The Girl Of Ghost Mountain

 Sheridan, rancher of Chico Mesa, had big dreams of irrigating the mesa: "His plan conceived the raising of high-bred beef-cattle on a big scale, fattening them on alfalfa grown under irrigation, producing first-quality beef, firm and larded with fat, commanding a top price.... It would take money, more money than he knew any way of commanding at present."

But, threatening to spoil his rosy dreams, are a gang of cutthroat rustlers. Not to mention "distractions" in the form of the "slimsy lady" and her Amazonian friend. Or even, the Chinese Tongs....

​

The Girl
Of Ghost Mountain

By J. ALLAN DUNN

Author of "Dead Man's Gold," "A Man to His Mate,"
"The Man Trap," etc.

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & C0MPANY
PUBLISHERS

​

Copyright, 1921
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(Incorporated)

​

To

DESIRÉE COURVOISIER

this book is affectionately
inscribed

J. A. D.

October, 1921Pittsfield, Massachusetts

​CHAPTER I

EL MONTE DEL MUERTE

Sheridan checked his sorrel as Jackson first held up his hand in sign of caution and then changed the gesture, pointing at something beyond the brow of the hill. The cowboy slid lithely from his saddle and the owner of the Circle S followed suit, anchoring the sorrel mare with reins he let trail from bit to ground, joining his foreman, who had drawn back his pinto mount from the top of the rise.

"What is it, Red?" asked Sheridan, instinctively lowering his voice.

"Smoke, down the draw a ways. 'T aint grub-time. Someone's heatin' a runnin' iron."

Sheridan followed the direction of Jackson's finger, finding it hard to differentiate the faint plume of blue smoke from the mid-afternoon haze that shimmered over all the foothills. He located it and his lips tightened, his eyebrows lowered to a straight line above his eyes in which danced a sudden sparkle of excitement and resolution. His right hand dropped automatically to his gun holster and eased the weapon in its smooth leather sheath. Jackson had already shifted his own gun farther back on his ​lean flank. The two nodded at each other with grim satisfaction.

"Hollister," said Sheridan quietly. "If he's after that red and white heifer we'll get him with the goods."

"He'll likely hev' a Greaser along with him. We better split. Leave the hawses. I'll take the other side the draw."

They were in the lower hills, halfway between the mesa and timber line on the mountains. Where they stood, close to the crest of a rolling ridge, it was joined to the next by a sage- tufted buttress of rocky soil. To right and left the ground sloped sharply off from this junction. Jackson had pointed to the left, where the land drew down towards a little spring, favored by the strays they were seeking on the open range.

The cowpuncher dropped to all-fours, then flat wriggling on his stomach across the connecting spur under cover of the scanty brush. Sheridan gave him a minute or two, and followed his example, working down the draw towards the smoke, and the spring.

Cicadas whirred and leaped about him as he crawled on towards a heavy growth of mesquite that flourished in the deeper soil of the hollow. The lacy foliage, brown above, tender green beneath, quivered as he disappeared among the mahogany-colored trunks. A hawk, suspended high above him, spiraled down for a closer look at the disturbance and planed off again. Save for the cicadas' strident chirruping, there was silence, broken suddenly by the frightened blat of a calf.

​The mesquite was high enough for Sheridan to risk rising to his feet and travel with his body bent double from the hips. The sparkle in his eyes changed to a steely glitter at the bawl of the calf and he increased his speed through the thick, jungly growth, parting the feathery leaves in wide ripples of changing hue as he brushed them aside. But he still went cautiously and, when he came to a flat outcrop of rock that saddled the draw, he flattened again and crept on his belly along a crack that made a zigzag trough across the ledge. It was oven-hot under the sun, almost scorching to knees and palms, and the sweat dripped from his forehead as he went.

A brisk rattle sounded, a burr-r-r of alarm, electric in its sudden signal. Sheridan halted, his hand going swiftly back to the grip of his gun and staying there while his whole body stiffened and his eyes swept the low ledges for the owner of that warning.

Not ten feet away a diamond-back rattlesnake lay, its body inflated and flung into a graceful fighting coil, the jetty eyes glittering, the blunt head poised for a lightning strike, the tongue waving slowly in and out of the opened mouth where the poison fangs were already lifting their hollow, curving needles for the deadly injection; to take toll for this invasion of the reptile's sunning ground. The greenish-yellow body, stamped with a connected chain of brown, diamond-shaped blotches, outlined in white, the vivid black and white bars of the tail, the uplifted rattle, were indelibly photographed upon Sheridan's memory. For a few heartbeats man and snake faced each other, both alert, ​the one determined, the other defiant. Sheridan could have blown off that proudly balanced head with its undulating tongue and beady eyes, but a shot would have defeated his purpose with Hollister. The snake's neck twisted into the shape of an S, the buttons of the rattle rasped incessantly; it seemed to quiver with rage, measuring distance for a stroke.

A shadow drifted over the ledge, covered the snake, dimmed for a second the glitter of its glance. Instantly it uncoiled, away from Sheridan, and glided, swiftly, but with dignity, to a crevice where it disappeared. Sheridan exhaled a breath of relief and glanced up at the soaring rock falcon gratefully.

"I owe you a fat chicken for that," he said, under his breath, and, as the graceful bird wheeled on, quickly crossed the remainder of the rocky flat and plunged again into the mesquite.

Beside the little pool of the foothill spring a man stood over a red and white calf that lay with its feet tied in a bunch. Its tongue lolled out, its sides rose and fell like a blacksmith's bellows, the piteous, white-rimmed eyes rolling fearfully. The man was tall and swarthy, broad of shoulder, inclined to thickness at the waist and he was wearing a blue denim shirt above overalls and well-scuffed leather chaparejos. His broad sombrero was pushed well back, showing sleek black hair that matched his clipped mustache, his eyebrows, his eyes. He held the string of a tobacco sack in his teeth and he was deftly rolling a cigarette with one hand when Sheridan emerged from the mesquite. Paper and tobacco ​grains fluttered to the ground, the man's fingers clutched towards the butt of his gun but the motion halted midway. Sheridan stood erect, thumbs hooked inside the belt of his own chaps.

"Whose calf are you going to brand, Hollister?" he asked.

The eyes of Hollister had something in common with those of the rattlesnake. In proportion they were set more closely. His mustache twitched in his sneer.

"So long 's it aint yore's, I don't see as it's any of yore bisiness," he answered, with a side glance towards the smoke a little way back of him, where the heads of two cayuses showed above the brush.

"It is mine," said Sheridan quietly. "Take off the rope."

"Talk's cheap. This is a maverick. "

"My calf, Hollister. I can prove it."

"How? Where's its mother?"

"You may know that better than I do. I know the calf is mine by the markings. I noticed it a few days after it was dropped. That red shoulder patch, shaped like a boot with a spur, is distinctive enough. I saw the calf earlier today. I've been trailing it with other strays."

Hollister guffawed.

"Trubble is with you, tenderfoot, yo're a stray yoreself an' don't know it. You don't belong on the range. Know its markings, do you? Well, I know the caf's mine by the patch on the underside that's shaped like a ha'f chewed hotcake." His voice changed to bluster. "You sneak back into the ​mesquite, Pete Sheridan, like the mangy coyote you are. You know the rules of the range. This is a maverick an' I found it. It's mine an' I'm goin' to set my iron on it."

"Take off that rope."

"You go plumb to hell! You don't know jest how close you are to it this minnit."

"If I go there it 'll be to find you waiting, Hollister." Sheridan stood motionless, in easy pose, but his voice was crisp with purpose, his grey eyes shone like the glint of sun on the mica flakes imprisoned in grey granite. Hollister had crouched slightly from the hips, arms away from his body, out-curving, his face set in a snarl. He was instinct with the desire to shoot, to kill, but something in Sheridan's seemingly careless confidence held him baffled him.

"You've seen me shoot, Hollister. Better take off that rope."

Hollister's eyes shifted. His hands closed and opened jerkily.

"Hands up! High! Grab for the sky, Greaser! Muy pronto. Now stan' up an' stan' still!"

Two arms, clad in cotton of gaudy check, shot up from the brush to Sheridan's right. Then the head and upper body of a Mexican came into view, mushroomed beneath his sombrero. A pistol gleamed in one hand. With them rose half the lean length of Jackson, hatless, his red hair fuzzy in the sun. He reached for the gun in the Mexican's nerveless grasp and with it covered the discomfited Hollister, while his own pistol menaced the man he had ​tracked through the mesquite, unheard and unseen while the other had been intent upon surprising Sheridan.

"Two aces in the draw, Hollister," drawled Jackson. "An' don't fergit I'm double-handed. What they call amberdexterous. There's yore hawses, what 's yore hurry?" he jeered as Hollister swore, first at him and then at the Mexican, whose walnut colored face was dirty grey with fright.

"You can take your rope with you, if you like," suggested Sheridan, "and ride down draw, please. All right. Red, give him his gun. "

Jackson slid his own gun back to the holster, broke the weapon of the Mexican and tossed into the brush the cartridges flung from the cylinder into his palm. Then he threw the weapon at its owner's feet.

"Git, you Greaser. Vamos." The man followed Hollister through the brush to the horses. They mounted, wheeled and galloped off down the draw, Hollister turning in his saddle to shake his fist and sputter out an oath.

"If you'll git back to the hawses," said Jackson, "I'll put our brand on the ca'f an' let it go. And I'll find my Stetson. A bush hooked it while I was trailin' that Greaser. He had his dirty finger crooked to pull when I called him. "

"Thanks, Red." The two were close enough, in the western intimacy between employer and employee, to make further expression of gratitude superfluous, though Jackson had been less than six months with the Circle S. Sheridan rejoined the ​horses and stood looking out across the mesa while his sorrel mare, Goldie, nuzzled and gently poked at him in protestation at this unshaded, unwatered halt.

Below him the plain unrolled far to the south where it blent with the horizon. To east and west faint violet outlines of sawtooth ranges showed. On the wide level, cactus and greasewood, soapweed and gramma grass and mesquite fought it out for existence and the right of reproduction. Ghost Creek meandered through the midst of it, a series of blue, sky-reflecting pools, strung on a silver thread, redeeming the mesa from complete surrender to the desert. There were times when the creek was a raging torrent, cutting viciously through the soft, powdery oil, and there were times, when it was most needed, that Ghost Creek proved its name and became a phantom stream, a wraith that mocked the parched cattle, drifting helplessly down to the alkali-rimmed bogholes where their scattered skeletons would lie, after the buzzards and coyotes had feasted on their shriveled carcasses.

Arid and hot lay Chico Mesa, desolate and inhospitable. Yet, ten miles distant, where the low buildings of the Circle S showed in the clear atmosphere, there were cottonwoods and willows and certain squares of alfalfa that looked like sections of bright green carpet. Sheridan had sunk for water and found it in the subterranean reservoirs of treacherous Ghost Creek. His gasoline pump supplied him with enough for limited irrigation and the experiment quickened his imagination as to what could be done ​with the floury soil that only needed water to produce five crops of alfalfa a year, the fattening for beeves, heavy and firm of flesh.

He saw a puff of white smoke off to the east. He fancied he heard the toot of a whistle from the railroad spur that ran from the main line, on the other side of the range that mounted behind him, to Metzal, the County Seat and shipping point for the community. It was sparsely settled as yet, but the stage was set for Capital to come in, to cut the mesa up into flourishing little farms, divided off by ditches, blossoming like the rose.

Jackson came up behind him, fanning himself with his recovered Stetson. In his other hand he carried two running-irons, not yet cool.

"Hollister left his iron behind in his hurry," he said. "The Lazy H. A damn good brand for him." He hurled the offending tool down the slope. "You 'd have had a hard time to prove title to that ca'f on 'count of its markings, Sheridan, even with me for witness. It was sure a maverick. It had lost its ma. D' you know why?"

Sheridan turned, surprised at the tense quality of Jackson's utterance.

"That skunk had slit the tongue of that ca'f, " said the cowboy, "so it c'udn't suck. It was nigh to weanin' an' it got to eatin' grass after it starved a while an' forgot it's ma. But that's a dawg's trick. If I had my way, a man who 'd do a thing like that sh'ud have his own tongue slit an' be turned loose where he'd know what it was to go thirsty an' hungry, with his mouth all filled up. Damn him, ​I wish I'd plugged him! I c'ud bury a man like him, cheerful." He rolled a cigarette and inhaled it strenuously.

"It was a rotten trick, Red," said Sheridan, gravely. "I hate to have him for even a near neighbor. Some day we'll chivvy his sort out of here. It's too good a place for men of his breed."

Jackson had recovered his temper with the soothing indraughts of the smoke. He looked out across the mesa with his eyes crinkling to the wide grin of his mouth.

"Looks like Paradise to you, don't it?" he said. "An' to me it looks like—well Texas suits me a heap better," he added politely. After all this was his boss's holding.

"All Chico Mesa needs, Red, is a few good men and water."

"Yep," drawled Red. "They tell me Hell's in much the same condition." He stamped out the butt of his cigarette under his high heel and swung to his saddle while Sheridan roared with laughter.

"I'll show you the water before the sun's down," he said as the mare caught up with Jackson's fussing pinto. "We'll camp there tonight. Lake of the Woods, I call it, right at the base of Ghost Peak. Trout there and all the vension you want, later in the season. I've got a cache there under some rocks. Just a frying pan and coffee pot with a tin plate or so. And I built a compromise between a leanto and a cabin. I never knew of any one going there but myself. At least, I've never seen any sign. "

​"Why the leanto?" asked Jackson. "Did you bach' up there?"

"For a bit. When I first came out. I was shy half a lung and most of my ambition and I healed up both at Lake of the Woods. Which way 'll we take now?"

They ran across no more strays and evening found them high up in the range among the pinion and cedars. The sunset over the mesa was hidden from them but the afterglow flamed and faded above their heads and the face of the scarred, bare battlements of the range was bright with the reflection of the gleaming west.

Lake of the Woods lay like a fire opal, holding as a mirror the shifting rose and violet of the sky. The trees came thickly down, close to its sloping beach and stabbed the water with their shadows. Back of it rose the splintered crags of Ghost Mountain, El Monte del Muerte, the Mount of Death, as the Mexicans and Indians called it; remote, inaccessible, a sheer wall of granite, ground smooth to glassiness by a thousand centuries of driving, sand-laden winds, planed, perhaps, by ancient glaciers; the grim summit notched with fantastic parapet and spire and turret, a brooding mass, bearing the ineffaceable placidity of infinite ages upon its brow.

"West is always goin' to be West," said Jackson, coming up from the lake with a lard pail of fresh water for supper after he had attended to the horses, while Sheridan prepared the meal, bacon and flour and coffee they had brought with them and trout that he had conjured from the lake with the ​magic wand of his steel-rod and a Royal Coachman fly, always a part of his equipment when he went to Lake of the Woods.

"You can build a railroad an' all the cities you want down there on the mesa," went on Jackson, "but they aint goin' to change the landscape a heap while the mountains stick around. An' you can't shift them in a hurry. Stick one of them skyscrapers, now, up again the foot of the peak, an' what would it amount to? Not to shucks. A match laid up to the trunk of a yeller pine 'ud make a better showin'. You can change the ways of men but you can't shunt them peaks, nor what they stand for. No, sirree."

Sheridan was used to occasional outbursts like this from the cowpuncher, who usually masked all feelings beneath a certain suggestion half swagger, half boredom. And he knew he was not expected to answer. Red was long on poetry and short on the expression of it, save at rare intervals. So Sheridan laid the trout tenderly in the sizzling bacon grease and checked the bubbling coffee in the blackened pot with a few drops from the pail they had unearthed from the undisturbed cache.

"She smells good." Red hunkered down, prodding the fire. "You are one almighty good cook, Sheridan. It wouldn't do to have the boss huggin' the cookstove, but I sure do wish you'd give Stoney a few tips. His hotcakes taste like they was made out of old cinches." He peered into an oven improvised from a cracker tin. "Biscuit. Hot biscuits! Whoopee! Let's never go back to the ranch. Let's you an' me play hermits."

​They made rare play with the food while the afterglow slowly faded and a star or two peeped out. Ghost Mountain lapsed to grey with a long scarf of mauve mist trailing among the pinnacles. Back of the peak the sky was translucent olive-green. Trout were splashing in the lake.

"Why Ghost Mountain?" demanded Jackson, suddenly. "Indian stuff? Lovesick maiden dives over cliff so she won't have to marry the bow-legged brave the old chief has sold her to for seven-spavined ponies an' a slab of chewin'?"

"I don't know, Red. Some old legend like that, I suppose. I'm only a tenderfoot myself."

"Shucks. Why you...."

Suddenly Jackson clutched Sheridan's forearm in a grip that made the latter wince with the quick pain.

"My Gawd!" he said, pointing upwards. "There's the Ghost."

Against the olive sky the gray turrets stood out sharply, the mauve scarf of mist twining in wreaths about them, puffed out by gusts of air, trailing away in smoky frazzles. For a moment Sheridan fancied he saw the figure of a horse and rider silhouetted against the sky between two fantastic juts of rock. Then the mist curled up into the notch and it was gone.

"Did you see it?" demanded Jackson, in an awed voice. "A gel, on a hawse! Up there. How in time did she make it, if it was a human?"

"I don't believe it was. You see, the gap is clear now. I imagine it was just the mist and the shadows ​on the rock. I've been to the foot of the cliffs and not even a mountain goat could get up there from this side, much less a horse. And they say the other is just as steep. Imagination, Red."

Jackson shook his head.

"But we both saw it, or thought we saw it. An' my eyesight 's sure one of my strong points. No, sir, it was a gel, on a hawse. I saw the mane lift in the wind. A gel on Ghost Mountain, sure as I'm sittin' here." He continued to gaze until the sky darkened and the range became only a dusky bulk that blotted out the stars. Sheridan smoked on in content, busy with his own visions. He had dismissed the image of the girl on horseback as a fantasy and he was pondering over what he was going to do in the morning.

Lake of the Woods was to supply Chico Mesa, at least a large part of it, with water. Sheridan held a half section in his own right. He had bought up relinquishments. His plan conceived the raising of high-bred beef-cattle on a big scale, fattening them on alfalfa grown under irrigation, producing first-quality beef, firm and larded with fat, commanding a top price.

The lake was fed with springs and its supply seemed sufficient, to his amateur engineering. It would need no dam; it could be siphoned by suction pumps to flumes, covered to prevent evaporation, or to pipes, leading down to the mesa by way of a box-canyon he had discovered that ran from his holding deep into the foothills. It would take money, more money than he knew any way of commanding ​at present. He was loath to go back east and form a company, he wanted the project, and its profit, to be all his own. And he had brought Jackson up here to camp so that he could make a preliminary survey in the morning. While he waited for the money he could work out the problem. At present he was raising cattle enough to show a slight profit, but they were not the fat steers he wanted to produce, that the market demanded.

Sheridan felt that he had found his bit to do in the question of increased production of staples, the betterment of quality. He liked the life, he was beginning to understand the work, he thought on a big scale, and he wanted action in like quantity. One success might lead to another in the reclamation of these semi-deserts by individual enterprise, the building up of a self-respecting owners' community. He was not going to be a hog about the water; once he secured rights and put through the project, he hoped to be a pioneer if not a promoter of similar affairs. He had an altruistic streak in him. It struck him that the proper uses of natural sources in such locations by the land-owners would come to mean an almost ideal Socialism. Opportunity for all, coupled to recognition of enterprise. It was all a bit vague at present but he fancied it would work out satisfactorily and the gradual evolution of it was delightful thinking. His main picture was not so hazy. It showed Chico Mesa as a great cattle-producing country, sending out the best, prosperous, progressive, self-supporting, profits invested for the good of the actual owners, not collected as dividends ​for watered stock held by the promoters of companies that cared not whether the land advanced or perished, so long as they could wring out the last drop of usury.

Jackson, coming back from a last look at the horses, interrupted his dreaming.

"'Bout time to roll in, I reckon," he said. "One thing I meant to ask you. I heard you say to Hollister, 'you've seen my shootin'.' Hollister was just itchin' to shoot. He was all set for it, an' he was afraid. When did he see yore shootin'? I ain't seen much of it. Are you a crackajack with the gun?"

"I'll tell you. Red. Before I came out here I was a lawyer, in New York. Not a very good one, nor a very bad one. And there are a lot of good ones there. I had some money, not much. I've had an idea lately that my being sick had something to do with my lack of success. I was short of the great essential to getting by in New York—'pep.' When my trouble developed I lost what I had. I didn't care much whether school kept or not. They suggested Arizona and I wanted New York. I didn't know what it was out here and I thought I couldn't get along without the rush and the lights and the things that seem to make life worth living in New York. I figured I wasn't going to last long and I might as well crowd through to the finish.

"I had a hemorrhage and it frightened me. Scared me into buying my ticket West. I had heard some one talk about Metzal and one place seemed to me as good as another, as long as I wasn't cooped up with a lot of T.Bs.

​"I had a horror of those sort of places. I'd seen something of them in the east, up in the Adirondacks. If I was going to get well, or if I was going to pass on, I wanted to go off somewhere by myself and fight it out or quit."

"Sure thing," said the Texan. "I know jest how you felt. I'd feel the same way if I was laid out."

"I came up here and found Lake of the Woods. I couldn't do much but lie around in the sun and sniff the pines. Even after I stopped coughing, began to put on flesh, got some strength back and could take a full breath again—that was great. Red, to do that in this air—I didn't have much to do. Fishing and hunting a bit. A few books to read. I hadn't thought of taking up land. The country hadn't really gripped me then. I got a Colt, the one I carry, and a lot of cartridges, and I started target practice.

"I was a long time getting the hang of it—I mean offhand shooting—for I could take a steady aim and pepper a target fairly well before long. Then—did you ever, when you were a kid. Red, stick pellets of clay on the end of a limber twig and flip them at a mark?"

"Sure I did. I sabe what you're drivin' at. It's the right idea."

"One day I found I could flip out the bullets like that. And I kept on practising. You know how a tenderfoot is about guns. He wants to be another Kit Carson, right off the reel. I practised drawing from the holster and I chucked up cans for myself to shoot at.

​"I was fishing Ghost Creek, up in the foothills. I had a full mess for myself and I had just eaten them and was clearing up an early supper when I first met Hollister. He was out hunting strays, he told me, just as he was today, I suppose. And he was halfway drunk. Offered me a flask, but I had cut that out when I came West, long before prohibition hit us. I was a bit too fond of it, at one time. I offered him grub, said I'd catch him a couple of fish but he said he was fed up on trout. Then a brace of willow grouse came out of the brush, just as if they had been whistled up, and, without thinking anything about it, I shot, and had the luck to take off both heads with the two cartridges.

"Hollister's face was funny. He had me sized up for a tenderfoot. He picked up the birds and handled them as if he thought it was some sort of a trick performed for his benefit.

"'I didn't see you draw,' he said, 'let alone aim. I'd hate to have you throw lead at me. Mister.' I don't know if I could do it again—two out of three, perhaps—but I used the bluff this afternoon and he evidently remembered."

"He sure did," drawled Jackson. "I reckon it wasn't much of a bluff at that, Sheridan. You ain't that kind."

The testimonial was a rare thing for the Texan and Sheridan warmed to it. He had felt that he was accepted by his men as one of them but the certainty was none the less pleasant.

"I can shoot middlin' well myself. It comes in handy, when there is Hollisters around. I admired ​to hear your yarn, Mr. Sheridan. I reckon you came where you belonged when you come out to a Man's Country, the West."

The second tribute was amplified by the Mister, a title scrupulously avoided by the hands of the Circle S. thus far.

"Hollister got quite friendly after that," said Sheridan. "He sold me my first bunch of cattle. And he's been trying to steal them back ever since," he added drily.

"Prohibition don't mean much to him," said Jackson. "I've seen him with a souse on in Metzal a dozen times. It warn't mescale, either. Rotgut whisky from Vasquez' blind pig over on the east fork, I reckon. Me, I aim to be a law-abiding citizen, but I ain't passin' up a slug of good juice if it comes my way. But I draw the line at Vasquez' licker. It 'ud turn a Sunday School Superintendent into the Apache Kid at one session, and they say it's gettin' worse. I like a bite to a drink but I like a clean bite. That stuff 'ud pizen a rattlesnake blind. Eat holes in a Dutch oven. It 'll git him some day. Yeh-ah, but I'm sleepy!"

Five minutes later he turned in his chrysalis roll of blanket to say, sleepily:

"I'll bet you a month's pay, jest the same, Sheridan, that was a gel on top of Ghost Mountain."

But Sheridan was asleep beneath the stars that swam in a purple void above them, his mended lungs inhaling and exhaling the rare, crisp air.

CHAPTER II

QUONG LI

It took a good twelve hours to drive cattle from the Circle S to the loading chute at Metzal for they had to be started in as perfect condition as was possible after the long trip. The start was made long before sun-up and frequent halts taken for water and intermittent grazing. Sheridan, Jackson and two cowboys went with them, one of the punchers slated to go on to the Junction with the main-line at Pioche and see them properly transferred.

So it was mid-afternoon before the herd arrived at the loading chute, a hundred yards from the little depot, and Sheridan rode ahead to see the agent about his cars. Metzal boasted one almost obsolete and wheezy engine for shunting purposes, relegated to the branch line for cattle purposes and its engineer and firemen were of the same character as their locomotive. The station agent was generally sleepy, infected with a Mexican manana that prevailed more or less in Metzal. There were two types of citizens in and about Chico Mesa, those who rose early, when the air was cool and sweet and bracing, and those who crawled out when the sun was high and the air within doors and out oppressive. There were, in effect, the hustlers and ​the loafers, and both seemed to find the climate suited their temperaments. Most of the loafers congregated in Metzal. All of them had one grievance, the airing of which they never ceased. This was Prohibition. The Mexicans made pulque and mescale. Nothing can stop a Mexican from slicing cactus and agave and fermenting their juices. He needs no still, no formidable, clumsy apparatus; his chief ingredients grow everywhere. But the loafing whites, who hung about the poolrooms and gambled with each other, or tried to set traps for taking away the money of the cattlemen and ranchers, by methods most indifferently honest, craved the whiskey with which they were saturated and, being no longer able to buy it in the labeled bottle, or from bond, surreptitiously consumed a substitute.

Metzal was far from the Federal authorities. The local officials were elected from the old regime. Metzal would vote "wet" and "no license" as long as the statutes were unrevoked. The sale of dubious liquor was winked at. If it was served from ginger-ale bottles it was more by way of a joke than by necessity. There were half a dozen so-called distillers of "forty-rod", "lightning" and "squirrel" whiskey. None of it was good, but that manufactured by Vasquez, who had a holding on the edge of the town, where he bred dogs and children, with his predilections slightly in favor of the first, was more fiery, more deadly than the rest.

Metzal was half a mile or more from the depot. It straggled along the banks of the creek and, when ​the railroad spur came out through Pioche Pass, it had to ignore the demands of citizens to come right into town by reason of quicksands. One train a day ran up from Pioche, rested a while and trailed back again. This was due at five o'clock and to it, on the return trip, would be attached the cars into which Sheridan and his men loaded the sweating, lowing, bewildered cattle.

It was done at last and Jackson went off to Metzal with another cowboy to make some purchases. Sheridan thought it likely that they would bring back "something on the hip" besides their guns but he was not worried about their getting drunk. Jackson, the Texan, was the type who, to use his own phrase, "worked like hell between paydays and raised hell while the check lasted." Neither of them, he was sure, had more than a dollar or two with them, and they had not drawn any.

He rode as far as the depot with them to see the agent about his waybills, bringing his mare alongside the platform, as high on the side of the street as it was by the track, reached at either end by a ramp. The agent roused himself at his call from an intermittent siesta and they transacted their business by the time a whistle sounded and the train from Pioche came shuffling in.

One passenger alighted and Sheridan stared at him curiously. The man was in dark blue serge and he wore a black broadbrim, of the type affected in the West by Pinkerton detectives and Chinamen. This was a Chinaman but he was different from any Chinese Sheridan had ever seen, far from the Mott ​Street variety. He was tall, his face was ivory pale and the features were wonderfully refined. They suggested the earlier ivory carvings of Chinese priests, or the paintings of Chinese aristocrats that Sheridan had seen in the Metropolitan Museum. For all its fine chiseling and oval symmetry there was a suggestion of strength about the face that was marked. The man was no pidgin-English coolie and Sheridan marveled over what had brought him to the end of a branch line in Arizona. There were Chinese in Phoenix, Chinese laundrymen in Bisbee, Globe, and the mining towns, but this man did not look like a washer of clothes. His hands were not those of a laborer. Sheridan had met a merchant in New York, an importer of valuable carvings and rugs, rare things of jade and teak and ivory, recognized as an expert, called to consultation by amateur and professional collectors, who reminded him of this Oriental who, with perfect self-possession and an inimitable air of self-isolation, descended from the jerkwater train carrying a modern suitcase, ignoring Sheridan's gaze and the more blatant curiosity of the agent, to take seat on the worn bench and smoke a cigarette produced from a silver case.

"Now what the devil are you doing in this galley?" Sheridan quoted to himself. But he had to superintend the shunting and coupling of his cars and he rode off as three riders came loping in from Metzal, one the postmaster, carrying his sacks across his saddle.

Another of the trio was Hollister, his face inflamed ​with the blood-fermenting combination of bad—but not cheap—liquor, and the sun. He did not notice Sheridan, who was well away by the time Hollister reined up opposite the platform, but he saw the Chinaman puffing at his cigarette and concentrated his attention upon him with drunken pertinacity. Suddenly he threw up his hat and caught it, cursing his shying mount, swaying in his saddle to retrieve the descending sombrero.

"Whoopee! Doggone my cats, but it's a Chink. Chink, what in hell are you doin' here? This is open season for Chinks in Metzal. Hey, blast yore yeller face, don't you sabby me?"

The Chinaman sat imperturbable.

"I sabby," he said quietly.

"You do? Then light out of here. We want no stinkin', bone-faced, water-spitting Chinks round here. We skin Chinks in Metzal, skin 'em alive an' use their flesh for coyote bait. It don't need no arsenic to pizen 'em." He guffawed at his own crude wit. His two companions looked on with careless interest, waiting developments, as they might have watched the preliminaries of a badger baiting. They were not especial pals of Hollister. He had accompanied them to the station on alcoholic impulse, not by their invitation. But a Chinaman was fair game. The old prejudice against them still lasted in Arizona, save where the towns tolerated them for their utility.

The Oriental did not move. His agate eyes, set slanting under wrinkled lids, were fixed on Hollister, He had finished his cigarette and sat on his bench ​mute and gravely attentive. His apparent apathy lashed Hollister to fury. He pulled a gun and fired it, the lead spatting through the clapboards less than a foot from the Chinaman's head. But he did not move a muscle. The agent came flying out.

"Doggone you, Hollister," he cried, "you quit shootin' up my freight room. They's chickens in there. Your derned shot went plumb through the top coop."

"Git back in yore own coop," retorted the bully, rolling bloodshot eyes towards the none too valorous agent. "Or I'll plug you, you ink-slingin', frog-faced, wire-pecker. Now," as the agent vanished, "are you paralyzed or are you a dummy? Come on, show us how the Chinks dance the shimmy. Come on!" He fired a second and a third shot, the last between his victim's shoes, perilously close to one foot. The Chinaman stood up.

"Me, I no sabby how to dance," he said. "Suppose I give you one fine piecee goods, velly fine piecee silk, you leave me alone? Bimeby I go away." Hollister turned with a grin to the two horsemen.

"You bet yore life you'll go away," he said. "Let me see that fine piecee silk." He sat twisted sideways in the saddle, his pony nervous at the shots, chafing at the cruel bit with which, and his heavily roweled spurs, Hollister forced him to stay against the platform. The Chinaman bent to his suitcase, unstrapped and slowly opened it.

"What kind you likee best?" he asked, his voice deprecating, his face a mask of hiunility. "You likee blocade, fine dless for lady?"

​"That's the stuff, Chink," said Hollister, disposed for the moment to be patronizing. "For a lady. I'll give it to Juanita for a make-up present. You—you hully up," he jested, with a hiccough.

The Chinaman's hand came out of the open bag. He straightened swiftly as the rise of a snake's neck and his face had changed to malevolence incarnate. It was not the rage of terror; the jet eyes were blazing, the jaw firmly set and the hand that now held a blunt automatic gun was far steadier than Hollister's.

"Hi-yah," he shouted. It was not a yell, not loud, yet it was a war-cry, defiant, determined, the slogan of a pirate brood. He fired twice. The gun jerked and the first bullet went wild, but the second struck Hollister's frenzied mount high in the flank. Hollister's mouth was open with surprise as he started to return the fire. He had slid his gun back to the holster as he had leaned forward to examine the expected brocade. The broncho bucked high and hard, squealing with pain and fright and Hollister, none too firm in his seat, shot off in a parabola, sprawling in the fine dust of the road as his pistol fell on the platform and the pony went bucking away towards Metzal.

The agent peered through the grimy panes of his office, the two men who had come with Hollister rocked with laughter and the bully rose discomfited, his face smeared with dust and blood from his nose and cut lip.

"Give me a gun, damn you! " he shouted. "Catch my hawss, one of you!" He started back towards ​the platform but the Chmaman faced him indomitably, his gun raised, his arm crooked, hand upwards. Hollister stopped, wiped away the blood with his bandana, spat out more of it. He looked for his gun in the road and then saw it in the Chinaman's other hand, hung at his side.

"Wait," he cried, his voice bullying but his eyes doubtful, the suggestion of a cringe in his attitude. "I'll crucify you before I'm through with you." And he started to run at a zigzag towards his companions, who had captured his pony and were holding it for him, still roaring at what they regarded as the primest joke that had struck Metzal. Hollister pleaded with them for a gun but they refused him with jeers and he spurred up his horse and streaked towards town in a cloud of dust, passing on his way the returning Jackson and his comrade, who stopped to inquire the cause of the rumpus, retailed them by the pair, who slapped their thighs and doubled themselves in mirth before they followed Hollister.

Sheridan came loping up on the mare. He had only heard the last two shots; the noise of the shunting and coupling had drowned the rest. The agent was out on the platform, the Chinaman was calmly closing his grip. He had put Hollister's gun inside it and laid his own on the seat. Evidently he expected more trouble but he looked quietly at Sheridan as the latter questioned the agent. Jackson and the other cowboy dismounted and came up on the platform to join the group.

"Hollister tries to make him dance," said the agent. "After he fires clean through the wall into ​the freight house and tells me he'll plug me if I kick. Then the Chink outs with a gat and cuts loose. You should have seen Hollister soarin' off that bronc' of his, like a spread-eagle with a busted wing in a gale. Gawd! Served him right. An' the Chink is game if his skin is yeller." It wasn't, it was the exact hue of aged ivory but, to the agent, all Chinamen were yellow-skinned.

Sheridan turned to the Oriental.

"Have you got friends in Metzal?" he asked. "Are you going to start in business here?"

The Chinaman regarded him with eyes that were appraising. That Sheridan's cosmopolitan quality of speech appealed to him was clear in the manner of his reply. His pidgin-English had vanished. Even his r's were only slightly blurred.

"I am looking for work of some kind," he said, without deference.

Sheridan hesitated.

"They don't like Chinamen in Metzal," he said. "You may sense that."

"It is an ancient antipathy that still holds, outside the cities," said the other.

"They are laughing at Hollister now, "went on Sheridan, "but he trails with a gang of his own sort and they'll be starting a lynching bee in this direction inside of half an hour, if not before. What kind of a job do you want?" Jackson pressed forward.

"Did you eat any of Stoney's hotcakes this mornin'?" he asked. "They warnt hot, in the first place, they was mush in the middle an' mine is ​still stuck halfway to my stummick. All Chinks can cook. Hire him an' the boys 'll chip in for the extry pay." Sheridan saw gleaming approval in the face of the second cowboy.

"Can you cook?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Fifty a month and found. Does that suit you?"

"Yes."

"Can you ride?"

"I will try."

Sheridan glanced towards the town, expecting to see a dust cloud heralding the lynching party he was sure would materialize shortly, if only for the supposed sport of the thing.

"Jackson, you take his grip," he said. "He'll have enough to do to manage Rand's horse. Rand goes with the steers. He won't be back till tomorrow. The horse is down by the chute. Get off there now and ride as fast as he can stay on. You didn't give me your name?" he asked the newly appointed chef.

"Quong. Quong Li. I think they are coming from the town."

He did not show any signs of nervousness. Sheridan still regarded him as a mystery. Dust showed on the outskirts of the town and they could hear shouts. But the mob had not started. It seemed to be waiting for others to join the party. Jackson took the suitcase and he and his comrade walked their ponies so as to screen Quong Li, walking at a fast clip ahead of them, losing no time, but unflurried, apparently the least anxious of any of them.

Sheridan lingered to talk to the agent.

​"I'd hate to lose a good cook. They're scarce," he said. The agent winked.

"I've no love for Hollister," he said. "I'll fool 'em. Here they come."

A score of men on galloping horses came dashing up, shouting in excitement, Hollister leading. His nose was still bleeding and he had to mop continually at it with his bandana. He affected not to notice Sheridan but shouted for the agent, who had gone inside, to come out. As the man responded the train started, slowly gathering speed.

"Where's that damned Chink?" demanded Hollister.

"Last I see of him," replied the agent, "he was makin' tracks for the Golden Gate. Goin' due west, fast." He pointed over to the willows that masked a bend of the creek. The mob wheeled and raced in that direction. The agent grinned.

"When they come back I'll sort of suggest that he may have doubled on 'em an' boarded the train," he said. "I'll come out some day to the Circle S an' sample some of his grub."

"You're welcome." Sheridan turned his horse and rode slowly after his men, now hidden by a bend in the road. He did not want to attract possible attention by hurrying. Once on the Circle S, he had no fear of interference for Quong Li. By the time the news leaked out, as it ultimately must, the excitement would have died down, submerged in the joke on Hollister. The laugh would still be against him when they returned from the futile search. Ridicule would calm the resentment against ​Quong better than anything else. And, if he turned out a successful chef—somehow Sheridan felt certain as to that—the men of the ranch would defend his sanctuary.

He caught up with them two miles out of town. Quong was hunched up on the pony, both hands on the horn and reins. He jerked to the trot, making a poor figure of it yet, curiously, there were no covert smiles on the faces of the cowboys. His awkwardness was still pervaded by a certain dignity. Moreover, a cowman has his points of etiquette and of fitness. It would never have occurred to them to "kid the cook". A chef, be he white, brown, black or olive, is a personage on a ranch, to be propitiated rather than to poke fun at, even when he was as poor a cook as Stoney, pressed into the kitchen by circumstance and not by his own desire.

Jackson dropped back to join him.

"They ain't trailin'?"

"The agent sent them off on a wrong trail," said Sheridan. "And he's going to hint that he might have made the train, after all."

"I never heard of a Chinese cowboy," said Jackson, meditatively. "Now I've seen one on a hawss, I know why."

"If they had more and better horses in China, I fancy they'd learn well enough. Red. They're a clever race. The Chinese aviators are good ones." Jackson snickered.

"I'll say they are. He's bin doin' some aviatin' himself. Ridin' the air, most of the time. Got bucked off twice but climbed on ag'en cool as a ​chunk of ice. He's game. What's more, I'll bet he can cook."

Jackson was not especially predisposed towards his stomach, but a rancher who has the name of a good provider can secure hands where others go begging. Open air work, that is apt to be strenuous, breeds appetite that can get away with coarse food, but appreciates good. And Quong Li was a success from the moment he entered the kitchen. Stoney remained to show him the ropes and gasped at the deft way in which the new chef went to work upon half a dozen things at once, bringing them all to a grand climax. The well had made a little garden possible and Sheridan had planted it to vegetables. With these, with steaks broiled to a turn, crisp potatoes and flaky-crusted pies and coffee, Circle S dined well that night. Yet Sheridan was positive Quong Li had never graduated at a range. He had seen him nonchalantly sacrificing an extra inch of nail from his forefingers.

Jackson, privileged as foreman as well as in a genuine friendship between him and Sheridan, joined the latter on the ranch-house porch while the rest of the men went to their own quarters.

"That's the first coffee I've tasted since Stoney went on the job," he said, ecstatically, "barring what you made that night up by Lake of the Woods. Stoney's didn't even smell like coffee. It looked an' tasted like Ghost Crick flood water. If Quong keeps up his lick the boys 'ud fight for him if it ever came to a showdown."

"I offered to bet you a month's pay that was a ​real gel on Ghost Mountain that night," he went on presently. "But you was asleep. If you'd took me up, you'd have lost."

