The Valley of the Wind

by J. Allan Dunn

 

THE VALLEY OF THE WIND

By J. Allan Dunn
Author of “Stetson Stew,” “The Little Cocked Hat,” etc.

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GOLD, LOST TRAILS, TREACHERY, EVEN THE THREAT OF THE YAWNING NOOSE; ALL THESE WERE FORETOLD FOR FOLGER BY THE OLD MEXICAN FORTUNE TELLER. AND THEY WERE TO REACH THEIR CLIMAX IN THE FABLED VALLEY OF THE WIND. FOLGER LAUGHED. BUT THAT SAME NIGHT TREACHERY STRUCK

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TO ROY FOLGER, standing with his red head brushing the low roof of the jacal, the ten dollars he had given the old crone was just money wasted, but he had done it to please Chiquita and there was no doubt about her interest and belief in the fortune telling. Perched on a stool, draped in her gay shawl, with her little head cocked on one side, her lustrous eyes wide as she watched the divination, she seemed like a bright bird.

La Bruja, whose ancient frame seemed jerking on wires beneath her nondescript garment whenever she moved, blew on her charcoal brazier until it glowed vermilion and its acrid fumes grew stifling in the tiny hut. Her exposed skin was like shagbark, her mouth was a mere slot between hooked nose and chin and, when she muttered or grimaced, a yellow tusk showed between the lips that seemed horny as a turtle's mouth. Old she was, incredibly old, with hands like claws, tremulous but efficient as she sifted fine sand on a tin plate, heated the grains over the brazier and commanded Folger to blow upon them.

Chiquita translated, though Folger could follow the crone's Mexican well enough. “You are to blow upon the sand, in the center. One puff.”

Chiquita's lips illustrated. Tempting lips, red as cactus blooms, adorable when they pouted. She was a cuddly thing. Clean as an unplucked bloom herself, for all that she danced in the bailes and at the Cactus cantina. Vivid and vital and in love with the tall, lean cowpuncher who had lately set up for himself.

Folger was not in love with her. He had theories about love and matrimony, fearing the loss of personal liberty, the curbing of adventure. If he let down those barriers, none too strong recently, he fancied he could fall irrevocably in love with Margaret Collins, sister to the sheriff of Caroca County. Whether she would reciprocate was not so certain. She had many suitors. Her blonde, slender, but vigorous beauty, that would long outlast the swift bloom of Chiquita, her accomplishments as horsewoman, housekeeper, and dancer, her love of outdoor things, and her sportsmanship, had swept the county off its feet as far as bachelors were concerned.

And Roy was wobbling. An extra dance, a ride in the hills, a talk in the moonlight, and he would be a goner. Meantime, he was here in the fortune teller's jacal with Chiquita. He had come largely because he did not want to hurt her feelings. He was neither conceited nor a fool where women were concerned. Only with Margaret he lost sense of analysis. Chiquita openly showed her preference for him, but she was a nice kid and he hoped someone else would come along. Not a chap like Emory Gates, the chief deputy sheriff, who was plainly bent on her capture, but perhaps Manuel Valdez, who was a sheepman but a decent sort, prosperous, and crazy over Chiquita, who flouted him.

Folger had a native reverence for women that was close to his own pride. Perhaps he had been foolish in coming here this afternoon with Chiquita—he must not let the thing go too far—but she was undeniably fascinating, and, when she begged resistance seemed almost cruelty.

He blew, and she drew in her breath as the grains went scattering, and La Bruja bent muttering over the pattern, beginning to rock to and fro, to mumble more articulately, to speak at last. Despite his cynicism, Folger was impressed. Wiser men than he believed that La Bruja foretold the future, whether by craft, or by gathering gossip and by judgment of human nature, none might say. It might be clairvoyance or the sheer wisdom of age where virility still cloistered in her brain. She had beyond doubt predicted many things, found lost objects. If she spoke as a sibyl, nevertheless she spoke sooth. How? Quien sabe?

Her croaking voice was impressive, droning or rising to a. shrill pitch as she rocked back and forth, apparently unmindful of her audience, while Chiquita translated in a frightened little voice.

“Heh, blood I see, and gold! Gold hairs and black; and gold that grows on no woman. Gold in a cage of death. Trouble and treachery, and a lost trail. A noose, but it opens. Love spurned and love returned. Riddles. Riddles! But the gold is sure. Which? Who knows? The gold that is living and curls about the heart of a man so that he loses reason—or gold that shines in the sun and charms him so he forgets the living gold? Riddles. Riddles! Who knows? Fate finds—fate binds.”

She turned the plate about and continued her divination.

“A high place, where trees grow and the grass is green. A lake of water with the wind blowing always across the lake and grass and through the trees, A pleasant place where the wind passes but there is death there also, I see dead men staring to the sky with eyes that cannot see. Trail's end. Treachery. And the gold. The gold within the cage of death.”

Something flopped suddenly down from the roof, a squirming thing that wriggled on the still hot plate and darted off before it might be known whether it was lizard or roof-snake, or the veritable familiar of the old crone herself. She was startled, Chiquita screamed, and even Folger's nerves twitched a bit while his hand fell to his gun butt as fast as the thing itself had moved.

“So,” said La Bruja, arousing herself. “The sands are scattered and I can see no more. Of what did I speak?”

“Gold an' death mostly,” said Folger. “I reckon you can't dodge the last an' I c'ud sure use the gold, though I'm no prospector. Ready Chiquita?”

Chiquita had pouted at the mention of gold hair. That meant Margaret Collins. Why had La Bruja mentioned her and left it all a riddle? She should have been fair to her own race and set Folger's thoughts against la señorita blonda, for Chiquita, though she believed in the clairvoyance of La Bruja, was shrewd enough to think that the ancient soothsayer could and did, upon occasion, supplement her prophesies with statements that might be suggestions calculated to bring them to pass. As La Bruja dwelled insistently upon the choice between golden hair and black, Chiquita's eyes began to glitter. Her tempestuous nature ruffled to storm. There was a pain in her heart like a stab. She hated Margaret.

“Yes,” Folger went on, half to himself, as they left the jacal where La Bruja watched them from the doorway, “I sure could use some gold on the ranch, right now.”

“Gold hair?” flared Chiquita.

Folger chuckled, shaking his head at her. He was used to her swift jealousies, and sometimes he had teased her. Gone a bit too far, perhaps. He could see her eyes dilate as she looked at him, her breath suddenly indrawn, her breast rising.

“Dios!” she told herself, “he is good to see!”

Folger guessed something of her thought, and his eyes grew serious. “No. I meant the genuine oro, kid. I'm squeezin through, but it's close pickin's. It'll be another year befo' I've got any of my own three-year-olds tuh sell, an' I need a good herd sire. So, though I don't know ore from chalk, if I run across that gold she spoke of, if it's in a cage of death or not, I'll likely try tuh lift it.”

But he could not halt the storm.

“So! You do not want golden hair? You do not weesh for the seester of the sheriff? No! Oh, no! You love her. An' you make fun of Chiquita. You gringos are all alike. You make girls like us your playtheeng. Oh, I should hate you!”

Folger's gravity increased. “Hold on, Chiquita. You're cute an' sweet an' you're sure mighty pretty. Bien parecido. Likewise you sure dance like thistledown on the wind. But, I've never made love tuh you. Nor no one else, for that matter. Can't afford tuh, if I wanted tuh. We've been good camaradas, why not let it thaterway?”

“Camaradas! Oh, you col' Americano. You theenk love is a horse you can saddle or turn loose in the corral. Rope w'en you like. Bridle. Ride. I do hate you. I weesh I had never seen you.”

Folger was uncomfortable. But it seemed the time for a showdown. He didn't want to hurt her. It would be wiser perhaps not to speak.

“I reckon you don't hate me,” he said. “Why can't we be just good friends?”

“Friends? Amigos? Between a man an' woman who are young? Madre mia! You, of the north! Weeth the water of ice een your blood. Si! Adios. Do not follow. Go to your blonda!”

Tears drowned the fire in her eyes as she thrust rowels into the flanks of her pinto cayuse, riding its desperate plunges down, quirting it. What a fool, to love a gringo! But she could not help it. He was a man. And, her heart longed for him. “Vamos!” she cried to the indignant pinto. “Caballo malvado! Vamos!”

La Bruja peered out of her door, like a witch out of a cave, and hobbled inside, chuckling. It was not so much that she was malicious as that her own fires had died and she liked to blow at other's embers. Those who sought her were puppets on her stage and she pulled the strings. Chiquita was a silly gallina, a foolish little hen, She was not so sure of the gringo. Americanos were not subtle but they moved on certain direct methods that she did not fathom. But she had told what she saw, or thought she saw, in the grains of sand, coupling it with the gossip for which her jacal was the inevitable clearing-house. Chiquita in love with the gringo, he in love with the sheriff's daughter, even if he didn't know it. Oh ho! It was good, for all her old bones that ached so, to watch the play. She tucked away the ten-dollar bill behind a basket that held a mummied head taken from an ancient cliff dwelling, mumbling over the brazier that could never keep her warm, though it was ninety outside in the shade, waiting for her next customer.

Folger whistled softly as Chiquita raced off. He hadn't wanted to make her cry. Perhaps it was just as well. Then he suddenly straightened and swept off his sombrero. Margaret Collins was close on him, riding her bright bay with the white blaze, trim in riding togs, her hair ashine under her Stetson, her eyes looking straight ahead.

At his bow she looked at him, through him and rode on.

“Now ain't that plain, unvarnished hell! No mo' use fo' me than Satan has fo' a burned match. Saw the hull shootin' match. Thinks I'm philanderin' with Chiquita an' thinks the kid's a wrong 'un jest because she's a dancehall gal. It ain't fair. Women are sure catty tuh each other, an' I git inside the scratchin' likewise an' also. Chiquita's straight but Margaret don't figger it thaterway, I reckon. Anyway she hangs me fo' Chiquita's querido. I'm in deeper'n a bogged maverick.”

He rode on vexed, irritable. He had a good nature and a quick, hair-trigger temper at times. That Margaret, like Chiquita, might be jealous, never occurred to him. The affair wasn't just, and it riled him. He had to go to the depot to arrange for a car to ship some stock he was forced to sell, since the banks had been stingy about further advances on a poor market, insistent on a note now out being taken up. On the way he passed the Cactus, rode into the alley between it and a long, ramshackle shed used as a hardware storehouse, and hitched his roan to the bowed rail. The roan promptly hitched up one hind foot, dropped its nose and drowsed. The alley was in the shade. There were no flies there and no other horses. After nightfall there might be as many as thirty along the rail.

The Cactus bar was deserted. Folger saw two loungers at a corner table and called them up to share his drink.

There was a card prominently displayed back of the bar.

ALL GUNS TO BE PARKED IN

SALOONS AND DANCEHALLS.

BY ORDER OF

DAVID COLLINS,

SHERIFF.

Folger did not notice it, did not realize he had broken the rule, which was really intended only for use after dark. It was a wise order if a stringent one. Vacada, county seat of Caroca County, was close to the border. There was an unruly element that was apt to clash with punchers off the ranch, spending their checks, bent on demonstrating their independence. Collins was a martinet. Gates was more popular perhaps, because he winked at irregularities that, some whispered, he was not above sharing in, on occasion. Whispered also that Gates was out for Collins' job. But the rule was generally obeyed. There was a little room at the curve of the bar, to the right as one entered, where the guns were swung from hooks of an evening as in quieter places cloaks are hung. Nobody ever took the other man's gun. That was an uncontemplated crime to which horse stealing would be petty larceny

Folger's bone handled six-gun swung at his hip but he did not think of it. He was thinking of other matters, of the eyes of the girl that had gazed through him as if he had been a dust cloud in her way. His back was turned when Collins entered, but he shifted at the sound of feet, none too pleased in his present mood at the meeting. Collins, guardian of his sister in his own estimation, had never been over cordial concerning Folger's attentions to her. Folger might make a go of his ranch but that had yet to be shown.

To Collins he was a happy-go-lucky waddie who had still to prove up. Folger sensed and ignored this. So, in point of fact, did Margaret.

“Hoist one, Sheriff?” he asked.

Collins' eyes were cold. He took his office a bit too seriously, perhaps, zealous of what he deemed his duty and more aggressive than was sometimes tactful.

“I'm not drinkin', Folger. You c'n hand over yore gun. You know the rule.”

To Folger this was the last, unnecessary straw. There was sudden tension. The bartender turned his back, polishing a glass, watching in the mirror. The two loungers edged away.

“You want it? Why don't you take it?”

The drowsy atmosphere of the place was suddenly charged with enmity. The two faced: each other. Collins cold and Folger hot, but the nerves of both steady, taut for action, their eyes hard and shining like steel. The sheriff's authority had been invoked and defied. The occasion was minor but the issue loomed large.

