Endicott laughed: "Regular habit," he answered.

The other drank deeply of the liquor and returned the cork. "You ought to break yourself of that habit, Win, there's no tellin' where it'll lead to. A fellow insulted me once when I was sober an' I never noticed it. But laying aside your moral defects, them whiskers of yourn is sure onornamental to a scandalous degree. Wait, I'll fetch my razor, an' you can mow 'em." He disappeared, to return a few moments later with a razor, a cake of hand-soap, and a shaving brush.

"I never have shaved my self," admitted Endicott, eyeing the articles dubiously.

"Who have you shaved?"

"I mean, I have always been shaved by a barber."

"Oh!" The cowboy took another long pull at the bottle. "Well, Win, the fact is them whiskers looks like hell an' has got to come off." He rolled up his sleeves. "I ain't no barber, an' never shaved a man in my life, except myself, but I'm willin' to take a chance. After what you've done for me I'd be a damn coward not to risk it. Wait now 'til I get another drink an' I'll tackle the job an' get it over with. A man can't never tell what he can do 'til he tries."

Endicott viewed the cowboy's enthusiasm with alarm. "That's just what I was thinking, Tex," he hastened to say, as the other drew the cork from the bottle. "And it is high time I learned to shave myself, anyway. I have never been where it was necessary before. If you will just sit there and tell me how, I will begin right now."

"Alright, Win, you can't never learn any younger. First off, you wet your face in the creek an' then soap it good. That soap ain't regular shavin' soap, but it'll do. Then you take the brush an' work it into a lather, an' then you shave."

"But," inquired the man dubiously, "don't you have towels soaked in hot water, and——"

"Towels an' hot water, hell! This ain't no barber shop, an' there ain't no gin, or whatever they rub on your face after you get through, either. You just shave an' knock the soap off your ears an' that's all there is to it."

After much effort Endicott succeeded in smearing his face with a thin, stringy lather, and gingerly picked up the razor. The Texan looked on in owlish solemnity as the man sat holding the blade helplessly.

"What you doin', Win, sayin' the blessin'? Just whet her on your boot an' sail in."

"But where do I begin?"

The Texan snorted disgustedly. "Your face ain't so damn big but what an hour or two reminiscence ought to take you back to where it starts. Begin at your hat an' work down over your jaw 'til you come to your shirt, an' the same on the other side, takin' in your lip an' chin in transit, as the feller says. An' hold it like a razor, an' not like a pitchfork. Now you got to lather all over again, 'cause it's dry."

Once more Endicott laboriously coaxed a thin lather out of the brown hand-soap, and again he grasped the razor, this time with a do-or-die determination.

"Oughtn't I have a mirror?" he asked doubtfully.

"A mirror! Don't you know where your own face is at? You don't need no mirror to eat with, do you? Well, it's the same way with shavin'. But if you got to have ocular evidence, just hang out over the creek there where it's still."

The operation was slow and painful. It seemed to Endicott as though each separate hair were being dragged out by its roots, and more than once the razor edge drew blood. At last the job was finished, he bathed his smarting face in the cold water, and turned to the Texan for approval.

"You look like the second best bet in a two-handed cat fight," he opined, and producing his book of cigarette papers, proceeded to stick patches of tissue over various cuts and gashes. "Takin' it by an' large, though, it ain't so bad. There's about as many places where you didn't go close enough as there is where you went too close, so's it'll average somewhere around the skin level. Anyway it shows you tried to look respectable—an' you do, from your neck down—an' your hat, too."

"I am certainly obliged to you," laughed Endicott, "for going to all that trouble to provide me with clothing. And by the way, did you learn anything—in regard to posses, I mean?"

The Texan nodded sombrely: "Yep. I did. This here friend of mine was on his way back from Wolf River when I met up with him. 'Tex,' he says, 'where's the pilgrim?' I remains noncommital, an' he continues, 'I layed over yesterday to enjoy Purdy's funeral, which it was the biggest one ever pulled off in Wolf River—not that any one give a damn about Purdy, but they've drug politics into it, an' furthermore, his'n was the only corpse to show for the whole celebration, it bein' plumb devoid of further casualties.'" The cowpuncher paused, referred to his bottle, and continued: "It's just like I told you before. There can't no one's election get predjudiced by hangin' you, an' they've made a kind of issue out of it. There's four candidates for sheriff this fall an' folks has kind of let it be known, sub rosy, that the one that brings you in, gathers the votes. In the absence of any corpse delecti, which in this case means yourn, folks refuses to assume you was hung, so each one of them four candidates is right now scouring the country with a posse. All this he imparts to me while he was throwin' that outfit of clothes together an' further he adds that I'm under suspicion for aidin' an' abettin', an' that means life with hard labour if I'm caught with the goods—an', Win, you're the goods. Therefore, you'll confer a favour on me by not getting caught, an' incidentally save yourself a hangin'. Once we get into the bad lands we're all to the good, but even then you've got to keep shy of folks. Duck out of sight when you first see any one. Don't have nothin' to say to no one under no circumstances. If you do chance onto someone where you can't do nothin' else you'll have to lie to 'em. Personal, I don't favour lyin' only as a last resort, an' then in moderation. Of course, down in the bad lands, most of the folks will be on the run like we are, an' not no more anxious for to hold a caucus than us. You don't have to be so particular there, 'cause likely all they'll do when they run onto you will be to take a shot at you, an' beat it. We've got to lay low in the bad lands about a week or so, an' after that folks will have somethin' else on their mind an' we can slip acrost to the N. P."

"See here, Tex, this thing has gone far enough." There was a note of determination in Endicott's voice as he continued: "I cannot permit you to further jeopardize yourself on my account. You have already neglected your business, incurred no end of hard work, and risked life, limb, and freedom to get me out of a scrape. I fully appreciate that I am already under heavier obligation to you than I can ever repay. But from here on, I am going it alone. Just indicate the general direction of the N. P. and I will find it. I know that you and Bat will see that Miss Marcum reaches the railway in safety, and——"

"Hold on, Win! That oration of yourn ain't got us no hell of a ways, an' already it's wandered about four school-sections off the trail. In the first place, it's me an' not you that does the permittin' for this outfit. I've undertook to get you acrost to the N. P. I never started anythin' yet that I ain't finished. Take this bottle of hooch here—I've started her, an' I'll finish her. There's just as much chance I won't take you acrost to the N. P., as that I won't finish that bottle—an' that's damn little.

"About neglectin' my business, as you mentioned, that ain't worryin' me none, because the wagon boss specified particular an' onmistakeable that if any of us misguided sons of guns didn't show up on the job the mornin' followin' the dance, we might's well keep on ridin' as far as that outfit was concerned, so it's undoubtable that the cow business is bein' carried on satisfactory durin' my temporary absence.

"Concernin' the general direction of the N. P., I'll enlighten you that if you was to line out straight for Texas, it would be the first railroad you'd cross. But you wouldn't never cross it because interposed between it an' here is a right smart stretch of country which for want of a worse name is called the bad lands. They's some several thousan' square miles in which there's only seven water-holes that a man can drink out of, an' generally speakin' about five of them is dry. There's plenty of water-holes but they're poison. Some is gyp an' some is arsnic. Also these here bad lands ain't laid out on no general plan. The coulees run hell-west an' crossways at their littlest end an' wind up in a mud crack. There ain't no trails, an' the inhabitants is renegades an' horse-thieves which loves their solitude to a murderous extent. If a man ain't acquainted with the country an' the horse-thieves, an' the water-holes, his sojourn would be discouragin' an' short.

"All of which circumlocutin' brings us to the main point which is that she wouldn't stand for no such proceedin'. As far as I can see that settles the case. The pros an' cons that you an' me could set here an' chew about, bein' merely incidental, irreverent, an' by way of passin' the time."

Endicott laughed: "You are a philosopher, Tex."

"A cow-hand has got to be."

"But seriously, I could slip away without her knowing it, then the only thing you could do would be to take her to the railway."

"Yes. Well, you try that an' you'll find out who's runnin' this outfit. I'll trail out after you an' when I catch you, I'll just naturally knock hell out of you, an' that's all there'll be to it. You had the edge on me in the water but you ain't on land. An' now that's settled to the satisfaction of all parties concerned, suppose me an' you slip over to camp an' cook supper so we can pull out right after sundown."

The two made their way through the timber to find Alice blowing herself red in the face in a vain effort to coax a blaze out of a few smouldering coals she had scraped from beneath the ashes of the fire.

"Hold on!" cried the Texan, striding toward her, "I've always maintained that buildin' fires is a he-chore, like swearin', an' puttin' the baby to sleep. So, if you'll just set to one side a minute while I get this fire a-goin' an' Win fetches some water, you can take holt an' do the cookin' while we-all get the outfit ready for the trail."

Something in the man's voice caused the girl to regard him sharply, and her eyes shifted for a moment to his companion who stood in the background. There was no flash of recognition in the glance, and Endicott, suppressing a laugh, turned his face away, picked up the water pail, and started toward the creek.

"Who is that man?" asked the girl, a trifle nervously, as he disappeared from view.