"How's that, Red?"

"I heard somethin' about her in town. Seems she an' her friend, or her maid, some says, got off the train to Pioche two weeks ago. They puts up at the Mountain House an' ses nothin' to nobody about their bisness, was they tourists or lungers or whatnot? Jest asks, casual, to be p'inted out Ghost Mountain. Hires Jim Woodhouse, who used to drive the stage, a few questions about campin' an' the like, hires him to buy 'em an outfit, an' then they strikes the grit for Ghost Mountain, all by themselves. One of 'em, the maid, is a crowd by herself. A Swede or some kind of a squarehead, an' big as two men. Seems a couple of ranch hands got fresh when the outfit passed 'em. This Swede she jest natcherly bumps their heads together, like she was crackin' walnuts. One of 'em's in the hospital, they say, an' t'other's a sorehead for life. Course it's all second-hand news, brought over to Metzal by some one who seen 'em, or said he did.

"One of 'em plays the violin. That made 'em think to Pioche they was concert folk. But they lit out—an' we saw the gel on the mountain that night. Rum, ain't it, two wimmen like that strikin' out alone an' choosin' Ghost Mountain for campin'?"

"What is the other one like, the one you think we saw?"

"It is the one. The other u'd break the back of anything short of an elephant. Why, some say ​she's pritty, some not. Got an elegant figger, 'cordin' to hearsay. Sort of slimsy. Not peaked or frail, but small built. I reckon she's a lady by all they say. That's one reason I wanted to talk with you about them. The boys are talkin' of givin' a surprise party, but I don't reckon they will."

Sheridan leaned forward in his chair.

"What boys?"

"The bunch of shorthorns that Hollister trails with."

"We can't stand for that, Red. Those two women alone!" He got up and strode up and down the verandah. "We'll have to stop that sort of thing."

"I thought you'd say somethin' of the kind. But it won't happen yet awhile, though I'll keep my eyes peeled an' my ears cocked."

"Why do you say it won't happen yet awhile?"

"Because there's one thing they are all agreed upon, unanimous, in the face of the fact that the wimmen are there. Leastwise we know they're there. The folks in Metzal on'y know they started out for Ghost Mountain an' was seen makin' for it an' never come back. What they're agreed on is, one an' all, in Pioche as well as Metzal, that there ain't no way to get up Ghost Mountain short of flyin'. It sure stumps me how they did it."

"If they found a trail, Hollister and his gang will nose it out," answered Sheridan. "It's just the devilish sort of thing they'd delight in, to start a chivaree and scare those women half to death, if ​they went no farther. They must be fairly sure they are on the mountain. If one of them is a lady...."

"She's an Easterner," said Jackson. "Calls a mountain a 'mounting'. Like that Vermont chap down to Prieta. What do you aim to do?"

"We've got to send a horse in for Rand to meet the train tomorrow. Suppose you take it, Red. I'll take over your work."

"That suits me. I'd ruther put a crimp in Hollister's schemes than hold four aces in a thousand dollar jack-pot. Not to mention the wimmen. The West may be wild an' woolly yet in spots, but it's usually bin reckoned a safe place for a decent female, an' I aim to hold up my hand in that."

"Then that's settled. And you can see how they stand about Quong at the same time."

But Sheridan was not bothering very much about Quong. He was seeing more plainly the vision of the girl in the notch of the mountain, with the mauve mists trailing about her. It had been stamped upon his mental retina more clearly than he had fancied. He had dismissed it as a trick of the eye but now he seemed to see it plainly, a slim girl upon a big horse, the mane of the beast lifting in the wind.

Was the fact that they had camped on the shore of Lake in the Woods and she had come to the edge of the cliff that evening mere coincidence?

Sheridan had a theory that there was no such thing as coincidence, as generally interpreted. Such related happenings were, he thought, the fruit of seeds not cast at random. If they had not seen ​her Jackson might not have listened to a casual conversation, the women might have gone unchampioned.

A lady, a slimsy lady! An Easterner who called a mountain "mounting". Sheridan smiled in the dark at the trick of speech. His own sisters, back in Massachusetts, had it. Was not Boston, "Bosting," even to its bluest blooded?

Why they had come, what they were doing there, furnished a mystery that fascinated him. The slimsy girl, the husky serving-woman, if she was that, the violin—and Ghost Mountain. Ghost Mountain the unscaleable! It gripped him and he made up his mind to follow the challenge, to solve the riddle. She might or might not be pretty, said gossip; she was a lady. It was all provocative. It awakened chivalry, never very dormant with Sheridan. His rough life had not blunted his sensibilities nor his imagination.

"I wonder which one of 'em played the fiddle?" said Jackson out of the long silence.

"The girl, I imagine. Why?"

"I sure hanker after good fiddlin'," said Jackson. "There was a chap in Texas could make you snap yore fingers at the whole dern world or choke you up like a hurt babby. He was a squarehead, too. They're long on music. I'll bet you ten dollars it's the big one."

"I'll take you on that, Red."

"You're on. If that surprise party don't come off, which same we'll attend, let's you an' me make a social call, bein' as we're neighbors?"

​"Neighbors? To folks on a mountain ten miles off and three thousand feet up! And how are we going to find the way?"

"Hell!" said Jackson with unconscious and colloquial profanity, "where a gel can climb, I can. An' what's a little space in Arizony?"

Sheridan laughed but he was paying close attention. Some lines from Kipling's "Explorer" occupied his mind. They seemed pat to the occasion:

One everlasting whisper, day and night repeated—so;
'Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges—
Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

'"Lost and waiting for you. Go.'" He repeated the words aloud.

"Huh?" queried Jackson. "What did you say?"

"Nothing, Red. I'm going to turn in. Good-night."

"Goodnight." Jackson left the verandah, the red glow of his cigarette glowing in the dark. It was stuck in the corner of his lips and his mouth was twisted in a confidential grin.

"'Lost an' waitin' for you?' Now what do you know about that?" he asked himself as he walked towards the bunk-house. "The Boss has struck a romantic streak. I hope it runs to pay-dirt. Me, I'm for the Big One, the one that plays the fiddle."

CHAPTER III

THE HIDDEN HOMESTEAD

Jackson left shortly after noon with the spare horse for Rand, and he left content. Stoney had specialized on stews and hash, alternating with steaks he always contrived to render tough, but Quong dished them up a meat-pie that was savory with herbs and would not have done injustice to Delmonico. Or so Sheridan told him.

Quong accepted everything with a dignified complacency that seemed to set him apart—at least in his cooking—as an automaton of perfect mechanism, plus imagination and resource, but uncommunicative, self-sufficient. Later in the afternoon, Sheridan, passing round the ranch-house on his way to the corral, saw him seated on a bench, reading a book set down beside him, its leaves held open by stone weights. How he contrived to follow the text and the contour of the vegetables at the same time, without disaster to fingers or potatoes, seemed a marvel to Sheridan, but Quong was doing it, the parings were fine and continuous, potato eyes were whisked out with a deft twist of the knife point.

"Everything goes wonderfully, Quong," he said. "You were a godsend. You are an artist as a chef but I suspect you capable of better things than ​cooking for a ranch outfit. For one, you have studied English with excellent results. Not that I want to interfere in your affairs and, above all, I don't want to lose you as a cook."

Quong looked up, inscrutable, his well-shaped fingers gauging his work by feel, trimming, guiding the shavings of peel automatically into a basket.

"I have studied—much," he said. "As for cooking, knowledge helps all things." He indicated the pages he had been reading in the tattered cook book, sent with some baking powder preparation as advertisement. "And I do not consider the means that may lead to an end," he concluded.

Sheridan thought that he would like to know what end Quong referred to. Hardly a trivial one he fancied, as he walked off to get what he had started after, a coil of barbed wire. With it he rode away to help repair a reported break in the line-fence. The wiring there was comparatively new, and Stoney, restored to horse-duty, stated that it had been cut by nippers. The bright, clipped ends told a story that seemed to point to Hollister.

Hollister had a holding and he had a herd. He spent most of his time in Metzal and he had no outfit but a Mexican woman, her daughter, Juanita, and her son, Pedro. Yet his herd steadily increased. He had more yearlings, comparatively, to the number of his cows than any other rancher on Chico Mesa. They all bore the brand that Jackson had claimed as so appropriate for its owner—the Lazy H—and it was generally rumored that Hollister was lucky with mavericks." Sheridan was the ​only man who had actually caught him in the act of appropriation. He had made a habit of fixing in his mind the peculiarities of markings on his herd with that purpose in mind, but he had no actual proof. He could not prove that Hollister had slit the tongue of the calf and, though he had redeemed the animal, he had incurred Hollister's enmity. "For which," he assured himself, "he did not give a damn." Hollister friendly, or Hollister an enemy, would be equally a rascal. Current talk ran that Hollister had started cattle ranching with "a branding iron and his gall" and they had strangely multiplied.

Generally, Sheridan imagined, he confined his depredations to nightfall and the open range. This cutting of the wire might not have included the stealing of stock, but have been only a spiteful answer to his discomfiture over the red-and-white heifer. Some cattle have a fence-drifting habit and any of Sheridan's, coming to the break would surely have gone through and wandered down towards the river over unfenced territory.

He looked for tracks but could not find any. He and Stoney used wire-stretcher and staples and mended the break in silence. Stoney was never a man of words, a lack that had been bad for him under the recriminations of his mates for his spoiling of good food. Sheridan had his mouth half full of staples most of the time, and Hollister, and the ways to get rid of such undesirables, filled his mind.

All hands, save Rand and Jackson, were washing up at the trough they used for the purpose, half a ​score of rangy chaps, sun-browned and sun-dried, splashing and laughing and all watching Quong, who was plucking chickens for supper, speculating on how he was going to serve it. Supper had been set back half an hour to allow for the two to come in from Metzal to eat with the rest. Sheridan himself ate at the same table with his boys. The more he saw of them the more he liked them. At ease, they were like so many kids at times, in action, they were men who appeared, many of them, far older than their years. Often they posed, they loved excitement and loved still better to affect to be unmoved by it, as they did by danger. Yet at times they would break out into the wildest demonstrations. They interlarded their talk with profanity as others might quote scraps of a foreign language, to add piquancy. They hated a liar and a braggart, they loved a good story. They gambled, they drank—whenever they could get it. Nearly all of them were shy of women; their stories were far more decent than the average run among men of their rank.

All of them had streaks of adventure, of romance, of poetry. There was Jackson's love of the fiddle. Sheridan had seen Stoney sit like a statue on his horse for half an hour gazing at a sunset. Their play was as vigorous as their work. The latter they took always seriously. They loved to play tricks on each other and their code forbade them wincing when they happened to be the trickee. They were at once boyish, manly, brave, and Sheridan felt himself akin to them in many ways.

​One slid a sudsy bit of soap down another's back. The other straightened up in a wild attempt to corral the slippery scrap, when he stiffened and pointed down the road towards Metzal.

"It's Jackson! In a Lizzie!" he shouted. "Bet the Pinto throwed him an' run off!"

"Throwed Jackson, nothin'!" said another, "but he might be hurt. "

The surmise was disproved by Jackson leaping from the car and hurrying on his high heels towards Sheridan, whom he drew aside. The car backed and sped back to town in a whirl of dust.

"I had to kidnap him to bring me," said Jackson. He's got a job to drive a party to Pioche. But I didn't have any time to waste an' the pinto had to throw a shoe. Rand's bringin' him. "

"What is it? Ghost Mountain?"

"Yep. The boys got hold of Old Yuni, thet ha'f dippy Navajo. Got him drunk an' talkin' about Ghost Mountain. He knows the way in an' they got it out of him—most of it ennyway. Yuni believes in the ghosts, all right. He claims they was an Injun tribe massacred there by the Paches, centimes back. His tribe, maybe. The ghosts are still on the job. Hollister was tryin' to git him drunk enough to lead 'em. The gang was all down to Vasquez'."

"Who told you this?"

"Juanita. Oh, it's straight goods, all right. I know she's stuck on Hollister. I reckon he ought to have married her. She come to Metzal to look him up. She's jealous as a wildcat. Hollister must have ​bin talkin' about the gel on Ghost Mountain an' she's got a notion Hollister will throw her over. They chucked her out of Vasquez' when she began to make a fuss. She was ready to spit fire w'en she met up with me. I figgered she'd had a row with him an' I got it out of her.

"They're goin' up there tonight after they grub up. I hit the breeze."

"We'll beat them to it, Red. Give them a surprise party. What did you learn about the way in?"

"Only that it's masked by a waterfall. There's a little crick runs out of a box canyon. I know whereabouts it is. The water falls plumb out of the rock. Green growth both sides of the fall. You'd never think of lookin' back of it. Live stream, winter an' summer. We can find it. "

"We'll snatch a cold snack and start right away, Red. We've got to get there first. If they've been drinking ...?"

Jackson nodded solemnly.

"It's liable to be a two-gun expedition," he said. "I'll git yore mare an' saddle up my roan. He's faster than the pinto, ennyway. You rustle the grub. Oh, Lord," he groaned.

"What's the matter?"

Jackson had stooped in front of Quong, gathering up the four plump, picked chickens in a pan.

"How was you goin' to serve them, Quong?"

"Fricasseed, with cream gravy." There seemed to be the merest hint of a twinkle in Quong's eyes. He must have overheard some of the talk between Sheridan and Jackson.

​"Just my derned, forsaken luck. You—you wasn't goin' to have dumplin's too, was you, Quong?"

"Yes, sir."

Jackson turned away with a groan. Then he wheeled.

"Save some for me, an' the Boss, Quong. Creamed chicken an' dumplin's! I'll git even with Hollister for this. "

Ten minutes later they were saddled and away, loping at a tangent towards Pioche Pass, where a wagon road paralleled the rails. Sheridan did not use his mare for ordinary ranch work and she was fresh. The ewe-necked roan wanted nothing better than to run but they held them in to a steady lope, the horses' heads high, nostrils distended to the cooling evening wind, redolent with spicy herbage. Again the afterglow was brilliant back of Ghost Mountain, spired against the glowing clouds, pink to the sunset that rayed its topmost crags and left the timberline black and shaggy. They had to ride through the pass and around the range to the Pioche side. Fifteen miles to go, against twelve from Metzal.

They carried four guns, though Sheridan hoped there would be no occasion to use them. But he dreaded what form of deviltry the drunken gang from Metzal might devise, and his face was grim as he opened up a primitive gate in the northwest corner of his holding, and looped it back in place again, after they had passed through.

They avoided the foothills and, choosing their ground by old acquaintance, loped on for the ​southern mouth of the pass through the thickening twilight. Stars began to come out. There would be a moon waiting for them by the time they emerged from the canyon. The land sloped gently upwards and, when they struck the road, they drew rein, gazing back along the grey ribbon of highway to where the scant lights of Metzal showed. There was no sign of the surprise party, no sound but the surge of Ghost Creek, confined to a rocky bed, sharing the gap with the wagon-road and the railway, crowding the latter sometimes to a manufactured bed hewn from the cliff.

Relieved, for it had been hard to guess at what moment the determination of Hollister and his roisterers might crystallize into action, they set their breathed horses north, going fast and even, the mare springy on her delicate pasterns, the heavier roan forging along with a powerful clumsiness more apparent than real.

Sheridan found himself more than merely anxious to reach the women on Ghost Mountain and stave off the crudities of the drunken gang from Metzal. The girl held his thoughts with an intensity that he wondered at, now and then, as he conjured up what she might look like, how she might act. It was three years since he had been on terms of intimacy with any woman, as long since he had spoken with one of his own rank—by which he meant one who had had the same opportunities of culture, education, habit of thought, manner and speech.

Sheridan liked to think himself essentially a ​socialist. He had found that what one man might lack in one capacity, he was apt to make up in other things that count. The main thing was to be a man. He found Jackson congenial enough. The cowpuncher had his philosophies, his codes, and they were none the less effective and invigorating for having been acquired without instruction. But, from a woman, Sheridan felt that his spirit demanded something more for true companionship.

A woman, he believed, should be able to furnish aspiration and inspiration to a man, to prevent him from coarsening, to polish what he rough-hewed from life. That is, a woman that a man might take for mate. He checked his thoughts at this. There seemed no reason why they should lead to such a close connection with a girl whom he had never seen, save at long distance. This ride was merely a man's duty. Jackson felt the urge as keenly as himself; any of the cowboys of the Circle S would have instinctively done the same thing. But he found he was regarding this nameless girl as a special individual, not merely as a woman likely to be insulted. And he was quite aware that he was not thinking of her companion at all.

Yet the answer was simple enough. It is hard for a man to judge his own composite. Sheridan was far from being an anchorite. The physical as well as the mental side of him desired to see this girl who said "mounting" for mountain; this "slimsy lady" of Jackson's phrase. The description stuck with him, suggested the need for his aid more keenly, fired his purpose. And she was from his own people.

​"Moon's up," said Jackson. "That 'll help some. Better leave the road an' scout along the foot of the hills. Don't want to override the place."

The northern side of the range was more fertile than Chico Mesa. Cactus grew, and soapweed, but gramma grass prevailed. The mountains rose steeply, their slopes bristling with forests of pine and cedar up to the gaunt crags above timberline, silvered by the lifting moon that rose at their backs, full and golden. Once they had to ford Ghost Creek, running in a loop from its mountain sources, fetlocks deep and cold, its ripples sparkling as they splashed through.

"Ahead of 'em all right," said Jackson, turning in his saddle and seeing nothing against the moon though he rode with his head twisted on his shoulder for some minutes, trusting to the roan to pick his way.

"It's just as well, Red. We've got to make ourselves acquainted and get their confidence. We don't want to start a rumpus, either, if we can avoid it by a little diplomacy. No sense in scaring them to death and making them leave the place."

"I'm carryin' my diplomacy on my hip," said Jackson. "There's on'y one sure way to argy with Hollister and his bullies when they're primed with Vasquez' whisky."

"You forget the women. They may not be incapable of handling the situation, with us to back them."

"Play a lullaby to Hollister an' put him to sleep, I suppose," said Jackson with grim sarcasm. "'Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.' I read ​that in a book somewhere, but I ain't bankin' on it. What if the cuss can't carry a tune?"

"If there's a tunnel back of that waterfall, we'll need lights. We should have brought a lantern."

"We can get some pine-knots," suggested Jackson. "I've got matches. It's a peach of a night, ain't it?"

To the cowboy the ride was an adventure after his own heart. Like all his kind, he had a keen sense of the dramatic and he was going to enjoy every minute of the trip. Danger spiced it, so did the prospect of thwarting Hollister, and the violin held a lively place in his anticipations. The horses kept gallantly to their gait, the air was full of the balmy tang of resin and dry wood, crisp and cool, every breath an exhilaration. And, being supremely happy, Jackson commenced to chant one of the dolorous songs that are sung as lullabies to uneasy cattle when the thunder growls and the nightherds ride round their charge.

Oh, bury me on the hillside where the grasses gently wave,
With a score of my com-pan-y-uns to follow m^e to my grave.
With four of my good comrades to carry me on my bier,
To speak a partin' word for me an' shed a bitter tear,
I was a rovin' cowboy an' I broke my mother's heart,
With gamblin' an' with drun-ken-ness I drifted far apart.
Now let me be a warnin' to all who see me lie,
An' listen to the tale of one who wasn't fit to die.

There were innumerable verses, strung out to while away the monotony of night work, and Jackson, in a high-pitched tenor that was not all unmusical, recorded them faithfully to the tempo of the ​roan's gallop. Despite the crimes of the leading personage of the song—he had been everything from bank-robber to train-bandit, horse-thief, crooked card-player and woman-stealer—shot at last through the lungs to a death by slow music; this ballad was the apotheosis of the cowboy; the villain was a hero in "The Cowboy's Lament." Sheridan knew this, the local version, well, and smiled at the doleful solemnity with which Jackson invested it. It stopped abruptly as they came to the sandy bed of a creek that was now merely a trickle. There were no foothills proper on this side of the range, merely a few buttresses of detritus and, here and there, a projecting spur or headland of stubborn granite. Just ahead of them jutted out such a promontory.

"Ha'f a mile, or thereabouts on t' other side of that," announced Jackson, "is where the crick I was talkin' of heads out. There's the Old Ghost loomin' up.

The northern escarpments of Ghost Mountain soared into the sky, its crags, as wildly rugged as those overlooking Lake of the Woods, touched by the moon with a magic that seemed to dissolve the harsh rock to something more ethereal.

To achieve those battlemented heights, to storm that fortress through some rift backing a waterfall seemed ridiculous. But a growing excitement possessed both of them now that they neared the goal. Jackson, riding in the skirts of the timber on the lower slopes, found what he wanted in the shape of dry pine boughs and resinous knots for torches. ​They rode more slowly as they reached a place where the mountain wall rose perpendicular from the plain, looking for a gap that might harbor the waterfall.

They found the stream first and let the horses rinse their mouths. Dismounted, they followed up the current into a narrow ravine, a mere cleft in the rock, walking now in, now out of the water, rushing fast from a pool some two hundred feet back from the plain; fed by a spouting fall, leaping over a ledge fifty feet above their heads; a veil of dulled silver in the gloom of the place unpenetrated by the moon. It covered the backwall of the cleft almost completely and vines and bushes framed it wherever they found placement and soil. The water fanned out towards the pool and completely screened any suggestion of an entrance back of it.

"This is the on'y waterfall along here or anywhere's nigh Ghost Mountain," said Jackson. "So this is it, though you'd never guess it. Derned if it don't seem foolish to butt yore head against what seems like must be solid rock behind that water, but, here goes."

There was not room to slip around the edge of the fall; the ledge it spouted from was not projecting. Jackson charged fairly into the silver tumble, broke through and disappeared. The next moment he was out again, soaked, but triumphant.

"Reg'lar adit. Blacker 'n a steer's stummick!"

With the pine torches protected by the slicker carried on Jackson's saddle, they led the none too willing horses through the drenching spray. Sheridan ​produced matches and soon they held flaring lights that revealed a narrow tunnel, not particularly moist and with the air pure enough, a tunnel that Sheridan believed had been enlarged if not entirely fashioned by hand. This theory was confirmed by the rude petroglyphs they passed, picture phrases chiseled in the rock and filled in with red and black pigments that held their color, for all the ages that had passed since the prehistoric chroniclers tried to link up their generation and its deeds with those to follow.

The floor rose at a stiff gradient. Occasionally one of the horses stumbled, its shoes striking sparks from the rock. A strong draught faced them. The tunnel turned abruptly to the left, widened, its walls opening upwards and, overhead, they saw the sprinkled light of stars. Their eyes became adjusted to the gloom of this grim gorge that lay before them, a gigantic gash, the unhealed scar of some titanic upheaval. Their torches were but small use now and they stamped them out. They were inside the mountain wall. Towering, the enormous rampart of Ghost Mountain lifted, springing from a floor midway the height of the mountain, reached from the tunnel's end by a series of terraces. Ghost Mountain was semi-hollow; its pinnacles and turrets were on true walls that guarded this hidden valley where, according to the Indian legend, once lived a tribe, remote in its fastness until the fierce Apaches raided it. The moon only tipped the eastern angles of the highest spires, the stars managed a lurky twilight, from which slowly emerged weird ​shapes of stone, wind-carven, sand-lathed; crouching monsters, sphinxes, grotesque statues on great pedestals, sentinels of the terraces. Among them loomed branched cacti, like mammoth candelabra, with the ashes of dead fire in their sockets.

A frightful sound suddenly filled all the place with hideous, wailing clamor. To Sheridan it seemed the wail of a woman in frightful agony of soul and body, magnified by resounding echoes. They had mounted again, for the horses were better able to pick a path in that light. The mare reared, shied, fought at the bit while Sheridan tried to soothe her, too much occupied with her plunges to grip a pistol, as his instinct prompted. The roan, too, tried to bolt but Jackson brought him up.

"Mountain lion," he shouted to Sheridan. "Way up on the cliff!"

Sheridan had heard their weird cries before and always his blood had run a little cold at their eerie quality, resounding in a canyon of the foothills. But this had been close and the character of the place had emphasized it. Even after Jackson spoke he could not laugh at himself. But his turn came.

They were traveling a trail that the horses had discovered and had reached the third of the terraced pitches, the way winding amid the monoliths and giant cacti. The rift funneled as they mounted and a strong wind blew intermittently, bred, Sheridan fancied, from the battling temperatures of the still warm cliffs that had absorbed the sun all day and the cold, descending air of the night. The puma had given no further outcry. Doubtless it had ​scented its chief enemy and deemed discretion the better part of its uncertain valor.

Jackson pointed to a sphinxlike head of sandstone, set on a snaky pillar, its profile startlingly realistic. A hole had been turned clean through a sand-drilled eye. And, as it towered above them, through that socket gleamed a star.

"There's yore ghosts," said Jackson. "Enough to scare any Injun. I'm glad I ain't alone, myself," he deprecated candidly. "I might git a notion to go back. My Gawd! What's that?"

This time the horses did not start and it was Sheridan who divined the cause. The wind, whistling through the orifice it had made, produced a sound that was uncanny in its semblance of a human sigh, or moan.

"It's the soul of some ghost that has lost its bearings. Red," and then Sheridan explained.

"Humph! No wonder the old Injun didn't want to guide 'em up here. If it wasn't for Vasquez' whisky, that crowd 'ud never come by here. But that stuff 'ud give a chap nerve enough to ask the devil in hell for a water chaser. The gels must have gone up in the daytime. I wonder if that lion's scared 'em?"

They passed the whistling monument and toiled up the steep trail to where the chasm closed in. On the rim they stopped involuntarily at the wonder of the scene. They seemed to look across the floor of a crater, its lava long crumbled to fertile soil, circled by jagged cliffs. The moon bathed a segment of the western wall. Grass grew thick as a mat, there were ​groves of trees and, in the center of this gently sloping bowl, a little lake lay like a frosted silver shield. The scent of flowers came to them, flower faces looked up at them, dim in the dusk. The foot of the circling wall was heaped with talus and this was thick with pines and cedar. On a low slope beyond the lake, backed by a mass of trees, there glowed an orange star.

"Too steady for a fire," said Jackson. "It 's in a winder. D'ye suppose them two wimmen c'ud have built them a house?"

"Let's go and see," said Jackson and they put their horses to a brisk canter. Once again sound halted them, a melody, thinly exquisite, that seemed reaching out to them in welcome.

"The fiddle," said Jackson in a whisper. "Here's where we settle that bet." The air continued, as they rode up it, as one rides up the wind; surely sustained, a haunting tune that was both sad and sweet, played with tender variants by a hand that was sure and firm. It ended on a high, faint note when they were still twenty yards from the light and could see the bulk of a low log-cabin with a stone chimney at one end and a long verandah fronting the lake.

"How you goin' to rouse 'em 'thout stampedin' 'em?" asked Jackson. "They ain't expectin' us no more than no one else. Also," he added whimsically, "I allow that Big One is short-tempered. She might have a gun—an' she might be able to aim straight an' hold steady."

His question was answered for him. Somewhere ​back of the house a horse nickered and Sheridan's mare responded with a shrill whinny. An oblong of yellow light appeared close to the smaller space that was the window. It was almost instantly blocked by the giant figure of a woman. A streak of dull light shone on the object she carried, which both men knew for a rifle.

"Who you bane out there? What you want?" The voice was deep, contralto, musical, but it carried a quality that was imperative, backed by the rifle.

"My name is Peter Sheridan. I am owner of the Circle S ranch," said Sheridan, riding in a little way.

"You stop right where you bane now. Both of you, 'lest you want you should git shot. Who told you how to git in this place?"

"I shall be glad to explain," said Sheridan, conscious of Jackson snickering beside him in the dark. "We'll both come in with our hands up, if you like. I assure you we are friends on a friendly mission."

"That will do, Thora." The great bulk of the woman disappeared from the lighted frame as she stepped on the verandah. Another figure took her place, slight, silhouetted, with the rays of the lamp inside just touching gold-brown hair and an oval cheek.

"The slimsy lady," muttered Sheridan. She spoke his own tongue, the language of culture. He fancied that she had recognized it in him also, that it had served as a password and countersign.

"Will you gentlemen come up? You startled us ​a little, but I am sure there is nothing for us to be afraid of."

"Plucky as a nestin' wren," murmured Jackson. Then, aloud, "No'm, there ain't nothin' to be alarmed at. We're harmless as yearlin's."

The girl, she was only that, gave a laugh that was like a silvery chiming of tiny bells but the pair was conscious of the dim shape of the bigger woman, suspicious, protective, holding her rifle ready.

"We'd like to leave our horses where we could tie them," said Sheridan. "We heard a mountain lion on the way up. They might get restless."

"There is a shed back of the house," she answered. "Our own horses are there. There is plenty of room."

What was a girl of her type doing in this wilderness? The marvel of it grew on Sheridan as they put away their mounts in the shed, a substantial affair built of heavy logs, like the house, and roughly divided into boxstalls that were bedded down with pine twigs. The wonder of finding Quong at Metzal depot faded beside this new riddle. The "slimsy lady" belonged against a background of mahogany highboys, old china, andirons, bookshelves and an Adams' mantel. He had a swift picture of her coming down a spiral staircase of white treads and slender white spindles, her white hand on the polished rail, her dainty body clad in white. And now she was dressed in a khaki skirt, with gaiters, a waist of blue flannel relieved by a bowtie of lighter blue silk. He had registered all this as she had stood in the door watching them as they rode round the cabin. ​Her face he had not seen clearly. But, what had brought her to so solitary a spot, who had given her the secret to this hidden homestead?

"The Big One, she's a whale!" said Jackson. There was respect rather than ridicule in his voice. "She's the biggest woman I ever see, short of a circus. And she's no freak. Well built. I'll bet that yarn of her crackin' them two fresh ranch-hands' heads is true. How in time did they ever make out to come to this hole in a hill?"

"They'll tell us, if they want to. We don't want to seem too inquisitive on a first visit, Red."

"Not me. I ain't that kind of a neighbor."

The girl and the woman stood on the verandah to bid them welcome and then the two men followed them into a big room where a fire burned low in a stone fireplace. It was somewhat primitively furnished. The big table, a settle, and two or three chairs, were eminently home-made and also evidently old, but they were not without some lines of grace and well put together.

"It will look more homey when the rest of our things arrive," said the girl as she noticed their glances. "When we get some curtains up and a squashy pillow or so. They are following us by freight, you know?"

She had a fascinating air of taking them into her confidence though it really mystified them the more. The Big One stood by silent, an Amazon on guard. She too was in khaki skirt, her well-shaped legs in high-laced boots, a khaki sweater tight over her great chest, ample breasted. Above it, her neck rose ​like a column on which her squarish but well contoured face was set, firm of flesh, ruddy under a thin veneer of bronze. Blue-grey eyes were frank with inquiry and suspended judgment. A mass of ash-blond hair was braided and coiled around her head. A handsome woman, a woman with no nonsense about her and of much capacity, with every inch of her body solid with good health and strength.

The face of the "slimsy lady" was not pretty, Sheridan decided, and almost immediately reversed his decision. The mouth was wide, but the corners turned up, the nose was short, but it was piquant. Her hair was either dull gold or bright bronze, he never really determined which. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers. Their blue made that of her companion's eyes almost faded but their chief charm lay in their crystalline clearness, the transparent whites, the fleck of red in the corners, the brilliance of their movement under the long lashes. And her teeth were perfect. The somewhat stilted adjective used by Jackson to describe her figure, fitted exactly. "Elegant." She was not plump, the "slimsy lady," but her breasts were delicately full and she was all lissome curves and tapering lines with daintiness of wrist and ankle.

For a few seconds the four of them appraised each other silently and then, springing to some common impulse, all smiled.

"My name is Mary Burrows," said the slimsy lady, "and this is my friend Thora Neilsen." Sheridan caught the look of affectionate gratitude flashed ​from the Big One to the girl who was undoubtedly, in less democratic surroundings, her mistress. And Mary Burrows began to mount in Sheridan's estimation. She was clever, as well as unprejudiced by caste.

"I have told you my name," he said, as he shook hands with Thora and felt the vigor of her grip, electric with vitality. "Peter Sheridan. This is my friend and my mainstay at the ranch, Lem Jackson."

"Better known as 'Red,' Miss—and Miss," said Jackson, trying to appear at his ease, dropping the hand of the slimsy lady as if he thought he might hurt it, shaking that of Thora Neilsen as if it had been that of another man.

"We've seen you before," said Sheridan. "One night when we were camping at Lake of the Woods at sunset and you were on the rim of the mountain."

The girl's eyes widened.

"That was you? I told Thora about it. I rode to see the sunset and I saw the lake. It was like a great opal. I saw the little fire and two tiny figures by it. But I did not suppose you had noticed me. The mists were all about me."

"You looked like a wraith," laughed Sheridan. "I was inclined to doubt your solidity and Red thought you were a ghost for a minute. This is Ghost Mountain, you know? El Monte del Muerte, the Mount of Death."

"We are not afraid of ghosts. El Monte del Muerte, Mountain of Death, is the Spanish name. We knew that, of course. An Indian tribe lived here long ago. Thora dug up some arrowheads yesterday. ​And so you came to make us a call? That was thoughtful. But—how did you find the way in? We are glad to see you but—we are a little disappointed that our secret entrance is known."

"You could easily make a heavy gate across the tunnel behind the fall," said Sheridan. "Or we would be glad to make it for you to atone for our trespass. It might be a good idea. I'll tell you how we found our way."

He was sure that they were well ahead of the surprise party and he took time to gloss the character of the proposed visit. He told of the way their arrival had been heralded to Metzal and described that place, half-cowtown, half-pueblo; he hinted at the ways of Hollister and his gang, watching the girl's eyes take on understanding, while Thora's narrowed. But neither of them showed any sign of fear.

"You must n't think that these men represent the community," he said. "They are in the minority. We have some respect for the conventions. And these are not altogether lawless. I don't want to frighten you away from here."

"You won't do that," said the girl. "We made up our minds before we came that things would be in the rough. We knew something of it, you see. We don't frighten as easily as we—as I—perhaps look. Do we, Thora?"

The woman sat there with her capable hands clasping each separate knee.

"I not bane afraid of any man," she said, without boast, a simple assertion that bore its own proof.

​"I imagine that their main motive is curosity," said Sheridan. "They might be less—boisterous—if we were present. Or so we fancied. "

"It was kind of you. To ride all the way around the mountain to help us receive our visitors. Do not think I underestimate it, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Jackson. I think we can manage them—now. I understand what we might have expected. It will not be a surprise party. And we must entertain them. Thora makes delicious doughnuts. She made a batch today. Do you like doughnuts, Mr. Jackson?"

"Who? Me? Tackin' Mister to my name is like callin' a dawg or a hawss by a strange one, Miss. I presume you'll mean crullers. To my mind they've mostly been overestimated, or misunderstood, out West. I've heard they eat 'em for breakfas' back East but I reckon that's jest a yarn. I've eat crullers in the Pioche depot restyront an' they 'peared to me like an excuse for cookin' sawdust in grease. "

"Wait till you try Thora's. And we can make coffee. We have it powdered, in cans. Do you think they will like that?"

"Coffee, black and hot, might help them," said Sheridan. "And, by the way, Miss Burrows, what about that gate in the tunnel? A heavy one with a bar, set in a long frame. We could fix it for you in a day."

"You are thoughtful. It might be a good plan. But we have an enormous front yard. There could be no bell. How should we know when our friends called?"

​"We could arrange that, I think. You had better let me do it."

"Thank you. I suppose Thora could hardly do it alone, though she is wonderful with tools. She chops trees for the fire and she mended the roof; put in new poles. Some of them were nearly down. The house was in wonderful condition, considering it was built sixty years ago; but so well built. The windows were boarded up and the glass was unbroken. It was terribly dusty, of course, but we fixed that."

How did she know when the house was built? Did she put in all these "you sees" and "of courses" for sheer tantalization?

Thora had gone into another room. There seemed to be three in all. The girl caught Red looking wistfully at the violin that lay on the table.

"Do you like music?" she asked. "We may have some presently."

"Yes'm, I do." Red glanced at Sheridan. The bet was still undecided. Thora came back with a kettle which she put on a swinging crane over the embers.

"Better I get some wood," she said. Jackson sprang up.

"I'll help you," he suggested. Thora looked at him with the amiability one might show to a child.

"All right," she said, and they went out together.

Sheridan began to doubt whether their coming had been necessary. Not that he was not heartily glad they had done so. But Thora was a tower in herself and the "slimsy lady" had both wits and spirit. He imagined the crowd arriving, offered ​coffee and doughnuts, and violin music of no rare order. It might sweep them off their feet. The ride would have toned down their liquor, if they had not brought too much along. He knew the type. Such a girl would check them intuitively. Except Hollister. There would have to be some opening for the rest to display their crudity. And he was certain no such opening would be made. Mary Burrows was the sort who could render herself sexless in certain environments. Her charm would manifest itself in other ways, the lure of her as purely woman would close like a sensitive blossom. Thora was not the kind to readily capitulate. A man would think twice before he tackled her. These two could handle the situation. But it had done no harm for them to supplement the defence. Unless—the thought hit him for the first time—a wrong interpretation might be placed upon the fact of their presence. Hollister, foiled, might well think of that. And Sheridan's jaw jutted as he made up his mind to nip anything of that sort in the bud.

Thora came back with Jackson, staggering under a load of wood that lacked a log or two of the pyramid the woman handled with ease. As he straightened up from depositing his burden he winked at Sheridan.

"Samson," he said, "was a joke along this lady."

Thora took the tribute calmly.

"You can git me them doughnuts, if you want," she said to Red. "I tank yore arms are longer than mine, anyway." If this was meant as a softening of the evident truth of the superior strength of her own, Red did not seem entirely to appreciate it. But he ​got down the crock from a high shelf obediently.

"No signs of arrival," he said as he put the crock on the table by the violin and took off the cover.

"They sure smell good," he said. Thora plucked him away.

"You bane keep your nose in place, young feller."

Mary Burrows smiled at Sheridan. Thora and Red had become "acquainted" while they were getting the wood.

"You don't find it lonely here?" he asked. He was resolved not to show any desire to probe her secrets until she showed a desire to take him into confidence.

"Why, no. It is as we expected. And it is so beautiful, like a park, the flowers, bees by the million, and birds, orioles, and mocking-birds. There is a pair of eagles that nest on one of the crags. And there are deer in the valley; mountain-sheep, too. We thought of keeping goats. And making honey. Do you suppose it would be profitable?"

There was a certain wistfulness in her inquiry that did not miss Sheridan. They needed to make money. The pity of it clouded his mind for a moment before he answered. Then the melancholy howl of a puma sounded from a distance. Both men got to their feet. Sheridan opened the door.

"That's the same beast we disturbed, I fancy," he said. "It should mean that they are coming."

"We are ready for them, as soon as the kettle boils," said the girl, quietly. Sheridan and Jackson, a bit shamed at her coolness, though she could not entirely comprehend the peril of the situation, sat down again.

​"Perhaps we had better go out on the verandah," she suggested. "They will be in plain sight across the meadows beyond the lake, under the moon. Do you think it wisest to wear your guns?"

"I wear one from habit," answered Sheridan. "It will not provoke anything, if that is what you mean. They will have theirs."

"No doubt about that," said Jackson as a small body of horsemen, scattering as they came, galloped from the rim of the rift towards the lake. The moon was now looking down into the mountain valley and they rode in its light, shouting and firing off their guns as they came. Sheridan's face grew stern; they were drunker, more careless, more confident than he had hoped they would be.

"The derned fools 'll likely forgit to reload," said Red. "Seein' they ain't expectin' to meet up with no men. Here's hopin' they empty their cylinders."

There were nine of them. Tuni, the Indian, had either balked or been left behind. Sheridan picked out Hollister leading the rest. He flung up his hand and shouted, apparently demanding a belated silence which was achieved as they reached the lake. The sight of the low house with its orange window seemed to have helped to quiet them by its unexpected picture. Here was a home.

They rode around the lake and reappeared from the shadows of the trees, lining up irregularly some distance from the house. The verandah was in deep shadow. For a moment they consulted. Hollister rode out.

"Hello, the house!" he shouted.

CHAPTER IV

MUSIC HATH CHARMS

"Won't you gentlemen come in?"

The figures of the horsemen seemed to stiffen. The girl's voice may have touched tradition, perhaps a memory. It was eloquent of gentility, it bespoke no alarm at this sudden intrusion in a place whose unusual privacy they had so rudely broken. Then they shifted uneasily. Sheridan could see the roll of their eyes towards each other in uneasy inquiry. The girl had scored. And he had a conviction that her manner would have been much the same if he and Red had not arrived. Admiration of her glowed within him.