“Hand it over, Folger.”

Folger's left forearm was on the bar, his right hand was poised over the gun butt. Collins' right thumb was hooked in his belt. Folger felt a burning sense of injustice. Collins was going out of his way to belittle him. He spoke in a slow drawl.

“Aw, you-all can go plumb tuh hell.”

Then, just as the three lookers-on expected flame and smoke with blood to follow, a swarthy man, thickset, slightly bowlegged, a deputy's star on his vest, came through the swinging doors.

“They told me you were here, Sheriff,” he said before he took in the scene.

Collins turned, his face eager. “Bring him in, Gates?”

“No. Someone tipped him off. He'd dragged.”

Collins frowned, his cold eyes suddenly burning with blue flame. “Why didn't you—?” He checked his speech. “I'll go up tuh the jail with you,” he said, and turned again to Folger. “I'll see you again.”

“I'll be waitin' soon's you git yore feet warmed, Sheriff.”

There was bravado in his speech and Folger knew it, half regretting it. Collins did not appear to hear the last words as he went out with Gates. The bartender set down the glass he had mechanically been polishing.

“Collins sent Gates out after that stage robber over tuh Semilla,” he said casually. “They heard he was hidin' out in a shack up in the hills. Thousan' pesos up for him, vivo, or muerto. Reckon Collins is sore he got away. They claim it was Pilar.”

“Yeah?” Folger straightened up and strolled to the door. The sheriff was not in sight. Nor did he see anything of him as he loped down to the depot and made arrangements for the car. Riding on out to his ranch, the Bar B, he cooled off, realizing he had been close to tragedy.

“Jest the same,” he told the roan, “Collins had no call tuh git biggity. An' he can't run a rannikaboo over me.”

He had supper with his three hands, who with him did all the work of the outfit. The fat old Mexican cook served the meal. Folger was silent and the punchers sensed his mood, talking among themselves. After the meal the two cowboys rode in from the neighboring ranch, looking for a game of stud poker. One of them had come from town.

“Collins is sure on the prod after Gates,” he said. “Threatened tuh take away his star. Seems he had the straight dope on this holdup gent. Knew where he was hidin', an' Gates loses him. Name's Pilar.”

Pedro, the cook, clearing up, halted to listen, his beady eyes agleam in his greasy face. “They allow this Pilar is mixed up with those border coyotes that are runnin' in Chinks an' dope. Some say he's the boss of the outfit,” the waddie went on. “Collins is out tuh git 'em, an' some talk that Gates ain't so hostile to 'em as he might be. Anyhow he loses Pilar, an' the sheriff is sure peeved. Gates was lined up tuh the Cactus bar with Smiley an' that breed Romero when I left, drinkin' like they had a contract tuh make the place dry.

“Hear you-all told the sheriff tuh go tuh hell this afternoon, Folger?”

They all looked at the Bar B boss, who said nothing.

“'Lowed he was goin' tuh teach you tuh respect the law an' its representative.”

“Yeah?” Folger's riders knew his slow drawl and the mood it stood for. They glanced at one another.

“Goin' tuh sit into the game?” his foreman, Jackson, asked him.

“No. I'm goin' tuh town.”

Folger drew his gun from his holster as he spoke, inspecting it. It was clean, but he swabbed the barrel and replaced its cartridges with fresh ones. The rest kept range silence, while he put on his Stetson, nodded and went out.

“He's sure on the prod himself,” said one of the visitors. “Looks like he meant tuh smoke out the sheriff. Thought he was sweet on the sister.”

The Bar B men ignored the inference.

“Figger we sh'ud ride in?” one of them asked Johnson.

“On'y rile him,” answered the foreman. “He's of age. What'll we play for? Either of you punchers got any money tuh lose?”

They heard the crisp gallop of Folger's roan as the game started.

Going into town, Folger cooled off a little. But the resolution to appear in person and see what the sheriff intended to do remained. If he went into the Cactus he meant to park his gun. There was no sense in openly defying a good rule and giving Collins the edge on him. But if he met the sheriff outside and Collins started anything, he was not going to have his weapon confiscated. He had broken the letter of the law but not the spirit of it and Collins knew that well enough.

He could beat the sheriff to the draw. There were few men who were quicker than Folger. Natural coordination made him a crack shot and a swift one. To kill the brother of Margaret, for all her slight of him, was not to be considered. To shoot the gun out of the other's hand, or to put his shooting wrist out of commission, would answer the purpose if it came down to an issue. The main thing was not to stay away after the sheriff's announcements. The puncher might have been trying to draw him, nevertheless a challenge had passed between him and Collins, the town knew of it, and he was not going to keep out of sight.

As for Margaret, she had hurt him so deeply that the sting of it told him he cared, beyond any effort to fight the feeling. He never saw her without receiving a momentary shock. When he was with her he knew that he was beyond reason, out of his depth.

Now Chiquita was the cause of this new state of affairs, but it was not Chiquita's fault entirely. He had gone with her to La Bruja's. And now Chiquita knew where he stood with her, at the cost of his standing with Margaret. He knew that his chance of explaining things to Margaret was remote. She was proud. Unless something extraordinary occurred she would not speak to him, would continue to ignore him. And his own pride was quick enough.

He rode into the alley beside the Cactus in a half reckless mood. He had not met Collins, but the sheriff invariably made the rounds of the cantinas in the evening. And he would find Folger there. The hitch rack was crowded with horses, he had to ride to the end of the sagging pole to place the roan. The ponies stood with their heads toward the warehouse, their heels far enough away from the wall of the cantina to give free passage to the side and rear doors. They were there for hours of patient or impatient waiting, according to their dispositions, some docile, others cantankerous, but all fairly philosophical under the restraint of hitching.

Folger entered as the music was beginning for a dance. He saw Chiquita standing with other girls at the wide opening between the dancehall and the gambling rooms, but looked away as Gates claimed her. He entered the little room and parked gun and gun belt on a hook among the rest.

Two or three hailed him as he walked to the bar. There was some chaff as to his “run-in” with the sheriff, a reference to Collins' wrath at Pilar having slid through his deputy's efforts at arrest. A suggestion for poker and adjournment to a corner table.

The game went well. Folger began to win, not much, but steadily. He could not well afford to lose. The shipment of his steers on a low market was necessary for running expenses, and before he got to the place where he would have natural increase to dispose of he was likely to have to sacrifice still more. He needed every dollar, but tonight it seemed as if his expenses were going to be paid. Unlucky at love and lucky at cards, he told himself a bit grimly as he raked in a nice pot. Then his fortune changed and he began to lose it again.

It was a friendly enough game. Talk went on during shuffle and deal, or when a round of drinks was brought.

“Beats me why Collins horns in on the border-runnin' so heavy,” said one, “Thet's a Federal job, I'd figger.”

“Be a big figger in Collins' cap jest the same if he landed 'em an' showed up the Gov'n'mint chaps. Sheriff ain't all he's after. Collins is plumb ambitious, an' he's li'ble tuh git what he wants. Jest the right type tuh land. That's why he's been herdin' those border coyotes of Pilar's so close that Pilar went into holdin' up stages. Collins is a quiet one but he's been linin' up things, an' Pilar sabe's runnin' ain't right healthy an occupation while Collins is on the job.”

“Pilar took a risk comin' over into the sheriff's own territory, at that.”

“Daredevil sort of hombre. An' he gits clear.”

“Wonder why Collins sends Gates an' don't go himself?”

“Collins is keepin' cases close tuh the border. This play of Pilar's might be a trick to leave things clear for a run. It's a cinch Pilar's in cahoots with someone this side of the line. There ain't a Mexican that'd give him away, partly because they're afraid of him, an' likewise because when it comes to a turn between a gringo an' one of their own breed they're goin' tuh back their own side. A contrabandista is a hero to them anyway.”

The play went on. Folger's chips mounted, diminished, winnings balancing losses. He saw Gates come in from the dancehall two or three times in the general exodus after a dance, Chiquita with him, Smiley with a blonde, Ramon with varying partners. Then the three of them settled down at a little table, cards between them, playing perfunctorily, talking most of the time. Once Folger caught them glancing his way and fancied he was the object of their speech. He knew Gates resented Chiquita's fondness for him and thought that there was open enmity in Gates' look.

Then he stiffened. Collins had entered. The sheriff seemed alert. There was something about his carriage, the lift of his head and a pale fire in his eyes, that suggested strongly that he was not there on a perfunctory visit. A manner too eager to bother about the parking of a gun, or even the words that had passed between them, Folger decided, and knew his idea justified as Collins, looking about the room, saw him, evidently recognized him, but passed his glance on. Folger saw him catch the eye of Gates, beckon him with a slight backward jerk of his head.

Folger had thrown in his cards, and he noticed Gates say something hastily to Smiley and Ramon and join the sheriff, going with him into the private office of Cardero, owner of the Cactus. The door closed tight behind them.

They did not come out for some time. Cardero was with them, looking sulky, ill at ease. Gates came back to his table as the sheriff went out of the cantina. He tugged at his mustache, a scowl on his face. The three of them sat with their heads close together, whispering. Ramon got up, passed into the little room where the guns were parked, and then made his exit.

After a while he came back, reparked his gun and joined Gates and Smiley. Folger was having a series of low hands and he watched them, not altogether casually. There seemed to be some sort of concerted action between them. It was getting late, but the dance still went on and few had left. Gates, by virtue of his office, wore his own weapon. Smiley was the next one to leave and he did not come back. Collins had not reappeared. Folger had a hunch that something was brewing. The sheriff, he fancied, was on Pilar's trail, or on that of some of his confederates on this side of the line. Gates, who still retained his star, did not seem over keen, and Folger wondered whether he was really friendly toward the runners.

It was certain that he wanted Collins' job, likely that if he was sheriff he would not bother to assist the Federal men.

Chance had brought the hazards of the poker game to an even outcome. Folger had won a few dollars, no one had lost much, It was getting monotonous. One of the players suggested breaking up and another seconded it, proposing a final round. Gates and Ramon got up. Gates sauntered into the dancehall and the half-breed left the cantina.

A dance started with whine of violins, twang of guitar, the blare of an accordion and the beat of an Indian drum.

The game ended with Folger winning the last pot. He was some thirty dollars ahead, willing enough to quit. He had shown himself, and Collins had passed the matter over. That incident was probably closed. The sheriff had bigger game on hand. Folger's thoughts turned towards his ranch, the gathering of the steers for shipment, early work to do. With his companions he went to the bar for a farewell drink. The crowd surged out of the dancehall, laughing and talking, girls and men together, Gates and Chiquita among them. Folger saw them pass behind him in the mirror, saw Chiquita's eyes seek his own. At the same moment he felt something thrust into his hand, a folded scrap of paper. He was not certain whether Chiquita had passed it to him or not. It seemed likely, The men beside him were roaring over a story that had just reached its broad point when he read the message. Chiquita had never written him before but this was signed with her name, a penciled misspelled scrawl.

Querido—mus' see you. Plees come outside in allee soon as you can. Do not look my way. In five minutes. I am in trouble. Plees. Chiquita.

He was not her querido. She had no right to call him that. But what if she was in trouble? His good nature asserted itself. The friction had gone out of his mood. He said good night, got his gun and buckled it on, and slipped out of the side door.

It was chilly and dark in the alley, the ponies getting restless, the stars still bright overhead with dawn not very far off. His eyes adjusted to the twilight, Folger could see nothing of the girl but he made out the figure of a man standing between him and the street, close against the cantina wall, watchful but not looking his way. Then it moved out a little and he recognized the straight, alert carriage of the sheriff. For a moment he wondered whether Collins was waiting for him but dismissed the thought. That was not the sheriff's way in such a matter. He turned toward the far end of the alley where the roan stood.

Suddenly there came a spurt of flame, a report at which the horses plunged and strained at their tie-ropes. Collins started out from the cantina wall, reached for his gun, staggered, fell prone on his face.

Folger's own weapon was out in a flash, its owner looking for the assassin, seeing no one. The shot had come from the warehouse side, perhaps from within through one of the roughly boarded windows. He ran toward Collins. Now men were swarming into the alley, Gates in the lead, his gun leveled.

“Man shot! Stick up yore hands, you!” shouted Gates.

Folger obeyed. His own gun was full, clean. Perhaps Gates knew who he was but it didn't matter.

“Don't be a damn' fool, Gates,” he said, “It's the sheriff. Shot came from the warehouse. Better git after the feller that done the shootin'.”

“The hell you say! Folger, eh? An' you tellin' the sheriff tuh go tuh hell this afternoon. In my hearin'. Keep 'em h'isted! Git his gun an' let me have a look at it, one o' you boys. Two of you hold him.”