"Who, him?" The Texan was shaving slivers from a bull pine stick. "He's a friend of mine. Win's his name, an' barrin' a few little irregularities of habit, he ain't so bad." The cowboy burst into mournful song as he collected his shavings and laid them upon the coals:

"It's little Joe, the wrangler, he'll wrangle never more, His days with the remuda they are o'er; 'Twas a year ago last April when he rode into our camp, Just a little Texas stray, and all alo-o-o-n-e."

Alice leaned toward the man in sudden anger:

"You've been drinking!" she whispered.

Tex glanced at her in surprise: "That's so," he said, gravely. "It's the only way I can get it down."

She was about to retort when Endicott returned from the creek and placed the water pail beside her.

"Winthrop!" she cried, for the first time recognizing him. "Where in the world did you get those clothes, and what is the matter with your face?"

Endicott grinned: "I shaved myself for the first time."

"What did you do it with, some barbed wire?"

"Looks like somethin' that was left out in the rain an' had started to peel," ventured the irrepressible Tex.

Alice ignored him completely. "But the clothes? Where did you get them?"

Endicott nodded toward the Texan. "He loaned them to me!"

"But—surely they would never fit him."

"Didn't know it was necessary they should," drawled Tex, and having succeeded in building the fire, moved off to help Bat who was busying himself with the horses.

"Where has he been?" asked the girl as the voice of the Texan came from beyond the trees:

"It happened in Jacksboro in the spring of seventy-three, A man by the name of Crego come steppin' up to me, Sayin', 'How do you do, young fellow, an' how would you like to go An' spend one summer pleasantly, on the range of the buffalo-o-o?'"

"I'm sure I don't know. He came back an hour or so ago and woke me up and gave me this outfit and told me my whiskers looked like the infernal regions and that I had better shave—even offered to shave me, himself."

"But he has been drinking. Where did he get the liquor?"

"The same place he got the clothes, I guess. He said he met a friend and borrowed them," smiled Endicott.

"Well, it's nothing to laugh at. I should think you'd be ashamed to stand there and laugh about it."

The man stared at her in surprise. "I guess he won't drink enough to hurt him any. And—why, it was only a day or two ago that you sat in the dining car and defended their drinking. You even said, I believe, that had you been a man you would have been over in the saloon with them."

"Yes, I did say that! But that was different. Oh, I think men are disgusting! They're either bad, or just plain dumb!"

"We left old Crego's bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo— Went home to our wives an' sweethearts, told others not to go, For God's forsaken the buffalo range, and the damned old buffalo-o-o!"

"At least our friend Tex does not seem to be stricken with dumbness," Endicott smiled as the words of the buffalo skinner's song broke forth anew. "Do you know I have taken a decided fancy to him. He's——"

"I'd run along and play with him then if I were you," was the girl's sarcastic comment. "Maybe if you learn how to swear and sing some of his beautiful songs he'll give you part of his whiskey." She turned away abruptly and became absorbed in the preparation of supper, and Endicott, puzzled as he was piqued, at the girl's attitude, joined the two who were busy with the pack. "He's just perfectly stunning in that outfit," thought Alice as she watched him disappear in the timbers. "Oh, I don't know—sometimes I wish—" but the wish became confused somehow with the sizzling of bacon. And with tight-pressed lips, she got out the tin dishes.

"What's the matter, Win—steal a sheep?" asked the Texan as he paused, blanket in hand, to regard Endicott.

"What?"

"What did you catch hell for? You didn't imbibe no embalmin' fluid." Endicott grinned and the cowboy finished rolling his blanket.

"Seems like we're in bad, some way. She didn't say nothin' much, but I managed to gather from the way she looked right through the place where I was standin' that I could be got along without for a spell. Her interruptin' me right in the middle of a song to impart that I'd be'n drinkin' kind of throw'd me under the impression that the pastime was frowned on, but the minute I seen you comin' through the brush like you was sneaking off at recess, I know'd you was included in the boycott an' that lets the booze out. Seein's our conscience is clear, it must be somethin' she done that she's took umbrage at, as the feller says, an' the best thing we can do is to overlook it. I don't know as I'd advise tellin' her so, but we might just kind of blend into the scenery onobtrusive 'til the thaw comes. In view of which I'll just take a little drink an' sing you a song I heard down on the Rio Grande." Thrusting his arm into the end of his blanket roll, the Texan drew forth his bottle and, taking a drink, carefully replaced it. "This here song is The Old Chisholm Trail, an' it goes like this:

"Come along; boys, and listen to my tale, I'll tell you of my troubles on the old Chisholm trail.

Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya, youpy ya, Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.

I started up the trail October twenty-third, I started up the trail with the 2-U herd.

Oh, a ten dollar hoss and a forty dollar saddle— And I'm goin' to punchin' Texas cattle.

I woke up one morning on the old Chisholm trail, Rope in my hand and a cow by the tail.

I'm up in the mornin' afore daylight And afore I sleep the moon shines bright.

Old Ben Bolt was a blamed good boss, But he'd go to see the girls on a sore-backed hoss.

Old Ben Bolt was a fine old man And you'd know there was whiskey wherever he'd land.

My hoss throwed me off at the creek called Mud, My hoss throwed me off round the 2-U herd.

Last time I saw him he was going cross the level A-kicking up his heels and a-runnin' like the devil.

It's cloudy in the west, a-lookin' like rain, An' my damned old slicker's in the wagon again.

Crippled my hoss, I don't know how, Ropin' at the horns of a 2-U cow.

We hit Caldwell and we hit her on the fly, We bedded down the cattle on the hill close by.

No chaps, no slicker, and it's pourin' down rain, An' I swear, by God, I'll never night-herd again.

Feet in the stirrups and seat in the saddle, I hung and rattled with them long-horn cattle.

Last night I was on guard and the leader broke the ranks, I hit my horse down the shoulders and I spurred him in the flanks.

The wind commenced to blow, and the rain began to fall. Hit looked, by grab, like we was goin' to lose 'em all.

I jumped in the saddle and grabbed holt the horn, Best blamed cow-puncher ever was born.

I popped my foot in the stirrup and gave a little yell, The tail cattle broke and the leaders went to hell.

I don't give a damn if they never do stop; I'll ride as long as an eight-day clock.

Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn, Best damned cowboy ever was born.

I herded and I hollered and I done very well Till the boss said, 'Boys, just let 'em go to hell.'

Stray in the herd and the boss said kill it, So I shot him in the rump with the handle of the skillet.

We rounded 'em up and put 'em on the cars, And that was the last of the old Two Bars.

Oh, it's bacon and beans most every day,— I'd as soon be a-eatin' prairie hay.

I'm on my best horse and I'm goin' at a run, I'm the quickest shootin' cowboy that ever pulled a gun.

I went to the wagon to get my roll, To come back to Texas, dad-burn my soul.

I went to the boss to draw my roll, He had it figgered out I was nine dollars in the hole.

I'll sell my outfit just as soon as I can, I won't punch cattle for no damned man.

Goin' back to town to draw my money, Goin' back home to see my honey.

With my knees in the saddle and my seat in the sky, I'll quit punchin' cows in the sweet by and by.

Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya, youpy ya, Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya."

As the last words of the chorus died away both men started at the sound of the girl's voice.

"Whenever you can spare the time you will find your supper ready," she announced, coldly, and without waiting for a reply, turned toward the camp. Endicott looked at Tex, and Tex looked at Endicott.

"Seems like you done raised hell again, Win. Standin' around listenin' to ribald songs, like you done, ain't helped our case none. Well, we better go eat it before she throws it away. Come on, Bat, you're included in the general gloom. Your face looks like a last year's circus bill, Win, with them patches of paper hangin' to it. Maybe that's what riled her. If I thought it was I'd yank 'em off an' let them cuts bleed no matter how bad they stung, just to show her my heart's in the right place. But that might not suit, neither, so there you are."

Alice sat well back from the fire as the three men poured their coffee and helped themselves to the food.

"Ain't you goin' to join us in this here repast?" asked Tex, with a smile.

"I have eaten, thank you."

"You're welcome—like eight dollars change for a five-spot."

In vain Endicott signalled the cowboy to keep silent. "Shove over, Win, you're proddin' me in the ribs with your elbow! Ain't Choteau County big enough to eat in without crowdin'? 'Tain't as big as Tom Green County, at that, no more'n Montana is as big as Texas—nor as good, either; not but what the rest of the United States has got somethin' to be said in its favour, though. But comparisons are ordorous, as the Dutchman said about the cheese. Come on, Win, me an' you'll just wash up these dishes so Bat can pack 'em while we saddle up."

A half-hour later, just as the moon topped the crest of a high ridge, the four mounted and made their way down into the valley.

"We got to go kind of easy for a few miles 'cause I shouldn't wonder if old man Johnson had got a gang out interrin' defunck bovines. I'll just scout out ahead an' see if I can locate their camp so we can slip past without incurrin' notoriety."

"I should think," said Alice, with more than a trace of acid in her tone, "that you had done quite enough scouting for one day."

