"He's a cool sort of a cuss," said Sam to Mormon. "I reckon he's a bad actor, but there's sure somethin' erbout the galoot I like. He ain't over fond of Plimsoll, that's a sure thing, if he is workin' fo' him. Wonder why?"

"They tell me," replied Mormon, "thet Plimsoll's apt to be fond of the other feller's gal. He ain't satisfied with what he can pick for himself. T'otheh feller's apple allus has a sweeter core. I w'udn't wondeh but what that was the trouble. Plim ain't got any mo' respect fo' wimmen than hell has fo' fryin' souls."

"Uh-huh! He w'udn't go round pickin' a scrap with Roarin' Russell on their account, fer instance?"

Mormon paid no attention to the friendly gibe. As they entered the street of the camp, largely deserted, though there was every evidence of crowds forgetting time in the drinking and gambling shacks, Sandy moved up even with Wyatt and locked arms with him.

"I ain't goin' ter make no break," said Wyatt. "Here's Plim's. Jest you let me go in ahead through the door. I've seen you use your guns. I ain't suicidin'."

They allowed him to go in first, unescorted. Their plans held no further reprisal against Wyatt.



CHAPTER XIV

A FREE-FOR-ALL

Plimsoll's place was crowded. There were more onlookers than actual players though the tables were fairly well patronized. Many of those who had seats were only cappers for the game. The majority of the men who had rushed to the new strike had not brought any great sums of money with them, or, if they had, reserved its use for speculation in claims rather than the slimmer chances of Plimsoll's enterprises. In a few days, if the camp produced from grass roots, as was expected and hoped, Plimsoll would gather in his harvest. A garnering in which Sandy had sadly interfered.

Plimsoll had set up a working partnership with a man who had brought moonshine and bootlegged whisky to the camp, occupying the next shack to the gambling place. For convenience of service extra doors had been cut and a rough-boarded passageway erected between the two places. The fever of gambling provided thirsty customers for the liquor dealer, and the whisky blunted the wits of the gamblers and gave the dealers more than their customary percentage of odds in the favor of the house. It was a combination that worked both ways. Waiters impressed into service from camp followers, crudely took orders and delivered them. There were no mixed drinks, no scale of prices. And there was no question of license. The will of the majority ruled. The gold-seeking reduced things to primitive methods, men to primitive manners.

Plimsoll himself presided over the stud-poker table, dealing the game. He showed nothing of the nervousness that crawled beneath his skin. He awaited the result of his play with Wyatt and the latter's companions. If he could make Sandy, Mormon and Sam ridiculous, he would achieve his end, but he hoped for bigger results. Wyatt and his fellow rider had been detailed to ride down the tent that had been reported occupied by the Three Star owners. That part of the plan had been suggested by Wyatt out of the sheer deviltry of his invention. Plimsoll had enlisted others of his following, none too fearless, to loiter in the brush and, in the general confusion, fire to cripple and to kill.

Plimsoll had learned of the visit of the men who had come with Bill Brandon to investigate Plimsoll's methods of running the Waterline Horse Ranch. He had learned, through the leakage that always occurs in a cattle community, that Brandon claimed to be an old acquaintance of Sandy and his partners. So he had told his men who had come with him to the camp from the Waterline Ranch that the Three Star outfit was a danger to all of them, undoubtedly acting as spies for Brandon, and that they should be eliminated for the general good. But there was none of them, from Plimsoll down, who had any fancy to stand up against the guns of Sandy, or of Mormon and Sam, when the breaks were anywhere nearly even.

So Plimsoll dealt stud and collected the percentage of the house, watching his planted players profit by their professionalism and by the little signs bestowed upon them by Plimsoll that tipped them off as to the value of the hidden cards. Plimsoll, with his ejection from Hereford, the advent of woman suffrage, the coming of Brandon and other irate horse owners, had begun to realize that his days were getting short in the land. He looked to the camp for a final coup. If he held the Casey claims and sold them, as he expected to do, to an eastern capitalist to whom he had telegraphed some days before, he might reestablish himself. Sandy's prompt arrival and subsequent events had crimped that plan and he fell back upon all the crooked tactics that he possessed in gambling. And now, if Wyatt....

He was dealing the last card around when Wyatt came in and his eyes lit up. Then his face stiffened, the light changed to a gleam of malevolence. Following Wyatt were the three partners, taking open order as they came through the entrance, about which the space was clear, Sandy in the middle, Mormon on the right flank and Sam on the left. The two last smiled and nodded to one or two acquaintances. Sandy's face was set in serious cast. The players at Plimsoll's table turned to see what caused the suspension of the game, others followed their example. The Three Star men were known personally to some of those in the room. The story of what had happened during the day had buzzed in everybody's ears, from Roaring Russell's discomfiture to Plimsoll's failure to hold the claims and the eviction notice served on him by Sandy.

The phrase "you'll see me through smoke," held a grim significance that touched the fancy of these gold gatherers, men of the cruder types for the most part. The issue between Sandy and Plimsoll was the paramount topic, they wanted to see the two men face to face and size them up. There was no especial sympathy with one or the other. There were other gamblers to provide them with excitement. Mormon's challenge of Russell was a sporting event that appealed to them more directly and there were many possessed of a rough chivalry that appreciated the heavyweight cowman's taking up the cudgels on behalf of a woman. But that was sport, this was a business matter, a duel, with Death offering services as referee.

Chairs edged back, the standing moved for a better view-point, the room focussed on Plimsoll, Wyatt and the three cow-chums. Then Wyatt stepped aside. There was a malicious little grin on his face. Mormon's suggestion as to his private grudge against Plimsoll was not without foundation. Wyatt had been glad to find excuse for severing relations with the gambler. He had done his best and failed, but his failure was not bitter.

The partners walked between the tables toward Plimsoll who sat regarding them balefully, his teeth just showing between his parted lips, cards in midair, action in a paralysis that was caused by the concentration forced by Sandy's even gaze, by the same sickening conviction that his manhood shriveled in front of Sandy and that Sandy knew it. Oaths against Wyatt rose automatically in his brain like bubbles in a mineral spring, together with the consciousness that Wyatt, if not allied against him, was no longer for him, that his chosen tools lacked edge. The placing of bets ceased, there was no sound of clicking chips, the roulette dealer held the wheel, expectant, dealer and case-keeper at the faro bank halted their manipulations, the presiding genius of the craps layout picked up the dice. Tragedy hovered, the shadow of its wing was on the dirt floor of the rude Temple of Chance.

"The chaps you sent up to move yore tent an' truck didn't make a good job of it, Plimsoll," drawled Sandy. "I reckon they warn't the right so't of help. Ef you-all are aimin' to take that stuff erlong with you I'd recommend you 'tend to it yorese'f. It's gettin' erlong to'ards sun-up, fast as a clock can tick."

Silence held. Sandy stood non-committal, at ease. His conversation with Plimsoll might have been of the friendliest nature gauged by his attitude. His hands were on his hips. Back of him, slightly turning toward the crowd, were Mormon and Sam, smilingly surveying the room. But not one there but knew that, faster than the ticking of a clock, guns might gleam and spurt fire and lead in case of trouble. It was all being done ethically enough. They did not know exactly what the entrance of Wyatt meant, but Sandy's talk gave them a hint and his poise was correct, without swagger, without intent to start general ruction. It was up to Plimsoll.

"I'll attend to my own business in my own way," said the gambler, knowing the room weighed every word. It was a non-committal statement and a light one, but it passed the situation for the moment. His eyes shifted to Wyatt, shining with hate, the whites blood-flecked by suppressed passion.

Sandy pulled out a gunmetal watch.

"I make it half afteh one. 'Bout three hours to sunrise, Plimsoll. I'll be round later." He turned his back on the gambler and sauntered toward the door. Before the general restraint broke Mormon put up his hand.

"I figger Roarin' Russell ain't in the room," he said. "Ef he happens erlong, some of you might tell him I was lookin' fo' him. An' I'm goin' to keep on lookin'," he added.

There was a laugh that swelled into a roar of approval in the general reaction.

"Good for you!" A dozen phrases of commendation chimed and jangled. A few followed the three out into the street, among them, Wyatt.

"I got a hunch it ain't extry healthy fo' me in there," he said. "A gamblin' parlor where I ain't welcome to stay or play makes no hit with me. I'll help you-all find Russell."

The search was not an easy one. Russell had been seen freely in the makeshift saloons and other places on both sides of the street. It seemed, from what they could glean and put together, that he had stopped drinking when he had arrived at a certain point in his boasting and had announced his intention of sobering up before he "took the bloody, hog-bellied cow-puncher apart, providin' the latter showed." This suited Mormon, who wanted fairly to whip a live opponent, not fight a staggering drunkard. But they could not find him. They had several volunteer assistants who proved useless. Sam began to yawn.

"I ain't sleepy, I'm hungry," he said. "Let's go get us a steak oveh to Simpson's. If he's gone to bed we'll rout him out. Won't be the first time he turned out to cook me a meal. A shot of that Rocky Mountain grapejuice w'udn't go so bad. Mormon, a feed 'ud round you out. Roarin' Russell has crawled in somewheres an' died of heart failure. Come on, hombres."

Simpson was awake and dressed and on the job. His place was almost as well filled as it had been the first time they entered it. In the first seethe of the gold excitement no one seemed to get sleepy, while appetites developed. Word had preceded them that Mormon Peters was looking for Roaring Russell and their entrance caused more than a ripple of interest. Simpson came bustling forward to serve them.

"Good thick rare steak's what you want, ain't it? Fine fightin' food. Me, I'm takin' in a few bets on you, Mormon. 'Member the time you got a hammerlock on that long-horned gent from Texas with the Lazy Z outfit? I cleaned up on you that time an' this'll be a repeater. This same Roarin' Russell has been tellin' the camp what a rip-snortin', limb-loosenin', strong-armed galoot he is, an' some of 'em have swallered it. They ain't seen you in action, Mormon, an' I have. You'll jest natcherly chaw him inter hash. I'm bettin' there won't be enough of him left to stuff a Chili pepper after you git through."

"I ain't as limber as I was, Alf," said Mormon deprecatingly. "Make my steak thick, will you? Have you seen anything of the Roarin' gent?"