Folger did not resist. “He's goin' off half cocked, boys,” he said. “The right man's gittin' clear.”

His voice almost convinced them but they held him. A man passed his gun to Gates. Others were bending over the sheriff.

“Plumb over the heart,” said one.

Gates produced a flashlight, his gun in his left hand for the moment. Then he sheathed it.

“Hold him, boys, while I take a look at this. You said it was clean, Folger. Clean, is it? It's just been fired! Grains in the a barrel yet. By God, we've got you!”

Folger stood with body and brain momentarily numbed. His gun fired? Gates lied!

But others examined, corroborated. The grip of the men tightened. There were angry murmurs.

The sheriff was being borne away, limp. They were taking him home—to Margaret. Collins was stiff and stern, he had his enemies but many men liked him and most everybody respected him. The town knew that Folger had challenged him, had said he would wait until Collins' feet were warm.

By what trick his gun had been fouled Folger did not know. But he could see where he stood in this predicament. Foredoomed! His own riders and the two visiting punchers knew he had gone to town in fighting mood. His words to Collins prejudged him.

Now he saw Smiley and Ramon close to Gates, grinning. He had the sense of a trap being sprung. But he was in it.

“Cover him, Smiley,” said Gates. “I'm taking no chances. Put your hands out, Folger.” There were handcuffs in the deputy's fingers. At the sight of them reaction surged through Folger. Those once on he was as good as hanged.

The men pushed him forward, hands on his shoulders now. A girl thrust herself through the crowd. It was Chiquita. What part had she played in this with her luring note, her plea of trouble, she did not answer. She had said she hated him.

Chiquita flung herself between Folger and Gates. She clutched at the deputy.

“Querido, they tell me you are hurt. That you are keel. Oh!”

The angry deputy thrust her off. Some fool might have told her it was he rather than the sheriff, but he did not want her sympathy now. She went staggering, blundering back, against Folger. He heard a swift whisper in his ear; the merest murmur of Mexican.

“Horse, at back.”

His doubt of her dissolved, if it did not vanish. It was his only chance, if the roan was clear. His hands were free. He drove one fist into the belly of the man to his right and kicked hard at the other's knee. High heel struck bone, his spur rowel gashed flesh, and the man winced with a shout at the sudden pain and shock, while the other one gasped for breath.

Folger wheeled and dived between two of the horses, all excited at the crowd and noise. He struck one on its muzzle and the half frantic cayuse tugged, squealed, snapped at his flying figure and lashed out hard. The whole line responded like a row of pool balls tapped at one end.

Folger raced down between the warehouse and the hitch-pole, the ponies starting back at his bent figure, that was screened by them. Men and frightened girls jammed each other, shouting and screaming.

He shot 'round to the back and saw the roan, head high, ground-anchored by the reins that Chiquita surely must have unfastened from the rack when she led the pony away under cover of the excitement; it had not bolted. A word from Folger reassured it. The next second he was on its back, making for the dry wash that ran back of the main street, the roan jumping, cat-hammed, up the farther slope, as mounted men came in hot pursuit out of the alley. Guns were barking now.

Folger bent low, bullets whining past. It would be foolish to make for the ranch. It must be the hills, rocky ground where trail would vanish. The roan was fresh and fast. There were good horses behind, but not many as good as this.

He made for the sage with twenty riders after him. They were close, and weaponless he spurred for a burst of speed to take him out of gunshot.

Once the roan flinched, struck, he thought, in the flank, but not seriously. He heard the whine of a missile, knew that someone had a rifle, probably Cardero's. Rifle shooting from the saddle was not apt to be accurate. A moment more and——

They had him. High in the left shoulder. He felt the blood ooze out, hot in the cold night, and he bent low. If he could stick in the saddle he'd do them yet. The rifle spoke again, with the roan stretching out in full gallop, belly brushing the sage and gramma, making for the hills, gaining, gaining, gallant and game in the race.

He must get to cover before dawn. The smell of it was in the sharp air that stiffened the gluey blood that leaked out of him with every leap of his horse. The cold might clot it. He could ride as long as he had consciousness, perhaps after. He was at home in leather as an old salt in the crosstrees. And the pursuers were falling behind.

The wind rushed by him as the roan kept at top speed, nostrils wide, neck extended, ribs rising and falling and great plate muscles working rhythmically.

Where to go? Folger knew the terrain as a ranging hawk knows it, and he mapped out his route. Up Hardwater Canyon, out through the lateral ravine, rimrock on top. On toward Dusty Gap.

“Owens' tunnel.” If he could cover trail, keep ahead, he could hide out there. Few knew of the mine. Owens kept it secret in his hermit fashion for all he had made no strike in it. Owens was esteemed a crank, if not crazy. He came to town perhaps twice a year for supplies and spoke to no one, handing over a written list to the storekeepers. The rest of the time he waited in his cabin for his partner who had gone out to the desert ten years back and never returned.

Other men swore the partner must be dead, but Owens swore he was alive; maintained, before they jeered him into silence, that he had see him, in a mirage. Not a dream but part of a desert phenomenon, driving laden burros in the foreground of a green valley where a lake sparkled.

Owens was old now, and rheumatic. He had given up his own personal quest for good but he still believed that Sam Davis was alive and would come back rich from a strike.

He would help Folger. They were friends. Roy and Margaret, they were the only two the old man knew. She and Folger, riding up into the hills, had heard the old man moaning after they had paused at his cabin for a drink. And they had found him in the entrance of his tunnel, pinned down by rock and the timbering he was installing too late.

But for them he would have perished there of thirst and starvation in the lonely place, far off the range, high up on the divide. He had been grateful after they had got him to the cabin where he could treat himself after they had brought him water, prepared him some food. Half mad, perhaps, with queer ideas on spontaneous generation, ever reading through a tattered old encyclopedia, but Margaret was sympathetic and Folger's mood was hers. That was a year ago. They had visited him two or three times and he had told them of the mirage, of the vision of his partner who would come back, some day.

Folger's shirt and coat were stiffening with congealing blood. He was getting weaker, and thought was an effort. But he believed the bleeding had stopped. Now and then he heard sounds of pursuit, saw riders once in a while as he rode up the ridges, the roan going valiantly but tiring, as the horses behind must be tiring, too. Some of them had dropped far behind, out of it.

One more hogback, then Purdy Creek, then the climb to Owens' cabin—and the tunnel. If Owens was up he might—Folger was getting lightheaded now. The sky was graying. Soon the sun would flash red daylight on the peaks, revealing, merciless,

Crossing the creek, the roan stumbled for the first time, gathered itself together clumsily. It balked at the climb, and then Folger felt it give way beneath him. He himself lurched as he got free from the saddle. The roan was lying half in and half out of the water, a gush of dark blood from its mouth dyeing the stream. The shot in its flank must have gone deep. It had been bleeding internally, the hemorrhage aggravated by its efforts. Now it was done, stretching out with a gurgling groan, dead.

Folger swayed. He had thrown the pursuers off a while back, he believed. But day was coming fast. They could read his sign, the trail of the roan down the ridge.

There was a rocky cliff ahead. The light was seeping in so that he could see seams and fissures. He called on his last reserves and sprang for a ledge, clinging, scrambling for footing, clawing up, diving into brush through which he crawled a little way and lay panting. He had left no sign on that rock. They would think he had gone up creek, or down. The strength was almost out of him, his heart pounding, lacking blood for energy.

On all fours he crept up, listening for shouts, hearing none yet. Overhead, through the brush, he could see the sky turned olive, changing first to blue.

There were trees about the log cabin with its dirt roof and clay chimney whence smoke plumed up. Folger staggered toward it, his sight dim, one arm entirely useless now, the other set against the friendly trunks.

The door of the cabin opened and Owens came to it, gray bearded, wrinkled, but tanned and fairly erect for all his rheumatism.

A faint shout from below came to Folger's dull ears. The pursuers had found the roan.

In a red haze Folger saw the old man's eyes open wide, his figure seem to grow gigantic as he stumbled toward it. Then he felt a sturdy arm about him and a voice talking as if from far away.

“Folger! You're hurt bad. Take a swig of this.”

Raw liquor burned his throat but put new life into him. He was leaning weakly against the door of the cabin, things coming back to normal.

“They're after me,” he said. “Close. I didn't——”

“I don't give a hoot what you done or didn't do. After you, are they? Likely to come here? By Gorrymy, I hear 'em. Brace up an' come 'round the back. Roof's the place,” he went on as he helped Folger along. “They won't think of that. Brush an' grass up thar. Now then, thar ain't no ladder. I'll give ye a back up. You got to make it, son. I'll stave 'em off. They think I'm cracked, but I ain't spillin' over yet. Now——”

He grunted as he bent, grunted again as he lifted. And Folger clutched the edge of the low roof, scrambled up, aided by Owens, rolled over onto the dirt roof where wild shrubs and grasses had long since taken luxuriant root and growth. They were tall enough to hide him from a chance downlook from the heights. He snugged in among them, consciousness slipping out of him.

Riders came through the trees, to find Owens pressing choke-cherries through a rusty colander. True to his character, he turned his back on them and went inside the cabin. Gates swung from his saddle and followed him, the rest crowding in. The deputy set a harsh hand on the shoulder of the recluse, and Owens turned angrily.

“Git!” he cried. “The hull bilin' of ye. I ain't askin' fer comp'ny.” He jumped back, nimbly enough, caught an old Sharps rifle from its deer-horn rack and held it at his hip, threatening them, his eyes blazing. They shrank from his fury though their own guns were out.

“Put up that rifle, Owens,” said Gates, his face twisted and his eyes alight with purpose. “This ain't a call. There's been murder done. A man named Folger's shot the sheriff an'——”

The hermit did not obey the order. “What's the sheriff to me?” he demanded. “I ain't killed him. An' there's a bigger law'n his up here in the everlastin' hills. The Lord lives here and I'm His servant. I stay apart from men and thir wickedness. Begone, you spawn of iniquity!”

His gaze was fanatical as he swung his rifle from side to side, his finger on the trigger.

“The Lord gives arms to His people and the right to use them ag'in their enemies,” he said. “Ye mock at me an' now invade my house. Git! This trigger is filed to a ha'r.”

“Crazy as a loon,” muttered a man in the rear. Gates swore, controlled himself.

“Look here, old man,” he said. “Law's law. We're lookin' fer a murderer. Looks like he might hev come this way. Can't you answer a plain question without gittin' riled up? Hev you seen him? Red headed chap. His hawss died t'other side of the ridge.”

“Do I look as if I would harbor murderers? Look 'round, if ye must, seein' you come in force an' I seek only peace. Day's clear enough. Can't you read sign?”

Owens' eyes were anxious for a moment. The ground was hard under the trees but there might have been blood where Folger had brushed against a tree; a branch might be broken.

“We lost his trail at the crick,” said Gates surlily. He went to the double bunk and pulled back the old blankets and skins upon the beds, peered beneath.

“Ain't here,” he said. Owens had put down his gun and taken up his colander again, kneading the cherries, as if unconscious of their presence. “He went upstream, like I said. Ramon says there's caves up by the falls.”

“I tell you I hit him,” said Cardero.

“You hit the hawss. He ain't here. Come on, we're losin' time.”

They remounted, with Owens paying no attention to him, his face turned away until they had gone through the trees out of sight. Even then he continued to work his fruit, listening, muttering to himself.

“I kin act crazy when it's needed,” he said with a chuckle. “An' I kin act cute. That depitty! He's spawn, he is. Bred out o' mud. The pore lad!”

Fifteen minutes later he went outside, called up to the roof, shook his head when he heard no answer.

“Hurt bad. Fainted, likely. Tunnel's the place fer him. Cool, there.” Still muttering, he busied himself getting cold food which he put in a cracked dish and tied about with a big bandanna. He put a flask in his pocket, filled a canteen from a pail, got a hammer and nails and fastened cross pieces to two peeled sapling poles that stood against the cabin, making a ladder up which he climbed stiffly to the roof. Folger lay on his face. Owens turned him over, got some whisky into him, revived him.

“You've got to git inter the tunnel, lad,” he said. “I'll fix it so they'll never go in. There'll be air through the shaft an' they'll hev a time findin' that. All overgrown, an' a blind man c'ud see no one's been nigh it for a year. Got to make it before the sun gits high an' while they're below ye. They've been here an' gone back to the crick. Brace yoreself, once more.”

Folger barely remembered his trip to the tunnel. Once inside, the cool air revived him a little.

“You stay here,” said Owens. “Here's whar you rescued me, you an' the gal with the golden ha'r. I'll be back with blankets an' dressin' for yore wound. Healin' gums an' herbs. You're plumb safe, son.”

They were well within the tunnel in a stoped-out place where Owens had worked on his barren vein. He had lit a candle in a miner's iron holder, thrust into the rock's fissure.