"In which case," smiled the unabashed Texan, "I'll delegate the duty to my trustworthy retainer an' side-kicker, the ubiquitous an' iniquitous Baterino St. Cecelia Julius Caesar Napoleon Lajune. Here, Bat, fork over that pack-horse an' take a siyou out ahead, keepin' a lookout for posses, post holes, and grave-diggers. It's up to you to see that we pass down this vale of tears, unsight an' unsung, as the poet says, or off comes your hind legs. Amen."

The half-breed grinned his understanding and handed over the lead-rope with a bit of homely advice. "You no lak' you git find, dat better you don' talk mooch. You ain' got to sing no mor', neider, or ba Goss! A'm tak' you down an' stick you mout' full of rags, lak' I done down to Chinook dat tam'. Dat hooch she mak' noise 'nough for wan night, sabe?"

"That's right, Bat. Tombstones and oysters is plumb raucous institutions to what I'll be from now on." He turned to the others with the utmost gravity. "You folks will pardon any seemin' reticence on my part, I hope. But there's times when Bat takes holt an' runs the outfit—an' this is one of 'em."



CHAPTER XIV

ON ANTELOPE BUTTE

After the departure of Bat it was a very silent little cavalcade that made its way down the valley. Tex, with the lead-horse in tow, rode ahead, his attention fixed on the trail, and the others followed, single file.

Alice's eyes strayed from the backs of her two companions to the mountains that rolled upward from the little valley, their massive peaks and buttresses converted by the wizardry of moonlight into a fairyland of wondrous grandeur. The cool night air was fragrant with the breath of growing things, and the feel of her horse beneath her caused the red blood to surge through her veins.

"Oh, it's grand!" she whispered, "the mountains, and the moonlight, and the spring. I love it all—and yet—" She frowned at the jarring note that crept in, to mar the fulness of her joy. "It's the most wonderful adventure I ever had—and romantic. And it's real, and I ought to be enjoying it more than I ever enjoyed anything in all my life. But, I'm not, and it's all because—I don't see why he had to go and drink!" The soft sound of the horses' feet in the mud changed to a series of sharp clicks as their iron shoes encountered the bare rocks of the floor of the canyon whose precipitous rock walls towered far above, shutting off the flood of moonlight and plunging the trail into darkness. The figures of the two men were hardly discernible, and the girl started nervously as her horse splashed into the water of the creek that foamed noisily over the canyon floor. She shivered slightly in the wind that sucked chill through the winding passage, although back there in the moonlight the night had been still. Gradually the canyon widened. Its walls grew lower and slanted from the perpendicular. Moonlight illumined the wider bends and flashed in silver scintillations from the broken waters of the creek. The click of the horses' feet again gave place to the softer trampling of mud, and the valley once more spread before them, broader now, and flanked by an endless succession of foothills.

Bat appeared mysteriously from nowhere, and after a whispered colloquy with Tex, led off toward the west, leaving the valley behind and winding into the maze of foothills. A few miles farther on they came again into the valley and Alice saw that the creek had dwindled into a succession of shallow pools between which flowed a tiny trickle of the water. On and on they rode, following the shallow valley. Lush grass overran the pools and clogged the feeble trickle of the creek. Farther on, even the green patches disappeared and white alkali soil showed between the gnarled sage bushes. Gradually the aspect of the country changed. High, grass-covered foothills gave place to sharp pinnacles of black lava rock, the sides of the valley once more drew together, low, and broken into ugly cutbanks of dirty grey. Sagebrush and prickly pears furnished the only vegetation, and the rough, broken surface of the country took on a starved, gaunt appearance.

Alice knew instinctively that they were at the gateway of the bad lands, and the forbidding aspect that greeted her on every side as her eyes swept the restricted horizon caused a feeling of depression. Even the name "bad lands" seemed to hold a foreboding of evil. She had not noticed this when the Texan had spoken it. If she had thought of it at all, it was impersonally—an undesirable strip of country, as one mentions the Sahara Desert. But, now, when she herself was entering it—was seeing with her own eyes the grey mud walls, the bare black rocks, and the stunted sage and cactus—the name held much of sinister portent.

From a nearby hillock came a thin weird scream—long-drawn and broken into a series of horrible cackles. Instantly, as though it were the signal that loosed the discordant chorus of hell, the sound was caught up, intensified and prolonged until the demonical screams seemed to belch from every hill and from the depths of the coulees between.

Unconsciously, the girl spurred her horse which leaped past Endicott and Bat and drew up beside the Texan, who was riding alone in the forefront.

The man glanced into the white frightened face: "Coyotes," he said, gravely. "They won't bother any one."

The girl shuddered. "There must be a million of them. What makes them howl that way?"

"Most any other way would be better, wouldn't it. But I reckon that's the way they've learnt to, so they just keep on that way."

Alice glanced at him sharply, but in the moonlight his clean-cut profile gave no hint of levity.

"You are making fun of me!"

He turned his head and regarded her thoughtfully. "No. I wouldn't do that, really. I was thinkin' of somethin' else."

"You are a very disconcerting young man. You are unspeakably rude, and I ought to be furiously angry."

The Texan appeared to consider. "No. You oughtn't to do that because when something important comes up you ain't got anything back, an' folks won't regard you serious. But you wouldn't have been even peeved if you knew what I was thinkin' about."

"What was it?" The instant the question left her lips the girl wished she could have recalled it.

There was a long pause and Alice began to hope that the man had not heard her question. Then he turned a very grave face toward her and his eyes met hers squarely. "I was thinkin' that maybe, sometime, you'd get to care enough about me to marry me. Sounds kind of abrupt an' off-hand, don't it? But it ain't. I've been thinkin' about it a lot. You're the first woman I've seen since—well, since way back yonder, that I'd ever marry. The only one that stacks up to the kind of people mine are, an' that I was back there. Of course, there'd be a lot of readjustin' but that would work out—it always does when the right kind of folks takes holt to put anything through. I've got some recreations an' pastimes that ain't condoned by the pious. I gamble, an' swear, an' smoke, an' lie, an' drink. But I gamble square, swear decent an' hearty, lie for fun, but never in earnest, an' drink to a reasonable degree of hilarity. My word is good with every man, woman, an' child in the cow country. I never yet went back on a friend, nor let up on an enemy. I never took underhand advantage of man or woman, an' I know the cow business. For the rest of it, I'll go to the old man an' offer to take the Eagle Creek ranch off his hands an' turn nester. It's a good ranch, an' one that rightly handled would make a man rich—provided he was a married man an' had somethin' to get rich for. I don't want you to tell me now, you won't, or you will. We've got a week or so yet to get acquainted in. An', here's another thing. I know, an' you know, down deep in your heart, that you're goin' to marry either Win, or me. Maybe you know which. I don't. But if it is him, you'll get a damned good man. He's square an' clean. He's got nerve—an' there ain't no bluff about it, neither. Wise men don't fool with a man with an eye like his. An' he wants you as bad as I do. As I said, we've got a week or more to get acquainted. It will be a week that may take us through some mighty tough sleddin', but that ain't goin' to help you none in choosin', because neither one of us will break—an' you can bet your last stack of blue ones on that."

The girl's lips were pressed very tight, and for some moments she rode in silence.

"Do you suppose I would ever marry a man who deliberately gets so drunk he sings and talks incessantly——"

"You'd be safer marryin' one that got drunk deliberately, than one who done it inadvertent when he aimed to stay sober. Besides, there's various degrees of drunkenness, the term bein' relative. But for the sake of argument admittin' I was drunk, if you object to the singin' and talkin', what do you recommend a man to do when he's drunk?"

"I utterly despise a man that gets drunk!" The words came with an angry vehemence, and for many minutes the Texan rode in silence while the bit chains clinked and the horses' hoofs thudded the ground dully. He leaned forward and his gloved hand gently smoothed his horse's mane. "You don't mean just exactly that," he said, with his eyes on the dim outline of a butte that rose high in the distance. Alice noticed that the bantering tone was gone from his voice, and that his words fell with a peculiar softness. "I reckon, though, I know what you do mean. An' I reckon that barrin' some little difference in viewpoint, we think about alike. . . . Yonder's Antelope Butte. We'll be safe to camp there till we find out which way the wind blows before we strike across."

Deeper and deeper they pushed into the bad lands, the huge bulk of Antelope Butte looming always before them, its outline showing distinctly in the light of the sinking moon. As far as the eye could see on every side the moonlight revealed only black lava-rock, deep black shadows that marked the courses of dry coulees, and enormous mud-cracks—and Antelope Butte.

As the girl rode beside the cowboy she noticed that the cynical smile was gone from the clean-cut profile. For miles he did not speak. Antelope Butte was near, now.

"I am thirsty," she said. A gauntleted hand fumbled for a moment with the slicker behind the cantle, and extended a flask.

"It's water. I figured someone would get thirsty."

The girl drank from the flask and returned it: "If there are posses out won't they watch the water-holes? You said there are only a few in the bad lands."

"Yes, they'll watch the water-holes. That's why we're goin' to camp on Antelope Butte—right up on top of it."

"But, how will we get water?"

"It's there."