"Not personal. He don't eat here. There was a friend of yores in a while ago who seemed to be sort of keepin' tabs on him. That young assayer Russell started to bulldoze when Sandy took a hand. Said he'd be in ag'in later. 'Peared to think you was bound to show before mornin'."

Simpson went to the back of his shack and started the steaks. A waiter brought over drinks of the Rocky Mountain grapejuice with the information that they were "on the house."

"It ain't the hooch we're sellin'," he said. "This is private stock, hundred proof." He eyed Mormon professionally as he hung about the table, setting out the battered cutlery and tin plates that Simpson provided. "They was offerin' two to one on Roarin' Russell a little while ago," he volunteered. "I think I'll take up a piece of their money."

"This ain't a prize-fight, it's a privut quarrel," said Mormon as he smelled the fiery stuff in the glass, sipped it and then swallowed it in one gulp. "That's prime stuff."

"You'll have one hell of a time keepin' it privut, mister," said the waiter. "They tell me there's nigh to six hundred folks in the camp an' there won't be many more'n six missin' when you two meet up. You want to watch out for Russell's pals, though; they ain't the gentlest bunch in the herd. But I reckon you can handle 'em," he said, turning to Sandy. "I saw you handlin' your hardware this mornin' an' you sure can juggle a gun."

A call from another of the makeshift tables claimed his attention. Simpson came hurrying with the meat, biscuits and coffee. He sat down with them, offering more drinks which they refused.

"Slack right now," he said, "but I sure have done a whale of a business to-day. If this keeps up I don't want no claims. They're tellin' me you give Plimsoll till sun-up to git out of camp, Sandy. I don't figger there'll be any argyment. He's yeller as the yolk of a rotten aig. Hell w'udn't take him in, he ain't fit to be fried. Gittin' rid of him an' his crowd'll sure purify the air in this camp. Times ain't like they used to be. This ain't the frontier any more and a few bad men can't run a strike to suit themselves. If the camp's no good it'll peter out like it did afore; if it amounts to anything, we'll have a police station on one end of this street, a fire station at t'other an' streetcars runnin' down the middle, inside of a month. Plimsoll's gettin' a bum name in this county. The wimmin are ag'in' him. An' I tell you, gents, we hombres 'll have to watch our steps or they'll be takin' our vote away from us next thing you know. It's a lucky thing for us that men is in the majority in this section. Here's yore friend now."

Westlake came through the door, looked round, saw them and came over.

"Russell is down at the Chinaman's eating shack by the bridge," he announced. "He's been drinking black coffee to sober up on. He's got some of his own sort with him. I think they're nearly ready to come up-street. He knows you are in camp and looking for him."

"Then we'd better be shackin' erlong," said Mormon, mopping up gravy with half a biscuit. "I w'udn't want to keep him waitin'."

Outside, it was apparent that the whole camp was waiting for the appearance of the two principals in an event that was not to be allowed to be dealt with purely as a personal encounter. The waiter's estimate was a fair one. The moon had risen, sailing round and fair and mild of beam from behind the eastern hills, making pallid by comparison the artificial flares. The one street was packed with men, not all of whom were sober. The crowd thickened every moment from outlets of the gambling shacks and saloons. All other business and pleasure was forgotten with the swift word passing to say that the cowman who had slapped the bully in the face and challenged him that morning to a catch-as-catch-can, free-for-all contest, was now in Alf Simpson's Chuck House while his opponent, in the cold range of enforced, semi-sobriety, was in Su Sing's Hashery, the pair about to emerge.

This was to be better than any gunplay, a gladiatorial combat to delight the hearts of frontiersmen. And they warmed to it. All day there had been rumors busy of the clash, of the matters involved. Garbled versions of the truth ran excitement up to hot-blood heat. The town had stayed up for developments. Bets had been made on Plimsoll's backing down at sunrise; on the cowman, Mormon; on the bully, Russell.

The affair with Plimsoll at sun-up was likely to be short and sharp. Men who knew the three from the Three Star Ranch spread their opinions. The prime event was the scrap. Russell was, or had been, a professional wrestler and held fame as a rough-and-tumble fighter. Mormon had once beaten all comers for the Cow Belt. The spectators swarmed like bees and buzzed as busily. They came in from the claims, warned by their friends. They greeted Mormon with a shout and one bulk of them surged down toward the bridge over Flivver Creek, escorting the three partners and Westlake, Simpson and his help with them. More were milling up-street from Su Sing's place, Russell in their midst. Where the two factions met, the principals kept apart by the crowd, a broad-shouldered giant with the voice of a bull and a beard that crimped low on his chest, harangued the multitude from a wagon-box. They halted to listen, like a crowd at a fair.

"Gents all," bellowed the big man. "There's been some tall talkin' done to-day between two hombres who have agreed to see which is the best man, in man fashion, usin' the strength an' skill that God gave 'em, without recourse to gun, knife or slungshot. Roarin' Russell, champeen wrastler, allows he can lick any man in camp. Mormon Peters, champeen holder of the Cow Belt, 'lows he can't. That's the cause an' reason of the combat. Any other reason that has been mentioned is private between the two principals an' none of our damned business."

The crowd roared in approval of the speaker's style and the force of his breezy delivery. He had touched their chivalry in thus delicately alluding to the episode of the insult and apology to the only woman in camp.

"Therefore," he went on, and the word slipped round that he was Lem Pardee, wealthy rancher and ex-representative of the state, "such an affair appealin' to every red-blooded male among us, it behooves us to see it brought off in due form, fair an' square to both parties, in a bare-fisted settlement—an' may the best man win."

More howls went up, dying as he held up his hand.

"There's level ground below the bridge with free seats an' standin' room for all on both sides. The moon graces the occasion an' provides the proper illumination. I move you that a referee be appointed to discuss fightin' rules with Roarin' Russell an' Mormon Peters, to settle all side bets, with power to app'int a committee to keep the side lines an' take up a suitable purse for the winner. Referee will give the decision, if necessary, an' settle all disputes."

Shouts that drowned all others nominated Pardee as chief official. He accepted the choice with a wave of his hand and, glancing about him, rapidly picked five men as his committee. Two of them he did not know by name but selected from his judgment of men, and his choices met with general approval.

"The principals will choose their own seconds," he said. "Not more than three to each man, to act only in that capacity and in no way to interfere. That's all."

In two factions the crowd moved down the slant of the street, turned aside at the bridge and, as Pardee indicated the level space on the nigh side of the creek that trickled down the gulch like quicksilver in the moonlight, ranged themselves about the natural arena while the committee established the side lines and the referee conferred with Mormon, Russell and their seconds in the open. Sandy and Sam appointed themselves corner men for Mormon, and Sandy asked Westlake to make the third. A roulette dealer from Plimsoll's and a bartender ranged themselves alongside Russell, together with Plimsoll himself. Pardee eyed the group.

"There's bad blood between you two," he said to Plimsoll and Sandy. "I understand you've got your own grudges. You'd better keep clear of this. And I'm tellin' you both this," he added. "This camp is in the rough-and-ready stage, but there's enough of us who've got together to see it's goin' to be run decent an' regular. We're goin' to establish fair play and order, from now on. We don't expect to run no man's affairs so long's they don't interfere with the general welfare of the camp, but, if there's any dirty work pulled off, the man that spills the dirt is goin' to be interviewed pronto. Things are goin' to be run clean. We ain't goin' to give this camp a bad name at the start."

"Suits me," said Sandy. "My blood's runnin' cool enough, Pardee."

"I'm not talkin' personal, 'cept so far as this bout is concerned. You two had better stay out of it."

Sandy stepped back and Plimsoll, after a few whispered words to Russell, followed suit.

"You men want another second apiece?" asked Pardee. "Or are two enough?"

"The Roarin' gent," said Mormon, "made his brags an' I took it up. Me, I don't know nothin' about Queensbury rules an', though the camp seems to have arranged this affair to suit itself, I didn't bargain for no boxin' match, nor no wrastlin' match either. It's either he can lick me, man to man, or I lick him. An' a lickin' don't mean puttin' down shoulders on a mat. If a man goes down, t'other lets him git up, if he can. Bar kickin', bitin', gougin' an' dirty work, an' to hell with yore seconds an' yore rounds. This ain't no exhibition. It's a fight!"

He spoke loudly enough for most of the crowd to hear, and they cheered him till the hills echoed.

"That suit you, Russell?" asked Pardee sharply.

Russell, stripping to the waist, belting himself, stood forward.

"Suits me," he said. "Suit me better to cut out all this talk an' get this over with. It won't take long."

He was a formidable-looking adversary. In the moonlight certain signs of puffiness, of dissipation, did not show, save for rolls of fat about shoulders and paunch. He was powerfully built, his chest matted with black hair, his forearms rough with it. Taller than Mormon, he had all the advantage of reach. He sneered openly at his opponent.

"One thing more," said Mormon. "We ain't fightin' fo' a purse. Roarin' knows what we're fightin' fo'. A private matter. But we'll put up a stake, if he's agreeable. Loser leaves the camp."

"When he's able to walk. You slapped my face this morning. This evens it."

Russell lashed out suddenly, his hand open, striking with the heel of his palm for Mormon's jaw. Mormon sprang back, warding off, but it was Pardee who struck aside Russell's blow and sent him reeling back with a powerful shove.

"Strip down," he said to Mormon. "Both of you keep back of your lines till I give the word. Sabe?" He scored two lines in the dirt with the toe of his shoe and waved them behind the marks.

"No rounds to this affairs," he called to the crowd. "Fair fightin', foul holds and punches barred. Everything else goes. Man down allowed ten seconds. That's my ruling," he added to the two men.

Mormon looked clumsy as a bear as he waited for the word. He was far stouter than Russell. His bald pate, with its reddish fringe of hair, looked grotesque under the moon. The bulge of his stomach seemed a strong handicap in agility and wind. Yet his flesh was hard and, where the tan ended on neck and forearms, it held a glisten that caused the knowing ones to nod approvingly. There was strength in his back, big muscles shifted on his shoulders and his arms were bigger than Russell's, if shorter, corded with pack of sinew and muscle. As he toed his line, swaying from side to side, arms apart, the left a little forward, he moved with a lightness strange to his usual tread. Russell crouched a little, his long arms hanging low, knees bent. The two lines were about six feet apart.