“I'll bring more lights,” he said. “Rest easy.”

Folger was coming back to life. The liquor had helped him. He saw the food on the floor with the canteen, and took a draught of water. The thought of Margaret came to him. Long since they would have fetched the body of her brother home. The posse would return and fresh men would start out, on the trail that led close to the cabin she knew so well. They would tell her of the talk with Owens. Would she guess that the hermit had rescued him? What would she do, think? His mind seemed to spur his body. He was vital when the recluse returned.

“Want to tell you what happened,” he said.

“Jest as you like. Better, mebbe. Don't talk too much.”

Folger finished his brief story. He started with the quarrel with Chiquita that led to Margaret's cutting him. Owens liked Margaret. And Margaret was the key to his safety, Folger felt. Or his disaster.

“Got thet note with ye, son?”

Chiquita's note was in the breast pocket of Folger's shirt where he had thrust it. It was blood smeared but legible. Owens put it away carefully in an old wallet.

“Folks think I'm mad, lad,” he said. “Daffy, as we say in Wales, where I was born. But we Welsh think deep. I may help ye. Don't fear for the lass. And none shall find ye. I'm goin' to pull down the timberin' at the mouth of the tunnel. When the time comes ye'll git out through the shaft, which'll give ye air, meantime. The tunnel's caved in, abandoned, ye see. An' you snug inside. There's grub to last ye, an' water. Here's the 'intment an' the healin' herbs. You'll be able to travel inside a week. Meantime, if news comes along, I'll give it to you. I'll go to town termorrer or the next day an' get in touch with yore foreman about shippin' them cows, like you said. See how things sit in Vacada. I'm not comin' nigh you for a spell. That outfit's likely to come back, an' I don't want to give them a lead. Whoever comes, I'll handle 'em. An' you're snug as a bug in a blanket.”

He went out the tunnel. Presently, Folger, drowsy, heard the sound of pick, the rush of falling earth and timbers as the light that came from the entrance was shut off by the cave-in that would deceive all seekers. He was safe. Deeper in, faint illumination and a drift of air located the overgrown and hidden shaft. The dressing eased the throbbing in his wound. By and by he would think, but now loss of blood and loss of sleep overcame him.

OWENS cleared up things in the cabin, took the ladder apart, and sat down on his bench outside the door, poring through a volume of his worn but precious encyclopedia. About an hour before noon he saw a bay horse coming through the trees, a girl upon its back. Both were familiar to him, not unexpected. Margaret Collins slid wearily from her saddle, wan and heavy eyed.

“They've been here?” she asked.

“The posse? Yep, an' rode away ag'in. Seemed to think I was hidin' out the man who shot yore brother. I ain't.”

She looked at him keenly and he met her gaze. In his own mind he was certain that Folger had not killed the sheriff. He was not so sure about the girl. He did not know much about women, he had a certain fear that they did not look at things as a man might. That Margaret was close to being in love with Folger he had long ago told himself, noticing her behavior when the two of them visited him. He had been glad of the romance, liking both of them. Now, he sensed there must be conflicting emotions within her. She would have heard all that could be told when they brought her brother back to the home where she kept house for him. It looked bad against Folger. She was jealous of him over Chiquita. She knew he had had words with her brother whom she was so proud of and close to. It was in Owens' mind to use her to help clear her lover, if Folger was her lover, but he meant to be careful.

“They think that Jim is going to die,” she said in a toneless voice. “The Vacada doctor is afraid to operate. We've sent to Ventura for a surgeon and a nurse. The bullet is in his heart muscles. Any excitement or movement might be fatal. He's under morphia. They won't even let me see him.

“They came here after Roy Folger? And you haven't seen him?”

The quiver in her voice, the instinctive betrayal of her real purpose, Owens fancied, reassured him a little.

“You take a dipper of spring water, lass, an' set down.”

She drank eagerly, her fingers trembling.

“I met two of the posse,” she said. “They were going back with their horses lamed. They seem to think he got away through Cumbre Notch.”

Owens suppressed a chuckle. He had trailed a deer over Cumbre the afternoon before. But had not killed. They would be following his sign, no easy trail to trace, broken by rock passage.

“You glad he got away?” he asked, seeking to surprise her, to fathom her eyes. It was not easy. “You think he's guilty?” he asked again, sharply.

She caught at her lower lip with her teeth.

“He quarreled with Jim, challenged him. They found him with his gun in his hand, standing over Jim's body. He claimed his gun was clean but it had just been fired. I don't know. I don't know.” Her voice died off, her eyes piteous.

“Looks like he was in bad, don't it?” asked Owens. “Suppose we sort of review things. Who said the gun had jest been fired?”

“Gates.”

“Humph! I live up here alone but I go to Vacada once in a while. I don't talk much but I hear quite a lot. Seems to me I heard that Gates was made chief depitty by yore brother because of political obligashuns. Seems to me I heard Gates wanted yore brother's job an was plumb sore because he on'y got to be chief depitty. And that he criticizes yore brother a heap. That right?”

“What do you mean?”

“That right? You're close to yore brother, you've told me that yoreself. He don't think much of Gates, does he?”

“No. He was angry with him for not bringing back Pilar. But it wasn't Gates that shot Jim. He was inside the place and came out with the rest when the shot was fired,”

“Ever hear of the monkey that got the chestnuts out of the fire 'thout burnin' his own paws? I ain't accusin' Gates. Jest showin' thar might be a motive for him to be interested in yore brother not bein' sheriff. But—Folger ain't a fool. He'd know they'd look at his gun right away. Gates says it's dirty. Does Gates let anyone else look at it, feel of it to see if the barrel was hot an' smelled of powder gas, as it w'ud if it had jest been fired?

“I don't believe much in circumstantial evidence but I do believe in spontaneous generation, an' this Gates crawled out of the same sort of slime thet spawns skunks an' weasels, if I know vermin. Here's another thing. Do they claim yore brother drawed his gun?”

“They think he tried to.”

“Think. Seems ter me I've heard how he was quick on the draw. So quick he's got a big name for it. Now then, you think Roy Folger the sort to shoot at a man without givin' him an even break? No, you don't, no more'n I do. Yore brother, least of all. Folger's in love with uou.”

“No.”

Owens blinked, remembering all Folger had told him. Margaret was jealous of Chiquita even as the Mexican girl had been of the blonde Margaret. “No smoke without fire,” he mused. “Jealousy's akin to love.”

“We'll leave love out of it fer a spell,” he said. “Looks like Folger was in a bad mess, seein' he's wounded.”

“Wounded? They told me his horse was shot but not—not—oh, you've seen him! Is he——?”

“He's a friend of mine, an' I believe he's innercent. I aim to help prove that, but it's goin' to be a mean job unless I git help. If you'd located him here, what was you goin' to do. Give him up?”

There were tears in her eyes. She set a hand over a wildly beating heart.

“No. Where is he? I can't think he did it.”

“He's whar no one kin see him for a spell. An' his wound is fixed up. It ain't serious. Now, Miss Margaret, I want you to help me prove Folger's innercent an' find out who did shoot yore brother, at the same time. I'm goin' to trust you as his friend, an' mine. Goin' to show you suthin'.”

He gave her the blood smeared note. She gave a little sign of pity, and then her eyes flashed. She started to tear up the paper. Owens held her fingers in his own strong palm.

“You don't wanter destroy evidence,” he said.

“Evidence? Why do you show that to me? And you said he loved me!”

“Hold on. I look at this thing without prejudice, an' I've done a heap of thinkin' the last hour.

“Suppose thar was someone—we ain't mentionin' names—who wanted to git rid of yore brother an' rid of Folger at the same time. He's sweet on Chiquita, this party is. He knows Chiquita is sweet on Folger. But he don't know they've disagreed.”

“How do you know?” she flashed at him.

“The birds bring me a heap of messages up here. Mebbe I'll tell you later. Here's this man. He gits hold of Folger's gun. That ain't hard, the way they park 'em. A man c'ud stroll out with Folger's gun durin' the evenin', fire it whar it w'udn't attract attention, tote it back, swop it ag'in for his own, an' hev things all set. Then someone writes this note an' slips it into Folger's hand behind his back. Folger's good natured. The gal says she's in trouble. He ain't been nigh her all evening, but——”

“You know that, too?”

Owens nodded. He was watching Margaret and saw that her face had changed. Her eyes were glowing. She wanted Folger proved innocent of more than one thing, even as she wanted to find the real killer of her brother. Her brain was active, her heart prompted her.

“So,” Owens went on, “he's tolled outside whar they know yore brother is. Thar's no gal in sight. But thar' a shot, an' then Gates comes out on the jump. An' this Chiquita, seein' what's happenin', helps Folger git away.”

“She might have been sorry when she saw what happened. She might have been trying to clear herself if the note was found.”

Owens shook his head. Margaret went too fast for him. He had not thought of such possibilities. But he kept doggedly to his idea.

“I'm supposin' she didn't write it at all. That someone else did an' if we find out who that someone was, it'll help a heap. Thar's you an' me with Folger's foreman, Johnson, an' the two other riders at the Bar B, to help him. An' thar's Gates an' all the authority back of him on the other side. Mebbe this Chiquita c'ud help. If you'd ask her?”

“Me? You want me to ask her? You must be crazy.” Margaret's face was scarlet, her eyes blazing.

“No. I ain't crazy, honey, though some people says so. An' I was sorter bankin' on that. We ain't got much to bank on. You see, I had a notion you might love Folger, gal, as he loves you. Then you'd do anything to help him, even if you do hev to swaller some pride. I figgered mebbe you'd be willin' to see this Chiquita an' ask her if she wrote this note. You, bein' a woman, c'ud tell if she was lyin'. Mebbe you c'ud git to see her real writin' an' compare it. She might hev to swaller some pride on her side. She's a dancehall gal, an' she likely figgers you despite her.

“It'd sure be one step to'ards helpin' him. Even if you ain't in love with him but jest friends, that calls for trust, an' trust that don't go into action ain't worth much. If they catch him they're likely to hang him off the reel, with mebbe the man who did shoot yore brother laughin' up his sleeve.”

Margaret sat silent, folding and unfolding the note. At last she put it away inside her blouse.

“I'll see her,” she said. “Can I see Roy?”

“No, you can't an' that's a plumb fact. You remember how you two found me pinned under a cave-in in my tunnel? That give me the idee. I fixed up another cave-in, natcheral as kin be, an' he's back of it, with grub an' blankets an' candles. Thar's air comes down through the shaft I sunk when I first started the mine. I don't aim to go nigh him myself for a while because I've a strong notion Gates' outfit is comin' back here when they git through follerin' my tracks over to the Notch. They may cast 'round. Right now, the hill is plumb overgrown along by the shaft, an' a blind man c'ud see no one's been thar for months. But some of 'em might happen to remember I've got a mine an' think Folger hid in thar, whether I put him up to it or not. I aim to git him out through the shaft after a bit an' away from here, soon's he kin travel, but you see you can't see him. I kin take him a message.”

Her face was rose-red again, but not with anger, and her eyes were shy.

“Give him—give him my love,” she whispered and kissed the old man on his leathery cheek. Then would have gone, but he stopped her.

“Thar's one thing more. Git a message to Johnson of the Bar B an' tell him to go ahead an' ship the steers. Folger says he knows which to cut out. The car is fixed for Friday. An' to deposit the check in the bank. Folger says you kin trust Johnson to the limit. I'm sort of rheumatic an' I never was much of a horseman. Wouldn't do for me to be seen consortin' with Bar B men. Will you do that?”

“Of course.” She mounted and rode off through the trees, waving her hand at the dip of the trail.

Owens nodded to himself, well satisfied. “She loves the lad,” he told himself. “An' she's game. Not so derned easy for her to tackle Chiquita, I reckon, but mebbe it'll clear things up a bit, more ways than one.”

Midway through the afternoon the posse returned, hungry, angry and tired.

“Ramon says you've got a mine,” snapped Gates. “Where is it? I want to look at it.”

Owens looked from him to Ramon, studying both. Then he emitted a slow chuckle.

“I had a mine once. Leastwise I thought it was a mine, but first she played out on me an' then she caved in. Lies down thar. Foller the trail.”

Gates surveyed him with narrowed eyes and went off with two of his men. The others made a thorough search of the cabin, one even boosting another to the roof where he peered about from the edge. The resilient growth had straightened out. Neither without nor within was there any evidence. Gates returned chewing savagely at his mustache.

“You got grub fer us?” he demanded.

“I'm nigh out, goin' to town in a day or so for more. Reckon you'll help yoreselves,” said Owens. Nor did he offer to aid them. When they had finished Gates tossed some money on the table.

“Fifty cents a head,” he said. Owens watched them go off; then took the money Gates had left and, coin by coin, sent it scaling through the brush. Afterward he washed his hands, as if in a ritual.