"Have you been up there?" The girl glanced upward. They were already ascending the first slope, and the huge mass of the detached mountain towered above them in a series of unscaleable precipices.

"No. But the water's there. The top of the Butte hollows out like a saucer, an' in the bowl there's a little sunk spring. No one much ever goes up there. There's a little scragglin' timber, an' the trail—it's an old game trail—is hard to find if you don't know where to look for it. A horse-thief told me about it."

"A horse-thief! Surely, you are not risking all our lives on the word of a horse-thief!"

"Yes. He was a pretty good fellow. They killed him, afterwards, over near the Mission. He was runnin' off a bunch of Flourey horses."

"But a man who would steal would lie!"

"He didn't lie to me. He judged I done him a good turn once. Over on the Marias, it was—an' he said: 'If you're ever on the run, hit for Antelope Butte.' Then he told me about the trail, an' the spring that you've got to dig for among the rocks. He's got a grub cache there, too. He won't be needin' it, now." The cowboy glanced toward the west. "The moon ought to just about hold 'til we get to the top. He said you could ride all the way up." Without an instant's hesitation he headed his horse for a huge mass of rock fragments that lay at the base of an almost perpendicular wall. The others followed in single file. Bat bringing up the rear driving the pack-horse before him. Alice kept her horse close behind the Texan's which wormed and twisted in and out among the rock fragments that skirted the wall. For a quarter of a mile they proceeded with scarcely a perceptible rise and then the cowboy turned his horse into a deep fissure that slanted upward at a most precarious angle seemingly straight into the heart of the mountain. Just when it seemed that the trail must end in a blind pocket, the Texan swung into a cross fissure so narrow that the stirrups brushed either side. So dark was it between the towering rock walls that Alice could scarcely make out the cowboy's horse, although at no time was he more than ten or fifteen feet in advance. After innumerable windings the fissure led once more to the face of the mountain and Tex headed his horse out upon a ledge that had not been discernible from below. Alice gasped, and for a moment it seemed as though she could not go on. Spread out before her like a huge relief map were the ridges and black coulees of the bad lands, and directly below—hundreds of feet below—the gigantic rock fragments lay strewn along the base of the cliff like the abandoned blocks of a child. She closed her eyes and shuddered. A loose piece of rock on the narrow trail, a stumble, and—she could feel herself whirling down, down, down. It was the voice of the Texan—confident, firm, reassuring—that brought her once more to her senses.

"It's all right. Just follow right along. Shut your eyes, or keep 'em to the wall. We're half-way up. It ain't so steep from here on, an' she widens toward the top. I'm dizzy-headed, too, in high places an' I shut mine. Just give the horse a loose rein an' he'll keep the trail. There ain't nowhere else for him to go."

With a deadly fear in her heart, the girl fastened her eyes upon the cowboy's back and gave her horse his head. And as she rode she wondered at this man who unhesitatingly risked his life upon the word of a horse-thief.

Almost before she realized it the ordeal was over and her horse was following its leader through a sparse grove of bull pine. The ascent was still rather sharp, and the way strewn with boulders, and fallen trees, but the awful precipice, with its sheer drop of many hundreds of feet to the black rocks below, no longer yawned at her stirrup's edge, and it was with a deep-drawn breath of relief that she allowed her eyes once again to travel out over the vast sweep of waste toward the west where the moon hung low and red above the distant rim of the bad lands.

The summit of Antelope Butte was, as the horse-thief had said, an ideal camping place for any one who was "on the run." The edges of the little plateau, which was roughly circular in form, rose on every side to a height of thirty or forty feet, at some points in an easy slope, and at others in a sheer rise of rock wall. The surface of the little plane showed no trace of the black of the lava rock of the lower levels but was of the character of the open bench and covered with buffalo grass and bunch grass with here and there a sprinkling of prickly pears. The four dismounted and, in the last light of the moon, surveyed their surroundings.

"You make camp, Bat," ordered the Texan, "while me an' Win hunt up the spring. He said it was on the east side where there was a lot of loose rock along the edge of the bull pine. We'll make the camp there, too, where the wood an' water will be handy."

Skirting the plateau, Tex led the way toward a point where a few straggling pines showed gaunt and lean in the rapidly waning moonlight.

"It ought to be somewheres around here," he said, as he stopped to examine the ground more closely. "He said you had to pile off the rocks 'til you come to the water an' then mud up a catch-basin." As he talked, the cowboy groped among the loose rocks on his hands and knees, pausing frequently to lay his ear to the ground. "Here she is!" he exclaimed at length. "I can hear her drip! Come on, Win, we'll build our well."

Alice stood close beside her horse watching every move with intense interest.

"Who would have thought to look for water there?" she exclaimed.

"I knew we'd find it just as he said," answered the Texan gravely. "He was a good man, in his way—never run off no horses except from outfits that could afford to lose 'em. Why, they say, he could have got plumb away if he'd shot the posse man that run onto him over by the Mission. But he knew the man was a nester with a wife an' two kids, so he took a chance—an' the nester got him."

"How could he?" cried the girl, "after——"

The Texan regarded her gravely. "It was tough. An' he probably hated to do it. But he was a sworn-in posse man, an' the other was a horse-thief. It was just one of those things a man's got to do. Like Jim Larkin, when he was sheriff, havin' to shoot his own brother, an' him hardly more'n a kid that Jim had raised. But he'd gone plumb bad an' swore never to be taken alive, so Jim killed him—an' then he resigned. There ain't a man that knows Jim, that don't know he'd rather a thousan' times over had the killin' happen the other way 'round. But he was a man. He had it to do—an' he done it."

Alice shuddered: "And then—what became of him, then?"

"Why, then, he went back to ranchin'. He owns the Bar X horse outfit over on the White Mud. This here, Owen—that was his brother's name—was just like a son to him. Jim tried to steer him straight, but the kid was just naturally a bad egg. Feelin' it the way he does, a lesser man might of squinted down the muzzle of his own gun, or gone the whiskey route. But not him. To all appearances he's the same as he always was. But some of us that know him best—we can see that he ain't quite the same as before—an' he never will be."

There were tears in the girl's eyes as the man finished.

"Oh, it's all wrong! It's cruel, and hard, and brutal, and wrong!"

"No. It ain't wrong. It's hard, an' it's cruel, maybe, an' brutal. But it's right. It ain't a country for weaklings—the cow country ain't. It's a country where, every now an' then, a man comes square up against something that he's got to do. An' that something is apt as not to be just what he don't want to do. If he does it, he's a man, an' the cow country needs him. If he don't do it, he passes on to where there's room for his kind—an' the cow country don't miss him. A man earns his place here, it ain't made for him—often he earns the name by which he's called. I reckon it's the same all over—only this is rawer."

"Here's the water! And it is cold and sweet," called Endicott who had been busily removing the loose rock fragments beneath which the spring lay concealed.

The Texan's interest centred on matters at hand: "You Bat, you make a fire when you've finished with the horses." He turned again to the girl: "If you'll be the cook, Win an' I'll mud up a catch-basin an' rustle some firewood while Bat makes camp. We got to do all our cookin' at night up here. A fire won't show above the rim yonder, but in the daytime someone might see the smoke from ten mile off."

"Of course, I'll do the cooking!" assented the girl, and began to carry the camp utensils from the pack that the half-breed had thrown upon the ground. "The dough-gods are all gone!" she exclaimed in dismay, peering into a canvas bag.

"Mix up some bakin'-powder ones. There's flour an' stuff in that brown sack."

"But—I don't know how!"

"All right. Wait 'til I get Win strung out on this job, an' I'll make up a batch."

He watched Endicott arrange some stones: "Hey, you got to fit those rocks in better'n that. Mud ain't goin' to hold without a good backin'."

The cowboy washed his hands in the overflow trickle and wiped them upon his handkerchief. "I don't know what folks does all their lives back East," he grinned; "Win, there, ain't barbered none to speak of, an' the Lord knows he ain't no stone-mason."

Alice did not return the smile, and the Texan noticed that her face was grave in the pale starlight. For the first time in her life the girl felt ashamed of her own incompetence.

"And I can't cook, and——"

"Well, that's so," drawled Tex, "but it won't be so tomorrow. No one but a fool would blame any one for not doin' a thing they've never learnt to do. They might wonder a little how-come they never learnt, but they wouldn't hold it against 'em—not 'til they've had the chance." Bat was still busy with the horses and the cowboy collected sticks and lighted a small fire, talking, as he worked with swift movements that accomplished much without the least show of haste. "It generally don't take long in the cow country for folks to get their chance. Take Win, there. Day before yesterday he was about the greenest pilgrim that ever straddled a horse. Not only he didn't know anything worth while knowin', but he was prejudiced. The first time I looked at him I sized him up—almost. 'There's a specimen,' I says to myself—while you an' Purdy was gossipin' about the handkerchief, an' the dance, an' what a beautiful rider he was—'that's gone on gatherin' refinement 'til it's crusted onto him so thick it's probably struck through.' But just as I was losin' interest in him, he slanted a glance at Purdy that made me look him over again. There he stood, just the same as before—only different." The Texan poured some flour into a pan and threw in a couple of liberal pinches of baking-powder.