They faced each other in a silence of held breath on all sides. Pardee stood to one side, equally between them. His arm went up.

"Ready?" he asked. "Let her go!"

A great sigh went up as the two fighters leaped forward. Both seemed about to clinch, to test their prowess as wrestlers. Murmurs went up from back of Mormon where his fanciers had ranged themselves. "Russell's got too many tricks for him," men told each other and then gasped.

Mormon had landed, light as a dancing master, despite his bulk, had stooped, turned in a flash with his right hand clamped about the right wrist of Russell, bowing his back, heaving with all his might.

Russell, shifting at the last second from a clutch, seeing Mormon charging, swung a vicious uppercut. He made the mistake of underestimating Mormon, thinking him slow-witted. He found his wrist in a vise, his arm twisted, bent down across the thick ridge of the cowman's shoulder, the powerful heave of Mormon's back. His own impetus served against him. Mormon shifted grips, he cupped Russell's elbow with his right palm and crowded all his energy into one dynamic effort of pull and hoist. Russell went over his head in a Flying Mare as the crowd stood up and yelled.

Surprised off his feet, Russell's experience served him in good stead as they left the ground. Mormon's trick had scored, but it was an old one and had its counter-move. As he landed, legs flexed, he twisted, grabbed Mormon's arm with his free one and jerked him forward, hunching a shoulder under the cowman's stomach. The pair of them rolled together on the ground, struggling and clubbing, while the spectators shouted themselves hoarse and smote each other great blows. Pardee, stepping warily, watched the writhing pair.

Russell, wiser at this game, contrived leverage, twisting Mormon, and pinned his arms in a scissors grip while he battered at his face and Mormon writhed to get away from the reach of those long arms. The soft dust clouded about them and their grunts came out from it as they struggled. Once, with Mormon striving to open the leg grip, jerking away from the flailing blows, they rolled perilously near a clump of prickly pear on the verge of their little arena and a universal cry of warning went up.

The two heard nothing of it in their hammer and tongs affair, the superheated blood, stoked by passion, surging through their veins.

Mormon felt the pressure of Russell's thigh-muscles closing relentlessly, clamping down on his chest, shutting off oxygen. His energy waned, his limbs grew heavy, nerveless, his brain clogged and dulled. He set his chin well down into his neck to save his jaw, but his right cheek was pounded, one eye closing. It was only a matter of moments before he must relax and then Russell would pin him down with one arm and send in the final smashing blow. He felt himself suffocating, sinking—the noise of roaring waters dinned in his ears.

He lay on his back, Russell on his side, one leg below, one leg above Mormon's body, bending at the hips in his efforts to reach the cowman's jaw. He bent a fraction too much, the scissors grip shifted imperceptibly and the message of that weakening of the chain flashed to Mormon's hazy brain. With every muscle taut in one supreme convulsion he managed to twist sidewise, back to Russell, opening the grip that now compressed shoulders instead of chest and back. He got a breath of air, dust-laden but blessed. His chest expanded, strength flowed in, he forced his arms apart, rolling over on Russell, crushing him into the soft earth with his weight. Another wriggling twist and he faced his man, bringing his mighty back into play to break clear. He got a forearm across Russell's Adam's apple, regardless of the blows that smashed into his face. He hammered home one jolt hard to the jaw and, as Russell's body grew limp, dragged himself from the relaxing hold and crouched on hands and knees, wheezing, spent, gulping air to his flattened lower lungs that refused to function.

Now he could hear the shouting of the crowd, a clatter of yells. He saw Russell's head move, his eyes opening in the moonlight. Mechanically Mormon stood up, swaying, bruised, one eye useless. Pardee began counting over Russell, according to the ruling he had made.

Russell rolled over on his face. It looked as if he was not going to try to get up. This was not how Mormon had wanted the fight to end, in a technical knockout, with his man beginning to come back and he not allowed to finish him.

Pardee had put in the clause, "Man down allowed ten seconds, with the other on his feet," merely to make a better, longer fight of it from the spectator's standpoint. It was supposed to be the sporting thing to do, but Mormon, blood-flushed, brain-dull, had no thought of ethics at that moment. Russell was lifting himself to knees and elbows, crouching as Mormon had done, watching his opponent, listening to the count. He was going to get up. He was up at nine, stooping, groggy, his long arms hanging low, and a shout went up from his backers as Pardee stepped aside.

Russell began to back away, to describe a half-circle, right forearm across his chest, left arm extended, both in slight motion. Mormon stood like a baited bear, slowly revolving to face Russell, wary of a feint to draw him out. There were smears of blood on Russell's arms, on his face, dark in the moonlight. Mormon's whiter skin showed greater defacement. There was a mouse swelling above his eye, the lids were clamping.

The ring of spectators was almost silent now, leaning forward, watching. Little jerky sentences passed between them.

"Russell's goin' to box." "He can beat the cowman at that game." "Cut him to ribbons. Blind him first."

The man in the crowd was right. Mormon knew little of boxing, but he knew enough to throw a cushion of sturdy arm across his jaw, the left elbow crooked, nose buried in it, eyes—one eye—indomitable above it. And the blunted elbow like a ram, as he ducked and Russell's straight right slid over his bald pate. He was far faster, lighter on his feet than Russell dreamed. The bully still underestimated his man, but woke to vivid and just appraisal as Mormon's elbow smashed against his collar-bone, left forearm clubbing his nose, starting spurts of blood, right fist coming up like a piston in short-armed, jolting upper-cuts.

Desperately Russell clutched, failed; held, clung, half tumbling into a clinch. Mormon's arms were about him, underneath, binding him with hoops of steel, compressing. He lost his footing, began to rise and he back-heeled in an outside click. They both went down together side by side in a dog-fall. Mormon loosed his arms as he rolled atop, got astride of Russell, strove to gather and control the arms that thrashed and smote.

Something jagged crushed against Mormon's temple. It seemed as if the skull split open and a jagged, red-hot probe searched through his brain. He threw up his head in agony, his chin exposed, but instinct still awake to fling out both hands, catch the oncoming blow, his fingers clamping deep about the wrist above the hand that held the rock—some ore fragment tossed away by an old-timer—that Russell had found in the dirt, and used in unfair, murderous intent.

The maddening pain of first impact died to a throb as the blood poured down, seeming to leave his brain clear, cold with a rage that responded to a deep disgust of the bully who was now at his mercy. For, with the rage came absolute conviction that this was the end of the fight.

He screwed unmercifully, flesh and sinews and the small bones of the wrist, until Russell shrieked through his swollen mouth at the anguish of it and dropped the rock. Pardee, hovering near, seeing all, picked it up and slipped it into his pocket as Mormon pinned down Russell's arm with his left knee and swung left and right in sledge-hammer blows to the jaw of the face that tried in vain to dodge the knockout. As if a galvanic current that had simulated life had suddenly been shut off, Roaring Russell's body lost all energy, it seemed to flatten, lay without a quiver.

Mormon got on his feet and stood to one side while Pardee counted off the seconds that were only a grim parody. Russell's brain was short-circuited. There was not even a tremor of his eyelids. Pardee knelt, felt pulse and heart. Then he beckoned to the loser's seconds.

"Come and get your man," he told them. "He's through for this evening."

Pandemonium broke loose as the crowd broke formation and surged down. Four men packed off Roaring Russell, limp and sagging between them. Pardee exhibited the chunk of ore, stained with Mormon's blood, while Sandy, Sam and Westlake ramparted Mormon from enthusiastic admirers and pushed down to the creek where he washed his hurts with the stinging icy water and stiffly put on his clothes.

"Knew he was licked and figured he might get away with it," declared Pardee. "Lucky it didn't split his head open." Murmurs gathered force against the bully's methods.

"Cut out the lynching talk, boys," cried Pardee. "The man's been beaten up. I wouldn't wonder if his jaw was bu'sted. His nose is. Let him go; we'll see that he leaves the camp as soon as he can hobble." He broke through to Mormon, being assisted into his coat by Sandy. "How are you standing up, old bearcat?" asked the referee. "I thought he had you nipped once but you walloped him."

"Me? I'm jest about standin' up, an' that's all," said Mormon, gingerly feeling certain places on his face. "I sure thought it was my brains oozin' when he swiped me with that rock. But my bone's pritty solid in the head, I reckon. I don't mind tellin' you-all I'm feelin' a good deal like a bass drum at the end of a long parade, but I believe it's all on the outside. And I ain't entered for any beauty show—at present."

"Eleven minutes of straight fighting by the watch," said a man.

Mormon looked at him humorously, and one-eyed.

"Seemed mo' like 'leven hours to me." He caught sight of Simpson, holding out a flask. "Now that's what I call a friend," he started, his hand outstretched. Then it dropped and a blank look came over his face.

"Let's git out of this," he murmured to Sandy. "Dern me if I didn't plumb forgit about any chance of her showin' up."

"Here's where you git called a hero," said Sam. "She knows what you've been fightin' erbout. More'n that she's been in the crowd for the last five minnits of the scrap. That right, Westlake?"

"Yes. I saw her come into the crowd with young Ed. She wants to thank you, Mormon. No use dodging it."

Young Ed was maneuverin' through to their side.

"Aunt wants to see you," he announced with a grin. "We heard the row down here, an' she sent me to see what it was. When I didn't hurry back she trailed me. Great snakes, Mormon, but you sure whaled him!"

"Huh!" Mormon said nothing but that mystic monosyllable until they reached the place where Miranda Bailey stood apart from the crowd who deferentially gave her room, whispering her supposed share in the recent event. She did not look much like the heroine of a romance, neither did Mormon resemble a hero. Her somewhat worn but wholesome face was set in forbidding lines, but Westlake and Sandy fancied they saw the ghost of a twinkle in her eyes. She greeted Mormon as if he had been a disgraced schoolboy.

"What have you been fightin' about?" she demanded.

But, like Russell, she underestimated Mormon. His one working eye was innocent of all guile as he looked at her.

"Fightin' fo'? Jest fo' the fun of it, marm."

She surveyed him grimly and then her features softened.

"I reckon yo're too tough to get hurt much," she said. "I can fix up that eye. I sh'ud think a man of yore age 'ud have more sense than fightin' at all in front of a crowd of hoodlums who ought to be asleep, 'stead of disturbin' the whole camp, let alone for sech a ridicklus reason."