“That feller Gates,” he muttered, “has got a face that's intended for human, I reckon. But thar's a devil's eyes set into it.”

Meanwhile, Margaret rode back to town in resolve to clear Folger and at the same time discover the real shooter of her brother. In her own mind she went over what Owens had said and reviewed certain knowledge of her own.

She knew her brother's growing mistrust of Gates whom he had been practically forced to appoint and had never considered fit for the post. It had soon been clear that Gates was not in sympathy with his chief's endeavors to clear up the smuggling across the line between Mexico and Caroca County; traffic in drugs, pearls from La Paz, Chinese and Japanese. Gates insisted this was the duty of the Federal agents alone, and Collins, aside from the fact that these agents were few in number and the border long, believed such traffic in his territory a disgrace and a menace to it, considered it his duty to the citizens of the county to maintain peace with law and order.

The border-running was, Collins believed, responsible for much of the lawlessness that had broken out from time to time in Vacada and that had led to his “parking” rule for guns.

There were many Mexicans, and these, whether citizens or not, were undoubtedly more or less in sympathy with Pilar and his contrabandistas, from racial loyalty, from a general prejudice against the payment of duty, and from fear of Pilar.

Collins had many lines out to catch those he knew were helping Pilar on the American side of the line, not all of whom were Mexicans, he believed. But so far no fish had been caught, and now he was down.

So close had been his surveillance, though, that Pilar had been lying low. With some of his men he had come across and robbed a stage. The robbery was successful but Pilar was wounded in the leg and had taken cover in the house of a Mexican, to whose wife he made such advances that the man overcame his fear and sent word to Collins. Gates had been sent to apprehend Pilar but Pilar was gone. He had been warned.

Margaret knew how her brother felt about Gates' failure to capture the bandit who had thus put himself deliberately against the sheriff's direct jurisdiction. Doubtless Pilar was across the border again. She knew that her brother had severely reprimanded Gates. She knew more, that he had hoped that night to catch a fish or two.

It seemed as if Gates had a motive, but there was no proof, unless she could find some. To see Chiquita was the hardest task she had ever set herself but she meant to go through with it. Owens had done much, he could not be expected to be very active, physically. Johnson, the Bar B foreman, she liked. He would help, if there was any definite thing to be done.

And she wanted to find out if Chiquita and Folger were still intimate friends. She was not yet purged of jealousy. She fancied that the note might have been written in an attempt on the part of the girl to make up. Nor did she have a high opinion of her as a dancehall woman. But Margaret did know now that she loved Folger, and she hoped to prove him worthy of that love and innocent of the shooting.

She knew her brother did not approve of her friendship with him. Collins had not been able to talk of the shooting. As she rode fast, pondering all these things, her anxiety grew over his condition. They were closer than most brothers and sisters. She knew his ambitions, his scrupulous regard for his office, his severity, and she admired him immensely.

It was dusk when she entered Vacada. She saw that the shooting was still being discussed, that she was observed, wondered at for being away from the house. That could not be helped. They might think her indifferent to her brother's condition, they might be gossiping about her known friendship for Folger. If they could read her thoughts, if they knew where she had been, their feelings would be intensified, the talk increase. It was a hard position for her. She might even be suspected of treachery towards Jim. But her heart told her that Folger was innocent. Owens' shrewdness she respected, knowing him far from crazy, for all his usual reticence, his belief in the miraculous mirage that convinced him his partner was alive.

Their house lay beyond the depot which was at one end of the town. There was no one in sight. Vacada was preparing for supper, the men preparing to go uptown, to talk over the shooting.

Then she saw the tall figure of Johnson on his gray, coming from the depot toward her. Doubtless he had been worried over the shipment. That he was stanch to Folger she did not doubt. The Boss of the Bar B was beloved of his men.

Johnson was nearing forty, gaunt, hard bitten by the life of the range. He took off his Stetson as he neared her but made no offer to greet her. She was Collins' sister. He did not know exactly how she would stand with Folger in this matter. The evidence was all against him. She might believe it. And Johnson himself viewed with gravity the fact that Folger had deliberately ridden to town, ready for trouble. The two punchers who had been at the Bar B knew that. If they talked it would not help matters.

Margaret held up her hand. “I want to talk with you,” she said. “I have a message for you about the shipment.”

The foreman's lantern jawed face with its high, Indian-like cheekbones did not change or show the surprise he felt.

“You've seen him, Miss?”

“No. But he's safe. In Owens' mine tunnel.”

“He'd best clear out for a bit.”

“He will, after his wound heals.”

“Didn't know he was hurt.”

“Isn't there somewhere we can talk? You'd better not go near Owens. The posse traced him near there. And we shouldn't be seen together.”

“We might ride down into the draw, Miss Margaret.”

It was dark in the arroyo as they spoke together. Margaret told all she knew, even to the note. Johnson said little.

“He didn't do it,” he averred decisively. “For more reasons than one. But Gates is boss while yore brother's out.”

“I must get back to him.”

“Yes, Miss. I'll attend to the shipping. Put the check in the bank. I'll hev it drawn account of the Bar B. That'll do away with the endorsement, mebbe. The bank'll protect themselves, an' I reckon they'll accept it.”

“How about money for the ranch?”

“Me an' the boys ain't broke, Miss. If the bank won't give us any we'll git by.”

“I've got some money.”

“We won't need it, Miss. An' we'll be ready, any minnit, to ride, or do anything to help the boss. He's a white man, plumb through. Been workin' like sin to make the ranch pay. I'm mighty glad you're with him. An' we'll keep our eyes and ears open.

“Gates is a slick one,” he went on. “An' he don't keep over good company, for a sheriff. Smiley's a bad hombre an' I wouldn't trust Ramon. He works for the sheriff, but he's a breed an' he's likely to play both ends. Smiley's a brother-in-law of Cardero. There's talk that there'll be another border-run soon, now yore brother's down. All rumors, but they've likely get some foundation. I got a half hint from Pedro, our cook. He'd go as fur as he dared for the boss. There's a reg'lar grapevine among all the Mexicans. They know a lot but they won't talk. We'll come out of this, Miss, an' so'll yore brother.”

“I hope so,” she said. She left the grave faced, efficient puncher with a renewed liking that was stiffened by his implicit faith in Folger. When she reached the house her brother was still under the drugs, with the surgeon expected within the hour.

On his part, Johnson rode up the street quietly. It looked bad for the boss, but he was safe for the time. And Margaret was true blue.

He was not so sure about Chiquita.

He met the posse coming back. They halted outside the Cactus and he drew rein to listen, unnoticed in the dusk.

“No, we didn't git him,” said Gates. “But we will, if I hev to go over the line to do it. He's likely there by now. But I'll git him.”

“You might do it at that,” drawled a voice. “They say you've got friends on that side, Gates.”

“Who said that?”

The man stepped out from the crowd on the high sidewalk. There had been a laugh to follow the sally and Gates was furious. He knew he was not generally popular. He had let two men get away now. If enough prominent citizens took it into their head to petition the governor he might appoint someone else to fill the unfinished term for Collins, or until the latter got well, if he ever did. There was not much chance of that, though, Gates thought.

Meanwhile the speaker, owner of the Circle K, a prosperous rancher, stood his ground. “I said it,” he went on. “I'll say some more. I don't believe Folger shot Collins. An' I ain't the only one. He ain't that kind of a man.”

Johnson heard the friendly talk with relief. He knew that Folger had friends. He had not been so sure they would speak for him.

“I reckon the prosecutin' attorney'll talk different,” Gates replied, controlling himself with an effort.

“If you git Folger. You don't seem to be over lucky of late, Gates.”

Again the snicker went 'round, and Gates dismounted and went into the Cactus, Smiley and Ramon following.

“If we kin ever turn up anything,” Johnson told himself as he went at a lope toward the masterless ranch, “I reckon we kin collect a few to help our side.”

But he was not over hopeful. A man's guilt, he reflected, was often easier to show than his innocence.

“An' the boss is surely in one jam,” he concluded.

The surgeon came, diagnosed, measured, probed gently and decided to operate.

He found the bullet, which Gates stipulated should be turned over to him for the prosecuting attorney. The caliber was the same as that of Folger's gun.

With absolute rest Collins would recover, the surgeon announced. He left a nurse, and Margaret prepared to divide her duty. Jim would live.

At dawn the nurse called Margaret. Collins was conscious. But he had little to say. He did not know who had shot him, had not seen the man. He had been watching the horses of two Mexicans inside the cantina whom he suspected of being members of Pilar's band. He had warned Gates not to lose sight of them inside, to follow them when they came out. He had told Cardero that he held him responsible for the men, that he meant to question them. If Gates and Cardero were guilty, partners with Pilar, there was additional reason for them to remove the sheriff. But how to prove it? The Mexicans were gone now.

“Did they get the man who shot me?” he asked.

Margaret shook her head. The nurse made a sign of warning. Collins was not to talk too much.

“Gates tried to arrest him,” she said, “but he got away.”

“Gates!” The contempt of the sheriff for his deputy was apparent. “Who was it?”

Again the nurse warned, but Collins was insistent. To irritate him might be more dangerous than to tell him.

“They say it was Folger,” Margaret said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“I don't believe it. I saw him earlier. We had a little trouble, but I passed it over. He understood. Gates is a fool.”

But now the nurse was imperative. Collins was exhausted. She gave him a sedative, motioned to Margaret to leave.

Margaret was comforted. But the evidence was almost conclusive, unless she could find something. She knew that the prosecuting attorney would be keen on trial, that Folger would be charged if caught. Even if Collins lived, as seemed likely, Folger would be sent up for attempted homicide. Her brother could offer nothing but his opinion to the contrary. He had not seen the man.

And Gates would be all the more virulent, if he had plotted to get the sheriff out of the way—virulent against Folger, of whom he was jealous. Jealous with how much reason? Chiquita's move had been clever but she had defeated Gates' purpose. Margaret must see the girl, get the truth from her as far as she knew it. A slender hope. But it steeled her for the interview.

She knew that the Mexican girl rode often on her pinto in the afternoons. She had seen her several times, though only once with Folger. She spelled the nurse from six until twelve, and then prepared to go in search of Chiquita. She told the nurse she was going for a ride, checking an impulse to confide in her, though she felt the other could be trusted.

“We'll keep your brother under opiates for a while,” the nurse said. “He's still in grave danger. It may be best for him not to see much of you for a while, Miss Collins. It excites him, and that shouldn't happen again. I suppose Mr. Gates will want to know what he said.”

Margaret hesitated, gauging the frank face of the other. “I wish you hadn't heard it,” she said finally. “You saw that my brother does not have entire confidence in Gates. And Mr. Folger is a friend, a very dear friend of mine.”

For a moment the two looked at each other. “As it happened,” said the nurse, “I didn't hear anything at all—though it seemed to be in favor of your—friend.” She laughed. “That sounds mixed,” she went on, “but I'm Irish.”

“You're a dear,” said Margaret with shining eyes.

Luck, perhaps, was with Margaret. It was Chiquita's time for riding. Margaret caught sight of the pinto, and the dancehall girl saw her at the same moment, wheeled her cayuse, galloped out of town on to the sage flats. Margaret spurred her bay, setting it to full speed when she was clear of the scattering huts. Chiquita was in sight, half hidden in dust. Margaret spoke to the bay and started in pursuit. She could ride as well as Chiquita, as well as most punchers, and she had the better horse. Gradually she overhauled Chiquita who, conscious of the chase, curbed the pinto to a halt at last and wheeled it to face Margaret as the latter pulled up.

For a moment they faced each other, black haired and golden, Latin and Saxon, Chiquita's eyes blazing with dark fire.

“Why do you follow me, señorita? I do not weesh to see you.”

“I want to talk with you. About Roy Folger.”

“An' I, I weel not talk weeth you. You theenk he keel your brother. An'—an' he, Folger, ees in love with you.”

Margaret's face flushed. Her heart leaped.

“Do you love him, Chiquita?” she asked. “If you do perhaps you can help him. I want to.”

Chiquita looked at her scornfully.

“An' so you come to me. Why?”

“You helped him once. I do not think he shot my brother. Won't you talk to me. Won't you get off your horse? Please!”

She slid out of her own saddle. Chiquita regarded her doubtfully, then dismounted and led the way to a rise where she slipped reins over the pinto's head. Margaret did the same.

“I do not know why I should trus' you,” said Chiquita. “I do not like you. You love heem, but you do not say so. I love heem an' I tell eet. But you have ice in your blood, like heem. You theenk because I dance weeth men that I am a bad girl. I see eet im your eyes. Yet you come to me, to help you. Do you have to make your leevin'? As I do! I am not bad, yet I would give myself eef it would help heem. Would you?” she challenged fiercely.