Alice's eyes followed his every movement, and she glanced toward the spring that Endicott had churned into a mud hole. The cowboy noted her glance. "It would be riled too much even if we strained it," he smiled, "so we'll just use what's left in that flask. It don't take much water an' the spring will clear in time for the coffee."

"And some people never do learn?" Alice wanted to hear more from this man's lips concerning the pilgrim. But the Texan mustn't know that she wanted to hear.

"Yes, some don't learn, some only half learn, an' some learn in a way that carries 'em along 'til it comes to a pinch—they're the worst. But, speakin' of Win, after I caught that look, the only surprise I got when I heard he'd killed Purdy was that he could do it—not that he would. Then later, under certain circumstances that come to pass in a coulee where there was cottonwoods, him an' I got better acquainted yet. An' then in the matter of the reservoir—but you know more about that than I do. You see what I'm gettin' at is this: Win can saddle his own horse, now, an' he climbs onto him from the left side. The next time he tackles it he'll shave, an' the next time he muds up a catch-basin he'll mud it right. Day before yesterday he was about as useless a lookin' piece of bric-a-brac as ever draw'd breath—an' look at him now! There ain't been any real change. The man was there all the time, only he was so well disguised that no one ever know'd it—himself least of all. Yesterday I saw him take a chew off Bat's plug—an' Bat don't offer his plug promiscuous. He'll go back East, an' the refinement will cover him up again—an' that's a damned shame. But he won't be just the same. It won't crust over no more, because the prejudice is gone. He's chewed the meat of the cow country—an' he's found it good."

Later, long after the others had gone to sleep, Alice lay between her blankets in the little shelter tent, thinking.



CHAPTER XV

THE TEXAN HEARS SOME NEWS

Bat had pitched the tent upon a little knoll, screened by a jutting shoulder of rock from the sleeping place of the others. When Alice awoke it was broad daylight. She lay for a few moments enjoying the delicious luxury of her blankets which the half-breed had spread upon a foot-thick layer of boughs. The sun beat down upon the white canvas and she realized that it was hot in the tent. The others must have been up for hours and she resented their not having awakened her. She listened for sounds, but outside all was silence and she dressed hurriedly. Stepping from the tent, she saw the dead ashes of the little fire and the contents of the packs apparently undisturbed, covered with the tarp. She glanced at her watch. It was half past nine. Suddenly she remembered that dawn had already began to grey the east when they retired. She was the first one up! She would let the others sleep. They needed it. She remembered the Texan had not slept the day before, but had ridden away to return later with the clothing for Endicott—and the whiskey.

"I don't see why he has to drink!" she muttered, and making her way to the spring, dipped some water from the catch-basin and splashed it over her face and arms. The cold water dispelled the last vestige of sleepiness and she stood erect and breathed deeply of the crystal air. At the farther side of the bowl-like plateau the horses grazed contentedly, and a tiny black and white woodpecker flew from tree to tree pecking busily at the bark. Above the edge of the rim-rocks the high-flung peaks of the Bear Paws belied the half-night's ride that separated them from the isolated Antelope Butte.

"What a view one should get from the edge!" she exclaimed, and turning from the spring, made her way through the scraggly timber to the rock wall beyond. It was not a long climb and five minutes later she stood panting with exertion and leaned against an upstanding pinnacle of jagged rock. For a long time she stood wonder-bound by the mighty grandeur of the panorama that swept before her to lose itself somewhere upon the dim horizon. Her brain grasped for details. It was all too big—too unreal—too unlike the world she had known. In sheer desperation, for sight of some familiar thing, her eyes turned toward the camp. There was the little white tent, and the horses grazing beyond. Her elevation carried her range of vision over the jutting shoulder of rock, and she saw the Texan sitting beside his blankets drawing on his boots. The blankets were mounded over the forms of the others, and without disturbing them, the cowboy put on his hat and started toward the spring. At the sight of the little tent he paused and Alice saw him stand staring at the little patch of white canvas. For a long time he stood unmoving, and then, impulsively, his two arms stretched toward it. The arms were as quickly withdrawn. The Stetson was lifted from his head and once more it seemed a long time that he stood looking at the little tent with the soft brim of his Stetson crushed tightly in his hand.

Evidently, for fear of waking her, the man did not go to the spring, but retraced his steps and Alice saw him stoop and withdraw something from his war-bag. Thrusting the object beneath his shirt, he rose slowly and made his way toward the rim-rock, choosing for his ascent a steep incline which, with the aid of some rock ledges, would bring him to the top at a point not ten yards from where she stood.

It was with a sense of guilt that she realized she had spied upon this man, and her cheeks flushed as she cast about desperately for a means to escape unseen. But no such avenue presented itself, and she drew back into a deep crevice of her rock pinnacle lest he see her.

A grubby, stunted pine somehow managed to gain sustenance from the stray earth among the rock cracks and screened her hiding-place. The man was very close, now. She could hear his heavy breathing and the click of his boot heels upon the bare rocks. Then he crossed to the very verge of the precipice and seated himself with his feet hanging over the edge. For some moments he sat gazing out over the bad lands, and then his hand slipped into the front of his shirt and withdrew a bottle of whiskey.

The girl's lips tightened as she watched him from behind her screen of naked roots and branches. He looked a long time at the bottle, shook it, and held it to the sun as he contemplated the little beads that sparkled at the edge of the liquor line. He read its label, and seemed deeply interested in the lines of fine print contained upon an oval sticker that adorned its back. Still holding the bottle, he once more stared out over the bad lands. Then he drew the cork and smelled of the liquor, breathing deeply of its fragrance, and turning, gazed intently toward the little white tent beside the stunted pines.

Alice saw that his eyes were serious as he set the bottle upon the rock beside him. And then, hardly discernible at first, but gradually assuming distinct form, a whimsical smile curved his lips as he looked at the bottle.

"Gosh!" he breathed, softly, "ain't you an' I had some nonsensical times? I ain't a damned bit sorry, neither. But our trails fork here. Maybe for a while—maybe for ever. But if it is for ever, my average will be right honourable if I live to be a hundred." Alice noticed how boyish the clean-cut features looked when he smiled that way. The other smile—the masking, cynical smile—made him ten years older. The face was once more grave, and he raised the bottle from the rock. "So long," he said, and there was just that touch of honest regret in his voice with which he would have parted from a friend. "So long. I've got a choice to make—an' I don't choose you."

The hand that held the bottle was empty. There was a moment of silence and then from far below came the tinkle of smashing glass. The Texan got up, adjusted the silk scarf at his neck, rolled a cigarette, and clambering down the sharp descent, made his way toward the grazing horses. Alice watched for a moment as he walked up to his own horse, stroked his neck, and lightly cuffed at the ears which the horse laid back as he playfully snapped at his master's hand. Then she scrambled from her hiding-place and hurried unobserved to her tent, where she threw herself upon the blankets with a sound that was somehow very like a sob.

When the breakfast of cold coffee and biscuits was finished the Texan watched Endicott's clumsy efforts to roll a cigarette.

"Better get you a piece of twine to do it with, Win," he grinned; "you sure are a long ways from home when it comes to braidin' a smoke. Saw a cow-hand do it once with one hand. In a show, it was in Cheyenne, an' he sure was some cowboy—in the show. Come out onto the flats one day where the boys was breakin' a bunch of Big O Little O horses—'after local colour,' he said." The Texan paused and grinned broadly. "Got it too. He clum up into the middle of a wall-eyed buckskin an' the doc picked local colour out of his face for two hours where he'd slid along on it—but he could roll a cigarette with one hand. There, you got one at last, didn't you? Kind of humped up in the middle like a snake that's swallowed a frog, but she draws all right, an' maybe it'll last longer than a regular one." He turned to Alice who had watched the operation with interest.

"If you-all don't mind a little rough climbin', I reckon, you'd count the view from the rim-rocks yonder worth seein'."

"Oh, I'd love it!" cried the girl, as she scrambled to her feet.

"Come on, Win," called the Texan, "I'll show you where God dumped the tailin's when He finished buildin' the world."

Together the three scaled the steep rock-wall. Alice, scorning assistance, was the first to reach the top, and once more the splendour of the magnificent waste held her speechless.

For some moments they gazed in silence. Before them, bathed in a pale amethyst haze that thickened to purple at the far-off edge of the world, lay the bad lands resplendent under the hot glare of the sun in vivid red and black and pink colouring of the lava rock. Everywhere the eye met the flash and shimmer of mica fragments that sparkled like the facets of a million diamonds, while to the northward the Bear Paws reared cool and green, with the grass of the higher levels reaching almost to the timber line.

"Isn't it wonderful?" breathed the girl. "Why do people stay cooped up in the cities, when out here there is—this?" Endicott's eyes met hers, and in their depths she perceived a newly awakened fire. She was conscious of a strange glow at her heart—a mighty gladness welled up within her, permeating her whole being. "He has awakened," her brain repeated over and over again, "he has——"

The voice of the Texan fell upon her ears softly as from a distance, and she turned her eyes to the boyish faced cow-puncher who viewed life lightly and who, she had learned, was the thorough master of his wilderness, and very much a man.

