have explained it, but I did not ride the white horse to the hill. Nor am I Willis Morgan. I am Edward Sargent. Morgan was the man whom I killed and staked down on the prairie!"



CHAPTER XVI

Helen Ervin rode past the ranch door just as the gray-haired man made his statement to Lowell.

"You are Edward Sargent, the man who was supposed to have been murdered?" repeated the Indian agent, in astonishment.

"Yes; but wait till Miss Ervin comes in. The situation may require a little clearing, and she can help."

Surprise and anxiety alternated in Helen's face as she looked in through the open doorway and saw the men seated at the table. She paused a moment, silhouetted in the door, the Greek letter on the panel standing out with almost startling distinctness beside her. As she stood poised on the threshold in her riding-suit, the ravages of her previous trip having been repaired, she made Lowell think of a modernized Diana—modernized as to clothes, but carrying, in her straight-limbed grace, all the world-old spell of the outdoors.

"Our young friend has just learned the truth, my dear," said the gray-haired man. "He knows that I am Sargent, and that our stepfather, Willis Morgan, is dead."

Helen stepped quickly to Sargent's side. There was something suggesting filial protection in her attitude. Sargent smiled up at her, reassuringly.

"Probably it is better," he said, "that the whole thing should be known."

"But in a few days we should have been gone," said Helen. "Why have all our hopes been destroyed in this way at the last moment? Is this some of your work," she added bitterly, addressing Lowell—"some of your work as a spy?"

Sargent spoke up quickly.

"It was fate," he said. "I have felt from the first that I should not have attempted to escape punishment for my deed. The young man has simply done his duty. He worked with the sole idea of getting at the truth—and it is always the truth that matters most. What difference can it make who is hurt, so long as the truth is known?"

"But how did it become known," asked Helen, "when everything seemed to be so thoroughly in our favor? The innocent men who were suspected had been released. The public was content to let the crime rest at the door of Talpers—a man capable of any evil deed. What has happened to change matters so suddenly?"

"It was the old white horse that betrayed us," said Sargent, with a grim smile. "It shows on what small threads our fates hang balanced. The Greek letter brand still shows in the mud where the horse rolled on the day of the murder on the Dollar Sign hill. When our young friend here saw that bit of evidence, he came directly to the ranch and accused me of knowledge of the crime, all the time thinking I was Willis Morgan."

"Let me continue my work as a spy," broke in Lowell bitterly, "and ask for a complete statement."

"Willis Morgan was my twin brother," said Sargent. "As Willard Sargent he had made a distinguished name for himself among the teachers of Greek in this country. He was a professor at an early age, his bent toward scholarship being opposite to mine, which was along the lines of invention. My brother was a hard, cruel man, beneath a polished exterior. Cynicism was as natural to him as breathing. He married a young and beautiful woman, who had been married before, and who had a little daughter—a mere baby, Willard's wife soon died, a victim of his cynicism and studied cruelty. The future of this helpless stepdaughter of my brother's became a matter of the most intimate concern to me. My brother was mercenary to a marked degree. I had become successful in my inventions of mining machinery. I was fast making a fortune. Willard called upon me frequently for loans, which I never refused. In fact, I had voluntarily advanced him thousands of dollars, from which I expected no return. A mere brotherly feeling of gratitude would have been sufficient repayment for me. But such a feeling my brother never had. His only object was to get as much out of me as he could, and to sneer at me, in his high-bred way, while making a victim of me.