Her eyes blazed like black opals. Margaret felt the world slip about her. Suddenly she seemed to see things in elemental fashion. The Mexican girl loved with every atom of her nature. And she, herself—would she make such a sacrifice for the sake of the man she loved? There was a sudden surge of feeling in her, sweeping away conventions, a rush of primitive womanhood.

“I would do anything for him,” she said. “I love him; we both love him, Chiquita, we two women. Whichever of us he loves, the other must lose him. I thought he loved you. And I do not think you bad. You are clean and true and sweet.”

The fiery challenge of the black eyes died in a gush of sudden tears. Margaret bent and kissed Chiquita, and the girl stood sobbing with her head on the other's breast.

“Eet ees not me he loves,” she said. “He tol' me so. Eet ees you. But I mean what I said. How can I help heem?”

Margaret showed her the note, explained away the threat of the brown smears upon it, told her of what she hoped.

“I deed not write eet. I did not geev eet to heem. He would not look at me that night. An' I have my pride. I know he does not want me, an' some day, I—perhaps I shall marry one who wants me, of my own race, señorita. But thees? Wait.”

She sat as if turned to stone, staring over the flat, her brows drawn together over closed eyes.

“Someone feexed his gun,” she said at last. “That was easy to do. Someone who hear him quarrel weeth the sheriff, perhaps, who wanted the sheriff to die an' who hated Roy. That would be Gates. He let Pilar go. He deed not try to take heem. Because he ees friend to Pilar. Weeth Smiley, an' Ramon. Si, an' Cardero. They say Cardero hides the Chinos een his cellar. An' Smiley, he dances that eveneeng weeth Helen. Perhaps he make her write that note. She weel not tell, for he would keel her. An' I cannot make Gates talk. He ees mad weeth me because he theenks I help Roy to get away. Eet ees true. But I mus' dance, an' all the time they watch me. Cardero questions me. They theenk I know where Roy ees. You do,” she flashed. “You have seen heem?”

“No. But I think I know where he is, safe.”

“Thees paper ees no good unless we can prove Helen gave eet. They weel say that he saw the sheriff an' shot heem, anyway.”

“Perhaps you could get something in Helen's own writing,” suggested Margaret, remembering Owens' hint. She did not doubt Chiquita any more. Woman to woman, they had read each other.

“She does not write letters,” replied Chiquita. “She ees much older than you or me, an' she ees what you would call hard. Smiley deed marry the sister of Cardero but she ees dead, an' Helen says that he weel marry her. Eet ees sure he would keel her eef she told. But I weel try.”

She paused, looking out over the sage. Her breast heaved. “I weel see Manuel,” she went on, tension in her voice. “I am sure that he mus' know sometheeng an' he weel tell me if I ask him. Eet ees he who would wed weeth me, señorita, an' he ees a good man. He grazes his sheep in Cumbre Pass through which eet ees sure Pilar come weeth contrabanda. I know I can make heem tell.

“I hav' geev notice to Cardero. He ees angry weeth me an' I am tired of dancing. I weel send a boy to Manuel an' I weel see you here the day after tomorrow, señorita. Dios grant I breeng news.”

THE hours crawled to Margaret before their next meeting. Gates' posses still scoured the range and the hills. But her brother was steadily if slowly improving, and a real affection was springing up between herself and the nurse, Mary Conlin.

Chiquita was awaiting her.

“I hav' not much news, señorita,” she said. “Notheeng of Helen. She weel barely talk weeth me. But I believe eet was she. The way she look' at me. An' once she say eet ees hard for a girl to lose two lovers at once. She mean me—an' the girls laugh.

“Manuel has tell me what he knows. He deed not weesh to, for eef Pilar knew he talked he would keel all the sheep an' cut the throats of Manuel an' his peons. So Manuel mus' never be mention'.”

Margaret reassured her.

“Manuel say' that sometimes a man comes to heem an' tells heem that the grazeeng ees better higher up on the mountains, an' then Manuel drives up his sheep, an' that night Pilar passes.

“That ees in Cumbre Pass where Manuel owns some land and grazes on the open range that the cattlemen do not weesh because eet ees too close to the border. He say also that Cardero ees weeth Pilar an' sometimes keeps Chinos een hees cellar. I theenk that ees true. The girls have smell opium sometimes. An' that Ramon is the amigo of Pilar. An' also Gates. But he cannot prove thees. Eet ees known, but who weel talk?

“There ees another theeng.” Chiquita's eyes grew wide. “There ees also another pass but eet ees difficult. A hard trail on the Mexicano side, an' the desert on thees. So eet ees not often used, Manuel theenks. But he has been forbidden to graze hees sheep there wheech he would like to do because eet ees a high vallee, weeth much grass, weeth trees an' a lake, call' Boca del Viento—The Pass of the Weend!”

Margaret, disappointed at lack of real proof, despite confirmation of Gates' interest with Pilar, was struck with the mysterious quality of Chiquita's voice. She spoke of this valley with something close to awe. Presently she went on to tell in a low voice of the visit of herself and Folger to La Bruja.

“Eet ees that same place. La Bruja saw dead men there, an' the gold. She called eet the end of the trail. An' what she say, comes always true. Eet ees there, in la Boca del Viento, that theengs weel end, señorita.”

Margaret was impressed, despite lack of belief in soothsaying. But it was all vague, indefinite, impractical. Manuel could not be quoted. If he was it would not amount to anything. If Smiley could be uncovered as an ally of Pilar's, perhaps the woman Helen might be made to talk.

Her brother with his authority might have done something with it all, but to Margaret their present forces seemed pitifully inadequate. There were Chiquita and herself, the old prospector, Johnson and the two punchers from the Bar B, arrayed against the evidence, the domination of Gates and his will to arrest Folger.

“You have done everything possible,” she said to Chiquita, trying to sound as if she felt that the information was valuable. Chiquita answered very seriously. It was very clear that she considered the description of the Pass of the Wind by La Bruja vital.

“Si, señorita. An' I have promise to marry weeth Manuel. He ees a good man, of my own people an' my own faith. An' he loves me,” she added simply, not without pride. “Also he has tol' more than you theenk. Señorita, een that valley, where the weend blow by the lake, een la Boca del Viento, where La Bruja saw the dead men lie, there eet weel all end. I know eet. How an' when? Quien sabe?”

She flung out her hands with the expression eloquent of her racial fatalism. She had made sacrifice. It was on the knees of the gods.

RETURNING home, Margaret found her brother in a relapse. She dared not leave the house for fear of his passing, of his asking for her. She knew that Chiquita would get into touch with her if there was any news, but none came.

Down into Vacada from the hills came the old prospector, Owens, plodding afoot behind his burro, traveling light to town but due to return with a full load.

A few hailed Owens, asking him if he had seen anything of the fugitive for whom search was still ardent. People, following the lead of Rand of the Circle K, were beginning to twit Gates about his failures now that Collins seemed likely to recover. But Owens had nothing to say. Close mouthed, he handed over his lists to the stores, making payment in the colors and chispa nuggets he had panned from the creeks, laying in, he told them curtly, a three months' supply.

Johnson, often in town these days, listening, talking a little, trying to pin something on the enemy, saw the burro outside the store. There were not many of them nowadays around Vacada and it was not much of a guess to surmise to whom it belonged. He strolled into the store for tobacco he did not need and saw Owens seated on an empty box, whittling a stick while his order was being made up. Johnson did not speak, there was no greeting between them, but he waited well out on the mountain trail.

“Tell the boss the shipment's gone through,” he said, as Owens came up. “Nothin' new that I know of. Gates is bein' kidded considerable an' it looks like he'd got to make an arrest an' git a conviction or they'll laugh his star plumb off'n him. It'd be a good idee fer the boss to lay low a spell or clear out of the country.”

Owens nodded. “His wound's healin' fine. He can't stay too long in that tunnel, though. It ain't healthy. I've been down for these supplies an' I'm goin' to outfit him an' send him off across the desert, close to the line, over by Coyote Wells. Not likely for anyone to see him, an' if they sh'ud he'll pass for a prospector. I'll make a trip myself later on. Mebbe by that time suthin' will hev broken. I was hopin' to see Miss Margaret today, but I know she'll git in touch with me if she finds out anything. Not that I kin do much.”

“You've done a heap, old man,” said Johnson. “The boss sure owes you a lot.”

“No, he don't. He got me out of that cave-in when I'd hev died like a dog in a b'ar trap—him an' Miss Margaret. Thar ain't nothin' I c'ud do for them I w'udn't do. Meant for each other, them two. An' Folger's goin' to do suthin' more for me on this trip.”

That “suthin'” Johnson shrewdly suspected had to do with the search for Owens' long lost “pardner.” The old man was still “cracked” on that score.

The foreman rode back to the Bar B. He had heard that Collins was not so well, and had given up hopes of having any present talk with Margaret. Like Owens, he knew that she would communicate with the Bar B if anything did happen, but there seemed little chance of that. Johnson shook his head, his face grave, when the two punchers asked if he had any news. Pedro, the cook, was serving the meal, listening, none too certain of the American.

“Not a damn' thing,” said Johnson. “Things ain't breakin' right for the Bar B, boys.”

“Sure is tough luck, five ways from the ace,” commented Buck Peters. “Looks like the Old Man's friends don't amount to much.”

“You can't play, let alone win, if you don't hold kyards,” said Limpy Rogers, lame in one hip from a bucking contest but still a tophand in the saddle.

Pedro shuffled out. In his kitchen he set down empty dishes, scratching his head meditatively and crossed himself after a shrug.

“Meterse en los peligros et malo,” he muttered. Which, literally translated, means that a man is a fool to deliberately place himself in danger. But Pedro did not seem entirely content with the quoting of the proverb. Folger was in trouble, and Folger had been very good to him. It was Gates who——

A roar from the other room recalled him to the fact that the punchers were waiting for the rest of their meat. He was not very wise, outside of his cooking, and even that could have been improved upon without scoring a triumph. He muddled over things and he was a fearful man. Gates and the boss? The boss and Gates? He could not see what anything he knew had to do with the boss shooting Collins. Quien sabe? He would think it over some more—mañana.

T moon had dropped behind the western range, it was cold under the glittering stars in the narrow gorge where Owens stood with Folger, talking in a low voice though there seemed no danger.

Folger, with one sound arm, the other still to be favored, had helped to haul himself out of the shaft as Owens strained at the ancient windlass. Two burros, old but rugged, both pack-saddled, nibbled at the chapparal.

“You won't hev any trouble with them,” said Owens. “Jinny, she's still some skittish but she won't leave Joe an' he'll do what you ask him. An' I'm keepin' Sammy for my own use. It's two days across the desert an' here's a map with the water marked an' the bearin's for Coyote Wells. That's right at the foot of the Seco Hills. Sweet water. I'll meet you there two weeks from today or sooner, mebbe, if anything turns up. You keep yore eyes skinned for sky-sign. If it looks hostile, keep atop the hills an' make a break for the border. Meantime you kin sorter prospect around for gold.”

“I don't know ore from onions,” said Folger, his spirits roused after his sojourn in the tunnel.

“Wal, thar's gold thar though I ain't found it myself. But my pardner found it though he never brought it back. They say he's dead, dead long before I saw him. But I did see him, plain. It was a mirage but what is a mirage but a real scene shifted by the sun? You look for gold, Folger, an' watch for sky-sign, but you look for Sam, too. Will ye? Ye might come across him.

“He was thar, drivin' his burros, one of 'em with tools an' grub an' t'other loaded with gold in his packs. I know it. Crossin' a green valley, whar thar was grass an' trees an' a lake, with the wind blowin' through a gap between the hills at the back. Reg'lar bowl, it seemed, with the front broken away an' a piece out of the back whar the wind come. You c'ud see the grass an' water ripplin' an' the trees wavin'. Sam's beard was blown by the wind——”

His voice died away and he stood as if he had lost consciousness of Folger's presence and the business in hand.

Folger stood still also. It was weird, this sudden coincidence. La Bruja had described a valley just like this, where the wind blew and a lake shone. Dead men lying there. Gold, in a cage of death.

He was seeking gold, equipped as a prospector. There had been treachery, the lost trail, the open noose. And now Owens, describing for the first time the details of his mirage to Folger, had drawn La Bruja's valley. A cold finger seemed to travel up and down Folger's spine. He felt the beginning of a hunch that did not, as yet, materialize.

Owens came out of his silence with a sigh. “You'll try to find him, son, won't ye? You might run across the place. Will you try?”

Folger gave his promise. That Davis was alive was not possible. But Owens believed it so.