"I love it too," he was saying. "This bad land best of all. What with the sheep, an' the nesters, the range country must go. But barbed-wire can never change this," his arm swept the vast plain before him. "I suppose God foreseen what the country was comin' to," he speculated, "an' just naturally stuck up His 'keep off' sign on places here an' there—the Sahara Desert, an' Death Valley, an' the bad lands. He wanted somethin' left like He made it. Yonder's the Little Rockies, an' them big black buttes to the south are the Judith, an' you can see—way beyond the Judith—if you look close—the Big Snowy Mountains. They're more than a hundred miles away."

The cowboy ceased speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze, made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair of glasses," he muttered, with his eyes on the moving dot.

"What is it?" asked the girl.

"Rider of some kind. Maybe the I X round-up is workin' the south slope. An' maybe it's just a horse-thief. But it mightn't be either. Guess I'll just throw the hull on that cayuse of mine an' siyou down and see. He's five or six miles off yet, an' I've got plenty of time to slip down there. Glad the trail's on the west side. You two stay up here, but you got to be awful careful not to show yourselves. Folks down below look awful little from here, but if they've got glasses you'd loom up plenty big, an' posse men's apt to pack glasses." The two followed him to camp and a few moments later watched him ride off at a gallop and disappear in the scrub that concealed the mouth of the precipitous trail.

Hardly had he passed from sight than Bat rose and, walking to his saddle, uncoiled his rope.

"Where are you going?" asked Endicott as the half-breed started toward the horses.

"Me, oh, A'm trail long behine. Mebbe-so two kin see better'n wan."

A few minutes later he too was swallowed up in the timber at the head of the trail, and Alice and Endicott returned to the rim-rocks and from a place of concealment watched with breathless interest the course of the lone horseman.

After satisfying himself he was unobserved, the Texan pushed from the shelter of the rocks at the foot of the trail and, circling the butte, struck into a coulee that led south-eastward into the bad lands. A mile away he crossed a ridge and gained another coulee which he followed northward.

"If he's headin' into the bad lands I'll meet up with him, an' if he's just skirtin' 'em, our trails'll cross up here a piece," he reasoned as his horse carried him up the dry ravine at a steady walk. Presently he slanted into a steep side coulee that led upward to the crest of a long flat ridge. For a moment he paused as his eyes swept the landscape and then suddenly a quarter of a mile away a horseman appeared out of another coulee. He, too, paused and, catching sight of the Texan, dug in his spurs and came toward him at a run.

The cowboy's brows drew into a puzzled frown as he studied the rapidly approaching horseman. "Well, I'll be damned!" he grinned, "ain't he the friendly young spirit! His ma had ought to look after him better'n that an' teach him some manners. The idea of any one chargin' up to a stranger that way in the bad lands! One of these days he's a-goin' to run up again' an abrupt foreshortin' of his reckless young career." The rider was close now and the Texan recognized a self-important young jackass who had found work with one of the smaller outfits.

"It's that mouthy young short-horn from the K 2," he muttered, disgustedly. "Well, he'll sure cut loose an' earful of small talk. He hates himself, like a peacock." The cowboy pulled up his horse with a vicious jerk that pinked the foam at the animal's mouth and caused a little cloud of dust to rise into the air. Then, for a moment, he sat and stared.

"If you was in such a hell of a hurry," drawled the Texan, "you could of rode around me. There's room on either side."

The cowboy found his voice. "Well, by gosh, if it ain't Tex! How they stackin', old hand?"

"Howdy," replied the Texan, dryly.

"You take my advice an' lay low here in the bad lands an' they won't ketch you. I said it right in the Long Horn yeste'day mornin'—they was a bunch of us lappin' 'em up. Old Pete was there—an' I says to Pete, I says, 'Take it from me they might ketch all the rest of 'em but they won't never ketch Tex!' An' Pete, he says, 'You're just right there, Joe,' an' then he takes me off to one side, old Pete does, an' he says, 'Joe,' he says, 'I've got a ticklish job to be done, an' I ain't got another man I kin bank on puttin' it through.'"

The Texan happened to know that Mr. Peter G. Kester, owner of the K 2, was a very dignified old gentleman who left the details of his ranch entirely in the hands of his foreman, and the idea of his drinking in the Long Horn with his cowboys was as unique as was hearing him referred to as "Old Pete."

"What's ailin' him?" asked the Texan. "Did he lose a hen, or is he fixin' to steal someone's mewl?"

"It's them Bar A saddle horses," continued the cowboy, without noticing the interruption. "He buys a string of twenty three-year-olds offen the Bar A an' they broke out of the pasture. They range over here on the south slope, an' if them horse-thieves down in the bad lands has got 'em they're a-goin' to think twict before they run off any more K 2 horses, as long as I'm workin' fer the outfit."

"Are you aimin' to drive twenty head of horses off their own range single handed?"

"Sure. You can do it easy if you savvy horses."

The Texan refrained from comment. He wanted to know who was supposed to be interested in catching him, and why. Had someone told the truth about the lynching, and was he really wanted for aiding and abetting the pilgrim's escape?

"I reckon that's true," he opined. "They can't get me here in the bad lands."

The other laughed: "You bet they can't! Say, that was some ride you put up down to Wolf River. None of us could have done better."

"Did you say they was headin' this way?"

"Who?"

"Who would I be thinkin' about now, I wonder?"

"Oh! Naw! They ain't ready to make any arrests yet. The grand jury set special an' returned a lot of indictments an' you're one of 'em, but the districk attorney, he claims he can't go ahead until he digs up the cripus delinkty——"

"The what?"

"Oh, that's a nickname the lawyers has got fer a pilgrim."

"Wasn't one stranglin' enough for spreadin' out Purdy? What do they want of the pilgrim?"

"Spreadin' out Purdy!" exclaimed the other, "don't you know that Purdy didn't stay spread? Wasn't hardly hurt even. The pilgrim's bullet just barely creased him, an' when Sam Moore went back with a spring wagon to fetch his remains, Purdy riz up an' started cussin' him out an' scairt Sam so his team run away an' he lost his voice an' ain't spoke out loud since—an' them's only one of the things he done. So, you see, you done your lynching too previous, an' folks is all stirred up about it, holdin' that lawless acts has got to be put a stop to in Choteau County, an' a pilgrim has got as good a right to live as the next one. They're holdin' that even if he had got Purdy it would of be'n a damn good thing, an' they wasn't no call to stretch a man for that. So the grand jury set, an' the districk attorney has got a gang of men diggin' up all the coulees for miles around, a-huntin' for the pilgrim's cripus delinkty so he kin go ahead with his arrests."

The eyes of the Texan were fixed on the mountains. He appeared not interested. Twenty feet away in a deep crevice at the edge of the coulee, Bat Lajune, who had overheard every word, was convulsed with silent mirth.

"You say they've dug up all the coulees? Red Rock an'—an' all, Buffalo, Six-mile, Woodpile, Miller's?" The Texan shot out the names with all appearance of nervous haste, but his eye was sombre as before as he noted the gleam of quick intelligence that flashed into the cowboy's eyes. "You're sure they dug up Buffalo?" he pressed shrewdly.

"Yes, I think they finished there."

The Texan gave a visible sigh of relief. "Say," he asked, presently, "do you know if they're fordin' at Cow Island this year?"

"Yes, the Two Bar reps come by that way."

"I'm right obliged to you. I reckon I'll head north, though. Canada looks good to me 'til this here wave of virtue blows over. So long."

"So long, Tex. An', say, there's some of us friends of yourn that's goin' to see what we kin do about gettin' them indictments squashed. We don't want to see you boys doin' time fer stretchin' no pilgrim."

"You won't," answered the Texan. "Toddle along now an' hunt up Mr. Kester's horses. I want room to think." He permitted himself a broad smile as the other rode at a gallop toward the mountains, then turned his horse into the coulee he had just left and allowed him his own pace.

"So Purdy ain't dead," he muttered, "or was that damned fool lyin'? I reckon he wasn't lyin' about that, an' the grand jury, an' the district attorney." Again he smiled. "Let's see how I stack up, now: In the first place, Win ain't on the run, an' I am—or I'm supposed to be. But, as long as they don't dig Win up out of the bottom of some coulee, I'm at large for want of a party of the first part to the alleged felonious snuffin'-out. Gosh, I bet the boys are havin' fun watchin' that diggin'. If I was there I'd put in my nights makin' fresh-dug spots, an' my days watchin' 'em prospect 'em." Then his thoughts turned to the girl, and for miles he rode unheeding. The sun had swung well to the westward before the cowboy took notice of his surroundings. Antelope Butte lay ten or twelve miles away and he headed for it with a laugh. "You must have thought I sure enough was headin' for Cow Island Crossing didn't you, you old dogie chaser?" He touched his horse lightly with his spurs and the animal struck into a long swinging trot.