"I didn't think the reason ridicklus," said Mormon, and the spinster's lips twitched.

"What he wants is a lancin' an' a chunk of raw beef," put in Simpson, with a sympathetic wink at Mormon that suggested more pungent remedies in the background. "Come up to my place."

There may have been some thought of trade from the many who would want to see the victor at close range. Mormon hesitated, all slowly moving toward the bridge. Men were staring toward the mesa whence came a high-powered car, rushing at high speed, magnificently driven, taking curve and pitch and level with superb judgment. Its lights flamed out on the night. It turned and came on, stopping on the bridge, blocked by the crowd that made slow opening for it. The driver, in chauffeur's livery, sat immobile, controlling the car, his worldly-wise, blase face like a mask. Two men were in the tonneau. One of them leaned forward, looking at the crowd, a square-jawed man, clean-shaven but for the bristle of a silver mustache beneath an aggressive nose, above a firm hard mouth and determined chin. The mintage of the East was stamped upon his features. He was a man accustomed to sway, if not to lead. His companion was as plainly as eastern product, but his manner was subordinate though his face that, alone of the three, seemed to hold a measure of fearful wonder at the turbulent throng of men, was shrewd enough.

"I'm looking for a man named Plimsoll," said the first of these two, his voice an indication that he was accustomed to a quick answer. "He wired me about some claims. Where'll I find him?" He made no question concerning the crowd, his eyes passed casually over Mormon's damaged countenance, over the procession that bore Russell, sack-fashion. Here was a man who, at any hour of the twenty-four, was primed for business and for profit.

Yet he could not fail but see that his question charged the crowd with some emotion he could not fathom. The night was spent, it was getting close to dawn. The issue between Sandy Bourke and Plimsoll, crowded aside for the moment, was now paramount. Some craned for sight of the two-gun man, others glanced toward the eastern sky. The stars seemed to be losing their brilliance, the golden moon turning silver, the high horizon, jagged with mountain crests, appeared to be gaining form and a third dimension.

"You'll likely find him at his place," answered a miner. "Up-street on the left. Name's outside."

They let the car go on in a lane that was pressed out of their ranks. They fell in behind or alongside of it as it passed slowly up the street. One or two of the bolder got on the running boards unchecked. The easterner who was looking for Plimsoll took in the situation as something beyond his present range, accepting it. Sandy turned to Mormon.

"You better see Miss Mirandy up to her claim," he said, his voice casual enough. Mormon started an appeal but it died unvoiced. The spinster knew nothing of the clash impending between Sandy and the gambler, neither did her nephew, who, the excitement of the fight over, yawned and went off with his aunt and Mormon.

"I'll bring you up that chunk of meat, Mormon," whispered Sam. "An' I'll bring you somethin' stronger, same time."

"Don't bring it all on yore breath," Mormon whispered back. "If I hear any shootin' I'll come back lopin'."

"There won't be any shootin'," said Sam. "You go soak that eye of yores in Mirandy Bailey's sage tea. Me 'n' Sandy, we'll handle Plimsoll." Then Sam broke clear from Mormon and hurried after Sandy and Westlake.

Sandy walked up the street without hurry and, as they had made way from the car, men gave him space. The nearer he got to Plimsoll's place the more room they allowed him. They melted away from the car on all sides, leaving it clearest between the machine and the entrance to the gambling shack. The chauffeur preserved his bored look and carved attitude. His face was lined with lack of sleep and the strain of driving at high speed over unknown mountain roads, powdered gray with dust. He seemed almost an automaton. The man with the square face looked alertly about him at the crowd, giving place to the lean tall man walking leisurely up the street, high lights touching the metal of the two guns that hung in holsters well to the front of his hips. Sandy's face was serene, but there was no mistaking the fact that the star performer of the moment had come upon the stage. Five paces back of him strolled Sam, his eyes dancing with the excitement that did not show in Sandy's steel-gray orbs. Westlake followed to one side, by the advice of Sam.

The stranger saw that Sandy walked lightly, on the balls of his feet, with a springy tread. He appraised his face, frown-lines appeared between his eyebrows and he half rose in his seat. Then the door of the cabin opened and the man who had volunteered to find Plimsoll emerged.

"He's comin' right along," he announced.

It was Plimsoll's way—the professional gambler's way—to play his cards until he knew himself beaten. He had been hoping for the arrival of this man. He represented capital, the development of the camp into a mining town, the movement of money, the boom of quick sales. With his backing—once the camp understood what it meant to all of them—he might turn the tables on Sandy Bourke. The protection of Capital was powerful.

He came out licking his lips nervously, with a swift survey that took in the setting of the stage prepared for his entrance. His eyes, shifting from the big machine, as if drawn by something beyond his will, focused on the figure of Sandy, easy but sinister in its capacity to avoid all melodrama. Half-way between door and car he halted.

"Plimsoll?" said the stranger. "I am Keith."

The light was perceptibly changing. Faces of men came out of the shadows, pale but visible. The lights of the machine changed from yellow to pale lemon, the flares outside the cabins, the illumination of the windows altered. High up, a tiny fleck of cloud caught the fire of the as yet unseen sun, rolling on to dawn behind the range. Things seemed flat, lacking full definition, lacking shadow. In the east the sky showed gray behind the dark purple crests between which mists were trailing. Men shivered, half from cold, half from tension and lack of sleep.

"Plimsoll," said Sandy. "That peak oveh on Sawtooth Range is goin' to catch the light first. I'll call it sun-up when the sun looks oveh the mesa."

Plimsoll bared his teeth in a fox-grin. Sandy stood with his hands by his sides, covering him with his eyes. Plimsoll looked at the hands that he knew could move swifter than he could follow, he looked at the car with Keith gazing from him to Sandy, he sensed the waiting strain of all the men, waiting to see Sandy shoot—if he did not go, to see him crumple up in the dust, and—he looked at the peak on Sawtooth and his face grayed as the granite suddenly flushed with rose. His will melted, he turned and went inside his cabin. No one followed him, there was no one inside to greet him. His heart was filled with helpless rage, centered against Sandy Bourke. He knew the camp was against him, considering him outbluffed or outmatched. His horse, ready saddled, had been at the door since midnight. He mounted, dug spurs into the beast's flanks and went galloping madly up the slope that rose from the street gulch leading down to the main gulch of Flivver Creek. He was shortcutting for the mesa road, hate in his heart, his blood, his brain; poisoning hate that turned all his secretions to gall. His plans for wealth had been blocked by a man he dared not face. Before Sandy Bourke his spirit flinched as a leaf shrinks and curls from flame. The forced acknowledgment of it was an acid aggravation. He raked his horse's flanks with his rowels and the spirited brute, pick of all Plimsoll's horse herd, tore up the hillside to suit the mad humor of his master, who was permeated with the venom of a man who knows his deeds at once evil and futile, a venom that was bound to spread until the infection mastered him, body and mind and soul, steeped them in a devil's brew that permitted of no other thought but what was dominated by the mad desire to get even.

Some one caught sight of the galloping horse and rider lunging along in a cloud of dust that showed golden as the sun rose and looked over the mesa. He raised a shout that was joined in by the rest, that reached the flying Plimsoll as the view-halloo reaches the fox making for its earth.



CHAPTER XV

CASEY TOWN

The man named Keith called to Sandy Bourke who, for the moment, still stood alone, now rolling a cigarette. He was the only man in the close vicinity of the car and he turned at the sound of Keith's voice.

"You-all talkin' to me?" he inquired mildly.

"I would like to know," said Keith in a manner which he appeared struggling to invest with humor, "exactly what is the idea of this theatrical, moving-picture episode?"

Sandy smiled back at him.

"Look like film stuff, to you?" he asked in his drawl. "Surely is movin' pictures to Plimsoll, though it's hell on the hawss. You can let it go at that, if you like. Li'l' western drama entitled To Be Shot at Sunrise."

The crowd began to gather closer, curious to find out the reason for the swift advent of the car, the desire to see Plimsoll.

"You were ready to shoot at Plimsoll?"

"I was ready. I didn't figger there was goin' to be much shootin'."

"It looks to me as if you've driven the man out of camp and, as I've come all the way from New York to do business with him, driven the last two hundred miles in this car, I'd be obliged if you would tell me just what was the matter, Mr.——?"

"Bourke. Sandy Bourke."

The stranger had managed to muffle down his chagrin and resentment at the outcome of his trip. Of necessity he was a judge of men and it did not take him long to place Sandy. Keith was an adept at adapting himself to his environment.

"Sorry to have upset things fo' you," went on Sandy, "but this was a personal matteh between myse'f an' Plimsoll that had to be settled pronto an' permanent. I don't reckon how you've lost a heap, said Plimsoll bein' a crook."

"My name's Keith, Wilson Keith," said the other. "I don't know that that means much to you as I judge you generally belong to the range rather than the mining camp, but there may be a few in the crowd who know me. I am a mining promoter. Plimsoll had agreed to sell me his interest in certain claims which showed well in assay reports. They alone were insufficient to interest me. When he wired me the news of the general strike, the prospect of development opened and I came on. You seem to have blocked the deal. However, I suppose Plimsoll can be located later. Have you any idea where he might be found?"

"It w'udn't do you one mite of good," said Sandy. "Plimsoll didn't own those claims. Didn't have an interest in 'em. Tried to jump 'em, an' did the jumpin' himse'f. I've got an idea you might have been through here some time back. I heard some eastern folk had been samplin' ore an' I saw some signs up on the Casey claims. Those are the claims Plimsoll tried to sell you, I reckon, for cash, figgerin' on the deal goin' through quick. He 'lowed he'd grubstaked Casey, which was a plumb lie. Casey had a constitutional objection about bein' grubstaked, an' he had none too much use fo' Plimsoll. Plimsoll's got nothin' to prove his end. From now on he won't try to. The claims belong to Molly Casey, the same bein' my legal ward."

"Ah!" Wilson Keith's eyes grew keen and cold. "Have you any interest in them yourself, Mr. Bourke?"

"Me an' my two partners of the Three Star Ranch own one-half interest, equal with Molly," said Sandy easily. His eyes matched those of the promoter and held them for a second or two.