“You must go now, boy. Down the ravine an' out to the desert. I'll see you a fortnight from today. An' we'll be workin', Things'll turn. But if they caught ye now you'd have short shrift. Thar's my six-gun an' the Sharps in the scabbard on Joe. I've got another rifle. Thar's ca'tridges. No thanks. You saved my life once an' you're goin' to find Sam. I know it. Good luck to ye. I'll git yore message to her. She believes in ye. It'll come right. I'll take you down the trail to the burros.”

As Folger reached the edge of the desert the sun, as yet invisible, set a twinkling star of rose on a high crest. It spread glowing, while the barrens stretched cold and vague, with clawed growths and drifts of sand, lava dykes, ghostly dunes that swallowed him, Ahead, to the south, the hills showed sharp, two-dimensioned, like silhouettes cut out of slate colored paper, untouched yet by the sun that now ennobled the western heights of the divide. These hills were outthrusts of burned rock, sharply serrated.

As Folger voyaged on behind the two burros that were going steadily enough by now, the hill turned purple, taking on form, far off but seeming only an hour's journey away. The last of the scraggly sage gave out, then the greasewood and scattering mesquite. The clumps of cactus were farther apart, the Judas trees and barrel cactus, the pillared chayas. Soon there was no more of them, nothing gray, or gray-green, only the sand and the dykes of igneous rock with here and there cracked surfaces of alkali. The hum of cicadas ceased, there were only lizards and crawling snakes and reptiles, venomous and ugly. A bird soared overhead. He was in the wilderness. To any who might see him from the slopes he had left he must have seemed a plodding prospector, a desert rat, setting out on the everlasting quest. His wound was healing, he could use his arm carefully.

His red beard had sprouted and he meant to let it grow. On the sea of sand, that looked so level from the height, but was in reality filled with undulations, ravines between the dunes where the sand rustled as the hot wind moved it, it was utterly lonely.

Now and then the sand gathered into little whorls, sandspouts that danced in a weird saraband of their own. As the sun lifted, the distant hills seemed to he lifted, their bases aswim on air.

He seemed to be committed to Fate, to be set in some fourth dimension outside of the world in which disaster had overtaken him, the world where Margaret lived and loved him. Margaret and Chiquita, Johnson and Owens, striving to clear him, with so little to help. Folger was sure that Gates had planned the murder, used him as a tool to fashion his own ends. And Gates, in authority, seemed safe. To convict him would require strong proof.

Fate finds. What was he to find in the desert? It seemed to him that there would be something, that this was a thing ordered.

At noon he reached the first spring on the map, a struggling pool of bitter water that the burros snuffed at but drank. Beside it was the skeleton of a steer, hide clinging to it here and there, the carcass torn apart by coyotes or buzzards, both probably.

Night with the air growing cold found him on the verge of the desert proper. He had brought some fuel and he made a tiny fire in a hollow place and sat beside it, smoking, dreaming, with the coyotes in ululating chorus far away, their yaps incessant for a while. The great stars burned above him like candles in a windless vault, infinitely remote and old. He woke to find the patient burros standing by, and made his meal of bacon and coffee with pancakes he shared with the two beasts, saving fodder.

The going was harder the next day. Soft sand, wide dykes of malpais, rough lava like rock candy in texture, blistered here and there into shells that hoofs and feet broke through, sharp edged. His wound ached and he applied another dressing, but the water was tepid and the ointment did not seem to ease it. His head throbbed, the burros lagged. He had no water keg with him, only two canteens. Owens had marked the wells and their bearings were indicated, but there was a curious haze on the desert and the outlines of the peaks were blurred.

A curious feeling came over him that there was something waiting for him in those barren hills, something more than a place where he could hide and survey the desert. He did not think he was being followed. It was not as if he was conscious of being watched—but there was something. His world had been the range and this dry bed of sand and rock, like the bottom of a vanished sea, seemed to hold mysterious influences.

It was well after noon when they came to where the well was marked, and found it dry. Digging deep produced no moisture. It had vanished, absorbed by the suction of the sand since Owens passed this way. He gave the burros water out of the canteens in the crown of his hat, and pushed on. He might have waited until nightfall but something drew him on, through the stifling heat, toward Coyote Wells.

It was still hazy and the sun seemed to be sapping his vitality as it drew the moisture of his body to the surface until there was no more to perspire. His eyes ached with his head, and his wound and his tongue began to swell despite sparing sips of water. The burros kept doggedly on, plodding toward the hills that seemed to mockingly retreat as they covered painful mile after mile.

Then the two brutes stopped on the brink of a rise, balking. He no longer saw the hills. They were blotted out by a moving cloud, dun colored, rolling fast toward them. He retreated down the slope with Joe and Jenny willing enough to follow, and found the lee of an outcrop. The storm came whistling over the rise like a brown wave, gritty, enveloping them, suffocating, roaring, piling up about their feet as they stood, backs to it, Folger with his bandanna over his mouth, the burros muffled with his coat and shirt. He could not see, his eyelids would not keep out the stuff that filtered into his nostrils, his ears, his mouth, despite the cloth.

It passed as suddenly as it had come, and he washed out his eyes, relieved the burros, astounded to find the sky serenely blue, like liquid sapphire, with a wan wafer of a moon hung in the south. As he topped the rise once more he halted, staring.

Before him, close, vivid, he saw an upland park, a lake of water in the midst of vivid green, trees on the shore, reflected there, the whole set in a broken bowl of rugged hills with a notch beyond, like a pass. He could see wind in the grass, the trees, ruffling the sparkling water. It was the mirage of Owens. He must have come to the same spot, the same conditions. He closed his eyes and reopened them and the mirage persisted, trembling a little as if it was a picture flung: upon a gently shaker screen. But there was no figure in it of man or beast, no simulacrum of Sam Davis. Beside him the burros stood quietly as if they did not see what he did. And then—there was only the desert reaching to the hills, close enough now for him to see the gorges and fissures, in one of which was Coyote Wells. The air was sweet though hot. The sand lay in ripples at his feet as if a tide had lately flown there.

He got his bearings and went on. The sunset blazed, painting the desert and the ragged hills. It was smoldering out when he entered the little canyon, the burros quickening their gait as they smelled water.

The walls were white limestone, the shape of the place a narrow corridor ending abruptly in a steep cliff. The water was in a natural tenaya, with the droppings of antelope and mountain sheep. There was a scanty herbage the burros cropped eagerly.

The water was sweet, plentiful. Stars shone reflected in it like spangles on a black velvet cloth as he got supper, infinitely weary, numb for sleep.

When he woke the stars were still bright above him but beginning to pale. He looked up into the dim face of a man who was standing over him. His hand sought and found the butt of his gun. Had he been followed? Stars commenced to wink out, the walls of the little canyon changed from purple to gray as the sky lightened.

“No need to shoot, old-timer,” said a voice that Folger did not fancy, the voice of a man who had lived hard, the voice of a boaster, a reckless liver. “I'll own up yore outfit looked mighty good to me. It w'ud come in handy. But I was jest thinkin'. You don't need yore gun. Jest blow hard an' I'll fall down. I've come fur an' tolerable fast an' I'm plumb famished. Had a run-in with my outfit, sabe?” Then, “Gimme some grub, for Gawd's sake, will ye?” he pleaded, his tone hoarse.

While Folger put on the coffee, warmed beans, sow-belly and started some camp-bread to bake in the ashes, he took stock of his visitor, liking him none the better. He was a hook nosed man, with predacious eyes, a scar across one cheek, a dirty rag wrapped about his lower left arm. He had a canteen with him that was empty and he had tobacco, but apparently no weapons. Folger still held an uneasy sense that if the man had had a gun or knife he would have shot him while he slept, or cut his throat, and annexed his outfit without compunction. He had given no name. He sat smoking a cornhusk quirly, his clothes rent by contact with thorny growths, as if he had forced a trail through chapparal.

And he gave no explanations. Folger did not ask him for one, eager to get rid of him, playing the prospector himself so that the man might forget him. The meeting meant that he must go into the hills right away from which he could overlook the desert, be near the border. He gathered from the other's scraps of talk that he had had a quarrel with an outfit with which he had recently joined, a fight over cards, or a woman, or both, and that he had left in a hurry without waiting for a general invitation to do so.

“I aim to git even,” he said with a nasty look on his face and his eyes evil. “You prospectin' for gold, old-timer? Don't look like much of a place to me.”

Folger recalled a saying of Owens' and applied it. “Gold's where you find it.”

“Yeah? Jest the same, I'd ruther be campin' out in the place I jest came through. I'd hev stayed there if I had a gun an' if I warn't aimin' to carry out a bit of business across the desert.

“I come on it unexpected. I was travelin' north, you see, an' I struck a trail. 'Most like climbin' a wall in spots, but it leads up to a notch where the wind blows like hell, an' there at the top was a reg'lar park. A lake an' trees an' grass. Not a dern' soul in it. The trail I'd come by was old and ain't been used lately, an' the trail out this side'd beat anyone comin' in from the desert who didn't know it.

“When I looked down an' saw the spark of yore fire I didn't see any way to git down, at first. But fire meant food an' I sure needed it. Then I see a deep cleft where the soft rock has washed out an' left a reg'lar wall standin' out mebbe ten foot from the cliff. Part filled up, it was, an' I made shift to git down it.

“From here it looks like a box canyon, don't it? But mebbe you know the place?”

Folger, staring hard at the end of the little canyon that seemed closed by the same limestone as the sidewalls, hardly heard him.

The lake again! Wind. Grass and trees. The valley of the mirage! It was uncanny. A sense of Fate leading him inevitably along blind trails was on him. He roused himself to answer.

“I didn't know of it,” he said. “Never tried to git up thataway.” He tried to strengthen the impression that he was an old-timer in his craft.

“Well, there she lies,” said the other. “You go plumb up to the end an' there's jest a crack, ha'f hid with brush an' a piñon nigh closing it. Squeeze through that with yore burros an' you'll see the trail. You'd never tackle it on yore own. You kin git all the fresh meat you want up there. I saw fresh sign of deer. Old-timer, I've give you some information, free an' gratis. I ain't lyin'. You've got a rifle. There's as likely to be gold up there as any place, 'cordin' to yore own notions. Now then, I've got to git across the desert. You stake me to two days' rations an' give me that spare canteen of yores, an' I'll make it. Mebbe you kin give me the location of the wells. An' I'm stakin' you to fresh deer meat an' plenty grass for yore burros. It's a secret that's worth suthin', ain't it? I'll go back with you to prove it, if you say so.”

But Folger knew it was there as the man had said. A fine place to hide, keeping a lookout across the desert. He wanted to get rid of the man. He did not like him. He might talk, would be more likely to if he hesitated to stake him.

“I'm on the trail of a lost strike,” he said. “I'm not keen to hev anyone know I'm after it. There's folks'd figger what I was after, sabe? But I might take a look at this place, if there's grass an' water.”

“I sabe. I don't talk too glib. You stake me an' I'll forgit I saw you. An' wish you luck with yore strike. I want to git on. I ain't follered. I didn't cotton much to the outfit I hitched up with or they to me. We wasn't what you might call intimate. An' they ain't missin' me none. But there's suthin' I want to 'tend to that won't wait. How about it?”

It was not Folger's business. If this man had pressing affairs of his own he would be more likely to forget the meeting, less apt to mention it. He surmised the other was headed for Vacada, though there was Calor not far away, but he did not want to ask him. He set aside the food and the other bundled it, refilled the two canteens that swung crosswise on his body and made ready to start.

“Good luck to you, pardner,” he said and went off, swaggering a bit.

Folger did not watch him long. He was eager to find the trail, to reach the windy valley. The cliff stood apart, an eroded screen of limestone that denied any hint of passage behind it until it was actually reached. They toiled up the steep path to come out on the top of a chalcedony plateau. To the north lay the desert with the figure of the unnamed stranger moving across it, antwise. Beyond was the range where Owens was cabined.

Below, inside, was a grassy vale, the lake, the trees, the notch that showed a triangle of blue sky clear as crystal. A freely blowing wind. The burros picked their way down on nimble hoofs, and Folger followed. He wondered a little that no one had preempted this spot, despite the hard climb and the desert, then remembered that it must be close to the line if the border ran as Owens had said. Still he was surprised no sheepherder had used it for pasturage, unless the travel to and fro was too strenuous. That hardly seemed likely.

He gave up the problem, and unpacked. The vale opened northward, with a gentle slope to the edge of the cliffs. A patrol every few hours would assure him that the desert was clear. The hard looking stranger was now only a tiny swirl of dust but visible enough. To the south was Mexico. Little danger in that direction. Folger washed his clothes, stripped, bathed in the lake. A deer stood at gaze and he saw fish darting in the shallows.

Exploring, he found an old, dim trail leading from the notch. It had not been used for months, save by the stranger. From the notch itself, where the wind blew so hard he leaned against it, the cliffs fell away abruptly, though there was evidently a path established from the terrain below, a wild extent of mesquite thickets and cactus mazes stretching far to where, in a blue blur, the sky, the land and the water of the Californian Gulf merged.