"This here's a mixed-up play all around," he muttered. "Win's worryin' about killin' Purdy—says it's got under his hide 'til he thinks about it nights. It ain't so much bein' on the run that bothers him as it is the fact that he's killed a man." He smiled to himself: "A little worryin' won't hurt him none. Any one that would worry over shootin' a pup like Purdy ought to worry—whether he done it or not. Then, there's me. I start out with designs as evil an' triflin' as Purdy's—only I ain't a brute—an' I winds up by lovin' her. Yes—that's the word. There ain't no mortal use beatin' around the bush to fool myself. Spite of silk stockin's she's good clean through. I reckon, maybe, they're wore more promiscuous in the East. That Eagle Creek Ranch, if them corrals was fixed up a little an' them old cattle sheds tore down, an' the ditches gone over, it would be a good outfit. If it was taken hold of right, there wouldn't be a better proposition on the South Slope." Gloom settled upon the cowboy's face: "But there's Win. I started out to show him up." He smiled grimly. "Well, I did. Only not just exactly as I allowed to. Lookin' over the back-trail, I reckon, when us four took to the brush there wasn't only one damned skunk in the crowd—an' that was me. It's funny a man can be that ornery an' never notice it. But, I bet Bat knew. He's pure gold, Bat is. He's about as prepossessin' to look at as an old gum boot, but his heart's all there—an' you bet, Bat, he knows."

It was within a quarter of a mile of Antelope Butte that the Texan, riding along the bottom of a wide coulee met another horseman. This time there was no spurring toward him, and he noticed that the man's hand rested near his right hip. He shifted his own gun arm and continued on his course without apparently noticing the other who approached in the same manner.

Suddenly he laughed: "Hello, Curt!"

"Well, I'm damned if it ain't Tex! Thought maybe I was going to get the high-sign."

"Same here." Both men relaxed from their attitude of alertness, and Curt leaned closer.

"They ain't dug him up yet," he said, "but they sure are slingin' gravel. I hope to God they don't."

"They won't."

"Anything I can do?"

The Texan shook his head: "Nothin', thanks."

"Hot as hell fer June, ain't it."

"Yes; who you ridin' for?"

"K 2."

"K 2! Mister Kester moved his outfit over to the south slope?"

"Naw. I'm huntin' a couple of old brood mares Mister Kester bought offen the Bar A. They strayed away about a week ago."

"Alone?"

"Might better be," replied the cowboy in tones of disgust. "I've got that damned fool, Joe Ainslee, along—or ruther I had him. Bob Brumley's foreman of the K 2, now, an' he hired the Wind Bag in a moment of mental abortion, as the fellow says, an' he don't dast fire him for fear he'll starve to death. They wouldn't no other outfit have him around. An' I'm thinkin' he'll be damn lucky if he lives long enough to starve to death. Bob sent him along with me—said he'd do less harm than with the round-up, an' would be safer—me bein' amiable enough not to kill him offhand."

"Ain't you found your mares?"

Curt snorted: "Yes. Found 'em couple hours ago. An' now I've lost the Wind Bag. Them mares was grazin' right plumb in plain sight of where I'd sent him circlin', an' doggone if he not only couldn't find 'em, but he's lost hisself. An' if he don't show up pretty damn pronto he kin stay lost—an' the K 2 will win, at that."

The Texan grinned: "Go get your mares, Curt. The short-horn has stampeded. I shouldn't wonder if he's a-foggin' it through the mountains right now to get himself plumb famous for tippin' off the district attorney where to do his minin'."

"You seen him!"

"Yes, we had quite a little pow-wow."

"You sure didn't let him git holt of nothin'!"

"Yes. He's about to bust with the information he gathered. An' say, he might of seen them mares an' passed 'em up. He ain't huntin' no brood mares, he's after twenty head of young saddle stock—forgot to mention there was any one with him. Said it was easy to run three-year-olds off their own range single handed if you savvied horses. Called Mister Kester 'Old Pete' an' told of an orgy they had mutual in the Long Horn."

Curt burst out laughing: "Can you beat it?"

"I suppose they'll have Red Rock Coulee all mussed up," reflected the Texan, with a grin.

"You wait 'til I tell the boys."

"Don't you. They'd hurt him. He's a-whirlin' a bigger loop than he can throw, the way it is."

Curt fumbled in his slicker and produced a flask which he tendered.

Tex shook his head: "No thanks, I ain't drinkin'."

"You ain't what?"

"No, I'm off of it"; he dismounted and tightened his cinch, and the other followed his example.

"Off of it! You ain't sick, or nothin'?"

"No. Can't a man——?"

"Oh, sure, he could, but he wouldn't, onless—you got your camp near here?"

Tex was aware the other was eyeing him closely.

"Tolerable."

"Let's go camp then. I left my pack horse hobbled way up on Last Water."

The Texan was thinking rapidly. Curt was a friend of long standing and desired to share his camp, which is the way of the cow country. Yet, manifestly this was impossible. There was only one way out and that was to give offence.

"No. I'm campin' alone these days."

A slow red mounted to the other's face and his voice sounded a trifle hard: "Come on up to mine, then. It ain't so far."

"I said I was campin' alone."

The red was very apparent now, and the other took a step forward, and his words came slowly:

"Peck Maguire told me, an' I shut his dirty mouth for him. But now I know it's true. You're ridin' with the pilgrim's girl."

At the inference the Texan whitened to the eyes. "You're a damned liar!" The words came evenly but with a peculiar venom.

Curt half drew his gun. Then jammed it back in the holster. "Not between friends," he said shortly, "but jest the same you're goin' to eat them words. It ain't a trick I'd think of you—to run off with a man's woman after killin' him. If he was alive it would be different. I'd ort to shoot it out with you, I suppose, but I can't quite forget that time in Zortman when you——"

"Don't let that bother you," broke in the Texan with the same evenness of tone. "You're a damned liar!"

With a bound the man was upon him and Tex saw a blinding flash of light, and the next moment he was scrambling from the ground. After that the fight waxed fast and furious, each man giving and receiving blows that landed with a force that jarred and rocked. Then, the Texan landed heavily upon the point of his opponent's chin and the latter sank limp to the floor of the coulee. For a full minute Tex stood looking down at his victim.

"Curt can scrap like the devil. I'm sure glad he didn't force no gun play, I'd have hated to hurt him." He recovered the flask from the ground where the other had dropped it, and forced some whiskey between his lips. Presently the man opened his eyes.

"Feelin' better?" asked the Texan as Curt blinked up at him.

"Um-hum. My head aches some."

"Mine, too."

"You got a couple of black eyes, an' your lip is swol up."

"One of yours is turnin' black."

Curt regained his feet and walked slowly toward his horse. "Well, I'll be goin'. So long."

"So long," answered the Texan. He, too, swung into the saddle and each rode upon his way.



CHAPTER XVI

BACK IN CAMP

From their place of concealment high upon the edge of Antelope Butte, Alice Marcum and Endicott watched the movements of the three horsemen with absorbing interest. They saw the Texan circle to the south-eastward and swing north to intercept the trail of the unknown rider. They watched Bat, with Indian cunning, creep to his place of concealment at the edge of the coulee. They saw the riders disperse, the unknown to head toward the mountains at a gallop, and the Texan to turn his horse southward and ride slowly into the bad lands. And they watched Bat recover his own horse from behind a rock pinnacle and follow the Texan, always keeping out of sight in parallel coulees until both were swallowed up in the amethyst haze of the bad lands.

For an hour they remained in their lookout, pointing out to each other some new wonder of the landscape—a wind-carved pinnacle, the heliographic flashing of the mica, or some new combination in the ever-changing splendour of colours.

"Whew! But it's hot, and I'm thirsty. And besides it's lunch time." Alice rose, and with Endicott following, made her way to the camp.

"Isn't it wonderful?" she breathed, as they ate their luncheon. "This life in the open—the pure clean air—the magnificent world all spread out before you, beckoning you on, and on, and on. It makes a person strong with just the feel of living—the joy of it. Just think, Winthrop, of being able to eat left-over biscuits and cold bacon and enjoy it!"

Endicott smiled: "Haven't I improved enough, yet, for 'Win'?—Tex thinks so."

The girl regarded him critically. "I have a great deal of respect for Tex's judgment," she smiled.

"Then, dear, I am going to ask you again, the question I have asked you times out of number: Will you marry me?"

"Don't spoil it all, now, please. I am enjoying it so. Enjoying being here with just you and the big West. Oh, this is the real West—the West of which I've dreamed!"

Endicott nodded: "Yes, this is the West. You were right, Alice. California is no more the West than New York is."

"Don't you love it?" The girl's eyes were shining with enthusiasm.

"Yes. I love it," he answered, and she noticed that his face was very grave. "There must be something—some slumbering ego in every man that awakens at the voice of the wild places. Our complex system of civilization seems to me, as I sit here now, a little thing—a thing, somehow, remote—unnecessary, and very undesirable."

"Brooklyn seems very far away," murmured the girl.

"And Cincinnati—but not far enough away. We know they are real—that they actually exist." Endicott rose and paced back and forth. Suddenly he stopped before the girl. "Marry me, Alice, and I'll buy a ranch and we will live out here, and for us Brooklyn and Cincinnati need never exist. I do love it all, but I love you a thousand times more."