Hollister spoke, his voice hoarse with the whisky he had drunk, impudent in its self-assertion.

"We'll do that. Light, boys. Better hitch your hawses to the trees." She did not offer the hospitality of the shed, Sheridan noted.

Mary Burrows received them with reserved cordiality that suggested an explanation of their visit was expected as they filed clumsily up the steps and trailed behind her into the big room. Thora followed and Sheridan and Jackson closed the file. The men were still too sheepish, most of them, to have noticed the men from Circle S. Only Hollister leered at them evilly, with his tongue set in his cheek. ​Sheridan itched to punch it back into place. Then the rest saw them, some with frowns, others with pure-half-drunken amazement. Sheridan sized them up. Two or three of them he did not know. But they were all palpably of the same kidney, loafers on the work of their women or the money of strangers, gained by any trickery.

"I see you've comp'ny, Miss," said Hollister, swaggering forward with a show of ease. "We didn't know you was acquainted round here. Figgered you'd be kind of lonesome."

"So you came up to cheer us up a bit. That was nice of you. Won't you sit down? I'm afraid some of you will have to sit on the floor."

She smiled at them as they clumsily disposed of themselves. Hollister sat astride a chair, gazing belligerently at Sheridan and Red, who paid no attention. She did not show surprise at their having discovered the way in.

"I wonder if you're not hungry after your ride?" she asked, her manner confidently perfect. "Mr. Jackson does not seem to have a good opinion of doughnuts but I am going to change it. One good thing about them, plates are not necessary, but you'll have to drink your coffee out of odds and ends."

They made a ludicrous picture as they sat, some of them crosslegged on the boards, dumb, goggling at the girl, at the great figure of Thora, pouring from the big kettle as if it weighed no more than a teapot. As each man thumbed his doughnut, reached up for his cup of coffee, served in tin and ​porcelain, they had a ridiculous resemblance to a children's picnic. And they seemed to feel it, to be held in amaze at the way the situation had been changed. They had come prepared to bluster, to demand music from the fiddle, to dance, to play boisterous tricks, and here they were, subdued by a Circe who fed them doughnuts. But they ate them, they broke bread in the house, they unconsciously assimilated the canons of such hospitality—and they eagerly devoured the cookies. Hollister shuffled a little in his chair, trying for some phrase that should show him master of the affair but he could not shake off an undefinable uneasiness. Neither Sheridan nor Jackson had noticed him by word but both sat, evidently welcome guests, and there was a quiet menace in the way they had shifted their guns so that they lay on their thighs while they munched at their doughnuts, a menace repeated in the cold gleam in their eyes. Hollister had never forgotten the demonstration of Sheridan's shooting. He saw both men were packing an extra gun. He remembered Jackson's boast of left-handedness. He had a premonition that he could not start anything that would not finish suddenly and disastrously to himself, first of all. And he had lost his grip over the men who had galloped so recklessly across the meadows on their "chivaree." There would be another laugh on him, and there had been too many laughs of late. He was a bully and his leadership had to be asserted by a bully's methods. The men had no keen liking for him, he was well aware of that.

​He viewed Jackson with a special enmity, guessing that the cowboy must have in some way got wind of their trip while he was in town. He knew nothing of the meeting with Juanita. But Red stolidly outstared him over his doughnut.

A chorus of praise arose when the crock was emptied.

"Thora will make you some more another time," promised the girl. "I hope we shall all be friends and neighbors."

"Ain't you two gels afeared to stay up here alone?" asked a man. "We nigh run into a lion on the way up."

"Tell them about the lion, Thora."

Thora grinned. Her teeth were as good as those of Mary Burrows, only larger, suggestive of vigorous mastication.

"One lion he bane come snoopin' around," she said. "Last night it was. You want you should know what I did to heem?"

With dramatic appreciation of what she was about to do, she went through the doorway to the room from which she had produced the kettle. They gaped at her returning, dragging, well off the floor, her grasp in the scruff of its neck, an enormous brownish-yellow body with underparts of dirty white and a gray face that snarled and showed its fangs in the stiff mask of death. Without an effort she lifted it full length with one arm and exhibited it before she flung it on the planks among the astonished, deeply impressed group.

"I think be git tired of mountain sheep, mebbe. ​Mebbe he smell those doughnuts. Annyway, I shoot him, back of the ear."

They bent over to examine the bullet-hole, fingering it, looking at her as they might have gazed at an actual Amazon.

"Mebbe that other one come along," she said. "Then I shoot heem, too. I think that flesh bane not much good, but that skeen, he make a pritty good rug. I set heem where it bane cool while I figger out best way to skeen heem."

"I'll skin him for you, Miss, if you'll give me a sharp knife," said the man, who had spoken of hearing the lion. "I'm a dab at that."

"All right." She picked up the great cat once more without effort and bore it off to the outer room where the volunteer skinner followed her.

"Where'd you learn to shoot, Miss—or Marm?" queried Hollister as Thora came back, leaving the door open after handing the man a lantern. "We figgered you was tenderfeet."

"Shoot? Any one can shoot if they got a good eye an' a steady hand. I can do anything a man can do," replied Thora with absolute statement.

"I believe you," said Jackson, quietly. Thora gave him a friendly look and turned again to Hollister. Her instinct recognized in him the really "bad man" of the crowd, aside from what Sheridan had suggested.

"You bane pritty strong?" she asked. "Did you ever try thees?"

She set her arm down on the table close to where he sat, extending it in a straight line from elbow to ​wrist, opening her fingers to a clutch. The men recognized the challenge and applauded.

"Bet she kin put you down, Hollister! You ain't game to try!"

Hollister scowled but he could not avoid the test. Mary Burrows looked a trifle anxious but Thora's blood was up. And there was a method back of the sport she proposed.

Hollister was not wearing a coat. He rolled up his sleeve from his hairy, corded arm, displaying muscles that might be a little flabby from drink and lack of exercise but which showed powerfully. The little frown on the girl's face deepened and Sheridan felt apprehensive that Thora might go down to defeat. A small thing might turn the tide. To pass the affair off without disturbance was the prime thing. Hollister, triumphant, might prove difficult to handle with gloves.

But he gasped when Thora rolled back the sleeve of her sweater. Her skin was startlingly fair above the sunburn of the wrist. It did not have the pearly quality of Mary Burrows'; it was like the arm of a marble statue brought to life. It had symmetry denied a man's but there were few men who would not have been proud of the packs of muscle that swelled and rippled in smooth sheathes as she flexed and unflexed them.

"You must not lift up from the table," she warned, as Hollister adjusted himself in his chair and then set his brown, furry forearm up against hers in vivid contrast, elbow to elbow, thumb locking thumb, four fingers clasped over four. He set out all his ​strength in a sudden burst. Thora's arm rippled, the muscles stood out, the veins showed but it did not budge. Once she relaxed her hand and let it flip backwards swiftly, regaining the pose instantly.

Then the rippling muscles tensed, seemed to grow. Her face was placid, she did not seem to be putting out especial effort, but the hushed, intent lookers-on saw Hollister's features congest with blood as he strained against the woman's steady force. Swollen veins showed in his forehead and neck, sweat began to form in beads and his arm faltered, swayed, then went slowly down until the back of his hand was fairly on the table. A roar of laughter went up as he sat there, discomfited, hate in his face, his hand half creeping to his belt.

"Anny one else?" asked Thora. Sheridan watched Hollister like a cat. The man was temporarily beside himself with rage and wounded pride. The jeers of his fellows were goading him to desperation.

Mary Burrows got Sheridan's eye and nodded. She got up and walked out between Hollister and the others.

"There are no more doughnuts," she said, "but there is plenty of coffee. I'll serve you while Thora gives you some music."

Jackson nearly shoved Sheridan from his chair by the lunge he gave him in his ribs.

"Ten you owe me, old-timer," he whispered.

It seemed incongruous, impossible, that the hands that had felled trees, killed the puma, set down Hollister, made the doughnuts, could produce such music as they had heard coming over the meadow. ​Even yet Sheridan was in doubt. The girl was letting Thora show off. But, as the big woman took up the instrument, he noticed how well-shaped were her fingers and how lissome. She cuddled the fiddle under her clean-cut chin, couched on her bosom, that had been undisturbed throughout her feat with Hollister, and turned a key, picking lightly at the strings. The man who had been skinning the puma came in. He had missed Hollister's defeat, and, chagrined at his lack of knowledge of the laughter, had hurried to finish his job.

"You've got a fine skin, there," he said. "Eight foot from snoot to tail-tip, or I'm a liar."

They hushed him down and Thora, taking up her bow, began to play.

There were folk-songs at first, lilting melodies some of them, others plaintive, all with the human note throbbing from the strings. That they were unfamiliar with them made no difference; they reached their hearts and they sat silent, enthralled. Thora played with no fireworks of execution, no great technique, but her ear was precise and, these things that she loved, she phrased beautifully.

She had them half-jigging finally to a dance, nodding their heads and tapping with their feet, as amiably, innocently delighted as children at a puppet show. Save for Hollister, who froze his face into a sneer. At last she put down the violin amid protest.

"Do you know 'Money Musk,' marm?" asked one of them. The size of Thora seemed to make it imperative for them to address her as if she were a matron. She looked puzzled.

​"Not by name, I think," said Mary Burrows. "But she will remember it. It goes this way, Thora."

And she began to whistle, pursing up her mouth slightly, almost without movement of the lips, emitting fluty bird-notes. Thora took up the fiddle and began to accompany her with softened chords. "Money Musk" glided into a "Dixie" of piccolo and muted drums and then the girl began to whistle something that Sheridan fancied was improvisation, at least her own. Thora followed her with due repression.

It was the cooing of doves, the music of a brook, or buds in spring branches. The sweet, pure tone soared shrill and infinitely clear; it softened, dropped, died away—and left them staring, under the spell. Mary Burrows herself broke the silence.

"It's your turn now," she suggested.

Embarrassment thickened, nudges were exchanged.

"Red sings a little," said Sheridan mischievously.

"I do not. I got a voice like a crow."

There were calls for Spike, insistent, not to be silenced. An elongated, pock-marked ruffian got up, arms akimbo, seemingly not at all loath to air his accomplishment. An Adam's apple slithered up and down in his throat as he sang, his voice lugubrious as the howl of a coyote on a wet night. But to his companions it was as the voice of Caruso and they reveled in the chorus.

Come along, boys, an' listen ter my tale,
I'll tell you of my troubles on the old Panhandle Trail.

⁠Comi ti yi, yuppi ya, yuppi ya.
⁠Comi ti yi, yuppi, yuppi ya.

​

I started on the train October twenty-third,
I started up the trail with the Two-Bar herd.

And then the rollicking, reckless swing of the chorus. There were not more than three or four actual riders among them, but they were all from the Cow Country, after all.

⁠Comi ti yi, yuppi ya, yuppi ya.
⁠Comi ti yi, yuppi, yuppi ya.

I woke up in the mornin' on the ol' Panhandle Trail,
Rope in my hand an' a cow by the tail.

My hawss throwed me off at the crick called Mud,
My hawss throwed me off round the Two-Bar herd.

Last time I seen him he was goin' cross the level,
A kickin' up his heels an' a runnin' like the devil.

It's cloudy in the west, it's a lookin' like rain.
An' I've left my derned old slicker in th' waggin again.

No chaps an' no slicker an' a pourin' down rain,
I'm a son of a coyote if I night-herd again.

Foot in the stirrup an' hand on the horn,
The finest lookin' cowboy that ever was born.

Stray in the herd an' the boss said kill it.
So I shot him in the rump an' he landed in the skillet.

We rounded 'em up an' put 'em on the cars.
An' that was the end of the old Two-Bars.

The chorus, pounded out, left them flushed and proud of themselves as Mary Burrows thanked them.

​"Thora will play once more before you go," she said. "I'm sorry we didn't have more doughnuts." She whispered to Thora. Some of the men had stood and reached for their hats. It was marvellous the way the two women had handled them, thought Sheridan. They were leaving meek as lambs and well satisfied. Except Hollister, who was palpably in the discard of this deal.

No matter how deep a man may get into a mucky rut, there are certain psychological reactions that may be counted upon. Some playwrights know them. To many they seem crude, the sentimental touches in a melodrama that bring down the gallery, the applause that comes from North and South when "Dixie" is played.

Thora played "Home, Sweet Home." It touched some spring, almost of reverence, revived unblighted childhoods, and it did more, it subtly invested the loghouse in the hollow of the mountain with a real sanctity. When Thora dropped her bow the men began to file towards the door in silence broken only by a "Thank you, marm an' miss, for a pleasant evenin'." Sheridan and Jackson remained a little, waiting for Hollister. He made no bow, no show of courtesy but went out into the night with a sneer.

"You were wonderful," said Sheridan to Mary Burrows.

"You two gave us a very comforting assurance," she answered. "They were not very hard to handle, after all. Except that one man, the one who just went out."

​"He can be handled. We are going to ride with them, Red and myself. To see them safely off the premises. You'll let me make that gate for the tunnel, won't you?"

She looked at him without speaking and nodded. The lack of words was, to Sheridan, an expression of confidence.

"We'll bring it along, or the materials for it, when we make our bread-and-butter call," he said.

"Your coffee-and-doughnut call, you mean." She laughed and gave him her hand. "Thank you again. We shall hope to see you soon."

"What's that bread-an'-butter bis'ness?" asked Red as they got their horses from the shed.

"A social convention, Red, seldom used west of the Mississippi, save in cities."

"Humph! Pretty social convention here tonight, at that. 'Member what I said about 'Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast'? She worked—outside of Hollister. He's jest plain skunk, that hombre. I've got a hunch that idee of yours about the gate is a good one."

"We'll come over some morning with a wagon and fix it, Red. Come on."

They pressed blunt rowels to their horses' flanks and soon caught up with the rest. There was a good deal of chaff going on as they rode down the terraces to the tunnel but Sheridan did not hear anything lacking in respect or admiration. Hollister was silent. At the tunnel he went first, spraying the way with an electric torch he had brought from Metzal. The others trailed closely, Sheridan and Red in the ​rear. They were with the cavalcade, but not of it.

Out of the mountain, riding towards Pioche Gap, they let the horses stretch to a gallop. On the wagon road they slowed down. Hollister began to make remarks that brought laughter from those nearest to him, laughter of a kind that Sheridan did not fancy. He and Red pressed in closer to the leader who was trying to regain prestige. He noticed them, turning in his saddle, and raised his voice.

"Coffee—coffee and doughnuts! Hell!" he said in derision, up-ending the flask he had carried and flinging it crashing on the rocks of the stream. There had been more or less drinking going on since they had left the upland meadow.

"Didn't you like them doughnuts?" asked Jackson quietly. "I noticed you took two."

"Jest to make sure how punk they was. What's it to you?"

"I'm sorry you don't like doughnuts, Hollister. Becoz I'm aimin' to git a dozen, not the kind we eat tonight, but a dozen from Pioche. The staler they are the better. And I aim to feed 'em to you, one at a time, 'thout coffee, or water, an' between each you can tell me jest how much better was the ones you had fed you tonight, you ungrateful swine."

It was a challenge and an insult. There was small reason to think it a mere threat without purpose behind it. Red's voice, light enough, but unusually distinct, precluded that. Hollister glanced at him, seemingly undecided whether to take issue immediately. Drink was mounting in him but he was ​the type that goes into action better after a wordy skirmish.

"An' what'll I be doin' all that time?" he asked.

"Four-flushin', as usual," answered Red.

Hollister laughed but his laugh was drowned by the rest. He had not yet recovered his partisans. They were becoming more their normal selves with each sup of liquor but they were still ready to laugh at Hollister, not wait to laugh with him. He glanced uncertainly at Jackson, then at Sheridan, who was close to him on the opposite side from Red. Their eyes were blank, their faces unmoved, stony. Why had they always managed to get the better of him? So far.

He called for a drink from a comrade who had not finished his share of the stuff that Vasquez had sold them. It added to the rising flood of resentment within him, gave him more assurance. Under cover of returning the flask, he pushed ahead of the two men from the Circle S. Soon they would come to the Metzal end of the Gap and the party would split.

"The big one," said Hollister, after still another borrowed aid to bravado, "ought to be in a side-show. She's a reg'lar freak. Still, the two of 'em might do a sister-act in vodeville. Fiddlin' an' whistlin'. The little 'un wouldn't look so bad in tights. I was noticin'——"

The sorrel mare felt the prick of sudden spurs, sharper than usual. With the roan, she leaped forward, shouldering aside a rider who was forced into the creek, swearing, but stopping his curses at the ​sight of Sheridan's face, eager to listen and to see—not to mix in. Hollister found himself jammed in, sandwiched between the roan and the sorrel; he felt the knee of Sheridan against the hollow of his own, the same on Jackson's side. For all the fire of the whisky he was suddenly a little chill.

"Hollister," said Sheridan, "you are a parasite, a predatory parasite. I'll translate that into a word of one syllable so you can't mistake what I mean. You're a louse. You live in dirt and, when you happen to be where it is clean, you show up all the stronger for the vermin you are. You mention those ladies again, here, anywhere, at any time or place where I may hear of it, and you'll do no more talking."

"Some of yore fancy gun-play, eh?" Hollister strove to hold his voice at the right note of jeering repartee.

"If I ever come to settling matters with you, Hollister, I hope it will not be with my gun. I'd prefer to handle you."

"That same goin' double," interjected Jackson.

"You're brave, two to one, ain't you?"

"It isn't two to one, Hollister," went on Sheridan. "There isn't a cowman on my ranch, on all the mesa, but is backing me in this, once they knew of it. We are getting tired of your sort on Chico Mesa, Hollister. Some day we may start in to clean house. But this is between you and me, right now. You keep a polite tongue in your head or—" he caught at the reins as Hollister tried to get ahead. Red copying his action on the other side, holding the brute ​curbed—"you remember what you did to that red and white heifer, Hollister? I'll do the same to you. Keep the names of those women free of your mouth or I'll slit that slimy tongue of yours."

He relinquished the reins. They had come out of the Gap. Jackson prodded Hollister's mount with his own spur. It shot ahead and he and Sheridan turned off across the mesa towards the Circle S. The crowd from Metzal rode in silence. That threat of Sheridan's had carried conviction. And they let Hollister ride a little apart, as if they were not anxious to be too closely identified with him.

CHAPTER V

PAST AND FUTURE

It was a week before Sheridan was able to go up to the Hidden Homestead, as Mary Burrows had named the holding in the heart of Ghost Mountain. He had news from Metzal that Hollister had left town for his ranch and the charms of the girl Juanita, which relieved him of apprehensions on the score of any speedy return visit of that blackguard to the mountain. He also believed that his own threat, uttered in all earnestness, would have deterrent effect for a considerable period.

He planned out a gate on paper and devised an arrangement for a heavy bar which could be raised from the outside by a trick of levers so that the two women could leave their front—and only—door locked when they were away. He was proud of the way in which he concealed the manner of opening the gate, having a knack for such small engineering, and he set Stoney, who was handy with tools, to work on preliminary construction.

Meanwhile he had his own work mapped out. He was gradually making a tour of Chico Mesa, getting acquainted with the ranchers, feeling them out as to his water project. None of them were wealthy, though all made a good living, but Sheridan hoped that he might be able to finance the ​development of Lake of the Woods by local enterprise and capital. There were other matters he talked of, the improving of grade stock, the importation of good bulls for that purpose and an ultimate end of making Chico Mesa a headquarters for the shipment of thoroughbred, one-purpose beef cattle; fed on alfalfa grown from the mesa-soil, seven crops to the year. There would be a Chico Mesa Cattle Shippers' Association, strong enough to obtain cars when they needed them, a stockyards-agent, a financial manager, a hundred details that were still in the background. And, with them all, went the clearance of Metzal from the crowd that now controlled it, grafting officials and small politicians. All these he worked out in his own mind, not all of them he mentioned. He knew he had to go slowly to start a co-operative plan among men who represented several racial types, slow and fast thinking, suspicious each of the other's motive and possible advantage.

If Sheridan could come to them with gifts in his hands, with Lake of the Woods developed, the water ready to turn into the laterals from a main ditch, they might listen to him. He realized that in such a community a one-man directorship was best for the public good until such time as common law and common wealth might be fairly well established. The deeper he went into the plan the more questions he was asked that could not be immediately answered, matters of expert engineering that Sheridan builded upon faith but which, with his own limited experience, would not stand the ​probing given by some of the longer-headed cattlemen.

Such an expert would have to be consulted, good engineers obtained. Sheridan was not a genius, though he had a certain knack of organization back of his imagination. Capital from the East was the last thing he wanted. He had a theory concerning community exploitation of community possibilities that he felt should go a long way towards setting an example of true democracy. So he worked on, from one rancher to another, getting encouragement here, blindness there. From the majority the best he obtained was "Sounds good," but he made progress, setting himself a regular programme of lining up all the cattlemen, for or against. Hollister he left alone. Such a man would be opposed to any progress that made his neighbor equal with himself, would do all he could to thwart any scheme of Sheridan's.

They started from the Circle S one morning at sunrise, Stoney driving a wagon that held lumber, spikes, a pair of hinges, a lock to supplement the bar, and his own tools. Sheridan, Jackson and two cowboys rode their horses. Arrived at the tunnel they went to work with a will by the light of lanterns.

A heavy frame was mortised and fitted snugly to the bottom and sides of the tunnel. It left only a narrow opening at the top, irregular, nowhere more than a foot wide. It seemed certain that this tunnel was the work of man, so well had it been squared. By noon most of the job was done, sufficiently for Stoney and the men to return to the ​Circle S, leaving Sheridan and his foreman to complete the gate and the ingenious arrangement for lifting the bar. It was a formidable affair when at last they tested it and stood off and surveyed it.

"Some job," said Jackson, gathering up the tools left behind by Stoney, and wrapping them in his slicker. He nodded in confirmation of Sheridan's statement.

"I'll feel a lot less anxious about the girls from now on. We'll wash up a bit, Red, and then we'll tell them of the latest addition to their premises." This they did at the waterfall and went through the tunnel, up the gorge, hardly less grim by daylight, on to the meadow and the lake. Sheridan carried a package of candy and magazines, sent for to Metzal. It represented the bet of ten dollars between him and Jackson. Red had volunteered to call the wager off, allowing that Mary Burrows's whistling offset the fiddling of Thora, and they had compromised on the mutual gift.

"All gels are strong for candy," opined Red. "I don't imagine Thora Neilsen will go very heavy on them magazines, but she may. I've bin driven to readin' myself, times when I didn't have nothin' else to do."

They found the two girls digging in their garden. They both came around the house at Sheridan's "Halloo!" Thora enormous and impressive in jean overalls, the girl charming in riding breeches, both frankly unaware of the lack of skirts, frankly glad to see their visitors. Mary Burrows was slender and as finely set up as a deer, Sheridan fancied, ​daintily suggesting efficiency in her practical toggery; Thora more the Amazon than ever, though a very modern version. Both had acquired a heavier coat of tan. Thora was brown, the "slimsy lady" "gilded by the sim."

"We were planting the seeds we brought with us," said Mary Burrows. "Vegetables and flowers, the old homey flowers, though the valley is fairly gorgeous with bloom. And there are lupines, too, giants to the ones that grew at home, a marvellous purple bloom on stalks that are—as tall as you are. But, now that you've come, we'll stop and become feminine. As a matter of fact, I am glad to. Thora makes me ashamed when I compare my work with hers and I am tired trying to save my face."

"Don't change your things," said Sheridan. "Come down and see your front door. It is all finished."

The glow of delight on her face fully repaid him.

"That was more than just thoughtful of you," she said gravely. "It was nice, the nicest thing I have had done for me in many a day, barring Thora, who is always doing those things. You are a true westerner, Mr. Sheridan."

She would have included Jackson but Thora had taken him off to see her gardening. Jackson had foolishly assumed a knowledge of the craft and Thora had instantly elevated him to the degree of expert, a height from which he was destined to fall heavily before long.

"I am hardly a westerner," answered Sheridan, "except in spirit."

​"The pioneer spirit," said the girl. "It doesn't take two or three generations to make a westerner, I think. The spirit is within one and you become western the moment you start."

"That is absolutely true. I have thought that, I believe, though I have never expressed it. Shall we get your horses?"

They rode in foursome down to the gate, through the valley that was vivid with bloom, larkspur and lupines, cactus blossoms in yellow and orange, pink and scarlet and crimson. Bees boomed everywhere, from carpets of lavender daisies to clusters of four-petaled lilies, white and yellow. There were patches of golden California poppies, the place was ablaze with color and redolent with scent of juniper, cedar, pine and manzanita, yucca blossoms, greasewood, sage, in one exquisite blend.

"Isn't the air wonderful?" asked the girl, riding the trail a little ahead of Sheridan while he admired the brave way she carried herself, the lithe seat, the square, boyish way in which she sat her saddle, all curves and yet all efficient, strength mated to symmetry. Brave, that was the word for both of them. And she had proclaimed herself a westerner. He warmed to the thought.

"One would think so much perfume would make the air heavy," she went on, "but it is exhilarating, a real elixir. You don't know how good it makes me feel," she smiled back at him as they started the descent of the gorge.

The gate was appreciated to the full. Thora was strong in her approval.

​"That bane a gude idea," she said. "Nex' time people come, mebbe they have to knock first."

"We could never hear them," said the girl. "How are we going to know when you are going to pay us a call? We are very busy, Thora and I, we expect our furniture almost any day. We are going to go in for bees and goats—but—we may get lonesome sometimes. What shall we do? Hang up a horn by the gate for you to blow?"

"I'm afraid you wouldn't hear it," replied Sheridan. "I have a better scheme than that. It needs paper to elucidate it. I'll explain when we get back to the house. That is, if we're invited back?" he laughed.

"That depends. Mr. Jackson, do you like waffles?"

"Do I like waffles? Miss—does a bee like honey?"

"Then you will both have to come back, for we are to have waffles for supper."

"How do you get your mail?" asked Sheridan, on their way back.

She widened her eyes.

"That is very simple. We don't have any." She shook her head laughingly as he looked at her, refusing to answer any suggestion of sympathy in his glance. "We have burned all our bridges in the East, Thora and I. We are orphans, sir, yet not unfortunate; pioneers, or heiresses, of our own fortunes, beholden to none, dependent upon none, save for our friendships." She bowed to him, her eyes sparkling, her small teeth showing in her smile, chin uplifted.

​"Do you mean to tell me you have no relatives, no friends to whom you are going to write, or who will write you to find out how you are getting along, who may visit you?"

"It may be an acknowledgment of weakness, but we have cast off the shackles of our sex. We are not defenceless. We have claimed the right to emigrate, to follow westward the star of Empire."

Sheridan's voice and face were grave but he could not pierce the armor with which she had invested herself, the tantalizing dance of her eyes, her debonair, gay manner. She did not want him to be sorry for her, he saw that clearly. But what maze of fell circumstances had combined to bring them out here, so utterly alone, their only link with the East seeming to be the furniture that was coming, a link that would break the chain by its moving?

"You are very brave," he said and changed the subject swiftly. His quick eye had seen a move in the brush, his revolver had flashed out, the reports sounding before he seemed to have cleared the weapon from its holster. He slipped off his horse and picked up two grouse, neatly beheaded.

"To follow the waffles," he said. "Red, show Miss Thora how to get out of plucking."

Jackson caught the tossed birds and initiated the interested Thora into how to peel a warm bird of its feathers. Mary Burrows made no remark about the shooting. Sheridan flushed a little, fancying she might think him trying to show off. Presently she spoke.

"I don't think I am over squeamish," she said, ​"and I know it is not being a pioneer, but I hate to see things killed. I eat the flesh readily enough, for I have a bonny appetite, and it shows what a humbug I am. I wish I could be content to live on fruits and honey and milk, and wheat stuffs, of course; things that are given without loss of life. But I can't. Yet the grouse were happy a moment ago."

"And they never knew what had happened to them. Perhaps it is the sight of blood?"

She shook her head.

"No. We come of a fighting stock. I am sure it is not that. It is because I am just a woman, I suppose."

Sheridan found that solution satisfactory. The girl went on.

"My grandfather built this log-house, took up this holding. After you had gone the other night, I realized I had been talking as if you knew just how we had come here. And no one does, though it seems quite the natural thing to us. Would you like to know about it?"

They had reached the house and Jackson had avowed his determination of learning the art of waffling so that he might impart it to Quong. Mary Burrows slipped into the house, leaving Sheridan on the verandah to smoke and think.

Life had been too vigorous the past three years for him to miss the society of women. He had enjoyed the rough but, now that he had met the girl, he realized how he had lacked the smooth. He had never met a girl like her, daring yet dainty, ​unconventional and still, in ways he dimly recognized, far more alive to the true sentiments that lie at the bottom of all conventions than the greatest precisian for feminine modesty and effacement. She was not city bred, he was sure of that. She was—different—and he waited eagerly to hear her story.

When she came out again she was in a gown of blue print that had white lawn cuffs and a lawn collar, turned down, showing the soft hollow of her neck. He had thought her dainty in khaki, now, the background of Colonial mahogany, old china, old brasses, inevitably reared itself. She was not so much a "lady," he suddenly determined, as a "gentlewoman."

The simple dress suited her, it suited the surroundings, yet to Sheridan it suddenly seemed pathetic. Pretty gowns, fluffy gowns. He had a swift revision of girls he had known in the old days, decked like flowers. He wondered how many she had had of the ribbony, lacy things in which all girls must delight. Not many, this slimsy lady, he imagined. This plucky, slimsy lady, who had come out upon high adventure.

"Aren't you terribly lonely, sometimes?" he asked. For Thora, brimmed with kindly capacity as she was, could be no real companion to this girl. Barely a woman yet. What was in the heart of her? Tenderness for wild things, spirit to handle the rough men who had broken her privacy, pluck to establish herself so gaily in this wild. A girl who was proud to boast of her fighting stock, proud ​to be a pioneer. There were other things, he imagined. Depths unrevealed, unsuspected by herself, fires too. Her eyes, her lips, could harbor passion. She was no weakling, for love or war.

He brought himself up with a jerk.

"My grandfather," she commenced, "was a dreamer, I think. He was not like his father, who was a miller, a manufacturer of woolen goods in Massachusetts. Grandfather roamed the woods, I know, and he wrote poems. There was something in him that just held him back from being a minister. He wrote a book or two, on natural history. He corresponded with Audubon when he was only twenty-two. That was the year before Audubon died, eighteen fifty-one. You know Audubon was writing a great book with Bachman, on the quarupeds of North America. It was finished after his death. But that was what fired my grand-daddy to go out West."

To Sheridan, Audubon was just a name, the name of a man who had written words and made pictures about birds. But he reflected the girl's interest.

"So grandfather came out here in 'fifty-eight. It was all New Mexico then. They had adventures with Indians and with Mexicans, cattle thieves, raiders, miners. It must have been wonderful. He told me all about it. He loved the life."

Her eyes sparkled, her voice was animated. Pictures came up before Sheridan of those early days.

"It was an Indian who told grandfather of this place," she went on. "Some of the party settled ​here and started to raise cattle. Then there came the slavery question. Arizona went pro-slavery. Grand-daddy couldn't stand that. He got in trouble, many of his friends deserted him. He studied the wild things, trapped some of them and sold their skins at Pioche. He went into mining. I have still got an agreement where he grubstaked an 'old-timer.' But nothing came of that.

"The Civil War commenced. I think only echoes of it came here for a while. Grandfather could not believe the whole country at one another's throats. Texas annexed it for the Confederacy. He was shut up here, in hiding, proscribed. And in May, in 'sixty-two, a company of Union soldiers came from California and wiped the Texans out.

"Grandfather went back East—to fight for the North. His father was already in it. Grand-daddy joined his regiment. He started as a private and he came out a captain. His father died in his arms, both together, at the last, at Chattanooga. After the war he went back to Massachusetts and married. But the war had not changed him. He would have gone West again but for my grandmother. She could not bear to leave New England. So they lived in a house he built for her, on Jefferson Mountain, near the New York line, in a little place called Hannibal.

"Poor Hannibal. It is a deserted village now. There is a church without a congregation, a post-office without mail, old houses, old people. Even part of its name has been taken from it. They call it Hannal.

​"My daddy was born there. And so was I. Daddy was like his father. He wrote about the insects of New England and dreamed until the Spanish War came. Then his fighting blood woke up and he went and came back wounded. Poor daddy. We had very little money, you see.

"Then Thora came, when I was thirteen. She crossed from the Old Country to join her brother. He had a wood-chopping contract near Hannal. He had a terrible accident. His axe slipped and slashed his foot. He was in the woods and he had lost a lot of blood before Thora found him, after dark, carried him home, and he was almost as heavy as she is. There was no doctor for two days. Blood poisoning set in and help came too late. Father had done what he could but he died. And Thora came to live with us.

"When my mother died she was everything to me—except daddy. He lost all interest in things. He buried his heart with mother. A year ago—we lost him. And there was nothing. Thora wanted to go to work and keep me idle. I wanted to go to work and there was nothing I could do. Daddy had taught me and my education was loving—and not practical. I could only have gone to work in one of the mills. Thora would not hear of that.

"Then the great idea came. Grandfather's holding on Ghost Mountain. He had told me all about it. How to get here from Pioche. We looked it up. Thora thought it possible and I loved the plan. There was a tourist who had wanted to buy some of old old furniture. We had her address in New ​York. And we sold most of it for enough to bring US here and leave a little over. So we packed what was left, shipped it—and came."

Sheridan let out a deep breath. The girl seemed unconscious of her own Odyssey. Fighting stock indeed.

"You like it?" he asked.

"I love it. It is grander than our New England hills that we called mountings." Sheridan repressed a smile as he caught the twist of her tongue. "It is vast, too big to touch, I sometimes think, and then it is suddenly all intimate, broody."

"You are not lonely?"

She looked at him squarely.

"Sometimes. And you? You are from the East."

"I haven't been. I have been working too hard. I might be lonely, now." They both sat quietly for a moment or two.

"Fruit trees will grow here, won't they?" she asked presently. "I should like to have some. We had an old orchard at Hannal—Hannibal."

She had a faculty of conjuring up pictures, this slimsy, plucky lady. Sheridan glimpsed her sitting under flowering apple trees, Thora coming up through the long grass with a foaming bucket of milk, her father dreaming in a long chair.

"Almost everything grows here," he said. "Altitude makes the division lines. Oranges, lemons, limes, figs, dates, olives, even almonds in places. Peaches, pears, apples and apricots about Yuma. Grapes, strawberries—and alfalfa."

"Why the stress on alfalfa?" she asked, laughingly.

​"Because it is my crop. The crop for Chico Mesa. Get water on the land and it will raise six-seven crops of ideal cattle food. There are nourishing grasses after the rains but they do not last."

With a word or two from her he was off on his hobby, conscious of a listener at once sympathetic and comprehending.

"Chico Mesa," he said, "is an ideal site for a real Commonwealth. Clear out your Hollisters, gather the real ranchers, breed beef-cattle for the million. Stimulate production of first-class stuff. In the old days the farmer was self sufficient. On the Missouri River farms he raised everything to eat and wear. He scheduled his own cost of living.

"Nowadays we overspecialize. A man will spend his whole life turning out some part of a machine that he would not recognize if he saw it, much less know how to run or repair. A strike of the nail industry would paralyze building. In the old days every village blacksmith made nails for the man who built his own house. Bring that down to farming, to beef and dairy industries. One man raises the stock, another grows the grain and feed. One milks, another gathers the milk and runs the creamery. Range cattle are fed up in the stockyards. The result is not the best and there are too many middlemen to split the profits.

"Produce better beef, at fairer prices. It helps you and the world at the same time. Get together and use all means at hand to become independent of the middlemen. The railroads must come to you for freight and the rates will be right if the railroad ​has not a mortgage on your profit bag. Railroad and other capital.

"Every man should work. I used to think I worked, as a lawyer, in New York. But I found out that I needed to work with my body as well as my brain. All men are not that way, but I am. And here is my work. All the mesa needs is water. There is Lake of the Woods down there, a natural reservoir ready for tapping, fed by springs, its natural overflow going off underground now, along a conduit that can be plugged. You can lie on the ground and hear it running to waste. Power, light, heat, telephones, irrigation. It is a part of Chico Mesa, it belongs. Our Commonwealth is complete. So long as we don't have to go to capitalists who have never worked, who look down upon the men who show them the projects, work them out, and claim the lion's share because they have money.

"I want to tap Lake of the Woods. Siphon it, use the water for power, light and heat and then for irrigation. It is my plan, I hope to develop it. I want to form a company among the cattlemen of Chico Mesa and pay for the thing out of the profits. I shall take pay for my original idea, if I put it over. Originality should not be ignored. But I'll turn it over to the Commonwealth for ultimate ownership at practically cost price. Chico Mesa will be independent, productive of the best."

"That is Socialism at its best, isn't it?" she asked him as he looked at her, wondering if he had bored her, glad to see her interest alight.

"Socialism as I see it. It fits Chico Mesa. Not ​all places are so fortunate. Capital is quick to seize water power but they haven't this. The Government handles the big projects in the same manner but here is where we can help ourselves."

"That is fine," she said. "That is what I should like to do"—for a second their glances met and something was conceived, something both set aside as she concluded, "—if I was a man."

"Waffles!" Jackson, girded about by an apron, made the grand announcement.

"Come a-runnin'. They're pipin' hot."

The meal was a merry one, self-served. Sunset was still lingering when they ended it. Jackson disappeared outside to help with the dishes. They could hear the splash of water and the laughter of Thora and Red. The two exchanged looks of smiling confidence.

"He's telling her about his war experiences," said Sheridan. "He was a sergeant. Was in the Argonne. Most of my men enlisted and came back the better for it. I was tied up with a damaged lung," he added, his voice keen with regret.

"Your battle is on Chico Mesa," she suggested. "You were going to tell me about how we and Circle S are going to communicate."

She got him paper and pencil while he explained.

"This may be for social calls or for any emergency. A doctor, for example. So you can teach it to Thora. It is just a primitive heliograph, in code."

"Why code?"

"It is just as easy as straight talk," he parried. He had an idea that he would like to invest possible ​future talks with Ghost Mountain in a measure of secrecy. "I will show you how to catch the sun in a mirror, how to flash it."

"In Morse dot and dash?"

"Not so complicated. There is no separation into dots and dashes."

He showed her the letters he had set down in a square.

C  H  S  D  J 

Z  R  K  M  Q 

T  O  W  I  B 

A  E  G  L  U 

V  P  N  Y  F 

"I have left out X. Now, in case you want to send a message—'Waffles for example, you flash out first the column in which the letters stand and then the number of that letter in that column.

"Three and three again would mean W. A is one and then four; F, five and five; L, four and four; E, two-four; S, three-one. Go to the edge of the cliff where we saw you first and shoot the sun. We'll catch it at Circle S ten miles away, and soon you'll see us streaking it for the waffles. If you ever want us at night, start a fire. It might be well to build one in readiness."

"Protection as well as neighborliness. It lines up with the gate. Thank you. You will make a copy of this. And now, will you show me how to use the mirror?"

​They walked up to the rim, ascending the steep pitch by a trail to the spired crags. He took the mirror, one from her own dressing table, and showed her how to manipulate it. Then, as the light died in crimson and purple, fading to amber and amethyst, they gazed across the mesa in a comradeship that had really started when she had said she would like to do what Sheridan proposed.

"My grandfather often came up here to see the sunset," she said. "He made this trail. But I don't think he ever saw such a vision as you have made me see. Soon the mesa there will shine with its own stars of night, stars hatched at the Lake of the Woods power house. And the day will show the green fields and the sturdy cattle, the water stretching out in silver wands. It is worth while,"

"I don't believe I'll say nothin' to Quong about them waffles," said Red as they loped homewards,

"No?"

"No, he c'u'dn't touch what we just had up there. It 'ud on'y be a disappointment." Whatever else Red may have had in mind he transmuted into song, carolling lustily to the tune of "My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean."

Last night, as I lay on the prairie,
⁠And looked at the stars in the sky;
I wondered if ever a cowboy,
⁠Would roll to that sweet bye-and-by.

Roll on, roll on,
⁠Roll on, little dogies, roll on, roll on;
Roll on, roll on,
⁠Roll on, little dogies, roll on.

​A horseman topped a rise, spurring hard towards them, shouting as he came, swaying a little in the saddle, as if drunk or injured. Sheridan and Red both instantly knew him, by man and voice and horse, for one of their outfit. They closed in on either side as he reined up, the bronco snorting, the man breathing hard.