The thought passed through Keith's mind that Sandy's interest, and that of his partners, might have been obtained from the girl under false pretenses, but he was very far from a fool and, among the things he saw in Sandy's eyes, it was clearly written that here was a man who was both absolutely fearless and absolutely honest. He had not seen many such.

"I'll be glad to talk with you later," he said. "Just now I'm ravenous. Any place to eat? And does the camp get up early or just go to bed late?"

The remark raised a laugh in the crowd, now milling good-naturedly about the machine.

"Want to buy any more claims?" asked a voice.

"I might. I've looked over the ground once, I may as well admit, and I've had an expert report upon it. I'd like to have a talk with all of you after I've had some coffee. This is a camp where it will take a great deal of money, of labor and of time to develop it, whether you try to drill and blast yourselves, or pool your interests and install machinery. Did you say which was the best place to eat, Mr. Bourke?"

Sandy recommended Simpson's and pointed it out. Keith, the man with him, his secretary, and the chauffeur, got out and walked stiff-legged to their coffee. The crowd once more had sleep discounted by excitement. Keith had shrewdly said just enough. The seed that he had planted in the suggestion that they pool interests fell in such rich ground that it began sprouting immediately.

Sandy introduced Sam as his partner, Westlake as a mining engineer and assayer. Keith gave Westlake a shrewd appraising glance, and a nod.

"I'm too sleepy myse'f to talk business," said Sandy. "My two pardners are in the same boat. So, if you-all want to look oveh the camp ag'in, Mr. Keith, an' talk business with any one you find awake an' willin', I'll prob'bly see you befo' nightfall. You know where the claims are."

Keith stood for a moment in the door of Simpson's, looking after Sandy.

"A fairly slick article, the man with the two guns, Blake," he said to his secretary. "But he's straight."

"And mighty hard to bend," added Blake with a yawn.

The chauffeur ate apart, devouring enormous quantities of food with as much emotion as a hopper taking in grain. Keith talked matters over with Blake, not because he valued his secretary's opinion, able as he was in his appointed duties, but because it helped Keith to clarify conditions in his own mind.

"There were only a few old-timers in the crowd, Blake," he said. "The rest of them will want to be going back to wherever and whatever they came from as soon as they find this is not a placer proposition. A heap of people heard of a gold rush and think it's always a Tom Tiddler's Ground, like washing out the rich sands of Nome. They'll be glad to sell and take shares for cash."

"Ought to change the name of the camp," suggested Blake. "Dynamite is known as an exploded prospect."

"Thought of that," said Keith. "This is damned good coffee. I'll have another cup.... How about Casey Town, after the original discoverer who always believed in the place, but lacked the money for development and wouldn't take in a partner? Picturesque and good stuff for the prospectuses. You might send off some stuff about that, Blake, work in this Sandy Bourke and Plimsoll affair and find out what this all-night racket was about. Good, lively publicity stuff we can use again later on. Romance of Casey's daughter. Wonder where she is?"

He lapsed into silence, swallowing his third cup of coffee in gulps. Blake, who admired his employer's successes, whatever he thought of his methods, did not interrupt him. Keith was planning a campaign, figuring out the best bait for gulls.

Sandy and his companions found Mormon asleep on the Bailey claims. Miranda brewed coffee, and they told her the news of Plimsoll and the arrival of Keith.

"It's too bad you didn't run Plimsoll out of the county, or the state," remarked the spinster. "He'll not rest until he does you some sneakin' injury, soon as he figgers out what'll do you the most harm."

"An' him the least risk," remarked Sam.

"Since the excitement is temp'rarily over," said Miranda dryly, looking at where Mormon snored beneath blankets, "I reckon we better all foller his example. If that man Keith wants to buy my claims I'm willin' to sell. Milkin' is more in my line than minin', I've decided. I had a fool idea we'd pick up nuggets, top of the ground. From what Mr. Westlake tells me, you got to put out a lot of money before you even find out whether you're goin' to see the color of gold."

"Let's hold a pow-wow before we turn in," said Sandy. "Westlake, what do you know about Keith? Anything?"

"I've heard of him. I imagine he started out as a promoter rather than a developer. He has made some lucky strikes. There is no doubt but that he can float this proposition on a large scale, induce others to put money into it. The least likely-looking properties he'll put on the market and tie them up with the reports of any strikes he, or others, may make. He'll put the camp on a working basis. If the gold's here that will be a sound one. You see, Miss Bailey, not every porphyry dyke is going to have a gold lining."

"Do you figger it w'ud pay best to sell him outright or let him form a company?" asked Sandy.

"For your claims, or these of Miss Bailey and her nephew?"

"All of 'em. Didn't you say they were all on the same syncline?"

"Yes. You really want to go by my opinion? I am not too experienced."

"You know a darn sight mo' about it than we do. I'm not takin' Keith's opinion on anything he wants to buy. He's tipped his hand already in showin' how far an' fast he came here. Probably had Plimsoll tied up on an option or he w'udn't have said 's much as he did."

"Then—there is no doubt in my mind that Patrick Casey picked the best side of the gulch. The indications are in sight there. This side the exposed reef may have been ground down below the sylvanite. There are glacial signs all around here. I would say sell these for cash, holding out on price until Keith refuses to offer more. He'll come back for a final bid. But let him organize with your claims."

"The Molly Casey Mine? With fifty-one per cent. of the shares, if we can't get more?"

"He'll squeal like a pig before he grants that," said Westlake. "But he'll have to come through to your terms. Those claims are the big bet of this camp, and he knows it."

It would have surprised Keith had he known how accurately the young engineer he had glanced at and dismissed as almost an amateur at the game, followed the trend of his scheming. There is not much variation in the methods of Mining Promotion, and Westlake was an observer and a conserver of the pith of what he had seen.

"Fifty-one per cent., an' the name's Molly Casey, then," said Sandy. "What's more, you're to be consulting engineer or whatever they call the fat job, Westlake. I'm dawg-tired. Sam, let's you an' me shack over to our claims. We'll leave Mormon where he is till he gits his sleep out, if you've no objection, marm?"

* * * * *

Sandy, Sam and Mormon returned to the Three Star with the papers drawn and signed and the shares of stock issued that gave twenty-six per cent. of the Molly property to her and twenty-five to the three partners. Keith returned to New York with his forty-nine per cent. to weave his plans for the full development of the claims he had acquired.

While he lacked the controlling interest, there was always, he fancied, a chance of division between the four who held control. Either he could get the girl to vote apart from the three partners or he might split them some way or another. But, wisely, he did not count on this. And he took up the task of exploitation with zest, Blake, primed with material and notes gathered on the spot, a ready and expert assistant.

When Wilson Keith made up his mind there was money in a plan—money for Wilson Keith—he lost no time in planning and carrying out all details. He loved the excitement of the gamble, he loved to evolve some play for which he could pat himself upon the back and tell himself how much cleverer he was than the public, swimming up to his golden-baited hooks like so many fish. Thornton, expert mining engineer, believed the prospects good for the new camp at Casey Town; but Keith, with Blake, who was a wizard at publicity, delighted most in the way it lent itself to exploitation.

Blake, nosing here and listening there, while Keith satisfied himself as to the legality of Sandy's guardianship of Molly and the powers that had been granted him to look after all her interests, assuring himself of the speciousness of Plimsoll's claim for grubstake interest. Blake, weaving fact into fiction, compiled the romance of Molly Casey, daughter of the wandering prospector, Patrick Casey; her father's trail-chum by mountain and desert; the death of Casey, the rescue of Molly, the strike at Dynamite.

Much about Sandy's part in it all Blake did not use. He learned little and said nothing of Plimsoll's attempt to get the girl under his control, of the wild ride across the county line. Blake's general canniness concentrated wherever his personal interests were concerned and he had made up his mind that Sandy Bourke was a man whom it would not pay to offend. He might never see the story in print, then again he might, and Blake, very likely, would return to Casey Town once in a while with Keith.

But it was a good story. A Sunday feature story if he could strengthen it a little. If the mine made the girl a millionairess it would carry the yarn as sheer news, but Blake wanted the story to help to carry the mine, to bring in the money from the outside to exploit Casey Town and the Keith holdings.

Keith had the capital and was willing enough to put it into developing the Molly Mine if necessary, but it was a business principle of his never to use his own money when he could get hold of some one else's. His stock in the Molly Mine he meant to hold on to, not to sell, but, with the profits from the sale of his promoter's shares of the "Groups," he expected to mine the Molly claims.

He had turned his eyes toward oil of late, scenting quick turns and this took money. His wife took more, his son, just out of college, took all that he could get. Mrs. Keith seemed to regard her husband's bank-account much as the wife of a farmer might regard the spring in the meadow. With the extravagance of the post-war period, the advance in prices, the amounts she spent were staggering even to Keith, who set no limits on his own ability to make money. To suggest retrenchment would not merely have had small effect upon his wife, but any curtailment would infallibly hurt the standing of the Keith investments. New York was full of people with money to invest. Profiteering, easy-come money, a lot of it. Easy-go money, too, when the profiteers, still dazzled by their riches, totally unconscious of real values, would meet Keith, thinking their money an open sesame to equality with such financiers.

Then Keith entertained them, taking them to his clubs—not his best—to his home where he dazzled them, fogged them in an atmosphere where they were ill at ease though striving to cover it; Keith, drawing them aside when the time was ripe, would tell them of their shrewdness, confess a liking, almost an admiration for them—and let them in on the ground floor.

There were the many who could not be touched personally and, for these, Blake prepared the literature and laid his schemes for real newspaper publicity. Submitting them to Keith, the latter approved. Mrs. Keith was to look Molly up at her school, take her into the Keith home on vacations, introduce her into the social whirl. The right newspapermen would see her, meet her, get the story from Blake of her romantic childhood, with photographs of the Western Heiress in the Park on Horseback. There would be drawings by staff artists of the way she and her father appeared wandering through the desert, discovering the claims, her father's grave, anything to round out the human interest. Moreover, she could be introduced to the right people, that was Mrs. Keith's end of it.

Then would come the prospectuses with these extracts of the best paragraphs, tied up with views of Casey Town, with engineers' reports, with semi-scientific stuff about sylvanite, a masterpiece of romance and fiction, peppered with fact. The whole to be titled White Gold.