To Endicott's surprise the girl's eyes dropped before his gaze and rested for a long time upon the grazing horses—then abruptly she buried her face in her arms. The man had half expected a return to the light half-mocking raillery that had been her staunchest weapon, but there was nothing even remotely suggestive of raillery in the figure that huddled at his feet. Suddenly, his face became very grave: "Alice," he cried, bending over her, "is it because my hands are red? Because I have taken a human life, and am flying from the hand of the law like a common murderer?"

"No, no, no! Not that? I——"

Swiftly he gathered her into his arms, but she freed herself and shook her head in protest. "Don't please," she pleaded softly. "Oh, I—I can't choose."

"Choose!" cried Endicott. "Then there is—someone else? You have found—" he stopped abruptly and drew a long breath. "I see," he said, gently, "I think I understand."

The unexpected gentleness of the voice caused the girl to raise her head. Endicott stood as he had stood a moment before, but his gaze was upon the far mountains. The girl's eyes were wet with tears: "Yes, I—he loves me—and he asked me to marry him. He said I would marry either you or him, and he would wait for me to decide—until I was sure." Her voice steadied, and Endicott noticed that it held a trace of defensive. "He's a dear, and—I know—way down in his heart he's good—he's——"

Endicott smiled: "Yes, little girl, he is good. He's a man—every inch of him. And he's a man among men. He's honest and open hearted and human. There is not a mean hair in his head. And he stands a great deal nearer the top of his profession than I do to the top of mine. I have been a fool, Alice. I can see now what a complacent fool and a cad I must have been—when I could look at these men and see nothing but uncouthness. But, thank God, men can change——"

Impulsively the girl reached for his hand: "No," she murmured, remembering the words of the Texan, "no, the man was there all the time. The real man that is you was concealed by the unreal man that is superficiality."

"Thank you, Alice," he said gravely. "And for your sake—and I say it an all sincerity—let the best man win!"

The girl smiled up into his face: "And in all sincerity I will say that in all your life you have never seemed so—so marryable as you do right now."

While Endicott cut a supply of fire-wood and tinkered about the spring, the girl made a complete circuit of the little plateau, and as the shadows began to lengthen they once more climbed to their lookout station. For an hour the vast corrugated plane before them showed no sign of life. Suddenly the girl's fingers clutched Endicott's arm and she pointed to a lone horseman who rode from the north.

"I wonder if he's the same one we saw before—the one who rode away so fast?"

"Not unless he has changed horses," answered Endicott. "The other rode a grey."

The man swung from his horse and seemed to be minutely studying the ground. Then he mounted and headed down the coulee at a trot.

"Look! There is Tex!" cried Endicott, and he pointed farther down the same coulee. A sharp bend prevented either rider from noticing the approach of the other.

"Oh, I wonder who it is, and what will happen when they see each other?" cried the girl. "Look! There is Bat. Near the top of that ridge. He's cutting across so he'll be right above them when they meet." She was leaning forward watching: breathlessly the movements of the three horsemen. "It is unreal. Just like some great spectacular play. You see the actors moving through their parts and you wonder what is going to happen next and how it is all going to work out."

"There! They see each other!" Endicott exclaimed. Each horseman pulled up, hesitated a moment, and rode on. Distance veiled from the eager onlookers the significant detail of the shifted gun arms. But no such preclusion obstructed Bat's vision as he lay flattened upon the rim of the coulee with the barrel of his six-gun resting upon the edge of a rock, and its sights lined low upon the stranger's armpit.

"They've dismounted," observed Alice, "I believe Tex is going to unsaddle."

"Tightening his cinch," ventured Endicott, and was interrupted by a cry from the lips of the girl.

"Look! The other! He's going to shoot—— Why, they're fighting!" Fighting they certainly were, and Endicott stared in surprise as he saw the Texan knocked down and then spring to his feet and attack his assailant with a vigour that rendered impossible any further attempt to follow the progress of the combat.

"Why doesn't Bat shoot, or go down there and help him?" cried the girl, as with clenched fists she strained her eyes in a vain effort to see who was proving the victor.

"This does not seem to be a shooting affair," Endicott answered, "and it is my own private opinion that Tex is abundantly able to take care of himself. Ah—he got him that time! He's down for the count! Good work, Tex, old man! A good clean knockout!"

The two watched as the men mounted and rode their several ways—the stranger swinging northward toward the mountains, and the Texan following along the south face of the butte.

"Some nice little meetings they have out here," grinned Endicott. "I wonder if the vanquished one was a horse-thief or just an ordinary friend."

Alice returned the smile: "You used to rather go in for boxing in college, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes. I can hold my own when it comes to fists——

"And—you can shoot."

The man shook his head: "Do you know that was the first time I ever fired a pistol in my life. I don't like to think about it. And yet—I am always thinking about it! I have killed a man—have taken a human life. I did it without malice—without forethought. All I knew was that you were in danger, then I saw him fling you from him—the pistol was in my hand, and I fired."

"You need have no regrets," answered the girl, quickly. "It was his life or both of ours—worse than that—a thousand times worse."

Endicott was silent as the two turned toward the plateau. "Why, there's Bat's horse, trotting over to join the others, and unsaddled, too," cried Alice. "He has beaten Tex to camp. Bat is a dear, and he just adores the ground Tex walks on, or 'rides on' would be more appropriate, for I don't think he ever walked more than a hundred feet in his life."

Sure enough, when they reached camp there sat the half-breed placidly mending a blanket, with the bored air of one upon whom time hangs heavily. He looked up as Endicott greeted him.

"Mebbe-so dat better you don' say nuttin' 'bout A'm gon' 'way from here," he grinned. "Tex she com' 'long pret' queek, now. Mebbe-so he t'ink dat better A'm stay roun' de camp. But Voila! How A'm know he ain' gon for git hurt?"

"But he did—" Alice paused abruptly with the sentences unfinished, for the sound of galloping hoofs reached her ears and she looked up to see the Texan swing from his horse, strip off the saddle and bridle and turn the animal loose.

"Oh," she cried, as the man joined them after spreading his saddle blanket to dry. "Your eyes are swollen almost shut and your lip is bleeding!"

"Yes," answered the cowboy with a contortion of the stiff, swollen lip that passed for a smile. "I rounded the bend in a coulee down yonder an' run plumb against a hard projection."

"They certainly are hard—I have run against those projections myself," grinned Endicott. "You see, we had what you might call ringside seats, and I noticed that it didn't take you very long to come back with some mighty stiff projecting yourself."

"Yes. Him pastin' me between the eyes that way, I took as an onfriendly act, an' one I resented."

"That wallop you landed on his chin was a beautiful piece of work."

"Yes, quite comely." The cowboy wriggled his fingers painfully. "But these long-horns that's raised on salt-horse an' rawhide, maintains a jaw on 'em that makes iron an' granite seem right mushy. I didn't figure I'd recount the disturbance, aimin' to pass it off casual regardin' the disfigurin' of my profile. But if you-all witnessed the debate, I might as well go ahead an' oncork the details. In the first place, this warrior is a deputy that's out after Win."

The Texan glanced sharply at Bat who became suddenly seized with a fit of coughing, but the face of the half-breed was impassive—even sombre as he worked at the blanket. "It's all owin' to politics," continued the cowpuncher, rolling and lighting a cigarette. "Politics, an' the fact that the cow country is in its dotage. Choteau County is growin' effeminate, not to say right down effete when a lynchin', that by rights it would be stretching its importance even to refer to it in conversation, is raised to the dignity of a political issue. As everyone knows, a hangin' is always a popular play, riddin' the community of an ondesirable, an' at the same time bein' a warnin' to others to polish up their rectitude. But it seems, from what I was able to glean, that this particular hangin' didn't win universal acclaim, owin' to the massacre of Purdy not bein' deplored none."

Once more the half-breed emitted a strangling cough, and Tex eyed him narrowly. "Somethin' seems to ail your throat."

"Oui, A'm swal' de piece tabac'."

"Well just hang onto it 'til it gets a little darker an' we'll have supper," said the Texan, dryly, and resumed.

"So there was some talk disparagin' to the lynchin', an' the party that's in, holdin' its tenure by the skin of its teeth, an' election comin' on, sided in with public opinion an' frowned on the lynchin', not as a hangin', you onderstand, but because the hangin' didn't redound none to their particular credit—it not being legal an' regular. All this is brewed while the dance is goin' on, an' by breakfast time next mornin', there bein' a full quorum of Republican war chiefs on hand, they pulls a pow-wow an' instructs their deputies to round up the lynchers. This is done, barrin' a few that's flitted, the boys bein' caught unawares. Well, things begun lookin' serious to 'em, an' as a last resort they decided to fall back on the truth. So they admits that there ain't no lynchin'. They tells how, after they'd got out on the bench a piece they got to thinkin' that the demise of Purdy ain't a serious matter, nohow, so they turned him loose. 'Where is he, then?' says a county commissioner. 'Search us,' replies the culprits. 'We just turned him loose an' told him to vamoose. We didn't stick around an' herd him!'" Again Bat coughed, and the Texan glared at him.