"What is it, Lund?" asked Sheridan.

"Quongy they got Quong!" An' laid me out." Lund was hatless and his hand went up uncertainly to the back of his head, bringing it away smeared with blood that he looked at curiously.

"Clipped me with the butt of a gun, they did! Damn 'em, they didn't even give me a show!" he cried, half sobbing with indignation and weakness.

"Who? Who did it, Jim? Brace up."

"They was masked, but I know it's Hollister an' his lousy hombres. Our bunch was down to the Diamond W outfit, playin' poker. Me, I'm broke, so I stays home to write a letter. Quong, he's in his kitchen. They got him, an' when I happens along, 'count of the noise, they jumps me an' smashes me back of the head, 'fore I sabied what was doin'."

"Can you stick to leather, Jim?"

"You bet I can. They thought they'd tapped me for keeps. I starts after my hawss to saddle up an' go after the boys. Then I hears Red singin' an' I knowed you was comin' home. They're goin' to tar an' feather Quong an' whip him out inter the desert. Took one of his cookin' pots for the tar. Took one of yore ticks for the feathers, the worthless sons of. . . . "

​"Only one way down to the desert," broke in Jackson. "Thet's Coyote Springs trail."

"You and I'll go over there," said Sheridan. "Jim, you streak it like all hell was after you to the Diamond W and bring our outfit and theirs to Coyote Springs trail. Burn the wind."

"Tell 'em to pack an' extry gun or two," said Red. "When all this happen, Jim?"

"'Bout hour after sunset, I reckon. It was dark."

"All right, Jim, off you go." The rider wheeled and raced away.

"They'll likely wait till the moon," said Red.

"I hope so, for Quong's sake. Lucky we've eased our horses along. He is trying to play even for the other night. Come on."

Together they rode south, fast, not sparing the mare or Red's pinto, covering mile after mile towards the crumbly wall where the mesa fell down to the desert in steep but broken cliffs, staired by the one trail at Coyote Springs. And they rode in silence, their thoughts on the grim picture of what might be happening.

CHAPTER VI

COYOTE SPRINGS TRAIL

Along the edge of the Chico Mesa, where it broke down to the desert in high walls of rock and friable dirt, weathered, decomposed, heaped and split and crevassed, unscalable save for the wedge where one trail uncoiled to the place where no man sought to go willingly; the cacti were assembled in great ranks. With them were agaves, candlewood, soapweed, mesquite and creosote bush but they were only a scattering gathering to the gray-green companies marshaled against the waste. Prickly pear, hedgehog cactus, torch thistles, old-man cactus, Judas Tree, and barrel cactus, three-fourths of a hundred varieties, from the button tops to the giant columnar chayas, fleshy, thorny growths that formed impenetrable thickets or stood in serried array.

Through them at the best speed they could make, the lithe ponies dodging and twisting, spines catching at leather chaparejos or cloth, Sheridan and Jackson rode against the moonrise. To this issue they clung stubbornly, clutching at the one hope as a drowning man grabs for the proverbial straw.

Glittering stars pierced the sky and made a half-light, a star dusk, but they figured that the cruel gang gathered under Hollister would wait to see ​more of the punishment they intended to inflict than this would reveal. They would want to see their victim cringe as the hot tar smeared his naked flesh, to see to strike as he ran the ruthless gauntlet down into the desert that would receive him as a horrible travesty of man and desiccate him to the semblance of a mummied bird.

Here was no group that could be cajoled by the ways of a woman, by a tune on a fiddle, doughnuts and a whistled aria. A Chinaman was fair game. Hollister would be leader of a crowd inhuman in their desire to torture, to hurt, to send a half-crazed screaming thing that had been a man to a loathsome death. And Metzal, while it might not universally approve, would be apathetic, would neither interfere nor punish. The feat would restore Hollister to that bullying supremacy that he loved and had lost.

The horses had made forty miles that day. They had rested well between stretches but they were tired and the clogging dust of the mesa pulled at their strength. Sheridan did not dare to gaze at the east. The full moon would throw glints and shadows soon enough to apprise him if his trip was a lost venture—a thought intolerable. That this was aimed at him, through Quong, he knew and cared not as he cheered the mare, responding to the last ounce of game vitality, dropping from springless lope to walk, back to dreary trot and so to walk again, almost played out, but indomitable to answer the will of her master. Beside her toiled the pinto. Both horses, both men, were grey with dust, grey as the whole landscape.

​At last Jackson sniffed at the air, pulling down his neckerchief from his mouth. Ahead of them stretched a battalion of chayas, another formation to their right.

"We're close on the desert," he said. "An' we ain't fur off the trail. I figger it to the right a bit." He turned in his saddle and sought certain notches in the range to fix his position. "Gawd!" he said with a sudden intake of his breath, "here comes the moon."

It sailed up like a great bubble of pearl, poising on the saw teeth of the far-away eastern crests. It seemed to leap from them into the air, blanching all the mesa, bringing color to the cactus, touching the blossoms to a faint semblance of their hues.

Sheridan struck off to the right between the cactus coliimns, Jackson following his tortuous trail. Suddenly Sheridan halted.

"I see their fire," he whispered. "Wait a minute."

He dismounted, passed his reins to Jackson and slid through the grove, gun in hand. Here and there he caught glimpses of an orange glow and could hear the careless talk of the raiders, feeling safe from pursuit, liquor-dulled to all but their intent.

Sheridan took his place behind a chaya that grew on the verge of a dry ravine, washed out by some long-dried and forgotten torrent. Down this ran the trail to the desert. He saw a group of twenty men, masked by bandannas, still wearing them for the devilish joy of the murderous masquerade. He saw horses standing in a little herd. Over the fire a pot ​swung on a shaky tripod. The smell of melting pitch was distinct and brought the blood boiling to Sheridan's brain, his finger to his trigger. A man was testing the stuff.

"Poco mas," he said. "Casi" (A little more. Almost ready.)

He was sweating beneath his clumsy mask and he lifted it to wipe his face. Sheridan saw it plainly in the glow of the fire. It was Pedro, brother to Juanita, one of Hollister's most devoted henchmen.

Two men brought out another from the shadow. It was Quong, stripped naked, hands bound, feet hobbled. His yellow face showed no emotion. It might have been carved from bone.

Sheridan stole back to Jackson and his horse.

"You ride around the head of the arroyo," he said. "Plenty of cover. When you hear me shoot, stampede the horses. Get them going hard and then you can help me round up the gang. I'll have them milling by the time you come," he added, quietly, as he mounted. Jackson rode off without a word and Sheridan walked the mare to where he had stood behind the arroyo. Pedro was still stirring the sticky tar, stubborn to become liquid enough for their purpose.

"Ahora!" (now), he said, as he tested it.

The men crowded towards him with cursing laughter, dragging Quong. Sheridan's gun spurted fire. Pedro dropped the ladle with an oath, clutching at his wrist, reeling back. His foot caught the clumsy tripod and the pot slumped upon the fire, ​scattering it, slopping over a little of its contents which flamed up, burning fiercely while it lasted.

"Hands up, the lot of you," called Sheridan as he rode out of the Chayas. Two more shots sounded. Jackson darted out from the opposite side of the arroyo, between the men and their mounts, firing at the heels of the frightened herd.

"Yippi-yi-yippi," he yelled and the startled brutes, stumbling over their reins, kicking, plunging, squealing, rushed off into the clumps of cactus and mesquite, streaking north.

"I'm right back of you-all," he cried as the last of the broncos disappeared. "Herdin' coyotes on the old Coyote Trail. Elevate, gents, elevate!"

Sheridan, like a statue on the tired mare, saw a furtive hand flash towards a holster. He fired again and the man fell groaning with a bullet through his shoulder.

"Line up!" he said tersely. "Next time I'll shoot closer. And I don't miss."

"Prime light for shootin'," said Jackson. "You folks timed it just right, like we did. Moonlight! Line up, you mangy, skunk-hearted lot of hoodwinked bastards. line up!"

They stood in a crestfallen, ragged line, their faces masked behind the bandannas, surprised, deadly afraid of Sheridan's targetry, fearful of Jackson menacing their backs.

Sheridan rode to Quong and cut his wrist bonds with one hand, then gave him the knife.

"Put on your clothes," he said. "Then take their guns away. Throw them over here."

​Quong, wordless, impassive in relief as he had been in peril, passed down the line. Pedro, holding aloft his dripping wrists, pleaded for a respite.

"No!" barked Sheridan. "Hurry up, Quong. I don't want to have a general murder on my hands," he said slowly. "My boys are on their way with the Diamond W outfit and they'll be a trifle warm under the collars by the time they get here. Hold on, Quong, drop that!"

His voice rang out sharply. Quong had just taken a knife from a sheath in the belt of one of the masked men Sheridan had placed as Hollister. As the blade gleamed Quong had crouched and his calm face had twisted into a sudden murderous fury. But he obeyed. The weapons were piled in a heap by Sheridan's feet.

"Throw them out into the desert as far as you can," he ordered. "You prick-eared curs of hell can collect them later. But not tonight." His voice took a higher note. His rage was mounting and he was having hard work to control it. But he knew that the best judgment on these men, outside the law, by reason of crooked politics, was the one he had devised.

"If there was tar enough to go round," he said, "I'd treat you all to the dose you meant for Quong. I may not be able to find a judge to treat you the way you deserve but I can make you laughing stocks and take some of the deviltry out of you before you get back to Metzal. For you are going to walk, unless you want to hunt your horses in the cactus. If you had killed Jim Lund I'd go further, but he'll ​want to settle that score himself. Now get out, the whole pack of you. Hurry! Hear that?"

They heard it distinctly. A twitch of apprehension ran down the line at the distant shouts, coming nearer, nearer, the joyous "Whoopee" of cowboys on the trail. Jackson rode towards Sheridan, leading a horse. The band scattered, diving for cover, fleeing for the shadows, torn by the cactus as they ran and leaped and dodged the eager spines.

One man stood his ground, the one Sheridan had marked as Hollister.

"Give me my horse," he said. "God damn you, Sheridan, I'll have you run out of the country for this. I'll——" he sputtered in his rage.

"Is it yore hawss?" drawled Jackson. "I sure hoped so. Quong's goin' to ride it back. We'll send it over later, maybe with a little tar an' feathers on it for a souvenir, though I'd hate to mistreat even yore brute."

"You'll walk, Hollister," said Sheridan. "If I were you, I'd run."

Hollister tore off his neckerchief, his features working as he struggled for sufficient speech to express his seething soul.

"I'll be even with you, you damned tenderfoot," he said. "You low, sneakin', love-makin'——"

Sheridan slid from the mare and jumped for him, tossing his gun to one side, anxious only to get his hands on Hollister, to choke down the dirty slanders he was about to utter. Hollister met him halfway and they came to a furious clinch, slugging and infighting, stamping, panting as they swayed back ​and forth. Hollister grunted as Sheridan smashed him over the heart with a short-armed jolt, clinging, striking up with his knee to foul. With one hand, his strength desperate in the extremity, Hollister clawed at Sheridan's face, his nails fetching blood, thumb and finger hooked into his opponent's eye, striving to force the ball from the socket while the other hand clutched at Sheridan's right arm.

The pain was maddening, paralyzing. Sheridan hammered at him with his free left, tore loose and, half-blinded, closed in again with smashing blows that broke down Hollister's guard. He clutched him by the throat and shook him, forcing him to his knees until his tongue lolled out and his bloated face turned purple.

"No sense in swingin' for him, Pete," said Jackson, his voice crisp.

"I'll not—kill—him," panted Sheridan, "but I'll mark him."

He twisted Hollister to hands and knees and dragged him, one hand in the slack of his overalls, the other twined in his collar, over the sand to where the tar pot stood slightly tilted. Into it he thrust Hollister's head, deep into the clinging muck, dipping it deep, then jerked it out and flung him to the sand. Hollister got up slowly, striving to wipe the stuff from his eyes, his mouth. His mustache was clogged with it, his face was hideous as he stood there, horrible, inarticulate, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve.

"Better git that off, 'fore yore whiskers start to sprout," advised Jackson.

​The reddened gleam of one eye shone at them as the cowboys from the two outfits broke through the chayas and rode down into the arroyo. They made a wondering circle round Hollister and broke into guffaws of laughter that left them weak in their saddles.

"I guess he's had enough, boys," said Sheridan. "There are a few scattered between here and Metzal you might sort of help on their way. No target shooting, boys, they'll have had all they need by the time they limp home."

"Called you a tenderfoot!" said Jackson. "Some of them'll be steppin' high an' soft afore they roost tonight. Hollister, the laugh's on you. Buenos noches."

Sheridan called Jim Lund, the wounded cowboy, who had come with the Diamond W outfit, over to him when the rest, still laughing, scattered over the mesa on their round-up.

"I said no shooting, Jim," he cautioned. "You'll ride home with us." Lund reluctantly put up his gun and obeyed. Quong mounted and the quartet started, leaving Hollister in the arroyo. When they looked back he was beginning to grope out a dim trail towards Metzal.

"You ought to have feathered him a bit," said Jackson. "An' we plumb forgot the tick. They spiled it ennyways."

Quong kept silence. The hands on his reins were steady. Sheridan wondered whether the man's sensitory system was different from that of a white man, his nervous combinations less complex, or ​merely under better control. In Quong's case, however it might be with others of his countrymen, Sheridan was inclined to think that his will ruled.

"They nearly had you, Quong," he said as they neared the ranch.

The Chinaman looked at him.

"A clock does not strike until the hands reach the hour," he said.

That was all. No word of gratitude. Yet Sheridan felt the man was not ungrateful, in his own way. He caught up with Jackson.

"The Chink isn't handin' out any life-savin' medals," suggested Red.

"He'll probably make it up to us in cooking."

"I'm mighty glad we fixed that gate an' got up that signal code," said Jackson presently.

"I was thinking that," answered Sheridan. "And we've fixed Hollister. If he wants to lead that gang of his again they'll remember that he's foozled out the last time or two. And they'll always be looking close to see if he has any tar on his face," Jackson laughed.

"Yep. Sure will. For once the devil got painted as black as he is. Ye-ah, but I'm hungry. I c'u'd eat a horned-toad stew. How about eats, Quong?" he shouted back.

Quong cantered up.

"I was planning something for tomorrow's breakfast," he said. "I can make them tonight, if you wish."

"Them? What? Not them chicken crokwets you've bin talkin' about?"

​"No. Waffles." And the cook surveyed them with his inscrutable, sphinxlike face as Sheridan bent to his horn in sudden mirth and Jackson muttered blankly,

"Waffles. I'm a son of a gun. Waffles!"

CHAPTER VII

ON GHOST MOUNTAIN

The snake, represented by Hollister, was scotched. Whether its backbone was broken, Sheridan doubted. At all events it would not disturb the Eden of the Hidden Homestead, now doubly protected, and that, aside from Quong, was the main issue.

Quong went on the even tenor of his way, cooking meticulously from the recipes in the book and scoring success after success. He never mentioned his rescue nor did Sheridan refer to it. But he sensed that the Chinaman had a lively appreciation of what had been done for him and was waiting, in his mysterious, Oriental way, for the moment in which to show his gratitude. Why such a man had isolated himself on Chico Mesa remained an unanswered and constant query. That it was done from no idle whim, that Metzal had been deliberately selected, Sheridan was convinced. The man was far removed from a coolie. His personal habits, his manners, more those of a diplomat than a cook, his reserved poise that held the liking of the rollicking cowboys while it prevented them from playing upon him the practical jokes they loved, proved that.

Sheridan kept in touch with the outside world by certain magazines, which, with the exception of ​journals dealing with cattle breeding and irrigation, ultimately found their way to Ghost Mountain. Quong read many of these. The Literary Digest he perused from cover to cover, gravely and methodically, and Sheridan had a feeling that Quong got more out of the consensus of world's news than he did. But again and again the question he had asked himself on the platform at Metzal depot reverted: "What the devil was Quong doing in this valley?" He seemed contented, but one could never guess at what worked back of his smooth forehead, his gemlike eyes set in their unwrinkled, hoodlike lids. After a while Sheridan gave it up, sure that the riddle would unfold itself in time.

The cowboys of the Diamond W and his own outfit had gleefully herded Hollister's lynching party into cactus thickets and ridden through to Metzal, where they had spread an account of the night's doings that caused the limping Hollisterites to be greeted with jeers and the ridicule that emphasizes defeat. Hollister had taken himself and his tarred visage to his ranch, where he sulked while the pitch wore off.

The Pioche Plainsman had got hold of the incident and its star reporter had wallowed in headlines and facetious paragraphs that referred to "Tar and Tartars" in a manner that rubbed in the lesson. Sympathy had veered to Quong. Hollister had gone too far. The voice of Law and Order was sounded grandiloquently in a Plainsman editorial and copied by the Metzal Branding Iron.

It promised well for the time when the mesa ​would be quit of its undesirable citizens. Meantime Sheridan went on with his proselyting of the cattle breeders. Developments here were not so encouraging. He encountered the surly hostility or apathy of those who feared—and sometimes fought blindly any change that might bring about some possible benefit to the neighbors they chose to think of as rivals. More and more he saw that he must develop the project alone to the point where he was able to deliver water for the various purposes of development for Chico Mesa. Some of them he did stir up to the cultivation of patches of alfalfa, limited to those who had wells, but most of them chanced the nourishment of the native mesa feed, succulent grasses that had a wonderful faculty for outliving the rains in lucky seasons. When the grass failed, the cattlemen shipped—and the commission men ate up the bulk of the profits. They saw the differences in price between steers on the hoof and meat in the market and groaned, bewailing the hard fate of the cattle rancher, but unwilling to fall into line. If it was going to be good for them, what must it not be going to do for Sheridan? Rumors that Eastern capital was back of him spread, rumors that he looked for the big end of the deal. It was hard work and discouraging. But Mary Burrows helped.

The more he saw of her the more he marveled. Brought up by a dreaming naturalist and a romantic, invalid mother in a remote New England village, without liberal education, without reading, without contact with the world, she showed a grasp of things ​that astonished him. The fighting spirit that had brought her to the wilderness, that promised with the aid of Thora ultimately to turn the Hidden Homestead into a paying ranch, he could understand. It was transmitted to her from clean-blooded, vigorous stock. And he could only think that the same attributes furnished her with a brain so well nourished that she was able to see things with a clear, wide vision. He did not flatter himself that her sight might be stimulated by a personal interest in Peter Sheridan.

But he found several occasions to ride over to Ghost Mountain, usually at the end of the afternoon. Jackson invariably accompanied him. And, while Sheridan gazed with an amused eye upon the wooing of Thora by the cowboy—for there was no mistaking the thrall laid upon Red by the Amazon, who appeared none too eager to respond beyond friendship—he did not turn that eyesight inwards nor consider that he might be rowing in the same boat with Jackson. His project held him.

Goats, the beginning of a lusty Angora herd, appeared from Pioche. Fruit trees were set out. The place was well managed. The goats were fenced off in sections with movable hog fencing, set to eat the brush and fertilize the land for better crops. And the two women did it alone. They would not hear of help from the Circle S.

"When we can afford to hire a hand, we may do so," said Mary Burrows definitely, as they sat one evening after supper on their favorite perch, a saddle between two fanglike crags, overlooking the ​mesa at sunset. "But until we do so we shall get along by ourselves. Are we not doing well?"

"Excellently, but—"

"That, sir, is a forbidden word in the Hidden Homestead. We have eliminated another, distinctly feminine—'because'—or I would use it to end the argument. Tell me about the project."

"Don't you want to open your letters?" Sheridan had been to Pioche on business and had brought back two letters from the General Delivery, despite the girl's assertion that she did not expect any mail.

She produced them from the pocket of her gown.

"One is not important," she laughed. "I would like to look at the other."

She showed him the one, an advertisement from Pioche's biggest store, an announcement of a Grand Millinery Opening with styles direct from Paris and New York.

"I'd look well wearing a Paris hat and gown up here, wouldn't I?" she asked him with a flash of the small, perfect teeth in the smile that he had become so eager to provoke. And he fell to wondering just how well she would look in such furbelows.

She handed him the other communication with a little cry of joy.

"Our furniture has come—at last," she said. "Now we can have a little home that will seem real. You will like some of the things."

It was always the unselfish "we," he noticed. Thora was always included equally. Mary Burrows was a true democrat.

"I'm sending over to Pioche," he said, ​"to-morrow. The team will be coming back with an empty wagon. Can't I bring them?"

"No, sir. It's all arranged for and paid for."

"But they'll have to be toted up through the tunnel."

"Have you any one more capable of doing that than Thora? Besides, I intend to have them all arranged as a surprise party for you. When we are ready I'll send you the first heliographic invitation. I've been practicing and I can send—isn't that the term?—quite well."

"I haven't seen any flashes." It was an acknowledgment that he had been watching, hoping perhaps, for some message and she flushed a trifle.

"I've been sending them across the valley, not the mesa. I won't have you laughing at my jerky trials. And you are not going to have anything to do with my house-moving arrangements, only to admire the result."

"It is an order." He admired her independence. It was an essential part of her.

"And here is another. How about the project? How does it go?"

He launched into it. His disappointments diminished as he spoke. Now and then she put in a word of approval, of understanding.

"I dream far ahead, you see," he said. "Too far, except for a dream, perhaps. But ultimately I hope to do away with the commission men, perhaps to establish our own markets. Fair profits and fair prices."

"You will have to be a dictator, if what you say ​about the cattlemen of Chico Mesa is not tinged with essimism."

"Oh, there are enough good men to form our own board and committees. The rest will join the procession when they see their own benefit. But it will take a lot of money."

"And you will not admit Capital. You mustn't ignore it. Can you?"

"It can't be ignored. But I hope to do without it. Capital is all right. Here is the way I look at it, in my scheme of socialism. Capital has its uses. It must be used for world development. But it has got into the wrong hands in many instances. It came out of the land. It is as much a product of the soil as wheat, cattle. It is the fluid that floats enterprise. But, instead of being a living stream, an artery of the body civic, it has got into pools, been impounded. Those who control it want too much for the use of it. The ratio is false. Most of the owners never earned it. Therefore they set a false value on it.

"Of course there are not many places like Chico Mesa where the country can provide everything for its own development. But, if we do it, others may see their way."

"A good thing, that is an unselfish thing," she said softly, "is bound to succeed. That is Progress, isn't it? And it can't be stopped."

He straightened his shoulders.

"No, it can't be stopped. The deserts must go. And the semi-deserts. Of course my horizons are limited. I am a cattleman and I do not vex myself ​with problems outside my personal touch and comprehension. But the principle is true."

"How about labor? Isn't it sadly twisted? Will the same principle work?"

"I don't pretend to know. I am a bit of a specialist in my way, after all. But this is how I look at that. Perhaps we have really all got to come back to the soil, to begin over again, after some terrible revolution. Yet it would not be progress to demolish all that has been done in labor-saving devices, to crush manufacture and commerce.

"But, there are forty million farmers to four million labormen. The latter are organized. The farmers are beginning to think about it. They have been ignored too long in great national questions. Like the coal strike. They have yet to begin to know their own strength. And they can begin right. When they organize they must do it fairly to all. They must have sympathy extending beyond the mere scale of their produce to the consumer. They can live well themselves and help others to live well by giving them their best at a fair rate. They are still the backbone of the nation. They can eliminate the middlemen, they can show that they are fair. They can slay the Big Dragon—Graft!"

"A farmer President?" she queried.

"Why not? It takes as much brains to run a big holding, agricultural, horticultural, cattle, horses, sheep, to run it right, as it does any other enterprise. He would have the votes behind him."

"Women's votes as well as the men's. It is growing dark. Shall we go back for some music before ​you leave? I like these talks," she went on as they walked towards the cabin where a light showed that Thora and Jackson were awaiting them. "It makes me feel as if I were a part of the big world of people, as if there were something I could do,

"I" said the sparrow,
"With my bow and arrow."

meaning suffrage and my vote. Not that I exactly want to be called a suffragist. I wish they had coined another title."

"I don't think they coined it themselves. It was wished on them. And I don't think you will become an extremist."

"No. Natural ways are best. The mills of the gods, grinding slowly but exceeding fine. How Dame Nature must laugh at us ants, trying to upset the world, scurrying to and fro, yet accomplishing something, after all. As you will accomplish. For you will find a way, I am sure of it."

"Why?"

She glanced at him in the dusk and her voice made him tingle.

"Because you are that kind of a man. And Fortune favors the brave."

"Then you ought to make a wonderful success of the Hidden Homestead," he replied.

The notes of Thora's violin greeted them and they went in to see her big but lissome figure swaying to her music, the fiddle tucked up under her strongly rounded chin, nestled on her capacious bosom, Jackson smoking a cigarette by permission, ​watching every move as a child might watch a magician.

"How are you getting along with Thora, Red?" Sheridan asked him on their way back.

"I ain't gittin'," said Jackson with a whimsical glumness. "She allows I've never yit growed up."

"She's never seen you in action, Red."

"No, that's a fact." His tone was more hopeful. "How you gittin' along, Pete Sheridan?"

There was no suggestion of impertinence in the query. It would have been a strange one, back East, between master and man, Sheridan reflected. Out here it was between man and man—and better so.

"We're getting to be pretty good chums. Red," he answered.

"That's fine. They're sure two fine wimmen."

"They are. And it seems up to you and me. Red, to look out for them, as much as they'll allow us to do so. Want to go into a partnership on that?"

"You needn't draw the papers," Jackson drawled. "I'm hired on that job already."

Another half mile and he flung away his cigarette and cleared his throat. Sheridan waited expectantly, riding easily to the mare's elastic gait. He had not been obliged to come West to become a horseman. And he wondered what the song would be. When Jackson sang, all was well with his world. But it would surely be a minor strain, in inverse ratio to Red's inner mood. So it came.

As I walked down the streets of Laredo,
⁠As I walked out in Laredo one day,
​I spied a poor cowboy wrapt up in white linen,
⁠All wrapt up in linen as white as the day.

Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
⁠Play the Dead March as you bear me along;
Down to the green valley and lay the sod o'er me,
⁠For I'm a young cowboy what knows he done wrong.

CHAPTER VIII

NIGHT

Night poured into the hollow of the Hidden Homestead in an amethystine flood of shadow, rising slowly as the last light shifted upwards towards the crags, and the bowl, filled at last with the wine of dusk, brimmed over into the void. The crags held the sunset rays, rosy and then fading gradually to gray, to purple spires hardly distinguishable against the sky, save as they were blocked out by the stars. Only, in the heart of the ancient crater, a light showed orange in the window of the log house and was reflected in the placid water of the little lake.

All day Mary and Thora had worked uncrating and arranging the furniture that had come from far off Hannal, each piece bringing with it the memories and the atmosphere of New England transferred to the West, the old Colonial to the new. It was always crisp after dark on Ghost Mountain and they had lit a fire both for warmth and cheerful celebration. The light winked back from polished mahogany, from the brass of drawer handles and candlesticks, from a few bits of silver, from the gilded frames of pictures and from the massive andirons that reared themselves aristocratically on the frontier hearthstone. Highboy and ​lowboy, gate-legged table and another larger, center one. Old chairs with fiddle and spindle backs, an ancient mirror and a yet more ancient clock, hand-woven rugs and carpets, some cushions and curtains for the windows; it made a brave and comfortable show, and the two women surveyed it with satisfaction.

"It makes the place look like a real home, Thora," said Mary, who was sewing at some stuff, to Thora, darning stockings.

Thora nodded her head and finished her criss-cross.

"It bane hard for just two women to make a home," she said. "They bane keep everything too much in place; home needs a man—and kiddies—to make it real complete."

Mary's eyes twinkled.

"Is that all you need a man for, Thora, to make work for you, to clutter up the house so that you can clean up after him?"

"He bane make safe the house," said Thora, eyes on another darn.

"We have the gate. And you are as good as any man, Thora."

"Ay, I suppose so." And Thora gave a little sigh.

"Thora. Is it Red?" Thora blushed. It started at the V of her gown where her milky skin was untouched by the sun, it spread up under the tan.

"Red, he bane gude enough," she answered. "And he bane awful fule too."

"Are you looking for a perfect man, Thora? There ain't any such animal," teased the other.

​"I think a man bane much like a stocking," replied Thora. "He need plenty darning if he bane going to wear good."

"Have you ever been in love, Thora?" Mary thrust directly and Thora countered.

"Why? Bane you looking for a cure? I think that Mister Sheridan, he bane pretty good man."

"And I think it's time to go to bed. I'm tired. Tomorrow we'll send an invitation down to both of them to come up and see the new place." Mary rose and went to the door, opening it on to the verandah. The air gushed in, fragrant with the scent of drying grasses, the delicate perfume of yucca bloom.

"I'd like to sleep out tonight, and every night it is like this," the girl went on. "Beneath a blanket underneath the stars."

"When you bane got your own four-poster bed yust set up? There bane no springs in the ground. I bane too heavy for such sleeping. And I don't like no lion sniffin' round me in the night. Wait till I kill that second one."

"I forgot about the lion, Thora. We'll sleep in the four-poster tonight. It would be ungrateful not to. But we can leave the doors all open, now the gate is there. Let in the out-of-doors as much as we can."

"Then you bane go to bed, pretty, and I'll come as soon as I bane finish this stocking." Mary smothered a yawn, picked up a candlestick and lit the wick, then disappeared into the inner room. After a while Thora rolled up her work and put it ​away in a basket. She went with wonderful lightness for her weight, to the inner door and looked in. Mary was in bed but not asleep. Her eyes glinted lazily at Thora, then closed. Thora tiptoed back and took up her violin, taking it out on the verandah. Lightly, lovingly, she played a folk song of her own land, a simple lullaby. One could hear the crooning mother, see the softly rocking cradle, the drowsy, drowsy babe. She had not played it thus since Mary had lain, a motherless youngster, uncomforted and lonely, upon the same four-poster—and Thora had come to be mother and companion, elder sister and handmaiden.

Twice she played the air, the second time so gently it was but a whispered melody, and then she went into the house, nodded to herself at Mary's even breathing, twined her mass of hair in two great braids and prepared for bed. At the last moment before she blew out the lamp she hesitated and then carefully closed the outer door, shooting two bolts into their sockets. Thora liked the out-of-doors but to her practical side a house was a house, therefore to be closed at nightfall. A moment later the candle was extinguished and the mountain bowl lay dark and still, steeped in flower fragrance and the scent of standing hay.

At three in the morning—the quiet hour of the night—a waning quarter of a moon topped the eastern crags and diluted the shadows, giving vague form to the trees, enlivening the lake. A coyote barked sharply at the head of the gorge that led to the tunnel and the stout gate.

​In the gorge horsemen climbed slowly, with the scrape of hoofs, with low words and a low laugh or two. They emerged on to the meadow, five of them, one leading an extra horse, and looked across to where the house lay dark. Matches made points of light and three lanterns glowed, swinging as the riders galloped towards the lake. Outside the house they dismounted and talked in whispers. One of them stole up on the verandah and tried the door.

"It's locked, or bolted," he reported in Spanish.

"To hell with it!" answered the leader—Hollister. "They're abed and asleep. We'll wake 'em up. Get a log. Bust it open. We've wasted too much time over that damned gate."

They found a fallen pine for a battering ram, handling it by the broken snags of branches still firm in the trunk. Outside the door they aligned, two opposite two, while Hollister held a lantern high. They swung the heavy timber back and forth, butt foremost.

Mary Burrows sat upright, her heart hammering, clutching at Thora, who rose and slid out from the covers of the four-poster to the floor as a crash resounded on the door and the sturdy house shook to the impact. Again and again it sounded with splintering crashes while Thora groped vainly for matches and then sprang for the doorway between the bedroom and living room. The outer door split, gave way at the hinges and fell flat while, over it, with oaths and shouts and gleaming lanterns, the five marauders rushed in. They paused for a second at the sight of Thora, filling the inner doorway, ​towering, white clad, her eyes ablaze, her hands curved to clutch.

"Get her out of the road," cried Hollister and two jumped at her. The rest set down their lanterns and two more leaped in to reinforce as Thora sent one spinning away, another crashing against a table and so to the floor. They grappled with her, fighting with snarls and curses as she fought with them as a she-bear protects her cub, dragging her out into the main room, a whirling teetotum of fury, panting, thumping, tripping. They caught at her braids, pulling back her head, and she whirled, swinging them clear, flailing at them, struggling desperately against the odds.

Hollister leaped for the bedroom door with one man close behind him, while the three held the raging Thora. Mary slammed the panels in their face, turned the key, dragged a bureau up and put her slimsy weight to it. There was not a weapon in the room. She had recognized Hollister's voice, she knew that they had come for her. The door swayed before the shock of their shoulders.

"Choke that Swedish sow, if you can't handle her," shouted Hollister. "Get a rope, Ramon. Keep an eye on that window outside, one of you. She may jump! Now! Damnation!"

Thora had broken loose, an incarnate fury, her nightrobe torn, her face bruised. She hurled herself at Hollister and caught him by the neck. Another, coming from behind, she gripped by his collar and swung the two together. Their skulls thudded and they dropped like pole-axed bullocks. Then a rope ​came whistling, the loop settled over her head, tightened viciously about her throat. She was dragged away, choking, amid a shout of triumph.

"Tie up the bitch!" shouted Hollister, gathering himself up from the planks. "Get that log again. Pronto, now. We'll have the daylight on us in a minute."

Terrified but not witless, Mary, behind her flimsy barricade, found in the dark her riding breeches and slipped them on, then her sweater. The silhouette of a man's head and shoulders showed at the window. With a crash the bureau was pushed back, the lock gave way, the door opened and Hollister jumped in, seizing her as she shrank against the bed. With all her strength she fought him, tearing at his face, the reek of liquor strong as he laughed at her, gathering her in his arms, bearing her into the other room.

There she saw Thora, flung into a corner, bound hand and foot.

Thora cried to her and a man struck her savagely in the mouth. He was a Mexican, as were all save Hollister, and his own lips were split and bleeding. The furniture was out of place, chairs on the floor, the lamp broken, rugs scrambled in mute evidence of the fight that Thora had made.

A man with a lantern went into the bedroom and returned with an armful of clothes, offering them to Hollister.

"Will you come as you are?" demanded Hollister to Mary in his arms. "Or will you go in there quietly and put them on first? Don't worry to fuss up in the mirror. You can use my eyes later."

​He set her down and she stood quietly, knowing her plight, but giving him such a look of utter loathing that he turned away as she went into the room.

"You can tell that tenderfoot lover of hers, if he comes," he said to the bound but unconquered Thora, glaring defiance from her corner, "that I have taken his sweetheart. I may send her back—when I get tired of her. All right, boys, get ready to clear out. We want to get clear before it's light."

Mary came out, pale, her lips close set. Hollister caught her wrists and bound them with a leather strip. Then he picked her up and started for the door. Mary looked across his shoulder at Thora. She did not venture to speak the words she tried to utter with her eyes.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUN MESSAGE

Quong was always the first man up on the Circle S. Sheridan was ever a close second. He felt that he should be at least one jump ahead of the men who worked for and with him. The first level ray of the sun over the saw tooths was signal for Quong's clarion on the gong, the welcome call to breakfast, or, as the cowboys termed it, to "chuck," though it was beginning to be agreed that this word was unsuitable to the quality of Quong's meals. He not only cooked them well but served them appetizingly.

This morning, the second since Sheridan had talked with Mary Burrows of the possibility of a farmer President, Jackson had judiciously waited until after the meal was over before he gave out the orders for the day. The job on hand was one of those hated by the average cowboy as a cat hates water, the digging of postholes and the setting up of a new section of fencing. It meant divorce from their horses, almost as much a separation as the dismemberment of a centaur into two parts; it meant leaving off their beloved high-heeled boots; it meant blisters and backaches.

But it had to be done and Quong's breakfast, digesting perfectly, eased the breaking of the sad news. Fence-posts had already been drawn from ​Metzal; wire and staples were on hand; as fast as the holes were dug the barrier could go up and, the sooner it was completed, the sooner an uncongenial task was finished.

Its purpose was to provide a special pasture for certain of Sheridan's best cows, picked fOr their reproducing qualities of certain good points already established in themselves, to be bred to his latest purchase, a thoroughbred Hereford into whose price had gone most of Sheridan's reserve. It was to be the beginning of his upgrading that eventually would lead to all-thoroughbred stock. No such animal had been seen on Chico Mesa. It was a magnificent creature heavy of bone and brawn and beef, shaggy of forefront, its hide, burnished like copper, so tightly waved as to suggest Sheridan's calling him Sir Marcelle Pompadour, instead of his much more dignified and illustrious pedigreed title.

With Stoney to boss the job of postholing and fencing, Sheridan and Jackson proposed to ride to the south holding and cut out certain of the selected cows tar an initial segregation. To them was to go the alfalfa as a pre-breeding stimulant and upbuilder.

As Sheridan stood outside the ranch-house, smoking the one pipe he craved after breakfast, Jim Lund, the cowboy who bad been beaten over the head the night of Quong's adventure, came round the house to draw a supply of tobacco against his wages. Sheridan gave him the key to the store cupboard and told him to help himself and charge it down on the slate. He had found all his men ​eminently honest and, while he maintained the key, had discovered that such permission to get their own goods helped to increase mutual goodwill.

"Head all right, Jim?" he asked.

"'Pears to be. Cure'll likely be complete soon as I square accounts with the feller that give me the slip."

"Any idea who it was?"

"Pedro Lopez, brother to Hollister's gel."

"How do you know?"

"He hid his face but he wears a bum ruby ring on his left hand. I saw that." Sheridan sensed deep resentment in Jim's manner of talk.

"Don't go doing anything foolish, Jim," he warned. "Don't give them a chance to get anything on you. You can't prove it was Pedro with that evidence. I put a bullet through his arm the other night. He won't be in shooting form himself for a while."

"I'll wait till his arm heals," said Lund. "Then I'll happen across him an' call him a few pet names that even a Greaser'll rile at. I'll see there's witnesses to that. I'll give him the chance to draw, Boss, but I'll shoot first an' I'll shoot straight."

"All right, Jim. Get your tobacco." It was small use trying to eliminate Lund's bloodthirstiness. It was quite natural. Such affairs would lapse only when such types as Pedro were swept from the mesa. Sheridan knew himself the quick, sharp temptation to use a gun. He had graduated swiftly in western ways of handling primitive questions.

Lund turned away with the key. He stopped at ​the house corner, blinking his eyes, rubbing them as if some insect or dust had suddenly blinded them. He looked towards the range, pointing to the crags of Ghost Mountain.

"Funny. I never seen that afore," he said. "Must be a reg'lar slab of mica rock up thar."

Sheridan followed the direction of his finger. The Sim was well above the saw tooths and it had chased the shadows half way down the slopes. On Ghost Mountain showed flashes of brilliant light, winking, winking persistently. Lund, self-explaining the phenomenon, had disappeared. Sheridan dived into the door as Jackson came around from the corral with the sorrel mare and the roan, ready saddled for their ride. He came out with his own shaving mirror in one hand and his copy of the code. Jackson had already noticed the signaling and hitched the two ponies to the set-rail.

"Count 'em, Red," said Sheridan. "It may be just an invitation to see the furniture set up, but it's a bit early in the morning for that sort of message."

Jackson nodded, counting the intermittent winks that came distinctly.

"Four-three. Three-two. Three-two. Two-three. Four-two. Two-four. Five-two. Five-four. Four-three. Three-two. Three-two———"

"Repeating ain't she?"

"Yes." Sheridan's brow was furrowed. The letters seemed only nonsense. Perhaps one of the women was merely practicing.

I-K-K-O-M-E-Q-U-I-K-K

​Jackson kept calling and the sequence was the same.

"All right, Red, I've got it. There's trouble."

"What is it?"

"It's Thora sending. We started in the middle of a word. Her spelling isn't exactly American. K-O-M-E Q-U-I-K. Come quick. That's what she's saying over and over again. Get your second gun, Red, and mine. It's on the shelf over my bed. Fill up my cartridge belt and yours. I'll tell her we understand."

His shaving mirror was circular, swinging in a frame of heavy nickel that also made up the handle. One glass magnified, the other side gave ordinary reflection. He used the first, tilting the glass to catch the image of the sun, shooting up a flash and then losing it as he shifted angles.

Two-three. Three-two (O. K.) he signaled, time after time, not certain whether Thora would understand the abbreviation. Then she flashed it back to him. O. K.

Jackson came hurrying with the extra guns, with the cartridge belts and a box of cartridges to fill any vacancies in the webs.