Advertisements, headed White Gold, offering the shares. Personal letters to those on the carefully selected lists of Preferred Investors. Offices of the Casey Town Mining Company with alluring specimens behind glass cases, with models of mining machinery and of sections of mines, framed maps and drawings, blue-prints, a chunk of sylvanite ore in a railed-off enclosure with the legend of its marvelous value. Many, most, of these lures, had done service in previous enticements of Keith, but they still held good. They were a good deal like the fake mermaids, the skulls and odds and ends in the window of a palmist, all bait, of better quality, more deftly arranged and displayed, part of the fakir's kit, bait for goldfish. Also brass rails, fine rugs, mahogany furniture, a ticker, busy and pretty stenographers.

Blake submitted his clever campaign, worthy of better things, and Keith approved of it. That the partners of the Three Star as fifty-one per cent, owners, or Molly Casey herself with them, should be consulted or informed, never entered his head.

Of course there was always a chance of the investors realizing heavily if Casey Town turned up big production. Keith hoped it would. Provided he made all the money he wanted, he was always willing to have others get hold of some, especially when he would be regarded by them as the benefactor who had given them the golden opportunity. He would reap the major harvest, and success would open up the way for other fields—perhaps in oil. Keith had some associates who rather scoffed at his gold-mining promotion as out-of-date. Oil was quicker, more in the public eye. Every time the price of gasoline or kerosene went up the American automobile-owning public thought of oil, they were primed perpetually toward its possibilities.

But Keith was still in gold. He knew all the technique of that branch of speculation and Blake's campaign was carried out most successfully. Mrs. Keith descended overwhelmingly upon Molly at her school, chauffeur and footman on the driving seat of her luxurious sedan; gasped a little when she saw that Molly was a beauty, could be made an unusual one with the right dressing, the right setting.

Her brain, which was keen enough in business matters, told her that she could improve her husband's program of using Molly as an attraction to bring investors to the Keith residence. It might be a good thing—Mrs. Keith was quick at dealing with the future—if her son, Donald, fell in love with Molly, the heiress. She wrote to the Three Star Ranch, to Sandy Bourke, guardian of Molly Casey, without Molly's knowledge. Sandy read the letter aloud to his partners.

DEAR MR. BOURKE:

I feel that I should write this letter to you although I have never met you, rather than my husband, since the question is one that a woman can handle better than a man,—that only a woman can understand and appreciate.

I have seen your Molly and she has entirely captivated me. She is really wonderful, with wonderful possibilities. She is more than pretty, she is talented and she possesses character in a marked degree that sets her aside from the rest. It is this difference, this broadness of view, perhaps a certain intolerance of conventionality, that make me feel that, much as it has done for her, and that has been largely due to her own endeavors, this school, or any school, is not the place for her best development.

I want to take her into my home, Mr. Bourke. She is practically a woman grown, much more so than the girls with whom she associates. This, I suppose, is due to her early experiences. There she would be under my own eye, which will be a maternal one, and she can have private tutoring in what she still lacks. I think she feels the need of the companionship and advice of an older woman, rather than that of the girls at the school.

I wish I could talk with you personally about this. Letters are such inadequate things. But I know, from Mr. Keith, that you have her interests at heart—and so have I. I shall dearly love to have her with me. I have, of course, said absolutely nothing to her about this plan before I hear from you, but I feel confident from what I have seen of her, that she will be happier in a home, with some one, who, however poorly, may take the place of the mother she must have missed all these years.

Let me hear from you soon. If my health and other matters permit, I must try to come out with Molly before very long. Mr. Keith has seen this letter and approves of my suggestion to have Molly with us.

Most sincerely yours, ELIZABETH VERNON KEITH.

It was a clever letter. There were several touches about it that almost amounted to genius. The hints of Molly's unhappiness so cleverly suggested, the mother suggestion, the need of companionship and advice from an older woman, Molly's intolerance of conventionalities, all went home; though it was some time before the trio entirely absorbed the meaning of the glossy phrases and glib vocabulary. The letter passed about in silence after Sandy had read it, Sam and Mormon plowing through the maze of the fashionable script.

"Reckon she's right," said Mormon. "Molly's different. She had a mighty hard time of it along with her old man, compared to what them soft-skinned snips must have had. Stands to reason she c'udn't be like 'em, any mo' than Sam c'ud be easy in his spiketail suit, or me handin' ice-cream at a swarry. Not that Molly 'ud make no breaks, but their ways w'udn't be her'n, most of the time. How 'bout it, Sam?"

"This Mrs. Keith must live high," said Sam. "She w'udn't be botherin' about Molly if she didn't see a heap of promise in her. I mind me it must be tough to be herded inter a corral where you got to learn all over ag'in how to handle yore feet an' hands, not to mention forks. This Keith woman's spotted Molly ain't easy at school. The other gals like her, but they ain't her style. She's range bred an' free. Those other fillies have been brought up in loose boxes. They probably don't mean to hurt her feelin's none, but I 'low they snicker once in a while if Molly forgets the right sasshay. An' Molly's proud as they make 'em. Sounds good to me. What you think, Sandy? It's up to you as her guardeen."

"It sure sounds good," said Sandy. "Seems like this Mrs. Keith must be a pritty fine woman to think of takin' Molly into her own home. I reckon Molly must have changed a good deal. I'd be inclined to put it this way; if Molly cottons to the idea, let her hop to it."

"Mirandy ain't brought over the butter yet," put in Mormon, with a glance at his partners that was half shamefaced. "Why not git her opinion? Takes a woman to understand a woman. She'd sabe this letter a heap bettern' we c'ud."

Sam winked covertly at Sandy and shoved his tongue in his cheek.

"That's a good idea, Mormon," said Sandy.

"Never did find out jest what happened to that last wife of your'n, did ye, Mormon?" asked Sam.

"Never did."

"That's too bad."

"Why?"

"Gen'ral principles." Sam said no more but took out his harmonica, ever in one hip pocket, and crooned into it. A jiggly-jazz edition of Mendelssohn's Wedding March strained through the curtains of Sam's drooping mustache.

"Speakin' wide, the weddin' cake of matrimony has been mostly mildewed for me," said Mormon reflectively, "but there was one thing about my last wife I sure admired. Uncommon thing in woman an' missin' in some men."

Sam, eager for chaffing, fell.

"What was that, Mormon? I heerd she was a good cook."

"It warn't her cookin', though that was prime when she was in the humor. But she sure c'ud attend to her own business, an' there's damn few can do that. Sandy's one of the few. I can't call another to mind jest now."

Sam grinned.

"You sure had me that time, ol' hawss. An' the mildew on the weddin' cake warn't none of yore fault. That sort of pastry's too rich for me to tackle. I used to wonder why they allus put frostin' on weddin' cake. I reckon it's a warnin'—or else sarcasm."

"Ef you ever git roped thataway, Sam, you're goin' to fall high an' hard," said Mormon. "You'll come to consciousness hawg-tied an' branded."

"That the way it was with you?"

"Yep. I've allus had an affinity fo' the sex. I ain't like Sandy. Nature give him an instinct ag'in' 'em, as pardners. He was bo'n lucky."

But Sandy had gone out. Sam and Mormon trailed him and saw him walking toward the cottonwood grove with Grit at his heels.

"He thinks a heap of Molly," opined Sam. "I reckon he sure hates to lose her, if he is woman-shy. 'Course Molly was jest a kid. But I don't fancy she'll take the back-trail once she gits mixed up with the Keith outfit."

"I ain't so plumb sure of that," returned Mormon. "Molly's bo'n an' bred with the West in her blood. She'll allus hear the call of the range, like a colt that's stepped wild. He'll drink at the tank, but he ain't forgettin' the water-hole."

Sam glanced at Mormon curiously. It wasn't often Mormon showed any touch of what Sam characterized as poetical.

Sandy, under the cottonwoods where the spring bubbled, so near the old prospector's grave that perhaps the old-miner lying there could, in his new affinities with Nature, hear its flow, was thinking much the same thing Mormon had expressed, hoping it might be true, chiding himself lest the thought be selfish.

A granite block stood now as marker for Patrick Casey's resting-place, carved with the words that Mormon had chalked on the wooden headstone. A railing outlined the grave, and the turf within it was kept short and green. Sandy squatted down and rolled a cigarette, smoking it as he sat cross-legged. Grit, as was his custom, leaped the railing lightly and lay down above the dust of his dead master, head couched on paws, turned a little sidewise, his grave eyes surveying Sandy.

"Miss her, ol' son? So do I. Mebbe she'll come back to see us-all. She sure did seem to belong."

Memories of Molly flickered across the screen of his mind: Molly beside her father by the broken wagon, climbing to get the cactus blossom for his cairn; Molly at the grave; Molly giving him the gold piece; the wild ride across the pass and the race for the train and a recollection that was freshest of all, one he had not mentioned to his partners; the touch of Molly's lips on his as he had bade her good-by. The kiss had not been that of a child, there had been a magic in it that had thrilled some chord in Sandy that still responded to that remembrance. He never dwelt on it long, it brought a vague reaction always, stirred that strange instinct of his that had branded him as woman-shy, kept him clean. Part of it was intuitive desire for freedom of will and action, as the wild horse shies at even the shadow of a halter that may mean bondage, however pleasant. Part of it was reverence for woman, deep-seated, a hazy, never analyzed feeling that this belief might be disappointed.

Miranda, alone in the flivver, a new car of her own, bought with money paid by Keith for her claim, was at the ranch-house when Sandy returned. Miranda and young Ed Bailey, accepting Westlake's advice, had sold for cash, getting fifteen thousand dollars to divide between them, refusing more glittering offers of stock. It was a windfall well worth their endeavor and they were amply satisfied. Young Ed had promptly gone to Agricultural College, putting in part of his money to buy new stock and implements for his father's ranch, in which he now held a half partnership. Miranda, Mormon and Sam were talking about this when Sandy came up.

"It sure made a man of young Ed overnight," said the spinster. "He thought it out all by himse'f an' nigh surprised us off our feet. He was sort of ganglin', more ways than one, an' we feared the money 'ud go to his head. Which it did, as a matter of fact, but it was a tonic, 'stead of actin' like an intoxicant. We're plumb proud of him.

"Mr. Westlake was over day before yesterday," she went on. "Goin' on through to the East fo' a consultation with Mr. Keith an' his crowd. Said to say he was mighty sorry he c'udn't git out to the Three Star, but he only had a couple of hours before his train. He says things is boomin' up to Casey Town. There's been some good strikes, one in the claim nex' but one to ours. Keith's goin' to start things whirlin', I reckon."

"Mebbe he'll see Molly," suggested Sam. "Though of course she ain't to Keith's house yet."

"How's that?" asked the spinster eagerly.

"We are waitin' fo' Sandy to show you the letter," said Sam.

Miranda read the letter through twice, folded it and held it in her lap for a few moments.

"Want my opinion on it?" she asked finally.

"Yes," said Sandy. "If the mines are goin' to produce big she'll likely be rich. She went east to git culchured up. Seems like the school idea might not have been the best, after all."

"I don't know. I don't rightly git the motive back of this writin'. It ain't been sent without one. Mebbe she's just taken a fancy to Molly, mebbe she's a woman that likes to do kind things and thinks Molly'll pay well for bein' taken up. I don't mean in money but, if Molly didn't have a show of bein' rich, an' warn't pritty, which she is, I ain't certain Mrs. Keith 'ud be so eager. I guess it's all right but, somehow, it don't hit me as plumb sincere. Still ... I reckon my opinion is like that gilt hawss top of Ed's barn," she ended with a smile. "It was set up too light, I reckon, an' it was allus shiftin', north, south, east an' west, when you c'udn't feel a breath of wind on the level. I ain't got a thing to pin it to, but I feel there's something back of it, like a person's rheumatic spot'll ache when rain's comin'."

"You'd vote ag'in' it?" asked Sandy.

"No-o. I w'udn't."

"I figgered on puttin' it up to Molly."

"That's a good idee. An', as her guardeen, I'd suggest that Mrs. Keith lives up to that half-promise of hers an' make it a condition she brings Molly out here inside of six months. That'll give time for a fair trial an' you can see right then fo' yoreself how it's workin'. Long's she goin' to have teachers she can't lose much."

"That's a plumb fine idee," said Mormon, looking triumphantly at his partners.

It ran with Sandy's own wishes and he subscribed to it. Sam endorsed it as well, and a letter was sent east that night, containing the proviso of Molly's return and another that Molly should bear all her own expenses of tuition and living. All this to hang upon Molly's own desire to make the change.

When Molly's letter came there appeared no doubt as to her willingness. She admitted that she had been sometimes "lonesome" at the school. One page was devoted to her anticipations of coming back to visit Three Star:

I may stay; there are lots of new and lovely things here, but I miss the mountains and the range terribly. Also Grit. Please tell him I have not forgotten him. You might draw cards to see who will kiss him on the end of the nose—for me. It is a very nice nose. High man out. Lovingly, MOLLY.

P. S. There are three other people I miss just as much as I do Grit, but, being quite grown up, I can not send them the same message, though it would be awfully funny to see you delivering it to each other. Maybe, when I come, I'll be so glad to see you, I'll do it myself. M.

"I'll kiss no dawg," declared Sam. "I like a dawg first-rate, like I do a hawss, on'y not so much, but I'm a hell-singed son of a horned-toad if I'd ever kiss one."

"It's two to one you don't have to," said Mormon. "If you're a sport you'll do as Molly asks an' draw cards fo' the privilege. It's a sure-fire cinch she'll never give you one of them salutes she hints at when she comes home ef she knows you backed out. Wait till I git the cards."

It was plain to Sandy that Sam and Mormon, despite Sam's protest, took Molly's pleasantry in earnest and he made no comment as Mormon deftly shuffled the deck and riffled it out over the table. He picked a jack, Mormon a three of clubs and Sam an eight of hearts. Sam whooped at sight of Mormon's card.

"Hold on, Molly said 'High man out.' That's Sandy. You an' me got to draw again. Ain't that so, Sandy?"

"Sure is," said Sandy gravely. "You hollered too soon, Sam. Prob'ly crabbed yore luck."

Both chose their cards and drew them to the edge of the table, face down, taking a peep at the index corners.

"Bet you ten dollars I got you beat," said Mormon cheerfully.

Sam turned up his card disgustedly. It was the deuce of spades.

"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed. "Now I got to kiss a dawg!"

At his voice and face Mormon and Sandy bent double with laughter that brought water to their eyes and nearly sent Mormon into convulsions. Sam surveyed them with gloomy contempt.

"Laf, you couple of ring-tailed snakes in the sage!" he said bitterly. "I'm stuck an' I'm game, but if either of you ever whisper a word of it to a livin' soul, outside of Molly, I'll plumb scalp, skin an' silence both of you. Kiss a dawg! Hell's delight!"

They started to follow him, still weak with laughter, but he threatened them with his gun and they fell back in mock alarm while Sam went round back of the corral and they heard him whistling for Grit. When he reappeared, straddling along on his bowed legs, his good humor had returned.

"How's he like it?" asked Mormon.

Sam grinned at him.

"You bald-headed ol' badger, you, he acted plumb like yore wives must have, when I salutes him on the snoot. Licks my nose first an' then curls up his tongue an' licks off his own. Wipes out all trace of the oskylation pronto an' thorough. Most unappreciative animile I ever see."

"I'll tell you straight out that none of my wives ever acted thataway," started Mormon, and the laugh swung at his expense.

"I didn't mind the operation so much," Sam confided to them, "when I figger out that I was just handin' it on fo' Molly, an' that she owes me one, whether she decides to salute you two galoots or not."

Molly's letters were prime events at the Three Star. She wrote every week telling of life at the Keiths'. Miranda made up the quartet to read them. Molly wrote:

It is full of excitement, this life at the Keiths', and they are just lovely to me. There is a lot of company always at the house and every one seems to be enjoying himself, but somehow it strikes me as not quite real. I want to be back where nobody pretends.

I go automobiling a good deal, with Mrs. Keith and once in a while with Donald, but I'd give anything, sometimes, for a good gallop through the redtop and sage and rabbit-brush on my pony. I can go riding here, but it is in the Park and you should see the saddle! Imagine a real saddle with the cantle taken away, the horn gone, the pommel trimmed down to almost nothing, no skirts to it, just pared to the core. And the poor horse bob-tailed and roach-maned, taught to go along with its knees high, like a trained horse in a circus. High-school gaited, they call it.

There was more talk of dinners and dances, of receptions and theaters, with mention of Donald Keith here and there, chat of new clothes, kind words for the elder Keiths. "Don't think I've changed," she said. "I'm the same Molly underneath even if I have been revamped and decorated."

The famous White Gold prospectuses and advertisements duly followed the news stories. Three Star saw no copies of the last, nor, it seemed, did Molly. Neither did prospectuses or advertisements come their way, for that matter. Casey Town boomed with some bona-fide strikes that sent Keith's stocks soaring high. The porphyry dyke at the Molly Mine began to yield rich results almost from the first and dividends were paid in such quantities as to stagger the Three Star outfit who saw themselves in a fair way to become rich. All over the barren hills, where the first futile shafts had been driven and abandoned, buildings sprang up like mushrooms, housing machinery, sending up plumes of white smoke that tokened the underground energies. The Keith properties were being developed with much show of outlay, prices jumping at every report from the Molly Mine or other successful developments. None of the investors in these Keith undertakings knew that he owned forty-nine per cent of the shares of the Molly and of none other, save for the space between issuing them and selling them.

The three partners held consultation as to their disposal of the checks that were sent them.

"Molly, she's gettin' the same amount we're splittin' both ways," said Sam, "but somehow it don't seem right to me the way we come in. It was her dad's mine. He found it. All we did was to find her—an' Grit done that. The dawg ought to have a gold collar an' we might accept a gold plated collar-button, apiece, that's the way it sizes up to me."

"The gal w'udn't promise to go to school 'less we shared even-Steven," said Mormon.

"She didn't know how much money she c'ud use then," demurred Sam. "Now she's bein' shown how to spend it. It ain't that she'd kick, but some might think we'd taken advantage of her. Darn me if I don't feel thataway myse'f."

"I see it this way," said Sandy. "I've done a heap of thinkin' over the matter. I don't believe that Molly has changed—still she might be influenced by folks who w'ud look at it that she made the deal when she was a minor an' we c'udn't enfo'ce it. Bein' her guardeen, I'm responsible fo' what she makes an' what she loses. Jim Redding fixed up things in that line He an' Ba'bara Redding understand it all but others mightn't. I'm plumb sure that if we-all didn't take the money Molly 'ud pull out her picket-pin an' say we wasn't playin' fair an' square with her. It was a deal an', at the time, I had no mo' idee the mines w'ud pan out than I have that Sam's laigs'll grow straight. I figger we can do this. We can use the money, keepin' account of it, puttin' it into stock an' improvements that'll pay fo' themselves long befo' Molly comes of age an' my guardeen papers play out. That way we'll have the benefit of the capital an' keep it ready to turn over to her if she ever needs it. I don't believe she'll ever take one red cent of it. It was a gamble with her an' she's a thoroughbred sport. To my mind, she'd sooner be slapped in the face by us than have us try an' wiggle out of the deal. But, in case anything ever turns up, or she gits married, we'll have it handy."

"Figger she's goin' to marry that young Keith? She writes a heap of Donald's this an' Donald doin' that. I'd like to take a slant at him. I sure hate to think of Molly hitchin' up with a tenderfoot."

"What put that in yore head?" Sam asked Mormon.

"Mirandy was wonderin' whether Ma Keith 'ud like to keep Molly's money in the family. Mirandy's allus 'spicioned a motive to that invite."

"Shucks! She asked her befo' the mine made a showin'. An' every dollar Molly makes, Keith makes five or six, out of the sale of them shares. But I subscribe to Sandy's scheme on these here dividends of ours."

"'Count me in," said Mormon. And so the affair was settled.

* * * * *

Of Plimsoll little was heard. The gambler had deserted that now unpopular profession, since suffrage ruled, and stayed close to his horse ranch. It lay alone, and few visited it save Plimsoll's own associates. Rumors drifted concerning Plimsoll's remarkable herd increase of saleable horses but, unless proof of actual operation was forthcoming, there was small chance of pinning anything down in the way of illegal work. There was always the excuse of having rounded up a bunch of broom-tail wild horses to account for growing numbers, and, if he stole or not, Plimsoll left the horses of his own county alone. No neighbor was injured and though stories of wild happenings at the horse ranch were current it was considered nobody's business. Wyatt once, staggering out of some blind pig in Hereford, still existent despite the suffrage sweeping, babbled in maudlin drunkenness of his determination to get even with Plimsoll for stealing his sweetheart. For Wyatt, for the sake of the girl, had gone back to Plimsoll's employ. The new sheriff took Wyatt's guns away and locked him up overnight in the "cooler," letting him go in the morning, soberer and more silent.