"We can shove 'em in as we go," he said briefly and jumped for his saddle. The mare was fresh. Sheridan set foot in stirrup, one hand in mane, the other on his horn. As he left ground the mare swerved in a sudden volte of a quarter-circle calculated to upset the careless rider. It was spirit more than temper. Sheridan stood with his weight in stirrup, his body close to her withers. At the ​end of her jump he swung his right leg swiftly over saddle and settled as she jumped into her stride, tearing after the roan, already twenty yards away. For a while Sheridan gave her free rein and the two raced towards Pioche Gap, drumming the light soil with an even rataplan of flying hoofs. Once he got a handful of cartridges from Jackson and filled his belt.

Neither spoke a word, their minds filled with speculation. Sheridan decided that there must have been an accident and then forsook his decision. In that case Thora would have called for a doctor. Something had happened to Mary. And he could not disassociate that possibility from Hollister. He had felt foolishly secure since they had built the gate. Even now he could not believe that Hollister had discovered the secret of the bar. He shook it all doggedly from him and bent all his energies on riding the mare to the best advantage. Both she and the roan had been resting up for a day or two and they were in rare fettle. The fresh air of morning left them cool and unsweated as they turned into Pioche Gap and galloped neck to neck along the smooth highway. Both mounts had speed and both had wide chests to hold the well-developed lungs, widened and deepened by living in the rare air of the heights, for Chico Mesa was four thousand feet above sea level.

They swung to the east and drifted, smooth and fast as the shadows of flying clouds along the foot of the mountains, clattered up the narrow ravine and through the spray of the waterfall without pausing, their riders bent to their saddle-horns. ​Sheridan shot on his torch and kept the mare at a trot over the rocky floor, snorting, protesting but believing in the right of her master to guide her at his will, not hers.

So they came to where the gate had been.

The stout timbers of the frame were charred and still smoking. Sullen flakes and sparks of fire glowed here and there. The door itself had been first burned and then battered down.

Sheridan set the mare, shying a little at the smoke and heat, and she leaped through the gap, followed by Jackson on the roan, up the passage to the turn, out of it to the gorge, up, terrace by terrace, past the sculptured sandstone monuments, both horses catching the fiery impulses of their masters, mounting sure-footed and swift as mountain goats until they reached the rim and tore across the level meadow to where the log house, backed by its grove of pines, was reflected in the peaceful lake. There was no sign of Thora. Sheridan had expected her to meet them at the gate.

At the house he jumped off the mare and looked in at the open door. Jackson went round to the back. The main room was in confusion. The Colonial furniture had arrived. Pieces of it were in place, curtains up at the windows, but much of it was upset. Chairs sprawled, one of them broken. The door to the inner room was open, showing a bed, a mahogany four-poster, with its linen and blankets tossed aside. There were a few articles of clothing on a chair. He noticed stockings. But the place was empty. Jackson called to him.

​"Up here! She's up here. Bring some water."

There was a pail full of water on the verandah, cool, in the shade. Sheridan caught it up and, following the voice, saw Jackson waving to him from high up the slope, above the pine grove, close to the rim of the mountain. He had dismounted and must have run at prodigious speed to have made the ascent. Sheridan hurried through the grove along the well-trodden trail and found Red standing beside Thora who was lying outstretched on the ground, unconscious. A khaki skirt and coat seemed to have been hurriedly thrown on above her night-dress which was torn almost to ribbons. Her feet were in unlaced boots. Her hair lay flung out from her head in two immense braids of palest silver-gold.

Jackson took the pail from the panting Sheridan without ceremony and began to toss palmfuls of water into Thora's face. The cold shock of it brought her to almost instantly and she opened wide eyes that held a latent horror. Then she appeared to recognize them and sat up.

"I bane fainted for first time in my life," she said, talking with difficulty. "Give me the pail." It was half full but she lifted it without difficulty and drank deeply. When she set it down she wiped her lips with the back of her hand, uptilting her chin. They saw around her neck the purpling wealmark of a cord. Her face was bruised and smeared with blood, one ear, large and symmetrical, was torn a little at the lobe and blood had run freely from this down to her bosom, half exposed by the tattered gown. She suddenly flushed almost ​scarlet and buttoned her coat closely, turning up the collar.

"Now I get up," she said. Both men gave her a hand and she rose stiffly. "I tell you at the cabin," she told them and started to run down the trail with them behind her. At the door she paused, facing them on the verandah, talking fast, dramatically.

"I don't know how they get through the gate," she said. "But they bane come this morning before it bane light. We are asleep, in the new bed that come with the furniture. We fix that last night, all the house. With the gate we do not lock this door, nor the one inside.

"They bane come an' we are asleep. I wake first an' hear them on the verandah. I yump from the bed an' they meet me at the bedroom door. Five they are. Five men. I bane try to get to gun, to a club. If I git to my axe I keel them all. But they are on top of me, they cling like wildcats. I throw them off, they come back. I knock one down an' there bane two more in his place. An' all the time my pretty is sitting up in the bed in her nightdress an' I call to her to stay still.

"They drag me into the big room an' we smash about. All the new pretty furniture that bane come. One, two men yump for the door an' Mary shut it in their face. She bane put something against it. I break away. I bane grab those two men an' I smash their head together. They drop. Then a rope come roun' my neck. I bane choke. But I smash that one who throw the rope. I break his ​mouth an' teeth. Then the rope git tight an' all bane go black.

"When I bane see again I bane bound up, han' an' foot," She thrust out her wrists, raw and bleeding. I am near naked, flung in a corner. I struggle but they bane tie too hard. Mary, my pretty, she is in the arms of that Hollister. I see where she tear at his face but he is too strong. One man he fetch some of her clothes. Hollister he laugh and say, 'Will you bane come as you are or will you put on some clothes? Never mind make fuss,' he say. 'I will be your looking-glass.' I bane fight so hard they come to me an' keek me. Hollister, he bane say, 'We leave you, you big beetch. You can tell that lover of hers I take her—for myself. Maybe, when I am through I send her back.' And he bane laugh again for what I call heem till he grow tired an' they gag me.

"Mary, she go in room an' put on some clothes. I think she try to yumnp through window for some one laugh outside. So she come out an' they bind her pretty hands.

"'You can scream all you want,' say that Hollister to her. 'I like your voice. Or you can whistle.' An' they take her away. I lie an' fight an' I hear their horse go away, clop-clop. But she does not scream. She bane give me one look an' I know what she mean.

"I fight but the rope bane too tight. Then I think, an' I bane wriggle to where I bane get on my knees against the table. I rub off the gag against the drawer handle. I bane pull out that drawer ​with my teeth an' everything fall out on the floor. I bane git knife in my teeth. I bane git point of knife in floor an' I cut my wrist free. I cut my legs free an' I grab my rifle an' run out.

"But they bane gone. It take too long for me to bane think of that knife. They bane gone! God damn them for dirty cowards!"

Her face had worked convulsively while she told her tale, the two men listening stern and silent. With her earnest, unblasphemous oath she controlled herself.

"I bane git mirror. I bane find code. Now you know. Now we git her back an'—kill—kill—kill!

The intensity of her quieter anger was terrific. So might some ancestress of hers, standing on the strand of some dark fiord, have sworn to revenge herself upon the slayers of her viking lover.

She turned and fetched her rifle, cramming her coat pockets with cartridges.

"You bane git my horse. Red," she said. "I do not think they bane take him. He is in the spring pasture." And, when he went to do her bidding, she quietly brought stockings from the room, removed her shoes, put them on, laced up her boots methodically. Her sweater was in a corner and she picked this up and went back into the bedroom with it, coming out again to Sheridan dressed for action, her braids coiled and pinned, her sombrero on her head.

"Now I bane ready," she said quietly, "when you are."

​Sheridan had been standing like a man turned to stone, only his brain racing madly over problems of rescue. Trailing would be an almost impossible feat. At the foot of the range beyond the tunnel the gramma grass grew in places like a mat. They would be lucky if they guessed whether the gang had ridden east or west. Not towards Pioche, he was sure of that. Nor to Metzal. But to some hideout known to Hollister. And they had a tremendous start. Two hours at the least. It might be six or twelve before they could pick up a trace.

He moved at the touch of sarcasm he fancied in Thora's words and she started at the look on his face. It was set in harsh lines, unmoving, save for the flaring of his nostrils. His eyes were cold as sea-ice behind which burned a flame of purpose and hate.

"As soon as Jackson finds your horse and saddles it," he said, and his voice was deep and low in his throat, "we shall ride fast. Are you going to wear that skirt?"

She stripped it from her with a swift gesture of self-disapproval and stood in overalls, thewed like a giantess, her own face rigid, her own eyes with the same icy quality as his. Jackson came round the house with the horse, a white charger, bony enough, but seeming fairly up to her weight. Sheridan surveyed it critically but said nothing. But he decided there and then that Thora could not be in the chase. They would ride far faster than her mount could go.

​"This yore saddle?" She nodded. Jackson flung it across the horse, his hands flying as he fastened the cinch. He led it to the edge of the verandah and she mounted. The three of them, at a gallop, crossed the meadow and made the gorge at break-neck gait. When she saw the burned gate in the ray of the torch Thora gave the only sound she made. At the opening of the ravine both men dismounted and anxiously hunted for a sign.

They found it, the mixed tracks of several horses on a soft patch by the stream. They were headed west. Towards Pioche Gap.

West they galloped, the white horse laboring hard to keep up under the handicap of years and weight. Where they struck the road Sheridan and Red again hunted for tracks and disagreed. Jackson was inclined to fancy the party had gone south but the wagon road was metaled and he could not be sure. Nor could they discover a sign farther west. The soil was too fertile, too well turfed with the long grass, waving in the wind as if to mock their efforts. Thora sat her horse, knowing herself useless in such extremity, yet craning her neck and bending from the saddle to find some trace, to be doing something. She had gnawed her lips till they bled. She was no rider and her mount was in bad shape, scant of wind, stained with sweat, standing with hanging head.

"Well?" said Red. "Looks like a blind lead."

"We'll try towards Metzal," said Sheridan.

"We'll ride to Hollister's ranch. Maybe we can get something out of that girl, Juanita. We can work ​on her jealousy. She may know of some hideout. If she does, she'll tell it," he said grimly.

"If she knows, I bane make her tell," said Thora. "You leave her to me."

"If we draw blank there we may round up some dope in Metzal," suggested Jackson. "I know where to try. An' I'll try my damnedest."

"Hollister's first."

The mare and the roan still stood up well but they were forced to accommodate their pace to Thora's horse or leave her behind. This she saw and her face betrayed her struggling agony of mind.

"I bane got to talk to that girl myself," she said once, urging the poor brute to efforts beyond its capacity.

At the end of the Gap they crossed Ghost Creek and rode west towards the Lazy H. They had gone less than a mile when they saw some one coming towards them on a bay horse at a fast lope.

The two men jerked their heads at each other. Thora, coming alongside, sensed their gesture.

"It bane her?" she asked.

The rider came on fast, straight towards them, a girl in a waist of orange silk and a divided skirt of dark stuff. She was hatless and her black hair streamed on the wind. They caught the flash of her eyes before they could define her features. It was Juanita Lopez. A short way off she set spurs into her fiery little mount and then brought him to a standstill, his forefeet plowing the turf.

"So," she cried. "You know. Dios! You go after them. Bueno!"

​She looked at the rifle that Thora had persisted in carrying across her pommel though Red had tried to relieve her of the cumbersome thing, and she laughed. Her small, olive-skinned face, not unbeautiful in a wild, reckless way, was aflame with emotion.

"I come to the Circle S, senor," she said to Sheridan. "First I think to ride after heem, w'en I know that he is gone to do w'at he say, w'en I wake up from w'at he put in my dreenk. Si.

"Las' night there come Luis an' Ramon Guiterrez an' Felipe Vasquez. They breeng weeskey an' they talk an' dreenk with Hollister an' Pedro. It is late. I am in my bed, try to sleep. I know for long time, senor, Hollister hav' no more use for me. Me, I am like new sombrero to heem. I look fine an' he choose, he take, he use. Bimeby he get too much used to that sombrero, it feet too easy, he look aroun', see another kind, another shape, he throw old sombrero away. Si." She spoke with flowing gesture that emphasized the text of her words, talking with every inch of her lithe vivacity centered in the story.

"So I try to sleep. Bimeby I hear them in nex' room. Talk, laugh, dreenk. I hear about the girl on Monte del Muerte. Hollister say he goin' to take her, to get even with you, Senor Sheridan. He say—never min' w'at he say about that girl who is your querida—she is your querida, senor?"

Sheridan nodded.

"But he is goin' to take her away. He is sol' all this land, all the cattle, an' he is goin' to ​Mexicali, maybe Los Angeles. But that is manana. First he is take girl an' then he is send her back to you, senor, afterwards. They are all to go to el Monte del Muerte an' he geev them money to help.

"Me, I am listen to all this, senor, an' I grow hot an' mad. W'en he start to talk again about the girl I get from my bed, I fin' my knife—an'—pronto!—I am in that room with them, an' that knife is so close to Hollister throat that his eyes look at Death, he see el muerte, senor, as it scratch his skeen. An' he is afraid. Pedro, he take away the knife, he throw me back, he slap my face an' Hollister laugh an' say—'Take her away.'

"So they throw me on my bed like the old sombrero an' I lie an' weep because I have no more knife. Then Hollister he come in an' say you mus' dreenk this. I theenk maybe it is poison but he make me dreenk, only the las' mouthful I do not swallow, senor, but w'en he go out I spit it on the floor. So maybe I do not sleep so long as he weesh. It did not taste muy bueno, that weeskey. Now you go to find your querida an' to keel Hollister. I would like to do that. Si. But I am too chico. too weak."

Her eyes flamed, her breast was tumultuous under the orange silk, the pulses beat in her throat and she seemed filled with venom, a snake that was tied short, able to hiss, to rear, to strike but not to reach.

"Where has he taken her? Do you know that?" demanded Sheridan.

"Si, senor. To El Pueblo del Silencio. The City of Silence. Does the senor know where that is?"

​"I do," said Jackson. "'Way west, almost to the Pyramid Hills. All of thirty miles. A bunch of rocks heaved out of the mesa that look a heap like churches."

"Si, that is it. There are cuevas (caves) there. The contrabandista use them one time, long ago."

"What about Pedro and the others?"

"I do not hear all they say, senor. Sometime they talk low. But he geev Pedro money, like the res'. An' Pedro say maybe he meet him manana in Mexicali or Los Angeles. So I think Pedro, maybe the res', they go away after they help him get the girl. Si. An' you, senor, it is muy bueno if you find her before it is dark."

The emphasis of the last words was ominous, it called for haste. But Sheridan regarded her doubtfully. She was still racked with passion, with jealousy, but he wanted to be sure.

"You say Hollister has sold his place and his cattle? What about your mother? Where is she?"

"Mi madre? Oh, she will stay an' be cocinero, housekeep' for the man who buy. She is ol', mi madre she stay where she know she can work an' eat. Me, I am go to the Circle S, senor, to tell you about your querida, then I go to Yuma. There I have a man who weel marry me. Si. Who weel not throw me away like the ol' sombrero."

"Hollister was your lover? You loved him?"

"Si. But, senor, love is like cream. It is very sweet an' then, maybe, unless it is look out for, it is sour. Love an' hate, they are so."

She thrust out one little fist, fingers upwards, ​as if it held something, then reversed it swiftly, spreading her fingers wide. But Sheridan wanted to be sure.

"Pedro is your brother?"

"He is the son of mi madre, not my own brother. W'en Hollister beat me, Pedro laugh, he slap my face. He is bad, like Hollister."

Thora broke in.

"Why we bane wait?"

"I don't know whether she is telling us the truth. She may have been sent by Hollister to put us on a false trail."

"Then let me talk to her." Thora handed her rifle to Jackson, rode close to Juanita and ranged the bony horse alongside the fretful bronco, head to flank. She put one hand upon the horn of Juanita's saddle, above the girl's own hands. The Mexican looked up wonderingly at the great woman, so much her opposite, Nordic against Latin, blonde against brunette, ice against fire, both in that moment elemental.

"Are you bane speaking the truth? Look at me, in the eyes. So."

Their glances held, welded. Then Juanita broke out.

"Senora, I swear I speak true. Madre di Dios! Sangre di Cristo!" She crossed herself, snatching her hands from beneath Thora's palm, plucking a cross from her bosom and kissing it.

"Never you bane mind all that," said Thora heavily. "You tell me, woman to woman, do you tell the truth? You shall stay with me until I find ​out. Suppose you bane lying I take you an' I bane break every bone in your body, slow, one at a time, like this."

A quirt hung from the horn of the Mexican saddle, its handle of hardwood, seasoned palo verde, stout as steel, covered with woven horsehair. Thora took the whip and broke the grip between her fingers as easily as if it had been a brittle stick of candy. Juanita's face paled.

"I tell you the truth," she faltered. "Mujer a la mujer. Woman to woman, I say I tell you the truth."

"Then we go. You bane hear what she say, to find her before it bane dark?"

"Thora," said Sheridan. "You're tired. Your horse is played out. He couldn't carry you another five miles. You can't ride Juanita's bronco, you're too heavy. You go to the ranch and take Juanita with you, if you want to. I'll give you a note to Quong." He started to scribble as he talked, tearing out a page from his notebook. "He is not to let our men follow us. Jackson and I can handle it."

"No. I bane go along."

"You can't, Thora. We can't spare time to go to the ranch or I'd gladly get fresh horses for Red and myself. You've got to trust to us, Thora, I'm sorry."

He spoke quickly but gently, genuinely sorry for the despairing face.

"You love her. Mister Sheridan. You will ride and fight for her." Thora turned to Jackson. "Red, if you come back without her, do not bane come back to me. And Hollister a . . . !"

​"He won't come back," said Sheridan shortly. "Give Red the cartridges for the rifle, Thora. Wish us good luck."

As they looked back, once, they saw the big figure of Thora on the tired, white, bony nag, plugging by the side of Juanita, tiny on her chico bronco. Thora's hand gripped one rein of the other's bridle.

"She sure scared the truth out of Juanita," said Red while they rode at a steady lope.

"Willed it out of her, I fancy," returned Sheridan. He looked anxiously at the sun. It was close to the zenith, then- shadows had dwindled, shrinking beneath the bellies of their mounts. It was within an hour of noon.

"What kind of travel between here and the rocks, Red?" he asked.

"None too good. Gets worse. Prit' nigh all desert the last ha'f . There is a spring, if I can locate it, 'bout eight mile in. We'll water up."

His words had a hidden meaning. They had no canteens with them. They held in the horses, walk and lope and walk again, under the burning sun. The character of the mesa began to slowly change. In the long ago it had been heavily crevassed. Now these splits were nearly filled with the powdery sand, forming a series of ridges with draws between, sometimes quite deep.

To their right the foothills radiated the heat, backed by the higher cliffs of the range, gradually steepening until they were too sheer to sustain tree life. Cactus grew thick as weeds, sprawling, pillared, branching growths of greyish blue and green, barbed, ​hostile, half string, half pulp. Here and there a barrel cactus promised liquid if they failed to find the spring. The going was hard on man and beast; the gray dust rose and settled on them, clogged like flour where the sweat broke through hide and clothing. After the first mile they spoke little.

An hour had passed when Jackson pointed out a purple fissure in the range.

"They say you can git through to the Pioche side that way. Just a one-horse trail." The fissure widened, became a wedge, a deep notch as they came abreast of it, half a mile away. They had been looking for a sign but had not been disappointed at not finding it. There was no regular trail in such country. A man chose his own ridges and traversed them, east or west, avoiding the draws where the sand shifted on the slopes.

Suddenly the mare, going gamely on though, with the roan, nostrils gaped wide and flanks heaved under the pitiless pounding of the sun and the drag of the loose soil, shied, sprang high and leaped aside. A sidewinder, a hooded, grey, mottled rattlesnake, had glided across her trail, disturbed by the vibration of her hoofs. As she came down one forefoot seemed to break through into a hollow, the burrow of some creature. She drew it out, still trembling at sight and smell of the serpent, set it down, and limped, badly, persistently. The lines that had been sinking deeper and deeper into Sheridan's face grew swiftly sharper as he dismounted and examined the foot.

"Bowed a tendon, Red," he said simply. "She ​can't stand my weight with that." Jackson slid off the roan, his eyes anxious.

"It's sure hell," he said as his expertness corroborated Sheridan's diagnosis. "You take the roan. I'll hoof it back to the ranch an' foller up hard as I can with the pinto. Or I'll trail after you with the mare. Mebbe that's better. She can make out if she don't have to pack either of us."

Sheridan looked at him, man to man.

"I'll take the roan, Red. If it was Thora, it would be different."

"Sure. Want I should shift the saddles?"

"It doesn't matter. As to your going back. . . ."

Jackson, with the roan, was nearest to the range. Across a sandy draw was a dense thicket of chayas, the fleshy columns so close as almost to touch, in some cases to merge into each other. He went to the mounting side of the roan to loosen the cinches in the double rings. A big, vividly green fly settled on the roan's updrawn haunch as it rested one foot. Red started to slap at the vicious insect, stepping back as a shot rang out from the chaya thicket. A bullet nosed its way into the nigh shoulder of the roan and out through the off, leaving a bloody hole where the missile had mushroomed. With a strange, strangling cry the roan dropped to its knees and rolled over. Sheridan's gun came out and up, poised as he looked in vain for a target. Jackson swooped for the rifle he had set against a prickly pear when he dismounted. It came up to his shoulder, aiming at the clustering chayas where his quick, resentful eye had caught sight of a glint of blue that could not belong.

​The high-calibered weapon barked sharply, a steel-tipped bullet sloughed through a chaya column and from behind it there sounded one broken cry.

"Got him," said Jackson grimly. "Ah!"

Sheridan was pumping lead at a horseman on a piebald pony, a man clad in a striped serape and wearing a Mexican sun sombrero who had spurred out of a draw beyond the chayas and was heading towards the gap in the range, dodging behind clumps of cactus, deliberately weaving a zigzag course to escape Sheridan's accuracy of fire. Behind him pelted a riderless horse, heavy, tapidero'd stirrups swinging, reins trailing, the brute's ewe neck held high to keep them off the ground.

The man's dodging had not given Sheridan a fair shot. In a few bounds he was beyond all pistol range. Jackson, cursing as he waited for his chance, fired at last with the rifle. The sombrero flew from the fugitive's head and went spinning through the air. Next moment the rider plunged down into another draw, the second horse following, and neither of them saw him again.

"Missed by a mile," said Jackson disgustedly. "Why in hell didn't I stick to my six-gun? On'y I wanted to be sure an' bore through that chaya. There's one Greaser gone to his God the other side of that. An' the other one was Pedro, damn him."

"I thought it was Pedro. I wish we could have got that horse."

"Juanita lied to us after all, Sheridan."

"I don't think so. She said she didn't hear all. I fancy Hollister posted those two here in case we ​got after him straight. We've got the best of him so often he grew careful. They were to ambush us and then cut through the gap to Pioche and the raihoad. Pedro will go through to Calexico."

"Maybe. Or maybe he'll wait for Hollister to show. He'll gamble all he's got away in Spigotty Town, outside Pioche, and look to Hollister for a fresh stake. I wonder did that hombre I touched up pack a canteen? Will you shoot the roan while I'm gone? I ain't got the heart."

Jackson walked over carefully towards the chayas, the rifle discarded, a precautionary gun in his right hand. He found a way between the cacti and disappeared. Sheridan put his own pistol to the roan's head and sent it out of misery. The mare stood by shuddering, sniffing the taint of blood on the air, as Sheridan took off saddle and bridle from the dead horse.

Jackson came back with the strap of a canteen over his shoulder, a pint flask partly full of a yellowish liquid in his hand. He had put away his gun.

"They been nestin' in there, waitin' for us to happen along," he said. "I got that Greaser plumb through the heart. Luck-shot. That's the second man I ever killed," he went on quietly. "Both of 'em took a first shot at me. That hombre had his mouth smashed to a pulp an' all swollen up. His teeth was knocked out. I wouldn't wonder but that was the one that roped Thora.

"There won't be enough of him left by the time we come back to hold an inquest on. See that?"

He jerked up his head. High in the sky a dark ​dot soared, a buzzard, volplaning down from its aerial watching place to the feast.

"We can fill the canteen at the spring," said Red. "After we wash it out good. I wouldn't drink what was left after that Greaser if I was thirstin' to death. An' we can use the flask. We'll likely go shy of water before we git through."

He pulled out the cork and smelled the contents.

"Faugh!" he exclaimed as he spilled them on the ground. "Smells like benzine. Vasquez' booze. I'll cache my saddle before we go on."

Sheridan watched him wrap saddle and bridle with their blanket and cover them with sand. They were going on, afoot, twenty-five miles of ever increasing desert ahead. If they got to the Painted Rocks by midnight they would be doing well. And how were they to find the girl and Hollister by night? How would they find her? "Get her before it is dark," Juanita, discarded mistress of Hollister, had warned. All the way that they would go the sun would be sinking ahead of them, marking off the day.

As Jackson straightened up Sheridan placed his reins behind his saddle horn. He turned the mare and slapped her on the flanks, bidding her go home.

"Go home, Goldie, poor old girl," he said. "Go home."

She went a little way, uncertainly, then stopped and whinnied. He urged her on and she started, limping. But, when the two men turned to trudge on to their distant goal, the mare wheeled and ​followed them, like a dog that craves company. Sheridan halted.

"She must go back," he said. "She'll find her way home easy enough. If she comes she'll have to share our water."

"If we git any. But she saw the roan shot an' she's scared. You can't shoo her home. Better let her follow. We may need her after all, if she is lame."

And the three trailed on, following the sun that seemed simultaneously to beckon and threaten, on to where even the cactus began to fail and the mesa turned to a desert where nothing grew. Once they turned aside to the foot of the range and Jackson found his spring, a brackish puddle with which they filled canteen and flask and slaked their thirst.

The sun set back of Pyramid Hills, still far away and the swift change of temperature found them shivering. They had had no food save a few prickly pears they had peeled, some lumps of cactus they had skinned and chewed. In the fever of pursuit they had forgotten provisions. The sun and sand had taken heavy toll. The lame mare was now the best of the three. Three hours later the moon came up, blanching all the plain. Their water was gone. They did not miss it so much in the coolness but their tongues were soon swollen and they were tired to stumbling, caked with the desert.

They plodded up and down a draw. They no longer chose a path but kept straight on towards Pyramid Hills and a low mound that was slowly rising in mid distance, the Painted Rocks, the City of Silence. On the ridge Jackson went to his hands ​and knees. Sheridan bent to help him but Red was pointing to the sand. There, edges shaded by the moon, were the tracks of two horses. They were on the trail. It put new strength into them and their crawl changed once again to a semblance of a stride.

CHAPTER X

HOLLISTER

What elements combine to make a "bad man"? Science would hold him not entirely responsible. Three-quarters of his human equation results from heredity and environment. Impure blood feeding fibers and tissues prenatally disposed to laxness, supplymg degraded nerve centers. Selfishness innate in all of us, the giving way to every evil impulse that panders to demoralized appetites, gradual accentuation of greed and lust and bullying tendency. Conditions inherited as well as physical negations, bad breeding, the faults and sins and diseases of past generations. Those, and a will unable to restrain the wild horses that tug and pull and chafe against all restraint and moderation until, given free rein at last, they run away with the driver who lashes them on, and who must, in our social order, be held primarily responsible. Human justice deals little in psychology, nor is this a brief for Hollister. Yet such congenital faults and personal follies—evil company, slack women, strong liquors, had made him the utter blackguard that he was.

He had carried off Mary Burrows to satisfy a lust composed of physical perversion and the wish to humiliate her gentility, her poise that had made ​a mockery of his first visit to Ghost Mountain. Also, he would even matters with Sheridan. He guessed that Sheridan was in love with her, it suited him to believe it. He meant to leave her a broken thing from which even a lover must turn away, wilfully to destroy the white flower of her innocence and trample it underfoot; unless he should decide to wear it for a while, a besmirched and wilted trophy to his prowess.

And he was half crazed with the last brewing of Vasquez, a brew no longer distilled by that Mexican scoundrel, but crudely mixed in laziness and the desire for quick returns.

Hollister foresaw the certainty of pursuit, the possibility of Sheridan striking his trail, though he held such a possibility remote, sure that he had drugged Juanita deep enough to hold her insensible for twenty-four hours. But he had made assurance doubly sure by posting Pedro and Ramon Guiterrez in ambush by the mountain gap. The two other members of his abduction party had departed for Pioche with enough money to still their tongues, bound to plunge into a debauch.

So he rode on with Mary Burrows confidently, towards the Painted Rocks. Her wrists were still bound, and their lashing was attached to the horn of her saddle over which her reins were draped. He had attached a leading rein to her horse's bridle. His face was still tender from the removal of the tar with which Sheridan had smeared it, inflamed by liquor, the sun and the hellish furnace stoking within his soul. He regarded his captive with a ​gloating grin that faded gradually, giving place to fury, as she absolutely disregarded him, his taunts, his threats. The glance she occasionally gave him seared him with its steady flame of purity and disdain.

For Mary Burrows steadily fought down the terror that occasionally rose in a wave that threatened to overwhelm her spirit. Where Hollister had inherited to his disadvantage she had been bequeathed the attributes of clean-minded, clean-living ancestors. She was as different from him as a shining shield differs from a tarnished sheet of base metal. She knew what might lie at her journey's end, faced it and dismissed it, knowing that way lay panic and disaster. She meant to use her wits and, to that end, she managed to retreat within herself, deaf and blind to her captor while she revolved possibilities of escape.

She believed that Thora would ultimately free herself from her bonds but she realized also that by the time she was able to signal to the Circle S interpreting the last glance that had passed between them, Sheridan and his outfit might be well away on outdoor duties. But she would not allow herself to see the hopelessness of her case.

Once Hollister turned aside from his direct trail at the brackish spring. He refilled the canteens and offered her a drink from a small cup. He cringed before her look of utter loathing though he tried to turn it into a shrug and then bathed his overheated face before watering both horses.

As they advanced into the desert portion of the ​mesa the girl's vitality lowered. The mere thought of the drink she had refused tortured her. The pitiless sunrays smashed down, drying the tissues of her mouth, burning her exposed wrists. Her lips began to crack and her tongue to swell. Lack of food assailed her. Hope began to dwindle. She knew every swallow Hollister took of the liquor in his flask added fuel to the fire of his intentions. He seemed hardened against the stuff and the possibility of his collapse under its influence became remote. She concentrated every failing faculty in petition to her God, for a way of escape to open, even if it had to lead through the gate to death. She lost all sense of pain, of outward things, in the merciful hypnosis of prayer, maintaining her balance on the plodding horse automatically.

It was close to noon when his harsh chuckle and his words broke through the shell of her weariness. Her concentrated prayer had numbed her spirit and her body reacted. If God had listened, he had heard.

"Look ahead, pretty," jeered Hollister. "'Pretty' was what that fat Swedish pig called you, an' it suits you. There's where we're goin' to stay till mornin', you an' me."

She gazed under the rim of her hat with sun-scorched eyes at a rainbow dazzle of cliffs that lifted suddenly from the desert. But she was indifferent to their beauty, too exhausted to take in the details of the wonderful place. Knowing that here she must rally her forces, she tried to clear her jaded energies, finding a reserve of force that promised ​help, striving to clear her wits for the final issue.

The Painted Rocks, El Pueblo del Silencio, thrust up from the sands in two walls of miraculous form and color, a ravine between escarpments of dazzling white, of pinkish grey, orange, salmon; capped here and there by dark red lava, cliffs caverned and indented by purple and mauve hollows where the shadows quivered in the fierce sunlight. They rose five hundred feet and more in great ledges piled with debris, where tons upon tons of burned clay had avalanched down, weathered and leavened by changing temperatures, lying like broken bricks upon the terraces of an American Babylon.

The great marvel of the City of Silence was the startling semblance of ruins, at the base of the cliffs, perched on the slopes and terraces. Here were arcades, castles, palaces, cathedrals, towers and domes, a bewildering fantasy of Oriental and Gothic forms, spires, gargoyles, pedestalled sphinxes, mutilated statues set in niches. There were walls, pierced with doors and windows, of a masonry that appeared to have defied Time, to be allied exactly with the fragments of burned clay heaped all about them.

Four hundred feet up on a grey, ribbed slope stood a citadel, a fortress of castellated ramparts, steep, buttressed, dreamy in the sun like a stronghold of Granada. Below, at half the height, were columns of stately symmetry. To the left, on the summit of the cliff, colossal, supremely dignified in a thousand-foot façade, ran a replica of the Acropolis.

They entered the ravine, treeless, waterless, though everywhere the place showed evidences of ​floods of torrents born of cloudbursts, the chief cause of the sculpturing and the smooth, clean lines of the mock buildings. There were Joshua trees, clumps of greasewood and silver sage. Banks were splotched with vivid bloom, like the scraping of a Futurist's palette; magenta Mariposa tulips, scarlet Indian Painter's-brush, baby-blue-eyes, wide cupped, staring innocently up at the masses of clay and gravelly sand and silica, bound with a cementing substance here and there that preserved the architectural shapes.

There was one apparent edifice that resembled a cathedral so exactly it seemed impossible that it had not been actually designed and raised by man, then ruined by Huns and the devastation softened by time. It showed even the suggestion of a stained-glass window, cracked across its front, mullioned, corbelled, colored in vivid hues. The entrance was twenty-five feet high, Gothic pointed, solidly blocked twelve feet in as if to preserve the shrine from further desecration. The mutilated images of saints appeared to be set in niches all about the portal. There was a structure like a heavily buttressed Spanish Mission, of white stone, with an entrance fissure that aped a ruined doorway and spaces where bells might have hung. Everywhere was inspiration for architect, despair for artist.

A side ravine opened to the left and they turned into it.

"Bonanza Canyon, pretty," announced Hollister. "A lucky guy turned up a six-hundred dollar nugget in this place one time. Me, I'm bringing in my ​own treasure," he added with a drunken chuckle.

It was a box-canyon, with lesser monuments, lower walls, pitted with caves. A tiny, crystal stream wandered through a grassy meadow, lost in the sands of the main canyon. The turf was starred with flowers. Hollister reined in the horses, dismounted, staggering towards her. He untied the leather thong from the horn and released her swollen wrists.

"If you'll promise not to run away from me, pretty, you can get a drink and wash up a bit in the creek. I'll have to tie you up again presently. I ain't worryin' about being followed and I'm dead on my feet for sleep. I'm going to put the horses in a hideout where I've got a cache of grub, an' then, after I've tucked you away in a spot I know, I'm goin' to turn in for a nap till supper time. Will you behave? I'll promise not to look. Not now."

She ignored his leer, she barely sensed anything he said save that he was going to give her a respite. She looked at him closely and marked the fact that sleep was threatening him with blinking eyes and wide yawns. He had been up all night and he was sodden with liquor. He might sleep for hours. Surely in that time she could devise something?

She nodded her parole and he let her go to the brook. The horses were already muzzling at the water until Hollister jerked them away, and they fell to grazing while she knelt and drank, swallowing painfully, intensely grateful for the cool water that gave her back some measure of strength. She rolled up her sleeves and turned down the collar of her ​waist, laving her wrists in the current, ridding herself of the desert dust as best she could, drying her skin with her handkerchief.

She rose and walked back to him. To attempt to run was useless. She was stiff from the saddle, weak from need of nourishment. Hollister was yawning prodigiously, fighting sleep. Her eyes wandered to the butt of his gun. If she could grab it—a shot at him—or herself?

He snickered.

"You're like a third-rate boxer, pretty. You telegraph what you aim to do. I ain't asleep yet. Hold out your hands. We'll let grub go till later. I ain't hungry myself. Unless you want a bite?"

She resigned herself to be rebound, standing with closed eyes, not to see his face. He tied her wrists, stooped and bound her ankles. Then he picked up her light weight in his arms, while she shuddered and turned away her face, fearing a caress. But he was too dull with lack of sleep to think of anything else. Stumbling a little, he bore her to the side hill, up a slope into a narrow vaulted place that had a floor of sand. He lifted her and set her up in a niche. Then he gagged her with her own handkerchief, tying his bandanna on top of it. The contact with the fabric, warm and moist from his neck, sickened her.

"I'll be back after a while, pretty," he mocked and she heard his footsteps gritting on the silt as he went out. It was dusky and cool in the cavern, the air was sweet and dry. And her bed was water-smoothed. He had bound her hands in front of ​her and she lay with some measure of comfort. In the absence of Hollister a measure of peace came to her. Over and over she revolved possible plans, rejecting them, fighting against despair. At last, from sheer exhaustion of mind and body, she relapsed into a coma that was half swoon, half sleep.

She awoke to the fragrance of coffee, of crisping bacon and the flicker of a fire. Wavering rays javelined up through the twilight of the cave towards a roof that she could not determine. She saw the entrance as a jagged line of orange light. Sunset had come.

The smell of the food tugged at her. Her mouth watered, her stomach clamored for sustenance. She had resolved already, nauseating as was the idea of accepting food prepared by Hollister, to share the meal he had mentioned. It would give her strength. He would have to unbind her. She might find some weapon, perhaps a loose stone, if she could not snatch his gun. She turned on her side, peering down.

Hollister was bending above a snapping fire set between stones. On it was a blackened coffee pot, bacon was frying in a pan. He held this by the handle and, as she gazed, drew back, rubbing his eyes, swearing at the smoke. Then he looked up and saw her by the glow of the fire.

"Supper's nigh ready, pretty," he said. "Kisses for dessert."

The smoke seemed to bother him again. He cursed it viciously and set down the pan, standing to empty his flask, throwing it into the back of the cave to ​smash and tinkle against the rock. As he stooped again for the pan she saw him fumble for it uncertainly, groping in the dirt. His fingers came in contact with the hot ashes and he withdrew them with a string of oaths.

He straightened up once more, his face showing drawn and puzzled, pressing his fingertips closely to his eyeballs, the wonder on his features changing to dismay, to fear. The girl held her breath. Something was happening.

A broken cry came from him. He staggered back, drawing his hands away slowly from his face, extending them gropingly at arms' length. He took uncertain steps forward and walked fairly into the fire, knocking over the coffee pot. His repeated cry, shrill, tremulous, held the swift horror of a wild thing that has stepped into a trap.

"God! I'm blind. Blind!"

He had sprung back from the hot ashes, losing his bearings, retreating out of the zone of firelight into the shadows, where she could see him only as a vague and wavering figure, coming back again into her view, his jaw fallen, his eyes crimsonly reflecting the fire, horror stamped on his face while her own heart leaped. Hollister was blind. His corrupt habits had defeated his more evil purposes. The crude, undistilled brew had paralyzed his optic nerves. Frenzied rage, coupled to fear, possessed him.

"Where are you?" he cried. "Damn you, slide out of that and come down to me. You can't get away. Come down!"

Some feel of draught from the entrance gave him ​its direction and he made his way uncertainly towards it. She saw him outlined against the dying light, his fingers making sure of the exit. Then he blocked it.

"Come down," he cried again. "Curse you for a jade, speak up!" His voice faltered, whimpered like a child in the dark. Even if she obeyed him, unless he was guided by the sound of her voice he could not find her. So she prayed and believed. Bound as her ankles were, she could not do more than wriggle from the niche to the floor and this she determined not to do. Her silence and his own impotence drove him to wild fury and he snatched out his gun.

"Think you've got the best of me, do you?" he yelled and fired, to right, to left. The spurts of fire stabbed the dusk, the bullets spent themselves against the walls. One entered the hollow where she flattened and she felt it drop, its energy baffled, upon her body. The narrow rift was filled with the acrid gases of the exploded powder. That mingled with a musty odor and, down from the top of the cave, fluttered a mass of bats, making for the entrance, flapping about Hollister, clinging to him like moths to a sweetened tree. He fought them off in a panic and, as they crowded down, fled from the cave.

She heard him stumble down the slope, thought that he fell, heard him cursing as he seemed to be trying to find his way back, and prayed that he might not do so. Nor did he, but shuffled off, direction lost.

​Silence came. The mouth of the cave darkened, the fire flared and died, while she crouched, hardly daring to breathe.

With the ending of the major suspense and dread the faculty of co-ordination came fully back to her. She breathed freely, despite the gag in her mouth, she thought clearly. She had tugged vainly through the afternoon at her bonds, made with leather thongs taken from Hollister's saddle, craftily moistened before using. They refused to loosen though she had chafed her wrists raw and lacerated her gums trying to bite through the seasoned stuff of rawhide. The thongs were so wrapped about her wrists that she could barely touch the knots in the handkerchiefs tied at the back of her neck, knotted so closely that her aching jaws seemed dislocated, and she could form no idea of which twist to work at. Often she had thought she only tightened the ligatures.

Now she made fresh effort. The horror of Hollister possibly finding his way back to the cave and finding her there was a vivid one. She could fancy him groping along the face of the cliffs until he found the opening. This and the steadily increasing chill of the night spurred her to fresh efforts. By an inspiration that had been lacking to her tired, scared brain, she crooked her legs, doubling them close to her slender body, squatting in the niche, head bowed to avoid its roof.

And she found that she could slip her bound hands down towards her feet over her knees, far enough to pluck at the ankle knots. They were stubborn. ​The shrunken leather was almost as tough as metal and the fastenings were both intricate and sunken into each other in the drying process. For hours, with intervals where she lay back exhausted, wet with the perspiration of her efforts that, drying, chilled her to the bone in the low temperature, she worked until her fingertips were sore and bleeding, her nails torn and broken.

Once a rumbling roar sounded overhead and her overstrung nerves quivered until she shook like a leaf in a gale, cowering, dreading the unknown. It increased, fragments leaped beyond the black entrance and she knew it for an avalanche of the crumbled clay, loosened by the reaction of the temperature after the heat of the day. It might have walled her in. She shivered to a lively sense of her still present weakness.

At last the leather yielded, loosened, looped and unlooped. Her ankles were free though her legs were numb to the knees, cramped in the muscles of her calf with spells of agony until she managed to chafe out the contractions. Half hysterically now, she attacked the gag and at last she got it clear of her jaws, slipped it down to her neck, and drew in deep breaths to her lungs. There had been no place on the water-washed rock against which she could rub the thongs with any hope of severing them. The hide was tougher than the sandrock. For the present her hands had to remain tied until she could discover some flinty edge. She swung her legs over the edge of the niche and then a sudden faintness swooped down upon her and she had to ​battle it off before she half slid, half dropped to the ground, landing clumsily on all fours in the sand.

She knew what was the chief matter. She needed food. The memory of the bacon was keen and she dragged herself about in the cold dark until she found the pan and then, one by one, the half-cooked strips, carrying them to her eager mouth. She found the coffee pot, managed to grip the handle and found it not quite empty. There was grit on the bacon, the little coffee left was thick with grounds, but she munched and swallowed all as manna from the wilderness, finding fresh strength running through her.

As she straightened up from her meal, she saw something that made her shrink back against the wall of the cave, horror tingling over her scalp and down her spine, seeming to bristle the soft hairs of her neck. Two greenly lambent eyes glowed in the dark entrance, she caught the inquisitive sniff of some wild beast that had scented the bacon, or her. Her hands were tied. She was utterly defenceless against claws and fangs. The eyes lowered and she imagined the head of a mountain lion sinking as the brute crouched for a spring. To move was to invite destruction. For seconds she waited in an agony of apprehension. The brute sniffed again. The thought came to her, welcome as a drawn sword, that lions did not sniff. They growled. This was a cowardly coyote, disturbed perhaps by the falling rockslide, seeking a refuge or tempted by the bacon with which she had forestalled it. If it scented her it was with doubt and fear. Even ​if it was a lion she could not stand the suspense. She summoned her bravery to moisten her parching throat and suddenly shouted. The echoes of the cave multiplied her voice and, instantly, the eyes vanished. She fancied that she caught the soft pad of retreating paws, the phantom of a slinking body. And then she saw that the fissure entrance was slowly revealing itself. Its black void became deep purple, then grey. Little by little it changed until she could see the opposing cliffs glowing rose and orange, harbingers of hope.

The light beckoned her. The cave was filled with terrors, past, overcome, but leaving the stamp of ordeal. Nor could she endure the bare thought of remaining in a cave where Hollister might find her, blind as he was. The memory of the spurts of fire from his gun, the spatter of bullets, the thud of the spent missile against the inner side of the niche, was too real. She went to the entrance, craning out, looking for Hollister. He might be hiding near. A sound, the scuffle of loosened shale, might give him what he was waiting for, some sense of her whereabouts and direction.

There was no man in sight. A rock-rabbit scudded across from a cranny and started nibbling at the herbage before the dew went off. A lizard flitted out from a crevice and halted, surveying her with doubtful beady eyes, while its jeweled throat palpitated in waves of green and crimson. High up, two buzzards were wheeling in opposing circles. She ventured out, careful of her balance under her handicap of bound hands. She thought of the horses ​but, even if she found them, she could not saddle nor manage them. And the place was seeped with the threat of Hollister. She must get away. Away.

She reached the turfy strip, treading lightly, kneeled by the brook and drank her fill. Then she got up and went on down to the main canyon, turning east towards the sunrise and the desert, towards the way by which she must return, looking here and there for some sharp-edged rock, fearful every moment of a shout from Hollister, a volley of shots.

She tried to remember what she had heard of such blindness. She believed it to be alcoholic, but she could not be sure how long it might last and she could conceive with what diabolical cunning Hollister might wait for his revenge after she had failed to answer him in the cave.

She was almost out of the canyon of the Painted Rocks when she found a large fragment of lava capping fallen from some pillar or pyramid that had succumbed to the weather. The stuff was flinty and she placed herself on one knee beside it, chafing the thongs at her wrists against its edges. It was clumsy work and the sides of her hands were soon bleeding. But it was effective and, finally, she was free. She could walk, could climb, could choose and hurl a stone for a weapon, at need. But she could not rid herself, overwrought as she was, of the suggestion that some one was following her, dogging her footsteps, hidden behind rock masses, coming ever closer. It drove her out of the City of Silence, out into the desert, plodding through the shifty sand.

CHAPTER XI

THE LIQUOR OF VASQUEZ

For the last few miles Sheridan and Jackson had traveled on their uttermost reserves. The mare, untroubled by the fears that beset the men of what they might find at their journey's end, was in far better shape, yet she was on her last legs, tormented by thirst, her swollen tongue lolling from the jaws from which Sheridan had removed the bit. She had shared with the men the last of their water. Jackson promised a stream and green feed in the canyon and it seemed as if the mare knew this and brisked up as the walls of the Painted Rocks were lit by the rising sun and loomed higher and closer. Neither of the men was recognizable. Their haggard faces were caked with the desert dust that had fallen away from the lines graved deeply overnight, down which the sweat had coursed. Their features were grey, grim masks of resolve. Sheridan, gripping the rifle, showed his set teeth between his blistered lips, lawful murder stamped upon his features.

They did not look at each other. What hope was left in the bottom of their souls was dregs. They feared to stir it up. There was no need for speech, since they knew, and dreaded, each the other's thoughts. Once Jackson glanced up to where two buzzards wheeled above the canyon but he averted ​his eyes swiftly. It was a common enough sight, but to him, at that stage of the game, they seemed an omen. They were slowly nearing the ground in long spirals, sure sign that there was something dead, or dying, within their vision.

And it was Sheridan who first saw the tracks in the sand, tracks of a small foot, plain and sharp enough though the signs showed plainly that the maker was tired. They had cut this trail, that caused him to halt Jackson with a hoarse croak of excitement, crossing their own at a sharp tangent.

"Headin' straight to'ards ranch. Alone."

Jackson's voice rasped this out in a throaty whisper. Their tongues were badly mushroomed, their mucuous membranes shrunken. Their eyes were gummed, bloodshot, scorched. But this sight gave them new life and energy. Sheridan followed the trail, Jackson close behind and the mare last of all, torn between her belief in water close by and duty to her master. So they found Mary Burrows resting in the shade of a cactus thicket, her face pillowed on her elbow—asleep.

The joy that surged into her face changed as she saw the grey mask of his face, the steely strips of his half-closed eyes as they searched her features. Here was a Sheridan she had not known, a man worn to the very core of purpose.

"It's all right, Peter," she said. "Nothing has—happened."

Relief showed through the dust and in the eyes that hardened again.

"Where is he?" It was all he could do to articulate ​the words, all she could do to understand them.

"I don't know, Peter. He's blind." Sheridan blinked at her uncertainly. Jackson croaked out a meaning "Ah!"

"Vasquez' booze," he said.

"Got to get him," managed Sheridan. He pointed to his throat. "Water?"

"In the canyon. Plenty of it. And Hollister has a cache somewhere. I think where he hid the horses last night. There is bacon—and coffee—I know." Jackson managed a cackle of approval. Sheridan whistled to the mare who limped up and he motioned for the girl to mount.

"No. She's lame. I'm not in bad shape. Now you've come."

She said it to both of them but it was meant for the man she had twice called Peter. And who had not forgotten it, despite his condition.

With due caution they entered the canyon and turned into the side ravine. Sheridan and Jackson drank and cleansed themselves of sand, then drank again in little swallows as if they were tasting nectar. The mare had had her share and fallen to nibbling grass.

"The man who says there's ennything better than water," announced Jackson presently, "is a plumb chump. The on'y trubble is it's too cheap an' plenty, an' it ain't been properly advertised. Me, I'm goin' to look for them hawsses. Incidentally, grub. Incidentally, Hollister."

Alone together, Mary Burrow outlined to Sheridan what had happened.

​"Thank God you are unharmed," he said. "I've come through the night searching for you with hell in my heart and my finger on my trigger, aching to kill him, to shoot him like a mad dog, every foot of the way. I should have given him no chance. I would have shot his heart out. And the score is not even yet. Or, if it is, I want to see it written."

She shuddered a little at the implacability of his voice.

"If he is hiding somewhere, in ambush?"

"There's no cover within pistol range of us. And Jackson can take care of himself. If the liquor has blinded him he won't recover for hours yet, if he ever does. But I mean to be sure before I leave this place. We'll eat first because we all need it. Then we'll find him."

"He's blind, Peter." Her tone puzzled him.

"Would you forgive him—after all he did, all he attempted?"

"God stopped him. God kept me safe. You thanked him for that just now. Hollister went out into the night, blind. You say he may not recover. Is that not punishment enough?"

Sheridan sat stern and silent. The girl studied his face. It was relentless.

"For my sake, Peter," she ventured. "It was I he meant to injure."

"And me, through you. It is for your sake that we shall find him. He shall have no chance to say he carried you off for a day or a night, and embellish his yarn to his own glory with his lying tongue. If I don't put him in his grave I'll make him stand on ​the brink of it and tell him how deep it is, and how always open for his reception."

Mary Burrows sighed a little at the new Sheridan. But it was not a sigh of reproach.

They sat silent for a while and then Jackson hailed them. He was bringing two horses with him, saddled.

"Found 'em tucked in a rift screened off by brush," he said. "They was thirsty, I reckon, an' w'en they heard me they whinnied or I might have passed 'em. Here's bacon, coffee an' canned tommatties."

He handed the provisions to the girl and winked at Sheridan.

"Lead one of the hawsses down to water, will you?" he asked.

"Well?" asked Sheridan when they were out of earshot. He knew Red's wink had not been casual.

"I found him," said Red. "You can take my word for it. He's dead an' he ain't pritty. Swollen up like a pizened woodchuck. Vasquez has saved the county money an' some good rope from bein' spiled. Vasquez' booze done the trick an' Vasquez has got to stop brewin' it. But I don't reckon it 'ud be a good idea to arrest him for this partickler occasion. From my p'int of view he ought to have a medal."

"You're right. Red. We don't want any inquiry, for her sake. The Mexicans won't talk. Hollister is known to have sold his place and stock. No one will grieve after him. We'll have to go light on what we tell the outfit, that's all, and ship Juanita away as soon as we can. Thora will have kept her quiet so far. Where was he?"

​"Twisted up in a pothole. Tryin' to git to the hawsses, I reckon. I spotted two buzzards as we rode in. They'd lighted an' was squattin' on a rock above him. That's what give me my tip where to look. I covered him up with rocks pritty thorough. Not that I was wishful to be his sexton, but, if ennything should ever break, it might be as well to be able to show there ain't no gunshot or other wounds on him. Sabe? So I staved off the coyotes an' buzzards. Saved their lives, mebbe. I wouldn't describe him as a healthy meal, even for them."

Sheridan walked back thoughtfully. His hate died slowly, the intense desire to kill that he had not dreamed himself capable of possessing.

"Red has found him," he answered the girl's mute question. "The score is settled. We'll eat and get out of this place."

Food and water had done wonders for the mare. Her limp, after cold applications and bandaging by Sheridan, was much less pronounced. She was easily able to bear the girl's light weight.

Red, cinching up the horse he was to ride, watched Sheridan as he set Mary Burrows in the saddle. There was a humorous twinkle to his eyes, a quirk to his mouth.

"She's leadin' him into the home corral," he said, half to himself, half to the mount. "An' he's followin', close an willin'. Hawse, you was too good a piece of flesh to ever git mixed up with that Hollister. I told you that, time I borrowed you for Quong. I'm goin' to ride you from now on, you ol' son-of-a-gun. You're adopted in place of my roan. If you ​behave I'll beg a piece of pie for you from Quong. He owes it to you, ennyway. An' you an' me 'll go out on front on the home trail, eyes to the front, ears to the front, all the way. Sabef? Three's a crowd, caballo."

Such was the order of their return. Once only Red turned off, with a gesture to Sheridan that the latter understood. Jackson rode off towards the range when they were opposite the little pass to Pioche, disappearing behind some cactus. There was a scramble and a sullen flight of buzzards in that direction which Mary, diverted by Sheridan, did not notice.

When Red joined them he brought back an extra saddle, his own, dug up from the sand, and took the lead once more. He said nothing about the dead Mexican, what was left of him. Only he began to sing just above his breath,

"Oh bury me not on the lone prair-ee,"
Where the coyotes wild will howl over me,
In a narrow grave just six by three;
Oh, bury me not on the lome prair-ee.

"Buzzards would fit in better than coyotes, caballo. I'll tell Thora what happened final to the hombre she jabbed in the jaw, some time when she's feelin' downhearted."

Towards the end of the afternoon he turned off at a long slant that cut the road to the Circle S. A mile from the ranch the outfit came galloping out to meet them. Pounding behind on the bony white horse was Thora, Juanita with her, impatiently restrained but minding her guardian.

​Thora rode up to Mary as the latter slid from her horse. Thora dismounted and wrapped the girl in her motherly arms.

"Oh, my lamb. My pritty," she cried.

The cowboys instinctively moved off. Sheridan answered a few of their questions and promised them fuller details at the ranch.

"The main thing is, she's safe and sound," he said. "Boys, for her sake, the less said about this affair the better."

"Seguro," assured Stoney. "You won't have to worry about that, Boss." Then he joined Jackson.

"Where you git the likely lookin' hawss, Red?"

"Swapped him for my roan. Roan's gone to horse-heaven. Hollister's gone t'other direction. No cards, no flowers, an' no regrets. Mum's the word. Sabe?"

"I don't have to be told twice," said the indignant Stoney.

Thora's face had lost its plump outline, it had traces of tears, it was drawn with anxiety.

"I haven't slept nor ate, not till I bane know about you," she declared to Mary.

"Thora! I was more selfish."

"You don't bane have a selfish bone in your body. I had to watch that Juanita. She bane a minx. She bane want to flirt with all the cowboys. An' they bane want to go after you but I gave them their orders. Now we bane go back home to the mountain, pretty, an' fix up all over again. I wish I bane there to kill that Hollister," she added simply. "I kill him slow an' hard."

​Sheridan gave his orders to Jackson.

"They'll be going home right after Thora gets something to eat, Red. We can't chance any gossip. And they'd rather be there. We'll give them the buckboard and you and I will ride with them. Tomorrow we'll start in to fix another gate. One that won't burn so easily. Though I don't think there will be any more trouble."

"Is Thora the only one goin' to eat?" demanded Red. "Me, I'm empty as a sucked aig. Which reminds me, I promised this hawss of mine a chunk of pie. I'll go see Quong."

CHAPTER XII

QUONG TALKS

It was late when Sheridan and Jackson got back from the Hidden Meadow, where, tired as they were, they helped to restore order and patch up the broken doors. And, on the way home. Red gratefully assented to Sheridan's proposition that they lay off on the morrow. Juanita was a burden to be shifted. It was necessary that she should stay at the Circle S overnight, and, much against her will, Sheridan had packed her off to bed and locked the door upon her. She was departing for Yuma and marriage. Any breath of scandal that might arise would pass off her person as mist from a mirror.

"You'll see her to the train, buy her ticket through to Yuma, and ride herd on her, Red. Better slip something to the conductor to see she doesn't miss connections."

Red assented without comment and the next day he escorted Juanita and carried out instructions to the letter, buying her pinto and saddle at a fair price for the ranch. Juanita, fortified with enough for an elaborate trousseau and some over for dowry, departed cheerfully. To the fate of Hollister she appeared absolutely indifferent. What love she might have ever held for him had been bullied, beaten out of her.

​"Hope you'll be happy," said Red gallantly, as the tram pulled out and Juanita leaned from the open window of the car.

"Eso no es impossible," she replied. "Dios bendiga a usted." (It is not impossible. God bless you.)

While Red was on his mission Sheridan sat in the ranch living room, reading a magazine on stock breeding. A tap came at the door and Quong entered to his invitation, suave, courteous. The Chinaman had a faculty of impressing his quality in a manner that was patent to even the cowboys of the outfit. Apart from his pots and pans his poise was that of a mandarin rather than a cook.i Sheridani instinctively rose.

"Want to see me, Quong? Have a chair?"

Quong took the seat with the grave dignity of an ambassador.

"Mr. Sheridan," he said, "I have heard some talk between you and others about the irrigation of Chico Mesa. Might I ask you to tell me the full details of the subject?"

Sheridan could not entirely veil his surprise.

"It may be as well if I tell you something of myself," went on the imperturbable Quong. "You have wondered why I, speaking as I do, came to Metzal. And you have not pressed the matter." He bowed in acknowledgment of the courtesy received, bending in his chair.

"My right name is Hi Luen. I am a mandarin of the third rank. In China I owned certain lands. These are irrigated, for rice. Not as you will irrigate. The fields are terraced from the hillsides. I am not ​altogether a layman in the matter of agriculture.

"I am not one of those who believe in a new order for China. I belong to the old party, not to the Republicans. I do not believe China ripe for a republic. It is easy for the young, who gather knowledge as a child picks up shells, to be ripe for change. It is easy for children to take apart a clock, not for them to build another from those works and start it running. Many countries have outlived kings. The many millions of my countrymen need a paternal direction. To set them loose would be the same as letting loose an orphan school.

"The world says, China sleeps. I say China waits. To wait, that is her strongest weapon. She has waited, secure in her philosophies and in her ability to acquire knowledge, while kingdoms have risen and fallen, since long before your ancestors stained themselves with woad and listened to the creeds of priests who cut mistletoe from the oak and worshiped it. The so-called conquering nations win with fire and sword. In China the most despised occupation is that of a soldier. The world will come to our way of thinking. We can wait. And we can absorb.

"But my leanings have made me many enemies. Even in San Francisco I was a marked man, if not proscribed. They made me cut off my queue, they watched me, they undermined me with false witness, they set traps for me, I went in danger of my life. At the last—never mind the details—I was forced to flee by stealth, leaving the wreck of my fortunes and my enterprises. And I came to Metzal. I shall ​never return to San Francisco. I shall go, perhaps to Siam, to Burmah, or an island I know in the South Seas where gold can build for me, with my brains as architect, a new principality. I came to Metzal for this gold."

Sheridan smoked on quietly, listening to every word. He did not think that Quong, or Hi Luen, used many idle ones. Nor was he disposed to consider even the connection of Metzal with gold a chimera. Quong might be mysterious, but he was not apt, in Sheridan's opinion, to be foolish. His statement was matter of fact, it carried conviction. And Sheridan resolved to let Quong see that he too could wait.

"You are identified with this gold, in more ways than one," went on Quong. "For one thing, I have discovered its whereabouts through you. For another, I do not believe it possible for me to secure it without your aid. Will you tell me about your project?"

Sheridan fancied that Quong was watching to see if he had made his point in impressing the other with the probability of his talk of gold. He was inclined to concede it. He liked the Chinaman's methods. To a certain extent he would copy them. The word gold in the mouths of most men is pronounced with an unction, is rolled upon the tongue, accompanied by a glitter of the eyes, an excitement more or less subdued. Quong showed nothing of this. Sheridan curbed his own curiosity. He rose and took some rolls of paper from his desk.

"As an engineer and a surveyor," he said, "I am ​only a layman. But I have read much on the subject and the irrigation of Chico Mesa is a simple matter compared with many similar projects. It is my idea to create a community corporation, with community capital. I find that a hard matter. If I can secure the capital I shall still offer water rights on the same basis. In a way I am a Socialist.

"Here is the mesa. He unrolled a drawing. "This is drawn up crudely. There are no geodetic surveys to work from. But it is to scale and covers the present holdings and a broad margin of land that can come under the ditch. Until an expert goes over the matter, as engineer and surveyor, I am not prepared to state exactly either the amount of water gallons that may be furnished nor the acreage it can irrigate for alfalfa.

"I purpose to turn Chico Mesa into a high-grade, ultimately a thorough-bred cattle-raising community, those cattle fed upon home-grown alfalfa. To turn the water into alfalfa, the alfalfa into beef. These are my approximate working figures, reduced to a minimum, of the water supply and acreage."

Quong scanned the memoranda with close interest while Sheridan produced another map.

"I am honored by your confidence," he said. Sheridan bowed. The atmosphere was almost formal. And he was certain that his confidence was not misplaced. He had guarded already against usurpation of the main factors, so far as he was able to do so within his modest expenditures.

"Here is Lake of the Woods," he went on, "a reservoir already provided, fed by springs. It has ​a present underground outlet which must be plugged. It is not far below the surface. I have filed on the acreage, taking in the lake and the necessary margins and leads. No dam needs to be built, no tunnel run. A suction pump and a simple siphon will bring the water to a natural watercourse in this box canyon. Thence it must be flumed, a covered flume to prevent evaporation, or a pipe, to the main canal or ditch. That will be dredged without trouble in our soft soil, along this line. Most of it runs through my property."

He changed back to the first map.

"Laterals will be run as the cattlemen come into the scheme. I have traced the doubtful as well as probable lines of the ditches. The soil contains alkaline salts that will readily be diffused and will prove, in moderation, excellent as fertilizers, though this soil, as my own patch proves, will grow alfalfa without stimulus for the present. But these salts, in too great quantity, will make the land sour. There is a slight dip to the mesa, running transversely. As the water goes on the salts will leach to the bottom lands. We must have a drainage system, a canal. It is marked in red, approximately.

"I believe we can put water on the land at five dollars an acre, with a maintenance charge of fifty cents, that may be taken out in labor. That will be the charge to those who come into the original plan. Others, and later comers and buyers of the relinquishments and such properties under the ditch that the company may be able to acquire, will pay a greater price. Their money will go for extensions, ​or repairs, upkeep. Ultimately we shall pay dividends. But the great dividend will be in the increased value of the land the moment the water goes on it, the profits from the growing of alfalfa and improvements of the herds. The company may purchase bulls, sell the bull increase at a nominal sum to its stockholders, holding a forfeit interest for non-use or wrongful use, not giving absolute bills of sale.

"We shall extend the branch of the railroad, build a larger depot, create a larger, more substantial town, start a bank. There is a spot where a gravity siding may be built here. We shall aim to sell to nearby markets—Yuma, Phoenix, Bisbee—sell at home. Our cattle now go thin to the train and bring lean prices at distant stockyards where they have to be fed. There is always a demand at home for the best beef at a good price. I aim not to profiteer in those prices. We may be able to force the buyers to purchase at our end of the line. We shall do away with middlemen, commissioners, brokers. We may, when we have established ourselves, furnish money for necessary mortgages on long payments, a demortization plan where the man who wants to make improvements will pay back his borrowed capital in his interest—not more than six per cent.

"Later, we shall do away with the siphon. We shall build a power house. The water will first charge dynamos and then go on for irrigation. There will be electric lights on Chico Mesa. Telephones. Other improvements will follow. And all from natural sources, developed by legitimate property owners, profits and improvements going ​to those living on the land. All this has to be verified by experts, but I have gone pretty thoroughly into the thing and I believe that my figures substantially stand."

Despite his endeavor to adopt the manner of Quong there was a flash to Sheridan's eye and a ring to his voice that told of his spirit being in his plan.

"Modern altruism," said Quong quietly. "But possible. You mean to love your neighbor as yourself, Mr. Sheridan. You would make them prosperous against their own wills. In China, if such a scheme were possible, I should order the land owners to come in and pocket most of the profit as a tribute to my own brains. But you set an example of true democracy."

"I expect certain considerations for my origination," said Sheridan. "But they will be modest ones. Brains are held too cheaply in many ways in America."

"In your pulpits, in your schools, and in general by the moneyed class. Will you assume control of your company?"

"If possible, until it is launched. I shall not insist. It may be necessary to control the voting stock. I shall exercise that power, for the general good, if I possess it. But it is my intention to make the direction plastic, with short terms for the directors and simple rules incorporated in the by-laws. Suits for water rights in time of scarcity may occur. There will be provision for the board to be chosen from all sections of the property under the ditch."

"And, with your mixed community, with the ​apparent impossibility of getting the American rancher to combine, you are having difficulty to find local capital?" asked Quong with a slightly sarcastic emphasis.

"I am."

"I should like to supply the necessary capital for you to make a start, such a start as would furnish an object lesson that these people you propose to enrich cannot ignore."

"As a partner?"

Quong raised his eyebrows.

"It would be a new and not popular partnership, I fancy. White and—yellow." Again the vein of sarcasm cropped out slightly. "No.

"Mr. Sheridan, I am greatly in your debt. You saved me at Metzal Depot once. Again at Coyote Springs. But for you I should be run out of the country. Unwittingly, but truly, you have supplied me with information it might have taken me months—of waiting—to secure. I need your help, the help of a man who is honorable. As you have trusted me, I trust you. I do not ask a partnership, I offer one. I have no fancy for your cattle breeding, nor for your country—without offence. I am triply grateful to you. Words cannot repay it. I have not offered them. I have waited. I have knowledge of buried riches. I do not seek to erase my debt with cold metal against the services you have rendered with a warm heart. You are still necessary to my success. I can offer you the opportunity to develop your project, your object lesson, your answer to Bolshevism."

​There was the ghost of a gleam in his eyes. But it was not offensive. His courtesy was perfect.

"Is it a mine? A lost mine?"

"The product of a mine. In bullion. Probably a little over two thousand pounds of bullion. Virgin gold. More than a ton of virgin gold."

"A ton of gold and more. The way gold is jumping, that should mean close to three quarters of a million!" Sheridan could not keep the excitement out of his voice. But Quong's even tones did not vary.

"Between six and seven hundred thousand dollars. I think there is fully that amount. Waiting to be taken away. Belonging to no one. Once the sole property of a man who was killed in defense of it, who has left no heirs, no claimants, though, I think, their claims would have been idle. Beside myself—and you—only a man close to death, living in an opium heaven far superior to the one he will ultimately inhabit, or has so been taught to believe, knows the secret.

"This shipment of gold"—Quong had dropped his tones so that he exactly gauged the hearing distance between him and Sheridan, bending eagerly forward—came from a placer mine that yielded up this shipment and failed. Petered out, is the expression. It is now buried in the heart of one of the cliffs in the Painted Rocks, El Pueblo del Silencio. In return for what you have done, for what you will do as the ostensible leader of the enterprise, which would not be tolerated in me, I offer you half of the proceeds. Three hundred odd thousand dollars to be turned into water, alfalfa, beef, altruism!

CHAPTER XIII

THE PURVEYOR OF DREAMS

"East and West—'and never the twain may meet,'" said Quong. "That is a bold saying. We shall see. But there are many things that seem differences between us that may not be so wide apart after all. When you of the West say China sleeps, you think of opium. You forget that China herself made the biggest effort to rid herself of the drug, that one of the modern races preferred profit to helping us do it.

"I sold opium, for a profit, in San Francisco. It was one of several of my means of revenue. I believe in opium, for the present generation. We, who furnished the base for Japan's boasted civilization, can take example from her. From her methods of colonization in Formosa. She has succeeded where other nations failed because she has regulated, restricted opium, instead of prohibiting it. No one who has not formed the habit is allowed to do so. Those who have become habituated to the drug may obtain it. Without it many would die. I have no doubt there are many old people in this country whose lives have been shortened for lack of their stimulating toddies. And I fancy it will take you a full generation to inhibit alcohol, to ensure Prohibition—if it is not revoked,

​"In my opium rooms, neither den nor cellar, I never permitted initiation into the habit of using opium. Novices were barred. Not from altruism, but because I believe in that regulation for my own people and it held with all comers. For I did not draw the color line. Any one who had the price, who regularly used opium, could come, under my rules, and enter their Nirvana. I was a purveyor of dreams, of comfort, of forgetfulness. Nor was the price always necessary nor forthcoming, though I am not a charitable man.

"One man came to me with a certain sum and wished to purchase what you might call an annuity. He was old. Seventy I know him to be. He might live a year, or twenty. If he lived more than two years, I, supplying him with the drug, would lose. Drug insurance you might call it. It is quite a common practice. He was a Mexican, wrinkled as a walnut, half man, half mummy. He ate little. Opiuan was his existence. With it, he dwelled half-way between the ultimate heaven and the earth, like Mahomet in his coffin. Without it, he was a haunted, miserable wretch. He had not the full faculty of his brain. He had suffered a blow in his youth that left some coagulation. In a rich man they would have called it cerebral thrombosis. In his walk of life it stamped him as partly crazy. Nutty Juan, they styled him. Juan Mendoza. He had partial paralysis. When he walked he sidled like a crab.

"But the opium cleared his brain, helped his coordination. Between his second and third pipes ​his brain was active, normal. I made several tests of this—for a purpose.

"I made a good investment in Juan Mendoza, though he has smoked many taels worth beyond what he paid for. He was humble. I, the purveyor of dreams, the dispenser of happiness, was his god. He feared I might repent of my bargain, cancel the contract, break the word of Hi Luen with an old Mexican peon. He offered, as he lived on, to make himself useful, to cook the stuff, to wait upon customers when he was not himself smoking. And, regarding me as his god, between his second and third pipes he told me his secret. Retold it, never varying. As far as could be, I checked it, as I checked the other things he told me under the same conditions. I did it very carefully and I accept his tale.

"In the early period of your Civil War this territory was once occupied by the Secessionists. They were helped by the Mexicans living here. A company from California drove them out."

Sheridan nodded, remembering Mary Burrows' tale.

"The Mexicans scattered into the hills. They were outlaws. And they lived as such, guerillas, preying on any one and anything they could get the better of. They turned highwaymen, joining in bands under different chiefs.

"The mine I have spoken of lay to the east, in the Sawtooth foothills. It was a placer proposition, a hill of hardened gravel. Doubtless its owner, a man named Frederick Kenyon, thought it all gold-bearing. He worked it as if he thought so. He built ​a furnace to melt down his gold. I imagine he shoveled it, panned it, amalgamated it with quicksilver. From what Juan said there was no force of water for hydraulic mining. Nowadays they would use a steam shovel. But that does not matter. Kenyon found only one portion of his hill was gold-bearing, the rest valueless conglomerate. He stored up the gold for shipment and, when he found he had come to the end of his treasure, he prepared to ship it to Pioche, in wagons, guarded—but not guarded heavily enough. They made for Pioche Gap, where the railroad now runs. And a Mexican band, hiding in ambush, swooped down upon the treasure train. In that band was Juan Mendoza, fifteen or so years of age, a man grown by Mexican standards, old enough to aim and fire a rifle.

"They killed Kenyon. They shot down the guards before many of them knew what had happened, firing from the cliffs. And they carried off the gold, westward, to their hiding place. Juan described it to me as a canyon rising from the desert, with painted cliffs that were shaped like churches. He regarded it with superstitious awe. To him it was sacrilege to bring stolen gold, won by murder, to such a place. He believed the rock forms were actual ruins, that they would be cursed for their action. Remember this superstition of his.

"But the others, older, more callous, laughed at him. There was water there and feed for their horses, many caves in which to hide and, if necessary, defend themselves. They had provisions stored there. There were women. It was their fortress. ​They knew the secret of the communicating caves. And to this place, the City of Silence, as they named it, they brought their loot. Juan was with the rearguard. He was a good shot, it seems. But he had a poor horse and it had been wounded by a stray bullet. So he fell behind the rest in their eagerness, as they approached their stronghold and knew they were not followed. Indeed the mesa was sparsely settled then.

"It was with infinite detail that Juan Mendoza told me this story, with detail never contradicted. An interesting, colorful story, Mr. Sheridan, but I think that, so far, I have outlined sufficiently."

He had. Sheridan had seen a vision of the treasure wagons setting out, the over-confident guardians, the jesting, wages to be paid, drinks and gambling to be had in Pioche, their carelessness as they neared the pass. Then shots, from unseen marksmen. Falling men, stricken horses. The rush of the bandits, the dead left for the coyotes and the buzzards. He had glimpsed the robber stronghold with its women, its lawlessness. Quong was a conjuror of words, his style of speech, almost a monotone, had flawless technique in the art of story telling. Sheridan saw, too, Juan Mendoza, sidling like a crab among the patrons of the opium rooms, worshiping Quong, his god, who gave him surcease, telling him his secret.

"The entrance to their system of caves," went on Quong, "was at the end of a wide fissure, a sort of open tunnel close to a mock structure of white rock resembling a Spanish Mission. It was named, I ​believe, La Capilla Blanca, the White Chapel. That title may endure. At any rate, it is the only formation of white rock that has that appearance, and the open tunnel was some fifty feet to the west of it. You may have noticed it?"

"I have a vague recollection of it," said Sheridan. "More than a vague one, as I think. The name should help."

"The wagons entered this ravine, the men whooping, the rearguard, save Juan on his lame horse, caught up with it, the women coming out of the mouth of the first cave.

"Much of these cliffs is formed of clay. It burns and hardens, it weathers, leaches in the heavy rains that break there, breaks off by various causes, lowered temperature at nightfall, one of them, and great masses that look like broken bricks come charging down the cliffs. It was well after sunset when they reached the place. There was a moon, and fires leaping within the cave mouth. No doubt it was cold.

"At all events, when the wagons and their escort were well within this open tunnel, Juan, arriving at its opening, turned in, heard a gathering sound as of thunder, and saw, rushing in clouds of dust, sweeping down from the cliffs, tons of this weathered clay. It rushed, swift as water, into the tunnel. It buried the men and the wagons, smothering their shrieks, trapping them, burying them deep, with the women waiting in the caves.

"Juan's wounded horse, stiffened with fright, balked and Juan flung himself from the saddle, but ​not too soon, for he was caught in the skirts of that earthy avalanche. He was struck upon the head. For him the horror ended, swiftly as the cries of the others had been silenced.

"He came to consciousness buried waist deep, bruised, half crazed, the clot forming in the cortex of his brain. One idea crystallized. It was the vengeance of God. Venganza de Dios. They had desecrated the place with the blood of innocent men. He alone was spared. Porque?

"I do not think he answered that question easily, or for a long time. But its constant interrogation imbued him with another fixed idea. He must not speak of this. Not only would he be captured, but he would go unshriven to his grave. He was ignorant, superstitious, and there was the thrombosis, the coagulation in his none-too-well-developed brain.

"He fought himself free like a wild thing. His horse was gone and he wandered out into the desert. After a long while he crawled to a white man's ranch. It was far away. They asked him no questions. He was in no condition to answer and terror held him dumb after they had tended him. There is no terror like that of the Unknown. Venganza de Dios. It drove him away when they offered him a job as herder. He fled, far to the west. His wanderings, like those of the accursed Jew, have no place here, save as I used them to check his narrative. But he held his secret until I, his god, appeared and gave him opium when he could no longer deny it. Or so I believe. We can easily find the place, can see if that buried rift has been disturbed. If not, over ​a quarter of a million dollars awaits each of us, if you accept my proposition."

Sheridan sat silent, silent as Quong. Yet both men looked beyond the gold and saw visions. Quong, of a principality he would establish in the far East, ease and command. Sheridan, Chico Mesa green with crops, with the flash of water squaring up the fields, of well-fed, well-bred cattle, prosperity, progress in a land where men were, or should be equal.

"Well?"

Sheridan rose and put out his hand.

"I accept, in the name of Altruism," he said. Quong joined the clasp, a leaping, vanishing spark of humor in his secretive eyes.

There was the sound of a rider calling his horse to a halt outside, the clink of spurs, the tread of feet, Jackson coming along the verandah to the outer door. Sheridan returned to Circle S as one set down from a magic carpet.

"We will discuss plans later, Quong," he said. Subtly Hi Luen changed to Quong Li, the cook, consulting the master of the ranch. As Jackson flung open the door he vanished through the inner one.

"She's done gone," announced Jackson. "Bill Grey, who rides herd on the train, will see her off. She's gone now. I waited over to see about my new saddle. Nothin' stirrin' about Hollister. But here's what the operator shouted for me to come an' git as I was lopin' past the depot on my way home. Telegram."

​Sheridan opened the yellow envelope, read its contents aloud.

"Voy a Yuma las guintas. Pedro en Pioche. Sea Vd bien prudente. A dios. Gracias. Juanita."

"Leavin' for Yuma at five o'clock. Pedro in Pioche. Look out. God bless you, thank you an' goodbye," interpreted Jackson. "Short an' concise, like the tail of a docked hawss. Well, I ain't worryin' none about Pedro. Me, I'm goin' to find out what Quong's got for supper."

Sheridan, too, dismissed Pedro's dangerous possibilities as he rolled up his maps and drawings that, at last, began to suggest more than the drafting of a dream.

CHAPTER XIV

TREASURE

Sheridan fancied that the dwellers on Ghost Mountain would prefer to be left alone for a few days in which to rehabilitate themselves and their household affairs. But he had Stoney start on a new gate, not so much that he believed it a necessity as that it gave him opportunity to express the protective instinct he felt towards Mary Burrows. Nor did he overlook the pleasant reward of her thanks, when she should find the barrier in place. He intended to send it over by Jackson and a gang, leaving it as a surprise. This time he covered the face and edges of the gate and the frame with green hides, well studded, as some protection against fire. Later this might be shielded by thin metal.

His feelings for Mary Burrows had not yet crystallized into self-acknowledgment of love, a resolution to announce that love to her. Thora had given him a close-up view of the port towards which he had been pleasantly drifting ever since he had met the Girl of Ghost Mountain, when, on the meeting with Juanita, she had said, "You love her, you will ride and fight for her." But that had cropped out under stress and so he had taken it. Events moved too swiftly after that for thoughts of love making. He had forged across the desert with fear for her ​and murder for Holiister eating his heart. Then had come the relief, a look in her eyes, a word or two, a softening of her independence that he thought of in retrospect.

But the present and immediate future claimed him. His brain dominated his heart, even if the pair worked in partnership. He was the type to whom life holds two prizes, success and love. Hitherto he had seen only the first trophy. Even as he glimpsed the second and noted its bright glint of promise, his pride forbade love the right of way until success seemed assured. Manlike, he wanted to go to the woman of his choice with more than hopes and theories. Then—both heart and brain hinted that it might be a wonderful thing to work out the details of success with Mary Burrows. Yet, while he appreciated her intelligent enthusiasm in his project, her subscription to his views of life, the brave spirit that had brought her out to the West, he was human enough, conscious of an underlying fount of passion enough, to want his wooing unmixed with other affairs. To which, he fancied, the Girl of Ghost Mountain would respond in kind. But these thoughts he set aside, as one shuts the door on a bright, beckoning, luring day when there is work to be done inside.

He had a talk or two with Quong and his confidence in the buried treasure grew. It was not the gold, but what could be done with it. It seemed so much the magic touch needed for his project that his will ran to meet it. And he flung himself into the details of opening up the treasure house.

​He took counsel with Jackson. The latter would have to come into the scheme in any event. Sheridan could not handle the affair alone, any more than could Quong. With Quong, there was enough of the Hollister element left in Metzal to form a lawless rush to this unclaimed trove if any word crept out concerning it. The whole countryside would be apt to dispute a Chinaman's claim to treasure that had been lying hidden in their midst for seventy years. The Painted Rocks were out of the way, but the uncovering could not be done without men and a certain amount of paraphernalia. The slide of broken clay fragments would have been cemented by the rains.