"But," said the sheriff to his cronies, "some day there'll be one grand shoot-up an' carry-out at Plimsoll's. Wyatt's sore clean through."

"He ain't got the sand in his craw to make a killing," said one of the listeners. "Sandy Bourke backed him off the map to Casey Town."

"Just the same, he's got something in his craw," replied the sheriff. "He may not shoot Plimsoll, but he's primed to pull something off first chance he gets. I spoke to him about what he's been firing off from his mouth the night before an' he shuts up like a clam. 'I was foolish drunk,' he says, but there was a look in his eyes that was nasty. If Plim's wise he'll get rid of Wyatt. He knows too much an' he's liable to tip it off."

"Wyatt an' Plim's both of 'em side-swipers," returned the other. "They'd throw dirt but not lead. Plumb yeller as a Gila monster's belly. Plimsoll told it all over the county he'd tally score with Sandy Bourke. Has he? He ain't even bought him a stick of chalk."

"He ain't had the chance he's lookin' for. That's all that's holding Plimsoll. Same way with Wyatt. Two buzzards of a feather, they are."

Thoughts of Plimsoll and his revenges did not bother Sandy's head. The "old man" of the Three Star—bearing the cowman's inevitable title for the head of the management, whether young or old, male or female—carried out his long cherished plans for additional water-supply, for alfalfa planting, for registered bulls and high-grade cows. Now that there was money in sight the success of the ranch was assured. He studied hard, he got in touch with the state experimental developments, he subscribed for magazines that told of cattle breeding, he sent soils for analysis and young Ed, coming home from his first term, found, somewhat to his chagrin, that Sandy was far ahead of him in both the theory and practise of ranching.

The days multiplied into weeks and the weeks into months. Sandy received one letter from Brandon that seemed to presage another visit across the line. It was terse, characteristic of the man.

MY DEAR BOURKE:

We are still losing three-and four-year-olds, and the evidence points plainly to their drifting over toward Plimsoll. We have traced up some of the links leading from this end. To be quite frank, the authorities of your own county do not seem over-disposed to bother in the matter, and we are taking things in our own hands. We have set a trap for Jim Plimsoll and have hopes he will walk into it if he is the guilty party.

If it springs and catches him you'll probably see us over your way again—after we have concluded our business with J. P. There are some of us old-timers—and I believe you are of our way of thinking or I would not write asking you to do this favor for me—who look at horse-stealing just as it used to be looked at—and dealt with. To be plain, we have been losing a lot of valuable animals and we are all considerably "riled."

The favor I want of you is to tip me off if Plimsoll appears about to leave the country. We have had a tip that he expects to do so before long. If you get wind of this a wire would be much appreciated by me.

Sincerely yours, W. J. BRANDON.

Have been hearing fine things about the way things are being run along modern lines on the Three Star. More power to you. Good stock always pays.

Sandy filed the letter. There was a room in the ranch-house that was now fitted up as an office, known to the riders of the Three Star as the "Old Man's Room." Sandy had even contemplated a typewriter, but given it up for the time being after talking it over.

"I don't believe I c'ud ever learn to ride one of those contraptions," he said. "I tried it once an' the wires bucked my fingers off reg'lar. But I sure hate writin' longhand."

"Why not import one of them stenographers?" suggested Mormon.

"Sure," jeered Sam. "Why not? Then you c'ud put in yore spare moments gentlin' a hawss fo' her an' pickin' wild flowers, until Mirandy Bailey persuades her the climate is too chilly. But I'll bet Molly c'ud handle that end of it prime, if she was back."

"I w'udn't wonder," said Sandy.

There was a lot of interjected talk about what Molly might say or do. With the founding of the Three Star Ranch the lives of the partners had changed a good deal. They held responsibilities, they owned a home and they lived there. None of them, since they were children, had ever known the close companionship of a young girl. Mormon's matrimonial adventures had been foredoomed shipwrecks on the sands of time, his wives marital pirates preying on his good nature and earnings. Molly had leavened their existences in a way that two of them hardly suspected and the yeast of affection was still working. Each hung to the hope that she might return to the ranch again to stay and each felt that hope was a faint one.

When, at last, there came the news, from Molly herself and from Mrs. Keith, that Keith was coming out to make inspection of his Casey Town properties, that he was traveling in a private car with his son, with Molly and her governess-companion, and that the two latter would get off at Hereford for a visit to the Three Star, Sandy went about with a whistle, Sam breathed sanguine melodies through the harmonica and Mormon beamed all over. The illumination was apparent. Sam told him he looked "all lit up, like a Chinee lantern" and Mormon beamed the more.

Molly's letter was primed with delight. Mrs. Keith's contained regrets that her physicians did not think the journey would be best for her to undertake in the present state of her health, which meant that she feared possible discomforts en route and imagined the ranch as a place where one was fed only on beans, sourdough bread, bull meat and indifferent coffee.

"You will find Miss Nicholson most efficient and amenable," she penned. "She has done remarkably well with your ward. I believe my husband expects to stay in your vicinity about a month and we have decided to make a holiday of it for Molly, so far as lessons are concerned. She can resume her studies on her return to New York. I regret exceedingly not being able to make your personal acquaintance. But, if ever you come east, we shall hope to see something of you."

Miranda Bailey sniffed at this letter openly.

"I hope they ain't spiled the child," she said. "I wonder what's the matter with the Nicholson teacher woman?"

"What do you mean?" asked Mormon.

"She says she's amenable. I ain't sure of the word, but I believe that means thin-blooded or underfed. My sister's niece by marriage was that way till they fed her cod-liver oil an' scraped beef. 'Pears to me as if all the companions an' governesses was that kind of folk. I suppose they hire out cheaper account of not bein' overstrong."

"You can search me," answered Mormon. "Ask Sandy, he's browsin' through the dikshunary reg'lar these days. Gettin' so it's hard to sabe half he tells you."

Sandy had to look up the word. "Liable to make answer," he read out.

"One of the snippy kind, back-talkin' an' peevish," said Miranda. "I can't bear 'em."

"That's the legal meaning," said Sandy. "I reckon this is it—submissive."

"Halter-broke. That's more likely. That's the kind that Keith party w'ud pick. I ain't ever seen her nor don't hope nor expect to, but that's the kind she'd pick. No backbone. Molly'll twist her round her little finger. Wonder how old she is?"

"The word you meant was anemic, Miss Mirandy," said Sandy, turning a leaf in the dictionary. "They sound about the same."

"There's too many words anyway," she replied. "Folks don't use mo'n a hundredth part of 'em an' git along first-rate. I don't see why they print 'em." Miranda did not show to the best advantage during the rest of her visit. She snubbed Mormon severely when he offered to get water for her car. "I've fetched an' carried for myself long enough not to want to be waited on," she said. "An' I don't need water anyway." She drove off and had to bail from an irrigating ditch before she was half-way to her destination. Whereupon she took herself to task.

"Miranda Bailey, there's no fool like an old fool," she said aloud, with sage-brush and timid prairie dogs for audience. "What you want to do is to keep sweet. Now git on." The final adjuration was to her car, to which she always spoke exactly as if it was a horse.

"What do you suppose made her so cantankerous?" Mormon inquired after she had driven round the corral. "Reckon you got her sore bawlin' her out about usin' the wrong word, Sandy. A woman's sensitive about them things."

Sam smote Mormon between the shoulders before Sandy could make answer.

"Fo' a man who's had yore experience, you're deef, blind, dumb an' lost to all sense of touch or motion," he shouted. "Remember what I said about the stenographer? Mirandy's jealous of the Nicholson woman. Plumb jealous! You better wear blinders while she's here, Mormon. If she's a good-looker, Gawd help you! Mirandy won't."



CHAPTER XVI

EAST AND WEST

When Miranda Bailey heard the news she announced her determination of coming over to the Three Star to prepare for the visitors.

"I reckon my reputation'll stand it," she said, "seein' I'm older than two of you an' the third is still a married man. That spineless governess'll be writin' back to the Keith woman about everything she sees, eats, sits or sleeps on. Pedro's cookin' is enough to give any easterner dyspepsy. The whole house wants reddin' up, it ain't been swept proper fo' a year."

Abashed, the partners gave her full sway. They lived on the porch in their spare waking moments, they ate cold victuals, and the lives of Pedro and Joe were made miserable. But the ranch-house was scoured from top to bottom. Miranda's car brought over curtains for the windows, flowers for the window-sills, odds and ends that made the place look homely, cheerful, inviting. Pedro was given lessons at the stove that he at first took sulkily but, being praised and his wages raised, took pride in.

"He'll do," vouchsafed Miranda at last, the evening before the arrival. "He's no hand at cookies or doughnuts an' never will be, but I'll bring them over from time to time. He can make a pie an' biscuit an' he can broil meat. I've taught him to mash his pertaters with milk 'stead of water an' to put butter in his hot cakes. I'm stayin' over till supper ter-morrer to see everything has a good staht."

"She's stayin' over to git a good look at the Nicholson party," Sam said to Mormon. "All this ain't jest for Molly."

"There's nothin' between Miss Mirandy an' myse'f," replied Mormon with dignity. "She's a wonderful housekeeper."

"She sure is. Me, I'm so I'm afeard to come into my own house, it's so golderned clean. If that third wife of yor'n...."

The long-suffering Mormon turned upon his partner. They were seated on the broad top rail of the breaking corral, waiting the call to supper. Mormon clutched Sam by his collar and jerked him off the rail, catching the slack cloth of his pants at the seat, holding him firmly gripped and bending him across his padded lap. Despite Sam's kicks and squirms, he paddled him unmercifully and then dropped him sprawling into the corral.

"I ain't done that to you, Sam Manning," he said sternly, "fo' five-six years. An' you've got too all-fired fresh. Nex' time I'll do it in front of Mirandy, you ornery, bow-laiged, hornin'-in son of a lizard."