Sheridan meant to give Jackson a substantial share in the gold—if they got it. Red was as much friend as foreman and there was an additional bond between the two in their visits to Ghost Mountain. The outfit of the Circle S would also have a stake in the find, those who helped as laborers as well as those who stayed behind at the ranch. The main thing was to. avoid all gossip, as with the Hollister affair.

"The Chink," said Red, "spins a mighty good yarn. Sounds fine an' fairly reasonable. On'y—"

"Only what?"

"I ain't aimin' to chuck no cold water on this expedition. On'y this. I've lived west all my life. I've heard a power of yarns of lost treasure—an' I never see one of them come true. Quong's got a level head an' I figger his blood ain't easy het up, but I've seen better men than him go loco over a ​gold prospect. The yeller stuff sure dazzles the eyesight an' fogs the understandin'. You goin' ahead?"

"I'm grub-staking the prospect to the extent of spending a little money, time and work on the prospect, Red. I'll survive the shock if it fails to pan out. I'm going to Pioche in the morning to buy some supplies. I imagine that what we really need is a steam-shovel, but that means an engineer and talk. We'll try and make dynamite take its place. Know anything about using it?"

"Some. You'll likely find that stuff too light to git much kick out of yore explosive. You'll be apt to need lights to work with as you tunnel in. We got picks an' shovels enough on the ranch. Goin' to take along some of the boys? An' me?"

"Yes. And Quong. We'll call it a picnic, with Quong as cook. I'd let the girls into it if it wasn't likely to take a day or two. But I don't want to buy any dynamite or other, unusual supplies in Metzal. And there are one or two other things I want to attend to in Pioche. After I go, you'll see Stoney started off with the gate. I'll be back by night. Have any of the boys heard talk in Metzal about Hollister? I heard two of them riding back late last night."

"Jim Lund an' Stoney. No. Metzal's forgot Hollister. An' our outfit's kep' mum as a stuffed toad. They're sure a good bunch of hombres. They'd go a long ways for you, Sheridan. Hollister, he warn't none too well liked. Too much of a bully, They figger him gone west, or south, Mexicali way, ​like he often spoke of doin'. Even if they knowed he was dead an' buried there wouldn't be any rash to subscribe for a wreath. Or even for a doublecross, which u'd be the right decoration."

"Fine, Red. I'll want the boys to keep on being mum. I'm going to give them all a slice of the melon if we cut it."

"They'll do it, 'thout the melon. The on'y one who's any ways dissatisfied is young Jim Lund. He got teased some about Pedro clippin' him over the head the night they came for Quong. Boys kidded him about not gittin' his gun into action. He's on'y a kid himself and he thinks he's got to git Pedro 'fore he can hold up his head an' tell 'em to go to hell about it. Sabe? He's got a tip that Pedro's in Pioche an' he's bin pesterin' me for a day off. It's comin' to him all right, but I figger that he'll use it to go to Pioche an' roundin' up Spigotty Town till he finds Pedro. Then ther'll be shootin,' an' no matter who gits hurt, there'll be talk an' mebbe an arrest. Newspaper stuff. They're gittin' mighty fussy about shootin' in Pioche these days. An' the newspaper likes to git somethin' on Metzal an' play it up. Better you talk to Jim. I'll send him in to you."

"All right. Red. Thanks. Anything you want me to bring back from Pioche? Doughnuts?"

Red grinned.

"I'd like some of Thora's. You aimin' to call up the mountain soon?"

"Day after I get back. I'll ask for their mail and bring back some magazines. Candy for you?"

​"Not exactly for me, though I'll dip into the box after Thora opens it."

He went out and presently Jim Lund came in. He was a slim, tall, handsome youth, well knit, a good rider, usually full of good spirits but now there was a sulky look in his eyes.

"Jim," said Sheridan, "I hear you want to go to Pioche. I can't stop you. I'm going there myself tomorrow. Want to go along?"

"Why—I did aim to go—but I dunno as my saddle's ready. I'm havin' me a saddle made there at Castillo's, Boss. I ain't got all the cash for it till next pay day."

"You can draw ahead whenever you like, Jim. You know that. Pedro's in Pioche. Jim, you've got a fixed idea you've got to wipe out the advantage Pedro ot of you that night. And you imagine it's got to be wiped out by spilling his blood. How about it? Man and man?"

Lund felt the scar at the back of his head.

"Man an' man," he said, "I reckon you'd feel the same way over it. Thet greaser's got the laff on me an' I aim to shoot that laff off'n his face first time I meet up with him."

"If you go gunning for him, Jim, there'll be murder one way or another. I don't want you killed. I don't want you to dodge Pedro. But I don't want you to pick a quarrel with him. I've got a score against Pedro myself. Yours came first, I'll admit that. I'm holding mine back on account of Miss Burrows. I want this Painted Rocks affair to die down. A woman's reputation is as safe in ​your hands Jim, as it is in mine. But perhaps you haven't thought of it just in that light. I wish you would. And there's something else on foot, that you'll be in on, that makes me want to keep attention from the Circle S outfit for a bit. It'll pay you to hold off, Jim, and it'll be a favor to me. How about it?"

Jim was fiddling with the rim of his sombrero. He put it on his head and looked Sheridan squarely in the eyes.

"I'd like my saddle," he said. "I don't wish to be kep' away from Pioche because that Greaser is pasearin' round. But if I meet him, which ain't over likely, I won't start nothin'. Is that good enough? If he draws I'll try to beat him to it. Otherwise I do nothin', until either you or the lady gives me the word. An' then," he added with boyish bravado, tapping his gun, 'watch my smoke.'"

Sheridan had a busy day in Pioche, the County Seat. He got his dynamite, with caps and fuses, and had it boxed to take back with him in a package that would not invite comment. Dynamite was used for well-digging, as well as the sporadic mining still carried on in the county. But he preferred over-caution. Jackson was to meet him with the buck-board in the evening.

He found in Pioche's only second-hand store some kerosene lamps that had been sold by a one-horse circus that had come to an end at Pioche. They consisted of cone containers from which the kerosene ran down to open burners, giving out a good flare. Six of these he purchased at a low price. He bought six electric torches with extra batteries, ​and half a dozen steel crowbars, with a set of drills, at another store.

He dropped into the office of the newspaper and chatted with the editor. The newspaperman was a progressive and Sheridan had talked with him before concerning irrigation and alfalfa possibilities, without mentioning Lake of the Wood or the details of his project.

There was talk of a new tourist hotel, he told Sheridan, and waxed eloquent over Pioche's climate and attractions. Some such lead Sheridan had hoped for.

"Isn't there a show-place somewhere round here called the Painted Rocks, or, in Mexican, the City of Silence?" he asked. "Something like the Garden of the Gods at Manitou, in Colorado? Rocks that look like castles and churches? Seems to me I heard about such a place, or read of it, but I've been pretty busy against picnics." Sheridan watched the editor closely under cover of his cigar smoke. If there had been any whisper of the affair with Hollister it should leak out now. But that fear dissolved.

"Garden of the Gods? Huh!" grunted the newspaperman disdainfully. "The City of Silence is a shout to a whisper besides that. I wrote it up one time, five years ago. You want to see it, Sheridan, to believe it. I had a photographer along and I got an article in a magazine about it. The World at Large. Ever read it?"

"No. I'd like to." The editor began to fish among some shelves.

"Some show place to boast about. All sorts of ​legends and superstitions about it. Man found a six-hundred dollar nugget in it once. Must have been brought down in a wash-out. Prospecting never developed anything else. Bandits there in the old days. But it's away to hell and gone. Trail runs over desert, and it's your side of the range. Metzal attraction. Ah, here it is. Take it along and send it back some time."

Sheridan pocketed the copy of The World at Large gratefully, and handed the editor another cigar He chatted for a little while and left.

In the Cactus Restaurant, where he got his lunch, he eagerly read the somewhat flamboyant article and scanned the pictures. The flat, gray reproductions did scant justice to the originals but they showed him what he wanted in confirmation of Quong's story from Juan Mendoza, and they identified the White Chapel.

Some of the captions had been manufactured by the editor, titles and all, he fancied; such as The Pillars of Hercules, The Castle in Spain, The Acropolis, but others had their original Spanish names—El Templo Cerrada (The Closed Cathedral) and La Capilla Blanca (The White Chapel.) The faint image stamped on his mental retina from the trip revived and he studied the halftone closely. It did not take in the filled-up rift to the west, but it showed debris that had landslid and halted on the tower and roof of the water-carven edifice. In the latter appeared the dark mouth of an entrance. Sheridan put the magazine back in his pocket well satisfied.

​He ran across the Sheriff of the County on the street and the official hailed and stopped him.

"Hear they're makin' rotgut booze over Metzal way, Sheridan," he said. "Federal man's here, stirring me up about it. Though I 'low it's his bizness. But, if they do bootleg, it ought to be decent stuff, not corked lightnin'. Know enny thing of it? You aim to run a sober ranch, I reckon."

Things were breaking well, thought Sheridan. The idea of Vasquez going on unpunished had worried him.

"If you can catch him with the goods," he said, "the man you want to get after is Vasquez. He has a shack just west of Metzal, and they tell me he brews poison. I never sampled it. But—"

"I've heard of the gent," replied the sheriff. "Thanks for the tip. A rattlesnake buzzes afore he pizens you, but this Vasquez charges you for killin' you, I reckon. There'll be action his way afore long."

Sheridan's last errand was with the County Commissioner of Deeds. He had done business with him before but his present mission was not on his own account. He did not imagine that Mary Burrows' grandfather had troubled to file on the Hidden Homestead. Probably no one suspected the existence of such a charming bowl of the mountains, but some one might discover it sooner or later, and covet it. The girls might be dispossessed, at the best, put to the cost and vexation of a suit.

He liked the Commissioner, as he liked many men in Pioche. It was a go-ahead town, with its ​locale on the main line, and it stood for law and order and improvement. He hoped to make Metzal a better place than Pioche some day, but he approved of Pioche and its general public spirit. This official was a square man, Sheridan had found out in previous dealings. He went beyond his duties in kindly, uncharged-for advice. Through him Sheridan had gained control of Lake of the Woods.

"Pioche's booming, sir," said the man genially. "Big tourist hotel coming. Palatial. Up to date. Two hundred rooms and three hundred baths, or something like that. You want to get busy at your lake and build something of the sort there, on a smaller scale, to catch the overflow."

"I'm a rancher," smiled Sheridan. "I've come here in the interests of a friend of mine. I want to help them, or rather get you to help them prove up on their property. Two women. It may go in both their names or in one. Miss Burrows has a good moral title. I want to see it legal," and he gave the Commissioner a short account of the Ghost Mountain venture.

"I've heard of the ladies. Seen them, in point of fact," the other answered. "Glad to serve them. Tell them to come right in and see me, Sheridan. And here's the papers for them to fill in. Glad to see you at any time. Goodby." If he raised eyebrows at Sheridan's interest in Mary Burrows, he did not do so until the rancher had gone.

Pioche, like many another city, had spent more time over the selection of its town site than that of its depot. The station and freight yards were ​fringed by the shacks of Spigotty Town, where the strings of red peppers, the rebosos of the Mexican women and the bright serapes of the men, could not offset the squalidness of the adobe huts, lack of sanitation, dirty, naked children tumbling in the sun, flea-harassed curs and smells almost to be seen, like unhealthy fogs.

Sheridan gathered his packages together, which had been sent down to the parcel room, and placed them on the platform ready for the almost-due train. Three Mexicans, in tight trousers belted with bright soiled sashes over gay shirts sadly in need of cleansing, wearing sombreros heavy with tarnished lace that gave them the appearance of constantly performing a balancing trick, raced along the opposite side of the tracks on sorry-looking but fast ponies. The men were yelling, evidently half drunk with pulque, or meseale.

They caught sight of Sheridan looking at them from the platform. The foremost reined in his mount viciously with the cruel curb and tinned in his saddle. The others ploughed along beside him, coming to a halt. The man who turned was Pedro, his dark face twitching with a hate his drunkenness both urged him to express and at the same time checked. He spat in Sheridan's direction, he sputtered and he clutched at the holster attached to the belt beneath his sash. One of his companions, more sober or more cautious, clapped his hand above Pedro's, jabbering at him excitedly.

The whistle of the train sounded and it appeared, entering the freight yards. Pedro drew himself up ​in his saddle and, charging the saying with venom, shouted three words at Sheridan:

"Hasta luego, senor," (Before long!)

Sheridan took no notice of the implied threat, surveying Pedro, to his exasperation, as if he had been part of the view.

Engine and cars shut off the group and Sheridan got aboard. By the time he had settled himself at the window the three had spurred off.

"It is lucky for you that I wasn't Jim Lund," thought Sheridan. "Jim would have been apt to construe that as 'starting something.' But I don't think you have, much enterprise except in your cups." He was glad, however, to know that the gate was being fixed in the tunnel that afternoon. Jackson, driving him home with his packages, told him that the job was completed.

"Didn't forgit the candy?" asked Red anxiously.

"No. Nor some magazines. Got one you'll like to read, Red. Tomorrow we'll go calling."

Sheridan had no hesitation about telling Mary Burrows and Thora the story of Juan Mendoza. Quong had given him full discretionary powers and he knew that here, if any place, confidence would not be abused but taken as a manifest of friendship.

He told the story much as Quong had done and the audience listened with fascinated, flattering interest in both the tale and its teller.

"I am so glad," said Mary Burrows. "I can't tell you how glad I am. I am sure it will turn out true, it must turn out true. It means everything to you."

​"Not quite everything," said Sheridan. The words slipped out. He had not meant to express himself. Mary Burrows had greeted him cordially enough but there was a certain air of constraint about her that Thora shared. Red had sensed it and looked at Sheridan in puzzled fashion more than once.

It had first shown itself after the thanks about the gate, which the girls had only noticed that morning.

"As long as we are going to stay here, it will make us—me at least—feel more secure," said Mary. "When the steed is stolen—and recovered—it is as well to put a lock on the door, I suppose." Sheridan had not noticed any especial emphasis in her wording. He had been too full of his news, anxious to see how she would respond to the promise it held for his project. Now the speech recurred to him with a new meaning.

"You said, 'as long as we are going to stay here,'" he said. "Are you getting tired of the Hidden Homestead and the West?"

"It is not that," she answered eagerly. "I am not tired. I feel at home here now. Just at first the mountains seemed to shrug their shoulders at me but now they are friendly."

He thought her still jarred from her experience with Hollister. He could not judge of the effect that might have upon her sensitiveness. It had been a horrible experience, borne by her so bravely that he had treated it too lightly, as one that would pass like the shadow of a cloud. And he did not want to ​broach the subject. Instead he went on to tell what he had planned with the Commissioner.

"You have only to sign these papers and take them to him the next time you go to Pioche," he said. "There are some small fees and then you will have your deed recorded and feel you own the place. I imagine records in your grandfather's day were few and far between. A man held his own by the force of his good right hand." He was conscious of her looking at him, curiously, anxiously. Thora had gone out on the verandah with Jackson. The girl gazed lovingly about the room.

"Dear grandad," she said. "I shall feel like a deserter, if I go."

"If you go?" Sheridan realized, with swift enlightenment, the stress he put into his exclamation. With her words the glamor of Quong's gold had departed, the glory of his project faded, the desire to aid his fellow man and reclaim the land died utterly. He knew that, without this slimsy lady, this Girl of Ghost Mountain, sitting opposite to him, her face a cameo in the light of the lamp, everything else was as dust and ashes. She looked swiftly at his face and averted hers.

"You brought me up a letter this afternoon," she said. "I told you we had no correspondents. I did not expect this one. It brings another fairy tale, like yours of the buried gold. I read it while you shot the birds for supper. Will you read it now?"

She took it from the bosom of her gown and handed it to him. He took it with a wondering dislike. It ​was a typewritten communication from a firm of lawyers in Boston. He had casually noted the forwarding addresses on the envelope when they had given it to him at the postoffice in Pioche. At first he did not fully comprehend the words, so keen was his sense of the girl sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, her face a little pale, her eyes downcast. He reread it and handed it back.

"I congratulate you," he said. "A hundred thousand dollars is not to be despised." Despite himself, he could neither control his tone to firmness nor keep from it a certain harshness. Man fashion, he was eminently sorry for himself and he could not avoid the bitterness. For the air castles he had been building—oh, he had been building them—had shifted on their unstable foundations, dissolved like the mocking mirages of the desert, before he knew their full design. He had been a conceited fool—sure of her all along—thinking he had only to reach out and pluck the flower of her—when he was ready, when, in his pride, he could do so with gifts to offer.

And now he was too late. She was beyond his reach. Even if the gold was found and, in sudden revulsion, he lost all hope in it, she would go back, taking with her the furnishings that, after all, did not belong in this log house, back to where she belonged, to smile later at the little burst of pioneer spirit that had possessed her.

Her voice broke in on his sour musing.

"I really never knew her. I doubt if she saw me more than once or twice. She was a distant relative, ​and very eccentric and quite wealthy. I was named after her. She was my godmother. She gave me that cup for the christening gift, the one on the highboy. And then we quite lost sight of her. I never dreamed of such a thing."

"And now, you will go back?" Sheridan rose, tall above her, the little slimsy lady whom his heart desired.

"I may have to, I suppose. I—I don't know." She got up from her chair as her face flushed and she gave Sheridan one glance that puzzled him for many an hour. It almost seemed appealing. Then she called to Thora to come in and give them some music.

Thora entered with a swift, comprehensive look towards Mary that the other avoided. Thora seemed puzzled, heavy with the news that she had most evidently imparted to Red, for he entered the room with an appearance that was hangdog, that irresistibly suggested a great dog bidden to stay home while his mistress went on a journey. Thora's mood affected her music. It was all minors. For the last, she gave them something, new to them, playing it with her eyes boring at Mary's shaded face, screened by her hand. It was the lullaby with which she played her to sleep.

They left soon after that. Red was glum and mounted first after a perfunctory "Buenos noches." Thora went inside. Mary gave her hand to Sheridan.

"I am not going until after I know how you come out with your treasure trove," she said. And Sheridan groped for the meaning he thought ​underlay her words. "And, in any case," she went on, with an assumption of the lightness that had been missing from her voice all evening, "I shall record the Hidden Homestead."

"That helps," Sheridan answered. "Goodnight." But he rode off with the feeling that a riddle had been propounded to him that he could not answer because he did not understand its terms.

Jackson did not sing on the way they passed in silence until they reached Pioche Pass.

"Thora told you, I suppose," Sheridan then said.

"Yep, she told me. She aims to trail along. Don't it beat hell? Don't it just plumb beat hell to a cinder? Here we go ridin' up all lit up like two church winders with good news. She comes back with the same stuff, an' the evenin's sp'iled. If you'd had enny luck, Pete Sheridan, you'd have lost that letter. They was both happy here as steers in clover, might have bin happier. What in Sam Hill does she want to go back East for?"

"For what she can't get here, Red. Society of her kind, men who are of a different world than ours, gowns, jewels, life!"

"Life! If it wasn't for you, her life wouldn't amount to much just now. She don't want truck with the East. She belongs West. Same as Thora. They both fit. An' I'm tellin' you somethin' else, Pete, a woman belongs where her man is, unless she's tied up to another woman, like Thora is, an' that other woman don't know her own mind. Easterners, gowns, jewels! Shucks."

Sheridan's thoughts echoed Red's to some measure. ​But he had his riddles to figure out. Why would she stay until she knew how the gold hunt came out? Just for friendly interest, and suiting her own convenience or feminine curiosity? If—and his heart leaped—they found the gold, her fortune would set no barrier between them. Would she accept him on equal terms and leave him if he was still a plodding rancher, with a dream he could not turn to reality? If so, he had misjudged her. He did misjudge her. And he mentally apologized. If she went, it was because she did not love him, did not want to share his life.

But he made up his mind to find the gold, if it was in the canyon, if he had to blast down all the cliff and sift the dust with his hands. Almost at the ranch Jackson piped up, with a reckless note,

Sam Bass was born in Indiana, it was his native home,
And—at the age of seventeen, young Sam began to roam;
Sam first come out to Texas, a cowboy for to be,
And a kinder hearted feller you seldom ever see.

"There's times, once in a while," he said as he and Sheridan off-saddled in the home corral, "when I have grave an' genuine doubts about the real valley of prohibition."

CHAPTER XVI

LA CAPILLA BLANCA

There were six. in the treasure salvage expedition that started for the City of Silence; Sheridan, Jackson, Quong and three of the cowboys. Circle S was left in temporary charge of Stoney, who was forced, much to his disgust, to be at once foreman and cook. Sheridan said nothing of the purpose of the trip. The three men he took with him regarded it in the nature of a lark, well content not to ask questions so long as there was something new in the wind. As for the rest, Sheridan believed the time for talking was after, not before the thing was attempted.

The west was still west in the neighborhood of Chico Mesa. With such trove to uncover, the rule of "findings keepings" would hold good. Quong's knowledge of the secret would be no protection. There were plenty who would consider their claim as good as any white man's, much better than a Chink's. And there were men clever and unscrupulous enough, where such a sum was concerned, to tie up the whole expedition, to suggest or invent holding rights in the property, to throw the matter into the courts.

Sheridan rode Goldie, the sorrel mare, quite recovered from her lameness, Jackson the horse that once was Hollister's, a dark bay that was beginning ​to respond to Red's gentling; a proceeding that at first had startled it by sheer novelty. Quong rode in the wagon that carried the tools behind a lusty team, destined to haul back the gold—if they found it—in two or more trips. One of the cowboys drove, the two others had their mounts.

A ton of gold would be hard hauling over the soft desert soil. Sheridan did not want to discount success by building too heavily upon it, but he had planned to divide the spoils, cacheing part of it anew and leaving a guard over it until he could come back and get it. He had only one wagon on the ranch and he did not want to buy a new one, or borrow, to make any move that might start inquiry or arouse curiosity.

Stoney gleaned a suggestion that they were out looking for a water supply for future irrigation. That he would pass on to any visitors to the Circle S. They left the ranch while the stars were bright, long before the sun was up, and they had crossed the highroad before dawn and were skirting the range westward—towards their goal—when the sun rose. Quong had his camp-cooking outfit and provisions in the wagon with the tools. Sheridan planned to set up headquarters in Bonanza Canyon, where there was water and feed, and he had come prepared to stay a week, if necessary. Quong was still to act in his capacity as cook but there was a change manifest in his manner. Always sustaining dignity, he now emanated something more, not arrogance, but an unpushed assertion of rank or power. With it was a supreme confidence that communicated itself to Sheridan.

​Sheridan, stung by the piercing of his self-conceit concerning Mary Burrows, concentrated all his energies upon the work in hand. He became the crisp executive, laying out the little camp and impressing the cowboys with the fact that they were on an important mission where work and time counted. Quong was well established by noon and a lunch served, of cold food, except for coffee. The horses were picketed and one man was chosen to stay in camp. Sheridan gave his three men a little talk.

"We are after a cache of gold, boys," he said. "The secret of it is Quong's. I am his partner in the deal. It is going to be a hard job to tackle. Very likely pick and shovel work. But each of you have got a share in it. So has every one on the ranch. I am going to use mine, if we get what we are after, to start the irrigation for Chico Mesa that you all know has been my plan for a long time. Now, I don't expect any interrruption, but it may come. This cache does not now belong to any one, but Quong's possession of its secret, which he shares with me as a partner with him, gives us first right of discovery. However, others who might happen to be on the ground might put in claims, whether they would be held legitimate or not, which might tie up matters.

"Quong is the only man who knows how to find it. He gives me a half interest, mainly because I aided him against Hollister at Metzal Depot and at Coyote Springs. And also because he is interested in the plan to make Chico Mesa a top-notch cow country, from feed to beef. All of my share goes into that project, except what you boys are to get out of ​it. You can do as you like with that. But, back in the main canyon, under a slide of dirt, there is water for Chico Mesa, electricity, thorough-bred cattle, alfalfa, improvements of all kinds. I want you to help me dig it out. It's going to be harder work than digging postholes, but the pay is special and the object is worthwhile. What do you say?"

Sheridan knew that in talking to the three riders he had brought with him he was ultimately addressing all the outfit at Circle S. He knew that his project had been one of the chief topics of conversation at the ranch and he fancied that it was generally approved of. Now he could see that he had quickened the imagination of the men, made them see something beyond the mere uncovering of gold, promised them an actual share in the development of the mesa that appealed to them, demolished the idea that they were only laborers and that the bulk of the treasure was not to pass through their hands. It was, in a way, an acid test of his men's belief and friendship in him, and they responded, after their own fashion.

"It goes," said one of the cowboys for the rest. "Lead us to it, Boss."

"One man will stay in camp here at the mouth of the ravine," he said. "The rest of us will be in plain sight, working, unless we have to tunnel in. You three will take it in turns to stay here and let us know if any one happens along. All right, let's make a start."

He said nothing of Hollister, buried beneath slabs of rock, halfway up the cliffs of Bonanza Canyon. It ​was not necessary. One man was picked to look after the horses and, later, to start a fire for supper. Sheridan, with Quong beside him, led the way to the main canyon.

The White Chapel was readily placed, a look at the magazine illustration confirming the location. Fifty feet to the west, the little ravine; the open tunnel, as Quong had described it, that had led to the bandits' stronghold, could be traced by the rim rock and that portion of it at the entrance that had not been entirely filled by the earth avalanche. Part of the dump overflowed into the main canyon in a tongue of crumbly clay. It was in this, Sheridan fancied, that Juan Mendoza had been caught.

He scaled the cliffs above the White Chapel and traced the width and depth of the ravine. The slide had sagged, with its looser formation, and the dimensions were plain enough. It ran back almost at right angles from the canyon for nearly eighty yards and was originally some thirty feet wide and about sixty deep. If the floor had been level, which was probable, his rough estimate of the amount of dirt they had to displace or mine was a staggering one. Jackson had been pecking at the edge of the mass and his face was dubious as Sheridan rejoined him and Quong. They three made up the engineering board, the two riders standing wondering and ready.

"Dynamite ain't no use here," said Jackson. "Too loose. A blast 'ud just bust it up a bit but it wouldn't make much clearance. You got to have hard resistance to git a real kick out of the stuff. I've got a ​brother thinks he's a miner becos he's allus diggin' tunnels an' sluicin' sandbars. I've helped him some, offtimes. More'n that, we'd likely bring down a sight more'n we displaced. There's a heap of it ready to shift."

His conclusions were only too logical, Sheridan thought, glancing at the mass of clay and at the cliffs back of it where the ledges were piled with similar stuff, weathered, crumbled, ready to be launched.

"Couldn't tunnel in without shorin'," went on Red. "An' where's yore timber?"

Sheridan glanced at Quong and found no encouragement. If they had been in China he supposed Quong would have set a thousand coolies to work and basketed the dirt away. But they were not in China. The nature of the friable dump demanded a gang of men and a lot of time, short of a steam shovel or a hydraulic Long Tom; both out of the question.

"We've got to sink a shaft," he said, still revolving the problem for a better solution. They might riddle the mass like a Swiss cheese with shafts without hitting a wagon or knowing they were near one. And a shaft, eighty feet deep, would be a herculean task.

"It depends upon how far those wagons got in before they were covered up. How about that, Quong? What's your judgment?"

"Juan's horse was lame," said the Chinaman. "He had fallen a good way behind in that last rush. Yet he saw the wagons in the gap. They may have slowed up a bit, but they must have been well in towards the cave."

​"Ah!" Sheridan's eyes lit up. "Juan said there was a network of communicating caves. Suppose we tackle the inside of the White Chapel? It may lead in the right direction. If it does we may be able to use the dynamite. Worth trying, at any rate."

"It's a hunch!" cried Red enthusiastically catching up a pick. "Bring the rest of the stuff along, hombres."

The entrance to the White Chapel was a fissure crack, leading back as a narrow passage some twenty feet to a great cave, its floor covered with silt, its walls convoluted but smoothed by floods, the ceiling higher than the rays of the electric torches could determine.

Half pillars bossed out from the sides, there were vaulted openings that seemed to lead to inner chambers. Sheridan directed his efforts to the western wall and to the rounded corner where that curved off against the back of the cave. Three torches sprayed white light while they searched, entering the side recesses, some high enough for upright entrance, others that had to be crawled into. But none of them was deeper than a dozen feet and all ended in rock that sounded solid.

But Sheridan was not through. He set them to sounding the wall everywhere as high as they could reach. There might be some water-worn cavern not reaching to the Chapel, connecting with the maze of inner chambers once inhabited by the bandits. It was cool enough in the big cave, but this testing out was hard and tiring work—discouraging.

At last a cowboy, in disgust, flung his pick to the ​gritty floor. The handle rapped smartly and gave out the dull sound that suggested a cavity. One claw of the tool had sunk deeply into the sand that was thickest along the walls. Sheridan stooped and released the pick, probing with his fingers, then his hand. He lay full length on the floor of the cave, his arm lost to sight.

"There's a rock curtain here," he said excitedly. "Water action both sides, leaving a hanging ledge of hard rock. Big space back here. Look at the draught." As he withdrew arm and hand, and Quong bent with a torch, they could see the grains of sand blowing away where floor and wall came close together.

"If that leads in the right direction?" cried Sheridan."

"It does," cried Red. "It's a hunch! Let's play it. Where's those drills?"

They attacked the rock under Sheridan's directions, bringing in water from the camp for the drillings. The two riders acted as muckers, holding the steel drills, spooning out the muck that accumulated as they turned the sharpened ends. Quong held a torch in each hand while Sheridan and Jackson pounded mightily and the clamor of steel on steel went booming away into the hollow vaults of the high roof. While the rock was hard, it was sandstone, and they made good progress. They made eight holes in the face, packed in their capped dynamite, lit short measures of the fuses and left them sputtering in the dark as they retreated outside, out of breath with their efforts, expectant.

​The hollow reports sounded in the interior. A cloud of bats came out of the passage in a black cloud, whirling bewildered in the sunshine, dazed by the gases, seeking other caves. One shot hung fire as they counted off. Just as it sounded there came a rush of disintegrated clay from high up the cliff, rushing down in a cloud of dust, flinging fragments far and wide as they dodged back, piling up a little in front of the entrance.

They rushed back, torches probing the gloom, to find a pile of shattered rock and the black gap of a tunnel. Sheridan had brought in some tufts of dried grass which he lit and tossed into the hollow. They blazed freely and he leaped ahead, exultant, the brilliant pencil of light from his torch stabbing far ahead of him. The tunnel, twisting like a snake, its floor wavily irregular, but in the main, level, led northwest, towards the end of the little ravine. It seemed as if it must join the bandits' caves. It was evidently a conduit for flood waters that had gouged it out of the heart of the cliff.

Suddenly it ended, progress blocked in a steep back slope impossible to climb, the stairway of a now dry cascade. At its top they could just make out the lips of a narrow cleft. Down this the torrents had poured, seeping from the outer slopes. But it was too narrow to explore, even if they could have reached it, and led apparently directly upwards.

Sheridan sent back for the tools, left behind in their rush. Once more they sounded and once again found a spot that promised other caves beyond. The place was honeycombed.

​The new obstacle was tough. They had blunted their drills, they had no forge, they were too impetuous to resort to slower methods of sharpening. They rigged up two of the kerosene flares and attacked the stubborn rock, placing the explosives and retreating back along the tunnel. These fuses were better timed and went off almost simultaneously with a great blast of compressed air that almost flung them from their feet. After the re-echoing thunder died away they could faintly hear, far above them, the rush of the loosened clay on the cliff. A V-shaped opening had been made, partly choked by the break-up. They scrambled over the barricade in a wild charge, checked by a drift of air, foul with a sickly odor, the channel scent of a long unopened tomb. The truth flashed over them as they hung back waiting for the testing dried grass to burn, instead of merely glow.

Then, bearing the flaming kerosene flares that went streaming out behind them, they raced ahead, jamming elbows, without precedence.

The way widened suddenly with the feel of big space, above and about, the air still tainted with the cloying reek of decay. The lights fought the dark, their pupils adjusted themselves and they stared about them. The cavern was lower than that of the White Chapel, but almost as big, and again there were indications of tunnels leading from it. But their gaze focussed, upon a cry from Red, on a hideous sight. Little groups of dead women, identified by their clothing, sitting, lying, tilted grotesquely against the wall, mummified by the dry cool air ​of the cave into which water had long since ceased to penetrate. Shrunken faces, glints of teeth between shriveled lips, bodies shapeless in dust-coated covered serapes and rebozos. There was another group, close to the heaped ashes of afire,—men these. On the dried skulls sombreros still rested, or lay close by.

Near were yellow bones, others partly covered, the skulls and scattered skeletons of horses that had furnished the last meals to the band shut up in the cave. Perhaps the mounts of the women. Full realization of the end of this wretched folk came to them. Not all had been smothered by the landslide but had died slowly, not of suffocation, but of thirst. The avalanche had been more merciful.

Sheridan turned from the sight to find the blocked entrance. A rubble of the clay had tongued into the cave beneath the rocky arch and, partly in it, there loomed a bulky mass that made his heart leap.

It was a wagon! Thick with fine dust, its tires rotted, sagging to one side where the wheels had collapsed. Traces and harness, withered and rotten, showed on each side of the pole where the horses had been taken out. This must be one of the treasure wagons; the horses must have bolted in their frenzy and under the lashing of frantic drivers, through the sliding earth, into the false safety of the cave.

His shout brought the rest to him. A blow from a pick proved the whole fabric rotten. Under their efforts it went crumbling down in a cloud of dust and the smell of decayed wood. And, in the middle of it all, something surged heavily to the floor with a dull thud.

​They leaped for it, spurning aside the brittle fragments of dry rot, tugging at what they had found. Fifty bars of heavy metal, each weighing between thirty and forty pounds, about nine inches long, four in width, tapering, and two in thickness. The five of them staggered to the flares, hugging each a bar in their arms, eyes shining, uttering inarticulate cries of triumph.

The bars were dull, seeming more like lead than iron, until Sheridan slashed one with a drill and the soft metal shone yellow. Half of the trove was theirs. The second wagon could not be very far away. Jackson and the two riders jumped for the picks with a shout. Quong stood under a flare, his face sphinxlike as ever, his eyes like balls of jet.

"It must be nearly dark outside," he said. Sheridan stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending. The flush of success flooded him and he tingled with excitement. Then he reacted to Quong's calm and looked at his watch. They had been in the caves for more than five hours. They were all streaked with sweat and grime. His own muscles began to assert their ache. The engine of his body clamored for fuel and water.

"Never mind that until later, boys," he said. "We can tackle it better after we eat and rest up a bit. We'll transfer what we've got to the Chapel. It will take ten trips."

As they toted the heavy bars back through the passages and piled them in the White Chapel, near the entrance, their fever slowly died down. Need of a drink and of supper took precedence with Red ​and the two riders. What Quong, carrying his bar as the rest, might be considering, could not be judged. Sheridan's brain was charged with broken pictures of canals, a power-house, spreading patches of alfalfa, herds of fine cattle. And, ever in the background, though constantly dismissed, the vision of Mary Burrows.

The men grunted and straightened up after every trip. The labor was leavened by the knowledge that they carried a small fortune with each bar. Sheridan roughly estimated them as being worth between seven and eight thousand dollars apiece. After the third trip he went to the entrance of the White Chapel, through the little passageway, to where he could look out and across to the head of Bonanza Canyon. The sun was well down, flushing the rainbow-painted canyon with a last flood of color, the air was already growing cooler, deep shadows were gathering. He called over to the cowboy watcher who started towards him across the main canyon.

"Got half of what we went after, Bill," said Sheridan. "You'll be in on the rest of the job. Anything stirring?"

"Quiet as an empty cowbarn. Fire's goin' an' the water's bilin'. Quong goin' to cook them steaks we brought along?"

"No hurry about them for a bit, Bill. We're not quite through. I'll give you a call later." Sheridan was doubtful whether Quong, in his restoration to wealth, would care to resume his job as chef. He rather fancied he would, until they returned to the ​Circle S. But he did not feel inclined to suggest it to him. On the fifth trip Quong himself suggested that Bill could peel potatoes as his contribution to getting supper prepared. Sheridan went again to the cave mouth, to find the stars out, the air keen, the fight of the campfire reflected in the throat of Bonanza Canyon. He shouted Quong's instructions over and Bill acknowledged them with a hail.

They had brought one of the kerosene flares into the Chapel, leaving the other in the treasure cave, using the electric torches for the transportation process. The sheer toil, the growing familiarity with their find, had brought about a certain reaction. For the time the gold, as gold, had lost its magnetism; it was reduced to mere heavy metal. But they stuck doggedly to the job.

On the sixth trip Jackson suggested a bucket of water.

"I strike," he declared. "I'm drier than a horn-toad in a museum. No more moisture in me than a burned stick. I vote Bill brings over a pail of water. He's bin havin' it soft all afternoon. I'll go tell him."

He disappeared in the entrance shadows beyond the fight of the flare. The others stood about waiting for the cold water. At the moment it would be nectar to their dusty, parched throats.

They heard a shout from Jackson, the crack of a shot, followed by another and another. The cowboy Bill came reeling back into the cave, one hand clapped to his forearm just below the elbow, blood dripping through his fingers. Behind him, more ​slowly, came Red, gun in hand. Beyond the opening, tremulous light played curiously. It strengthened to brilliant, well-defined radiance that seemed to be projected from lenses.

"They come all of a sudden," Bill announced. "Me, I was peelin' spuds when they come sneakin' up, silent over the sand, two cars of 'em. Had their lights way down. I catches the sound of the engines an' I starts to pussy-foot it over here. Struck me thet organization looked too bisnesslike. I was half-way over, sneakin' through the brush when they spots me an' throws up the lights full. Me, I was like a vodivil actor in the spotlight. One of 'em fires an' fires damn straight. Red, he jumps out of the cave here an' takes a crack back. He yells for me to run for it. An' covers me with another shot at the Chinks."

"Chinese?" As Sheridan spoke he glanced down the passage towards the entrance. Plain in the light that shone on the portal, a head and neck was thrust, peering into the cave. It vanished as Sheridan flung a bullet humming for the mark. For a split-second it had shown clear to all of them: a flattened nose, high cheekbones, cruel mouth. The glitter of slanting eyes, the face of a Chinaman of the lower type, piratical, murderous! A hatchet-man, a Tong-killer!

"I suppose I give the whole show away, boltin' in here like a rabbit," said the wounded rider, baring his wounded arm for Sheridan's inspection. "But I figgered I c'ud warn you. Did you git one of 'em, Red?"

​"Busted a windshield, fur as I know, an' that's all," replied Jackson. "You're bored plumb through your arm. Nothin' busted, is they, Sheridan?"

"No. It'll heal all right." Sheridan spoke confidently. The wound ought to be bathed before bandaging and they had not a drop of water. The suggestion that it was going to be a long while before Bill could get proper attention was beginning to impress itself upon him.

"Did you say two machines?" he asked. Jackson answered.

"Two big ones, filled up. A dozen or more in 'em. They sure got us herded."

Sheridan nodded in grim silence. They were in little better case than had been the bandits in the inner cave. In place of the landslide, the exit was blocked by murderous Chinamen. These were, doubtless, the enemies of Quong, whom he thought he had shaken off in San Francisco. They had come in relentless pursuit. Their presence in the City of Silence was doubly ominous. And there was no food, no water. He turned to Quong, who stood with his arms folded. His face was still placid, but his eyes now gleamed in the flare of the torch like black opals.

"I made a mistake," he said. "We are all likely to pay for it. I left Juan Mendoza behind in San Francisco. I was forced to. Some one else has given him opium, has taken my place as his god. And he has babbled his secret to them in gratitude. He had lost his soul, he was only a shell and he would grovel for the drug after a day without it. ​I should have passed him out after I got his secret. He would have been better dead. Now he has jeopardized the lives of six of us. I fancy he is dead by now. Hsu Fu would see to that.

"Now they have scented the gold. I told you I had many enemies. The score was not always on their side. I almost wrecked one of their societies. Hsu Fu was its head—of the Chu Chi'en. I have no doubt he is outside. I may be able to deal with him—if you want to give up part of the gold. Hsu Fu won't be over anxious to kill white men. He knows he would have to pay toll, one way or another. He wants me, primarily."

"Offering to give yourself up?"

"With enough of the gold to satisfy them."

"That isn't the way we play the game," said Sheridan. "If we get out of here, we'll do it together. And take the gold with us. They've got us in check, herded, as Red says. It's our move."

Jackson came forward carrying five sticks of dynamite.

"We got this much left over," he said. "How about cuttin' them in ha'f, like this"—he worked as he spoke, trimming a short fuse and attaching it to the capped and primered ends and ruffling up the material.

"Ten li'l hand grenades, all in a row," he declared. "All-same we used to chuck across to Heinie in the trenches." He left nine of the improvised bombs on the floor of the cave and advanced with the tenth to the passage, stealing half way down it. Only the unvarying radiance of the headlights, ​trained on the entrance to make a first-class target of it, showed the confident vigilance of the Chinese, waiting for the defenders to make their move. Sheridan's bullet, whistling sharp to the scalp of the one peeper had made them chary of exposure.

"Keep talkin," Jackson called back. "If you shut off they'll think we're up to something." He lit a match, applied it to the teased-out braids of the fuse. At the same instant Sheridan shouted to him.

"Hold on a minute. Red." His first swift endorsement of Jackson's plan had cooled. They had not brought in all their dynamite. There was enough left in the little camp to blast down the entrance. It was foolish to suggest such a weapon to the invaders. Undoubtedly they had raided the camp already.

But it was too late. Red had swung back his arm, with the fuse sparking like a firework, and hurled the bomb, whirling down the passage in a sputtering are to explode just outside with an air-rending detonation. Immediate damage showed in the dimming of the light, then came the shrill jabbering of startled Chinamen, the sound of a starting engine and the disappearance of the rays. But they reappeared promptly, half their previous strength. Sheridan figured they had backed off one machine to a safer place beyond damage from other bombs, but where the headlights could still play upon the Chapel entrance. The second machine he hoped had been put out of commission.

Red came back to the main cave exultant.

"Made scrap iron of one car," he said.

​"We can only play that trick once, Red," answered Sheridan. "And we may have to blast our way out at the last. I hope they don't return the compliment in kind and fill in the entrance."

"I hardly think so," said Quong. *'They would have to take too much time to tunnel in for the gold. They hold all the cards. They can afford to wait, but not too long."

It was bitterly cold. Hunger gnawed and thirst attacked them savagely, intensifying the frosty temperature. Hard labor had lowered their vitality. They held council, discussed a rush and abandoned it in face of the steady lit and the narrowness of the entrance fissure. They would be shot down one by one as they emerged. Yet to remain inactive became a condition hard to bear.

Then a hissing missile came rocketing down the tunnel. Sheridan, watching for something of the kind, fired at the arm that had been exposed and then dodged back behind the cave wall, shouting warning to the rest, who broke for the cover of the tunnel back of the blasted rock curtain. Hsu Fu had tried hoisting them with their own petards. In the cavern the exploding gases of the nitro-glycerine broke loose in yellow flame, filling the place with choking, acrid odors, torment to their throats, compressing the air to battering rams, roaring up to roof and walls, turning the space into a miniature hell. While they were still half dazed, the passage was filled with charging men. Pistols barked, the red spit of the shots breaking the blur of the dynamite haze.

​Sheridan, nearer the passage, got one man as he leaped by. Then he ran swiftly back along the wall to get out of the range of the bullets of his own men. Another Chinaman sprawled. The kerosene flare asserted itself and the firing of the men from the Circle S became too accurate for the liking of the yellow invaders. They retreated, leaving their dead behind.

"Reduces the odds a bit," said Sheridan, coolly enough, though his fighting blood was up, pounding through his veins, tingling at his fingertips.

Quong was examining the two corpses. Sheridan's bullet had gone through one from temple to temple. The other was shot through the heart.

"Sing Li and another rascal named Chang," he announced. "I thought so. They are hired bravos of Hsu Fu. Highbinders, you call them."

"Where do you suppose they got the cars and who guided them here?" asked Sheridan. The questions had been troubling them. There promised to be a respite after this attack that had ended in their favor.

"I think they bought the cars in Los Angeles," said Quong. "They would come through Imperial Valley and Yuma and Prescott. It would be the simplest way. Hsu Fu would not risk trying to hire cars in Arizona for his men. Even if he could get them, the publicity would be dangerous. They would travel by night and take cover in the daytime. As for a guide, he would leave the cars outside Pioche or Metzal and go in himself to ask for a Chinaman of my description and the way to this ​place. Hsu Fu speaks Spanish fluently. I imagine he would talk to Mexicans. He could almost pass for a Mexican himself in the proper clothes. He is clever enough to think of all that."

"Ill bet a month's wages he ran across Pedro," exclaimed Jackson.

Quong shrugged. The fact accomplished, he was indifferent to the means.

"I sure hate to stick here like a prairie dawg at the bottom of his hole, with a rattlesnake snoopin' round the door," said Red. "How about sneakin' to the openin' an' tossin' a couple of bombs for divertin' their attention while we make a bolt for it? We could hunt cover an' throw lead into 'em till they vamosed." Sherixlan shook his head.

"We'd have to look first to see where to throw," he said. "They'll be behind cover themselves with their guns trained on the entrance. But we might try to find some other way out. That fissure where the water came down, or some other weak place. I imagine there's mare than one. We may strike it and we've got to tackle it before our strength gives out."

He took Red with him and, using the electric torches and ticking along a pick, they searched the tunnels vainly. The fissure was impractical. Nowhere, though they explored all the cavities opening from the Chapel, could they find a place that held any hope of exit. The little stock of dynamite was pitifully inadequate. Explosion might bring down a slide. To use pick and drill would direct attention. And there was no starting point. At ten o'clock ​the kerosene flare began to burn out. Sheridan had extinguished the one in the treasure trove and brought it in to the Chapel. Now he lit it and they sat in its light, silent. Speech was difficult, there was nothing to say. They were trapped, with the gold that lay in its heap, mocking their eyes whenever they glanced at it. Only Quong, squatting cross-legged on the silt beside the bars, his pose placid as that of a statue of Buddha, seemed indifferent, or reconciled to fate.

"Rats in a trap!" said Jackson at last. "Let's make a break for it. I'd ruther be shot down than die the way they did in the other cave. An' I'll git one or two before I cash in."

There was a murmur of assent.

"Odds ain't more than two to one," went on Red. "We stand to lose, ennyway. We can't take the gold along. If they git the best of us, they win. But we can give 'em one hell of a scrap."

Sheridan hesitated. There came a rustling sound in the passage. Tho light was blocked by a mass of something that dangled from the end of a rope, settled down into the passage, half filling it. It had been swung in from above. More was added swiftly, blocking the exit. A torch beam revealed a mat of cactus and desert growths, pushed back foot by foot into the passage as more was added to the barrier.

"Looks like checkmate this time," said Sheridan.

They might attempt to blast out the stuff, but it was doubtful what effect the dynamite would have on the squashy mass, certain that there was ​plenty more to replace it. The idea of a last rush was destroyed.

"Hsu Fu has got a brain that works quickly," said Quong.

"I'd like to put a bullet into it," snarled Red. "I'd sure muss up the works."

"I trust that will be my privilege," rejoined Quong quietly. They stared at him, savagely resentful in their despair. And he smiled back at them, the author of their misfortune.

"We have many proverbs in China," he said. "You have a few. One of them is excellent. 'While there is life there is hope.'"

"Hope? Hell!" exploded Red. "I s'pose a jackrabbit hopes, with a coyote ha'f a junp behind him, but so does the coyote. We got as much chance as a snowball has of not meltin' in the place I jest mentioned. We're plumb euchred."

The rest appeared glumly to agree with him. Sheridan felt the numbing sense of despair settling down about them all like a pall. But he did not intend to allow a Chinaman to outgame a white man. After a minute he saw Red's chin come up with a jerk as he started to roll a cigarette. The riders followed his example. Bill using his one hand dexterously. Sheridan took out his pipe and Quong produced a silver box from which he took a tiny pellet of brown and swallowed it. The smoke wreaths mounted and Quong brooded over his opium. Red finished his cigarette and began to chant softly:

Last night as I lay on the prairie,

⁠An' looked at the stars in the sky;
​I wondered if ever a cowboy,
⁠Could drift to that sweet by an' bye.

The three riders joined him in the chorus, chiming in a crude harmony:

⁠Roll on, roll on,
⁠Roll on, little dogies, roll on, roll on.
⁠Roll on, roll on;
⁠Roll on, little dogies; roll on

Sheridan glanced across at Quong and thought he saw a gleam of approval in his eyes. Outside Hsu Fu and his henchmen watched and waited.

CHAPTER XVII

YA-HOO!

Time dragged in the White Chapel. The air seemed devitalized. The kerosene flare, the exploded powder gases, the carbonic discharge of their own lungs, appeared to have robbed it of freshness, despite the great vault of the cave, the tunnels and the rift above the dry waterfall. The taint of the cavern where the mummies sat in ghastly conclave crept into the place. Worst of all, the explosions had somewhere opened a fissure, and, drop by drop, with an iteration that was maddening, somewhere within the walls water was falling. It was impossible in that place of hollows even to trace the general direction of the sound, but sitting there in the silence, parching with a thirst that seemed to increase with every drip, the tantalizing plop-plop dominated everything. Their pulses began to beat to it, it was like the tick of a clock, beating off the hours they had left to live; it seemed to pound upon their brains like the water torment of medieval prisons.

So it affected Sheridan, a species of hypnosis that caused the little thread of water to assume the proportions of a sparkling mountain torrent, clear and cold, impressed upon his brain until, with an effort, he concentrated upon more material things.

​The three riders were asleep, the wounded man lying with his head pillowed on Red's lap. Sheridan was not so much on watch as unable to sleep. Quong's eyes were closed but every now and then the lids opened to show glittering slits of wakefulness. Occasionally there were sounds high above as if the cold was loosening, shifting the clay already loosened by the blasting.

Sheridan went over and over the situation, like a squirrel in a revolving cage, getting nowhere, finding no way out.

Once, before they fell asleep with their responsibilities shifted to Sheridan's shoulders, the three riders had whispered together and then talked to Red in a low voice. He had laughed at them but he reported to Sheridan.

"The boys have got an idee that mebbe Quong is in on this deal. Got you an' us to get out the stuff, an' arranged for the rest of his pals to come on an' take it away from us, savin' his face."

"You don't believe that. Red, do you?"

"No, I don't. Not if I'm enny judge of humans. Course a Chink's hard to read. He don't give himself away."

"He risked as much as we did when they threw in the dynamite."

"Yep, but you might have noticed he was well to the rear. But I don't take stock in it, an' I told 'em so."

Now this sinister suggestion returned to Sheridan. Everything was distorted in the face of their dilemma. And, if the air was devitalized, it was also surcharged ​with premonition, a prickly sort of statics that got at the very soul of him. The quiet and the silence were ominous. He could not reason that the Chinese would wait until the defenders were too weak to repulse them. That might take a day or two, depending upon the air. The cactus plug was effective in more ways than one. But Hsu Fu could not know how soon they might be missed, or the idea come to their friends that something had gone wrong. To blast them in and come back later would be too big a risk for a rescue in the meantime. Everything pointed to a speedy clean-up and he was certain that the crafty minds outside were planning a coup. And the helpless waiting was demoralizing. Was Quong playing double?

He looked across at the mandarin, and envied him his capacity for absolute relaxation and withdrawal into a placidity that reserved all forces. Yet he felt that the will of the man was like a tightly coiled spring, encased for the time, but able to fling off its cover and lash out into action the second it was necessary. If he had nerves he had some way of temporarily disconnecting the circuit. The dripping of the water, by now growing to an exquisite agony with Sheridan, failed to even annoy Quong. With Red it was different. Sheridan saw him carefully shifting, so as not to disturb the uneasy rest of the wounded rider, with every sign of restlessness, blinking eyes and twitching muscles; folded arms with hands that plucked continually at the flannel of his shirt. Red met his glance.

"If ennyone said Boo to me I'd jump clean ​through the roof of this God-forsaken hole," he said in a low tone. "My sister-in-law used to go nigh crazy if they was a tap leakin' in the house. She cu'd hear it way down cellar. Me, I ain't goin' to la'f at her no more. Why in hell don't they start somethin'?"

Then, above them, hell broke loose. With thunder and with flame the high roof was riven and split apart, great masses of sandstone hurtling down amid a rain of flying fragments. Quong leaped to his feet, gun in hand, only to have the weapon struck from his grasp as he jumped out of the zone of the falling rocks. Sheridan sprang to give Red a hand with the wounded man. A ponderous mass struck his outstretched right arm and it fell to his side numbed and bruised. Red was hit a glancing blow on the head and staggered dizzily to the side wall, dragging with him the cowboy. The two other riders, wakening dazed to the roar, had jumped to their feet and both had dropped again under the bombardment. Sheridan, back to the wall beneath the sheltering curve of the vaulted roof, saw them scramble for safety. The scalp of one of them was torn and his face ran blood.

The flare wavered, almost went out, then flamed up again. A fog of dust rose, obscuring things. Above there showed a gap through which stars shone coldly. Through the gap fiery twisting snakes came whirling, sticks of dynamite, exploding just before they touched the floor, flinging them all flat, poisoning the already overladen air, blinding them with scattering silt and debris, driving the breath ​out of them, leaving them prostrate, gasping, battered, helpless.

The wily Hsu Fu and his men had found a weak place in the roof, a cleft worn deep by water, and their experiment of breaking through to the cave had succeeded.

A rush of air came through the tunnel. The plug of cactus had been yanked out as if attached to one of the cars. A horde of yellow men poured into the cavern where the flare lamp, hanging from a crowbar stuck into a superficial rift, glowed through the choking clouds.

Sheridan dragged himself to a mass of rock and tried to steady his left forearm upon it, firing at the dim, darting figures. One—or two—shots rang out beside him while, from the besiegers, there came the rattle of guns and the zip of bullets.

He had but one coherent thought. This was the end. Blood was surging through his brain. It seemed as if the blood vessels had broken down under pressure. His body lacked all co-ordination. He fired jerkily, without aim and effect. Yet the air was clearing. Somewhere, deep within him, his spirit summoned his will, that had gone far off, to return and assume control. Slowly he was recovering, but it was too late. Before he. . . .

Vaguely there drifted to his consciousness the wild squawk of auto horns, shouting that swelled into a cheer. It was the slogan of the cattle riders, high-pitched, exultant, athrill with a note of cheer, of triumph!

"Ya-hoo. Yi-yi-yippy-ya-hoo!"

​The firing ceased. The tongmen of Hsu Fu, trapped themselves, faltered, bolted for the passage. The entrance now blazed with light. Shouts and shots mingled with the noise of a starting motor.

Sheridan got clumsily to his feet. Belated hope revived him. And, as he stood uncertain, shaken, dizzy, other figures darted through the narrow way. There were cheers somewhere, scattered firing still going on outside, the quick rush of feet, a flying figure that came straight to him, nestling close to the pressure of his one good arm. The face of Mary Burrows lifted to his. He felt the soft warmth of her cheek, the moisture of her tears, her lips meeting his and then her cry,—

"Peter, Peter! Oh, my dear, my dear!"

The cavern seemed to clear of fog. He saw Stoney, grinning at him. He saw Red, gripped tight by Thora, almost lost in her embrace.

"They got away, in one machine," said Stoney. "Some of 'em. We're shy on gas!"

He saw the figure of the Sheriff of the County, gun in each hand, tall, dominant, his thin, tanned face alight with congratulation. How had they got there? How. . . .

He saw Quong, as he released Mary—Quong standing in the center of the White Chapel, in line with the passage, crouching a little, looking intently about him.

A spit of fire came from one of the inner caves, spurting out between two pillars, just as Quong leaped sideways. The bullet flattened itself below the flare. Following it came the gleam of a flung ​pistol, emptied of its last cartridge, and then the high bounding figure of a Chinaman, a flashing knife in his hand, his face asnarl with hate and murderous resolve. Even in the speed of the tigerish spring, Sheridan sensed that it was Hsu Fu, intent upon the killing of Quong. The twisted features were of the same high-caste stamp as the mandarin's.

Quong had struck up the sheriff's ready hand, the shot echoing up to the roof.

"Leave him to me," he cried in a voice that held such command, such confidence, that they automatically obeyed and stood spellbound to watch the strange duel. From somewhere Quong, gunless, had produced a knife and, sidestepping the first rush of Hsu Fu, the two shuttled and circled over the gritty floor, in the light of the flare, their shadows distorted on the farther wall.

The long blades clashed and sparked in lightning thrust and parry. Gone was Quong's veneer of calm, his teeth showed plain between his drawn-back lips, deep lines angled from his nose towards the comers of his mouth, his nostrils flared. The sharp cut nose was now a beak and his eyes flamed with the lust of killing. His face flamed with incarnate ferocity; it was the face of a pirate, drunk, amok with the desire to carve the soul of his enemy from his body.

Twice they locked, hand about wrist, left arm to right, muscles swelling in leg and shoulder, glaring, tense with supreme effort. They sprang apart as if by mutual consent and leaped in again, crouching, lunging, emitting harsh grunts, beastlike, primitive.

​Sheridan saw Quong spring to the right and then, with flexing ankles, leap to the left. There was a flash as he tossed his knife from one hand to the other with juggling dexterity. This time his right hand caught the knife-wrist of Hsu Fu, tugged downwards, jerking Hsu forwards, off his balance, caught unaware. And Quong's left hand and arm shot across the barrier of their two right arms, swift and sure as the strike of an eagle in an overhanded curve. The point of his blade sank into Hsu Fu's abdomen with the sharp skreel of steel against bone as it slid over the hip and ripped across the undefended stomach. Hsu Fu pitched forward as Quong released him, blood spouting from the frightful wound and fell in the growing puddle of it; one hand outstretched, groping, twitching, still; pointing towards the piled-up bars of gold.

Quong's features reverted swiftly to their ivory calm. Only his heaving chest showed token of the subsiding whirlwind of his fight. He glanced at his wet, smoking blade, then tossed it from him, tinkling, far into the interior.

"It was not my hour that struck," he said. Then took out his little box and placed an opium pellet in his mouth.

"Let's get out of this," said Red. Thora, the stout-hearted, had quailed before the smell and sight of the blood of the savage conflict. She clung to Red, pale, trembling, averting her face on his shoulder.

They filed out of the cave in silence, Mary close to Sheridan. Very close, now and for always, he ​thought, for the barrier was down. She would not have come had she not meant to stay.

There were two dead Chinamen in the opening, three more on the ground. Close by was the twisted ruin of a motor car, its engine a muddle of scrap. Two other cars, their engines still running, their headlights biting into the darkness, illuminating the cave mouth, stood as they had raced in from the direction of Metzal, of the Circle S. One tall cowboy stood off to the side of the rays, by a still body. He came forward as they emerged and joined them.

"Me, I got my man," he said with an odd note of boyishness. It was Jim Lund.

"It was Pedro. Me an' him shot it out. I came after him—an' I got him."

Stoney and the sheriff moved towards the two cars to shut off the engines. The rest hurried to Bonanza Canyon. Sheridan stumbled as he went and Mary threw a slim, vigorous arm about him to steady him.

"You are badly hurt?" she asked, the keen anxiety in her voice music to his ears. "Your arm?"

"Nothing but a bruise," he said thickly. "No bones broken. But I am literally perishing for water. With the rest of us."

CHAPTER XVIII

MARY BURROWS

The fire blazed and crackled lustily in the throat of Bonanza Canyon. A scattering of pinyon and cedar, that had practically given up all fight for existence, but which furnished more solid fuel than greasebrush and sage, had been hauled in by Bill in the afternoon. Over this Quong, for all his new-found riches, still only half retrieved, had quietly insisted upon preparing pots of fragrant coffee and broiling steaks. The wounded and the bruised had been looked to, and, with no serious casualties, rescued and rescuers gathered round the fire. Sage cushions, covered with Navajo blankets from the Sheriff's car, made springy couches for those who most needed them. With food and tobacco there came content.

Sheridan's arm was badly bruised but he forgot it. Mary Burrows was beside him as he handled his pipe with his left hand. She was on his right. Since her first rush to him with its unspoken declaration she had insensibly retreated, but he felt that the way was still open and held a welcome at the end. On the other hand, Thora openly appropriated Red with a quaint mixture of materialism and worship of "her man" that might have once embarrassed Red, now too stiff in the neck and shoulders ​to be anything but grateful for her efforts to make him comfortable. Besides, Romance dealt the cards that night. It all fitted in with the roaring fire, the sparks dancing up to where the stars showed in the cleft of the cliffs, the happenings in the cave. No one had talked much while the meal was cooked and eaten, the wounds tended. Sheridan had gathered that they had come from Metzal on short order, with barely gasoline enough in their tanks to reach the Painted Rocks and return. He was satisfied to let the remnant of the tongmen go. But now, with his pipe drawing freely, he asked the question that was rising to the lips of all the defenders of the cave, save Quong the Imperturbable. To watch Quong, cooking, detached from all but his immediate task, made the knife-fight appear like a dream.

"How did you get here, in the nick of time, Mary?" he asked. He called her Mary frankly enough before all of them. Any other title would have seemed inadequate. The fact was patent that he was her lover, equally so that she would not resent it, and he knew that all the group, riders, sheriff, Quong, were gentlemen.

Mary Burrows looked around at the faces turned towards her, thrown into high relief by the flames that fought off the cold of the night. Then, without preamble, she told her story simply.

"Thora and I went into Pioche—to file papers for the Hidden Homestead—and for some other matters." Just a hint of self-consciousness crept into her voice and vanished again as she referred to the papers. "I wanted to get some Mexican lace; ​there is a place near the depot where it is for sale. When I was in that house I saw, through the window, while the woman was getting out her goods, two men talking together. They both seemed to be Mexicans, they were both dressed as Mexicans. One of them was Pedro. The other—was a Chinaman. Under the wide brim of his sombrero it was easy for him to pass as a Mexican. He was bronzed and his features were not very different from Pedro's. They were finer cut, but they were not"—she glanced at Quong—"distinctively Chinese. Only the slant of his eyes really suggested that.

"I knew the combination meant no good. Of course all that you had told me about the trip to the Painted Rocks was fresh in my mind. It flashed across me that this Chinaman was making inquiries for Quong. I thought at first that Pedro would direct him to the Circle S, not knowing about the treasure expedition. And Quong would not be there. So at first I did not worry, except that I did not want to run across Pedro, although Thora wanted to get her hands on him. But she knew as well as I did that it would only start people talking and presently the two went away.

"We started back and took the wagon road. We usually cut off across the prairie for the Homestead about a mile after you cross the bridge over Cedar Creek. We rode off the road at the bridge and down through the willows to water the horses. We didn't get off them, but sat in our saddles while they drank and cooled off their fetlocks.

"Then we heard—the horses first of all, pricking ​up their ears—the sound of an automobile, two as it turned out. They were not sounding their horns and they were coming at high speed, but they slowed up for the bridge. It is none too firm and Pedro must have warned them about it. For Pedro was in the front seat of the first machine. They were not looking for us, knew nothing about us, and they would not have discovered any one unless they had slowed up still more and looked very carefully through the green boughs of the willows.

"But we could see them. It was sunset and they were traveling straight west as the road runs there. The driver of the first car was goggled and wore a cap with a low visor, but he was a Chinaman. Both cars had their tops up and curtains too, but it was still warm and they were in a lonely country with nothing in sight, so they had unbuttoned some of the curtains and those who could were getting the breeze. They were all Chinamen, not the type of the man I had seen talking with Pedro—the man Quong killed—but cruel faces with high cheekbones and slitty, tilted eyes. The second driver was goggled and visored too. If it had not been for the rest I might not have known either of the drivers as Chinese, but I was thinking fast.

"There was deviltry on all of those yellow faces peering out from the car curtains. They passed out of our sight fast enough, but they left a sinister trail behind in my mind. They picked up speed and went sweeping on towards Pioche Gap. I thought of them arriving at the Circle S. Then I thought that Chinamen would hardly dare to attack an ​American ranch in such force. If they were after Quong, they would do what they had come to do by stealth. One man would be better than a dozen. From what I knew, and had read, of tong fights, I fancied they would not attempt open methods in this instance.

"Thora and I argued out why they should have arrived in such force, and the idea came to me that in some way they had heard of the gold cached in the canyon. I could not be sure, but I determined that I would ride to the Circle S and warn Stoney, at least. Then we could come here to make sure you were safe.

"We galloped nearly all of the way to Pioche Gap and through it. The trail of the tires was plain. One of them had a diamond-studded tire on one rear wheel, nearly new, and markings on the other rear wheel that left a series of V's.

"When we got through the gap the two machines left the road and turned west again along the range. They were heading for the Painted Rocks. Pedro was guiding them here. They would take you unawares. It was plain enough, though by this time it was so dark we could barely make out those tracks.

"Both our horses were tired. Thora's was winded. I began to despair of the time it would take them to get to the Circle S, and I knew they would never last to carry us to the Painted Rocks. It would take a frightful time for even the riders to make the desert trip and I knew the machines could plough through at a steady gait. We were about two miles out of Metzal.

​"Then two horsemen came out of the dusk from Metzal way and they drew up and one of them hailed us. It was Stoney. I never felt so glad in my life. I told what was the matter and, it slipped into my mind all of a sudden, I suggested that we might get a car or two at Metzal. He agreed with me it might be possible and that it was the only way to get through. He sent the other man—it was Jim Lund—racing back to bring the boys up to Metzal and we three rode on to Metzal to see what we could do. Stoney was worried, I think, though he tried not to let me see it.

She stopped and glanced at Stoney.

"I was worried stiff," said Stoney. "Figgered they'd git you unawares. I knew Chinks was a cutthroat lot of devils when they got started—beggin' yore pardon, Quong, an' leavin' you out o' this deal. An' they sure had one big start. We'd have to wait until the boys come from the ranch, though I knew they'd come a runnin'. I told Jim to tell 'em to bring their artillery an' spare ammunition. An' I was doubtful about gittin' cars. Metzal ain't Pioche. An', take it after sundown, every one that owns a flivver is out to hit the breeze.

"But, shucks, I didn't have to worry none with a lady like Miss Mary here, runnin' things. She thought of everything. She coaxed Herron, the stage-driver, into lettin' us have his flivver, though she couldn't promise when we'd bring it back. Bought it for five hundred bucks, he to take his chance of hirin' or buyin' another if we didn't come back by his mornin' trip.

​"Herron, he's a wolf on anything that spells cash, an' for a while I thought he was goin' to make a fuss about not gettin' it down on the spot, but Miss Mary she persuaded him she was good for it. An' I suggested I'd sort of back her note. I suspicion he fancied I'd use my gun for a fountain pen, but he comes through agreeable. An' the cuss lied to us after all. Said the tank was filled ready for his trip. Mebbe he forgot he hadn't filled it. But he hadn't.

"One flivver wa'n't goin' to hold the outfit an' I cudn't locate another. Jest before the boys come up, the sheriff here, he shows, an' Miss Mary takes him in tow."

Stoney looked in turn at the sheriff.

"I didn't need much persuadin' when I heard what you might be up against, Sheridan," he said. "I was in Metzal with the Federal officer I told you of. He rounded up Vasquez an' took him back on the train, but I stayed over to chin with some folks, an' mighty glad I was I did. Miss Burrows, if I'm rememberin' right, didn't ask me for my car, she sort of commandeered it. Then the bunch from yore ranch comes up on the run an' we piles in an' on an' starts through the night. Come ten miles an' Herron's flivver goes dead for lack of juice. I had to divvy with 'em. That's why we couldn't chase after the car that got away.

"We shacked along at a lively clip enough. I reckon we made better time than them heavy cars of the Chinks. A flivver is sure a reg'lar sand-flea for cross-country work. An' we hopped fast an' frequent. Well, you know the rest,"

​Thora, silent all this time, ministering to Red, who acted like a great dog having its head scratched, broke into speech.

"By Yiminy," she cried. "I bane forget. Did you bane get the gold?"

"Half of it," said Sheridan. "The rest won't be hard to come at."

Perhaps it was not curious, after all they had gone through, that the gold should have sunk to such insignificance, but it appeared that Mary Burrows had said nothing of the treasure. The sheriff and the riders who had come with Stoney gasped.

"Gold," said the sheriff. "What gold?"

Sheridan told him briefly.

"I've heard of that old yarn," he said. "Never took no stock in it. Three quarters of a million in bars! No wonder they were out for yore scalps." He looked at Quong with a suddenly increased respect.

"You folks are dead where you sit an' lie," he said. "We're fairly fresh, barrin' some stiff from that ride. I'll boss us gang of newcomers. Leave one man on guard, an' to tend the fire, an' the rest of us'll dig out yore gold for you, an' clean up things a bit while you take a snooze."

It suited Sheridan. He was tired and he ached, and he was, with all of it, ineffably comfortable with Mary by his side. Quong voted to go along, wide-awake, the only one of the treasure party actually unscathed. The horses had been found at the head of the canyon, scared by the shots, but ​safe. Barring the dynamite they had used, Hsu Fu's party had not disturbed the camp.

Soon the little camp was quiet. Sheridan drowsed off, conscious of Mary Burrows close beside him. He woke once, to the touch of her fingers. In her sleep they had crept out and found his hand, the hand to his injured arm.

The dawn was rose-red on the rim rock of the main canyon when he awoke, the stars were swiftly vanishing, melting in the blue. For a moment he lazily watched the narrow ribbon of crimson widen as the sun lifted, his senses hazy in sleep, until his brain seemed suddenly to clear. Beside him, curled and tucked up beneath a blanket, lay Mary Burrows, sleeping softly and quietly as a child.

About the glowing fire that sent up a thin column of smoke, steady, intensely blue in the still air of early morning, lay Thora, next to Mary. Then came Jackson and the three riders. All of these slept like logs, though Jackson had a wry neck and two of the riders more serious and painful casualties, in a torn scalp and a riddled arm.

But Sheridan was very wide awake. To banish sleep and find the slimsy lady, the Girl of Ghost Mountain, close beside him, to feel his heart beat swift and strong in the recollection of what her presence meant, of how she had guessed his danger and planned and worked a way to reach him, was a degree of exaltation that Sheridan had never known before. He bent a little towards her, forgetful of his arm, and the sudden anguish that shot through the bruised length of it brought out an involuntary ​exclamation that he stifled with his teeth in his lower lip.

But the girl awakened^ with a little sigh not of discomfort. She gave a deep breath, started a yawn, a demi-yawn that opened her fresh lips, red as the heart of a rose, and then her lashes lifted. Sheridan gazed full into her eyes and watched a glory grow within them. For a moment it seemed as if her soul spoke to him while her body still slumbered. His own eyes answered and the slimsy lady flushed divinely and then sat up with a quick touch to her hair.

"They are still asleep," said Sheridan in a low voice. "The others haven't come back yet."

He felt that there was understanding between them but he wanted words. Now was the opportunity, before the camp buzzed with the return of the Sheriff and Quong with the riders, the bustle of breakfast and of departure.

"Are you going to go back East, Mary?" he asked her.

But she was not to be so easily cornered.

"I may have to, to see about my property," she parried.

Beyond her, Thora, so far placid, a slumbering mountain of a woman, began to stir.

"I may have to go myself," said Sheridan, spurred to boldness. "If only to see that you come back again. Shall we go together—on our honeymoon?"

Like a light through glass, the soul of her seemed to make her flesh transparent, radiant. But she put up a hand.

​"If—if you had not found the gold—would you—knowing I was an heiress—have asked me that question, Peter?"

"No—"

"And then I should have had to go away. I could not have stayed. And, I did not want to go, Peter."

The same impulse came to both of them. Both glanced swiftly round the ring of sleepers. The rider left on guard was up at the head of the little canyon with the horses. They were quite alone for the moment. She lifted her face towards him. It was like a flower, he thought, as he bent his own to meet it, moving his arm painfully.

"Oh, Peter, your poor arm," she said, and then knelt beside him, her arms going about his neck, her lips on hit.

They talked softly together for a little. This was their own short hour and they wanted to make the most of it.

"Peter," he asked, "Will there be enough gold for you to complete the project?"

"Hardly that. But enough to make a good start. To dig the main ditch, to put in the siphon and start the water flowing. The power house must come later, from the sale of shares. I don't know just what the cost will be, Mary. My estimates are all amateur. There is a man I know back East, a young man, comparatively, but a splendid engineer. I think I can persuade him to come out here and superintend the work. We might see him together."

​He liked to watch the responsive flush on her face, the steady light in her eyes that looked so frankly into his for all her blushes.

"There is just one thing that is hard to determine," he went on, "and that is the amount of the supply that flows into Lake of the Woods. One thing we can do to assure water, and that is to afforest the bare slopes of Ghost Mountain and turn them into watershed. That is an extra that may not be necessary now but it is a very vital precaution. And it will all take money."

"We are going to be partners, aren't we, Peter? In everything?"

"In everything."

"Then please don't overlook my little fortune. I should like to put those dollars into trees. Not trees to be cut down, but to grow, to beckon the rain, to live their full lives of beauty and usefulness. Let that be my share, Peter."

The rider, bringing back the horses to the stream for water, broke his answer, roused Thora and Red. Thora's first thought was for Mary, even ahead of Red. She read Mary's eyes instantly before the question formed in her own.

"Oh," she said, "I bane so glad."

"We are going East in a few days, Thora," said Sheridan. "Do you want to come along?"

The clear tan of Thora's skin, from where her neck sprang out of her waist, up to the roots of her flaxen hair, became like the rim rock that Sheridan had noticed in the sunrise, and her clear woman's eyes clouded with a mist of girlish shyness.

​"I dunno," she said slowly. "I t'ink you bane better ask the boss."

Red's look of mingled proudness and surprise was almost ludicrous. If he was the boss of that mating he had not yet acquired confidence. But it was very evident that Thora had capitulated completely. She turned to him for the answer and Red moved his head stiffly.

"Well," he answered slowly. "Now you've got the gold, ha'f of it ennyway, you'll be startin' on that water an' alfalfy scheme. Me, I'm handy with a herd while it rums wild. I can hold down a job as foreman of a cattle ranch, but w'en it comes to tumin' farmer an' feedin' tame steers, I dunno. I ain't much on crops, nor on breedin'. You'll be needin' an expert for that, Sheridan. I—we—was thinkin' of goin' in for bees an' goats. They ain't like range cows but they both trail wild. They's money in goats an'—" He faltered, picked up again, "Thora an' me was figgerin' on askin' you for the lease of the Homestead, Miss Mary," he plunged. "Thora said that mebbe you might be aimin' to not be usin' it for a spell. I've rambled a heap an' I've lived sort of various, but I've allus aimed to settle down some time, w'en—" He looked proudly towards Thora.

"I'm sory, Red,*' said Mary. "But I can't do that."

Jackson looked blank and Thora puzzled.

"We warn't tryin' to horn in on enny plans you might have," he started.

"It isn't that, Red. I don't own the Homestead. ​It belongs to Thorn. She doesn't know it yet, but the papers are all in her name. I did it yesterday in Pioche. So you'll have to look on it as Thora's dowry."

"Gosh!" said Red as Mary turned to hear her lover.

"I hoped they might want it together," she said. "If I went East I wouldn't need it. I was afraid that Thora might not want to leave me and I was sure that she loved Red. And—I thought that if—if you asked me to stay—I might have to live closer to Chico Mesa."

"Red has a share in this gold," said Sherman, "enough to buy them the finest goats and queen bees that leap and fly. Kid meat and honey and music. They'll have an idyllic existence."

"I hope so. I'll have to whistle for you, Peter."

"You'll never find me far away, Mary."

It was all delicious nonsense, but it could not last long and it was the only medium for present love making. The three riders were waking up. They heard voices and the rest appeared, coming in from the main canyon, Quong and the sheriff walking ahead together. Quong's face was serene, unvexed by lack of sleep.

"We've got it," said the sheriff. "Warn't such a hard job. But I'm glad to get shet of that cave with that crowd of seventy-year old mummies. Quong here 'lows he'll get breakfast. An' we sure can do justice to it."

Mary and Thora departed towards the stream and Sheridan and the sheriff strolled towards the mouth of Bonanza Canyon.

​"Don't reckon you'll feel like ridin' yore hawss back," said the sheriff. "Not with yore arm swollen thataway. We can find room for you in my car. Goin' to be a bit crowded, but yore men that came in with me can go back a-saddle. I had the boys bury the Chinamen. Don't see no sense in spendin' the county funds over inquests for a pack like them. Packed that Pedro away with the rest of 'em. Pioche won't be no worse off without him.

"That Quong is different from enny Chink I ever met up with. Sort of noble in his own land, I reckon. Me an' him got right friendly. He aims to go down to the South Seas, he tells me. Knows an island down there that ain't on the charts. Goin' to buy him a ship an' tote along machinery an' stuff with a bunch of coolies. Be a reg'lar king on a mountain. On the wrong side of politics back in Chiny, I understand.

"That Miss Burrows," he continued, "is sure one woman with brains and understandin'. She organized us last night with speed an' dexterity. I'd hate to have her run agen me for sheriff. She's the kind of woman we need out here. I hope she's aimin' to stay?"

His glance was quizzical but not inquisitive.

"She's going to stay, sheriff," replied Sheridan. "She's going to be my partner at Chico Mesa."

"Man to man, Sheridan, I plumb hate to congratulate you. I'm too envious. You'll be spillin' water all over the mesa, now, I reckon. First thing I know you'll be shiftin' the county seat from Pioche to Metzal."

​"If we do, Sheriff, we'll bring you along with your office. There's one thing I want to tell you. Hollister's up there on the side of the cliff. He attempted to abduct Miss Burrows. We found her, but—it might have been too late, if Hollister had not gone blind and then died from Vasquez' liquor. I don't suppose there will be any inquiry but I want to see the future clear. And I don't want to bring her into it."

"Natcher'ly not. Want to avoid enny complications. There won't be none. I understood Hollister had gone on a long journey. I can confirm that rumor from now on. As to Vasquez, the Federal man is goin' to make one bright an' shinin' example out of him. There'll be a fine, but not as an option. Vasquez is goin' to be a gov'mint boarder for quite a spell. As fur as his killin' Hollister is concerned, the prosecution might consider it as mitigatin' circumstances. We'll let her ride as she goes. You got a wagon to tote in the gold, ain't you? Then you an' your fiancee 'll ride with me. There's both the ladies comin' up from the creek. An' I smell coffee."

Red came up and the sheriff strolled off.

"Pete," said Red, "you've got a stiff arm, an' I've got a neck that's all gristle. I can't even wiggle it. But they'll both mend. You an' me, Pete Sheridan, there ain't much the matter with us from now on, I reckon.

"But I've found out one thing," he added whimsically. "Times must have changed, or else the fellers that writ the sayin's was doin' it second-hand. ​I was allus brought up to understand that love spiles the appetite. It don't, Pete, for I'm sure in love an' I'm hungrier than a spring bear."

*⁠*⁠*

Late spring on Chico Mesa. A myriad blossom faces pushing up everywhere, even in the desert places. The grass growing and blowing in the wind. But, quilting the level expanse, signs of surer growths, squares of green velvet, vivid, promising. Alfalfa, vigorous under the sun and above the water, sucking up the moisture and transmuting it to lush leaves and stems, presently to purple blossoms that would herald the harvesting of the second crop.

Straight from the foot of Ghost Mountain ran the gleaming line of the main ditch, laterals shining as they stretched east and west. Beef cattle grazing on the spring range or content within fenced pastures. Growth everywhere, regardless of the seasons, laughing at drought. Present growth and steady progress.

Peter and Mary sat in the rocky notch at the edge of the cliff, looking out at the sunset. Below them Lake of the Woods flashed in its tree setting. They could see the foundations of the new power house where the dynamos were to be installed.

On other slopes, that had been barren, little pines were working hard to make a new watershed. Behind them, as they sat silent, in a perfect partnership that did not always need words, the bowl of the Hidden Homestead pitched sharply down ​towards the home of Thora and Red, living their happy pastoral.

In the grove of pines Thora was playing her violin.

"Thurston came in today," said Sheridan. "I forgot to tell you. That means all the crowd that followed his lead, fourteen of them, practically all the cattlemen now, will come under the ditch. We can begin the drainage canal, and we can start to reclaim the outlying lands. It looks as if Chico community is going to be a success, Mary."

She slid her hand into his, breathing in the air deeply.

"To work," she said.

"And to love," said he.

"And to put love into work, Peter."

"Makes for perfect happiness."

"Is your happiness complete, Peter?"

"Why do you ask me that, Mary?"

"Because—because"—the sunset glow was very rosy on her face—"there is something that might make it more complete. Do you know what Thora is playing, and why she is playing it, Peter?"

He listened, wondering. Then he caught the rhythm of the notes. It was the air with which Thora used to play Mary to sleep, the air that she had played when Mary had told of her good fortune.

"It is a lullaby," he said.

"Yes, Peter. I used to whistle it. Soon—I think I shall be humming it, Peter dear."

THE END

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