He passed two days in luxury before he did any more exploring. And he moved his camp from the shore of the lake to a tree shaded spot under the western cliff, not far from where he had entered. There was a spring there, with grass and wild mints that delighted the burros. The central lake might find him cut off if men should elect to ride in by night from south or north, little chance as there seemed to be of such a happening, but a chance he could not afford to take. Every little while he searched the desert for sky-sign of telltale dust but saw nothing but the wind whorls gyrating. He wondered whether his late guest had passed the desert, feeling a little uneasy lest he give out information wittingly, or unwittingly, that would bring a posse to the valley, debating whether it would not be wiser to camp on top of the cliffs that walled the vale, even at the cost of comfort.

This unrest developed with a feeling that made him restless, forced him to a round of the place. He shot an antelope, saw some grouse. Close to his new camp was a gorge rent out of the igneous walls, a narrow, tortuous gash whose floor led sharply upward between black rocks of obsidian, a cleft he fancied might lead to the chalcedony plateau on which the trail from the desert emerged. He made up his mind to go up it. It might be well to have an emergency entrance, or an exit.

It was a tiresome place to achieve but it seemed to lead to the summit and he kept at it, although the obsidian walls, twisted and jagged and seamed, closed in and began to throw back reflected sunheat until he felt as if he was in an oven. Midway, the floor was broken into a series of terraces, the broken treads of a giant's stairway. He heard the whirring warning of rattlers, smelled their musky odor, and guessed them sunning themselves on ledges above his head. Once he saw a sinuous neck and flat, wicked head with topaz eyes and a pink, quivering, forked tongue, overlooking him. Then a scaly body, patterned symmetrically, as long as he was tall, glided ahead, halted, coiled and sounded its rattles.

Folger instinctively hated rattlesnakes, not fearing them, save as a menace to stock. Without thought he whipped out the six-gun and fired. The bullet cut the reptile's neck from its body, the latter thrashing and looping on the ground while the echoes of the report made local thunder. As if by magic the place became alive with snakes. From all sides came the sharp rattling, he could see them emerging from beneath overhanging ledges, peering from crevices, crawling here and there, great lengths of brown sinuousness, diapered in pink and black.

Folger leaped on a boulder, gun in hand, watching them, seeing the disturbance die down. If they had attempted a concerted attack they could easily have disposed of him. It was an uncanny place and these were the gliding devils that lived in it. He wondered, as he had often wondered in a rattlers' den, where the reptiles got their food. They lived in barren places and they had to seek their game. It could not be of too great size yet they would attack anything. And here there were scores, hundreds of them.

He forged on, looking warily about him. A chance step might bring him within striking distance of a serpent whose poison, if it did not kill, would bring him close to death. But it was nearing noon and they were sluggish. The gorge would be no place for a man to pass through at night, or twilight, or in cool weather.

Now the cleft turned at a sharp angle, and as he turned into the new course his heart began suddenly to pump. Walls and floor and fragments were all of black obsidian but here was a white stone, smooth, and the size of—a man's skull. He knew it for that before he reached it. The snake-guardians of the place had found one victim.

There were bones scattered here and there that had been crunched for marrow, most of them the missing bones from this broken skeleton of a man, a white man he judged, by the shape of the cranium. There was nothing left for identification. Years had bleached the remains that beasts had worried. There was a rusty pistol, eaten red. No shreds of clothing. All else had blown or been dragged off.

Had this been Sam Davis, snake bitten, suffering lonely agony as he strove to get back to the valley, bitten again perhaps, going to or from the plateau?

His quest was not yet finished. There was something more to find. The gorge narrowed again until he could have stretched out his arms and touched both walls at once. Another turn and then more bones. The skeleton of some beast of burden, largely articulate. He knew it for that of a burro. It lay on the backbone, the ribs curving out, like a cage.

Like a cage. A cage of death!

The legs were gone, fallen or torn apart, carried away. But the body had been circled with leather saddle packs, with cinch straps and the lacing of a diamond hitch. Time with the elements had rotted the leather, flesh and hide had gone. Insects had been at work here more than the prowling brutes that had secured the joints, the straps had seemed too much like a trap for animals. Buzzards, perhaps, had helped to strip those cagelike bones within which gleamed the dull yellow of gold, burst with its own weight from the rotting packs.

“Gold in the cage of death!” He had found it. Fate's finding.

The gold was practically pure. To it a little of the matrix clung here and there, but it was ninety per cent. virgin metal, hammered from its shell of quartz. Between thirty and forty pounds of it, he judged. Sam Davis' gold surely! Owens' now.

The next day he retrieved it with what was left of the saddle bags and the rusty pistol for identification by Owens, The skeleton of Davis, if it was Davis, he buried, and placed a cairn above it with a rude cross to mark it.

The natural thought came to him of the source of the gold. Davis might have taken it all but there was an even chance he had not, that somewhere there was a quartz seam only partly ravished. He tried to reconstruct the tragedy. Davis picking out the gold, breaking the rich fragments like a man getting kernels from crushed nuts, coming down to the valley, to the desert, on his way back with partial riches and news of a strike. The burro struck first by a snake's fangs, and Davis next, perhaps as he tried to help his faithful burro. Both perishing miserably. There had been a second burro, according to Owens. He could guess at its ultimate fate. He had seen the trail of a puma by the lake.

It was an ancient story now, but the gold remained. Owens was old, seeking colors and small nuggets in the creek, finding enough to fend off hunger but not age or rheumatism. There might have been some five or six thousand dollars' worth of gold in the packs but, if he could find the seam of quartz, why, he had ten days ahead of him and he might be able to tell Owens he was wealthy when he met him at Coyote Wells.

Once more he ventured up the snake-ridden gorge, this time to the top of the plateau, searching over the uneven surface for signs of miners' monuments or an outcrop of quartz. The piled up rocks that the dead prospector had heaped to mark the claim he never recorded caught his searching eyes at last. What notices had been left there had long since gone but there was the seam of quartz, like a scar, but rich with seeded gold that sparkled dully. How deep it lay he could not guess but there were some forty surface feet of it in length, in places two feet wide, fractured at one end where the dead man had hammered, or blasted, to reach the treasure. A pocket mine at best, but holding a small fortune beyond all question.

Folger brought his burros up to the plateau the next day and made camp there, leaving the comfort of the valley, though it was still his supply house for all of them. Here was work to do for Owens, in repayment; work that checked the fretted current of his thoughts. And it was safer here. The sense of uneasiness still prevailed. He was far from being out of the woods. Every four hours he went to look over the desert, and found no sign as the days passed on to the time when Owens would be coming across the waste to bring him news of Margaret, who filled his dreams and whose face came often between him and the quartz he cracked. Sometimes he thought of Chiquita, going over the happenings of the night when he became an outlaw. That they were still hunting for him, had posted rewards, he did not doubt. That Owens and the rest could do much for him, he did doubt.

One night he woke to hear voices, a snatch of song. He went to the edge of the plateau and saw leaping fires by the lake, many men moving about them, men in serapes and Mexican costume. The valley was invested, and he was thankful for the caution he had taken. It was likely they would not come near his deserted camp, which was among trees, with few visible traces left of use.

These were surely Pilar's men. For some reason they had chosen to come up the stiff trail through the windy notch, perhaps only to a rendezvous, to hand over their contraband. Here was the actual border. It would not be Chinamen this trip, but drugs, to be taken over by agents, on the American side, or cached. Who were those agents? Gates? Smiley?

He had no glasses with him and the light was uncertain. Some of the band were camped within the trees. He settled down to watch. The fires were being used for barbecuing meat, portions of which were borne into the trees. The meal over, there was more singing, the twang of guitars, melody that changed in character to drunken howling and then, gradually, silence. They would sleep late, secure, considering no watcher on the plateau. With daylight he could tell better who was there. If the deputy sheriff was with them, trafficking with the smugglers, he would have something to work on, though exactly how he still could not devise. He brought his blankets to the verge and rolled up in them. He might need that rest before he was through.

IT WAS Chiquita's last night at the Cactus. Cardero seemed willing enough to let her go. Gates was surly, not speaking to her, still suspicious of her, vexed by his failure to find Folger, by the news that Collins was slowly on the mend. And he had other fat fish to land and fry before the sheriff resumed authority, before his own might be taken from him.

Smiley's woman, Helen, seemed to Chiquita to regard her with a none too well concealed triumph. And she had discovered nothing.

She arrived through the side door ready to go to the dressing room and put on her garish costume for the last time. Afterward, there was Manuel waiting for her. And Folger still was in jeopardy. She had seen Margaret, who had seen Johnson. Folger, she knew, was somewhere beyond the desert waiting for Time or his friends to clear him, an outlaw.

Chiquita saw Gates at the bar, with Smiley and Ramon, the three talking with Cardero. There were four or five more men in the place, loungers and a couple of punchers. Gates gave her a mean look as she passed and paused in the shadow of the as yet unlit dancehall, hoping to catch something of value.

The front door opened and a man entered, ragged and unkempt, an air at once swaggering and weary about him. There was a scar on his face and his skin was burned red over tan by prolonged exposure to the sun. He looked to Chiquita as if he might have come from across the desert. Her senses quickened.

The newcomer fished in his pocket and tossed a coin on the bar. “Poco dinero!” he said in a hoarse voice, “but I know where I'll git more.”

No one noticed him. Obviously he could not stand treat and his manner seemed that of a braggart. Gates looked at him once, then turned his back on him. The man swigged the mescal he asked for and sauntered across the room close to where Chiquita stood back of the arch between bar and dancehall. He halted, his eyes fixed on two placards. One offered reward for Pilar, and he glanced at it casually. But his eyes gleamed as he perused the other.

He read the headline aloud. “Five Hundred Dollars Reward.” His burned lips puckered to a soundless whistle.

“Two birds with one stone,” he said with a dry chuckle, and turned to see Gates. “This redheaded hombre plugged the sheriff, did he?” he asked. “Who's actin' chief?”

“I am.” Gates showed his badge.

“Then you're the man I'm lookin' for. On two counts, now I see this placard. That five hundred goes for informashun leadin' to his capture?”

“Sure does. Why?” Gates' tone was eager.

“I'm claimin' it. Givin' notice now. You folks are witness. This is a red-headed, red whiskered hombre, tall, with a blue star tattooed on the back of his hand?”

“Yes,”

“Well, I ran across him two days back. He's across the desert. I know where he hangs out.”

“Where?”

“Hold on. I'm broke, I aim to stay here while I do a little collectin'. This five hundred, pesos an' a few more. I don't expect to collect in advance, but I want a stake. Do I git it? I talk better with money in my pants. Will you gamble?”

Gates eyed him narrowly. Then took a twenty-dollar gold piece out and handed it over. “I'll take that out of yore hide if you give us a wrong lead,” he said.

The other laughed. “That ain't the only lead I'll give you. But you're a sport. We'll drink on it.”

“On the house,” said Cardero with a nod to his bartender.

Chiquita, in the dark room, leaned with her ear against the thin partition, praying no one would come down from upstairs to light up. The orchestra would be coming soon. A memory of La Bruja, weaving over the plate of sand grains, rose before her as she listened. For the man was telling about the Boca del Viento. Saying that Folger was camping there.

“Or thereabouts,' said the stranger. “He'll likely be watchin' the desert if he's hidin' out. I sorter noticed his hands didn't look like a prospector's when I spotted that star. Reckon he's let his beard grow. But it's your man, an my five hundred pesos.”

There were more drinks set out while Chiquita's heart hammered. Gates would send a posse. She must see Margaret immediately. It was lucky she had not changed her clothes. Folger must be warned, The Bar B men would ride. She slipped toward the rear door and passed out. Five minutes later she was racing on the pinto to Margaret.

Inside the Cactus the newcomer went on. “But thar's a back way to the place.”

“I know of it,” said Gates. “On the Mexican side. It's Boca del Viento. Border line runs plumb through the lake.” He exchanged looks with Cardero, with Smiley and Ramon, reflected in the glass, while the informer, careless of his promise, of the fact that Folger had staked him, saved his life perhaps, thinking Judas-like only of reward, drained his glass.

“That ain't all,” he continued. “There's a greaser called Pilar.”

“Let's go in the private office,” broke in Gates. “Talk better there. We'll hev some drinks sent in.”

“All of us?” The man was looking with sudden suspicion at Ramon and Cardero,

“They're all right,” said Gates. “Ramon trails an' interprets for us an' Cardero owns this place. We're all on the side of law and order.”

They went inside.

“Now then,” said Gates. “What about Pilar?”

The bartender brought in bottles and glasses. Cardero made a little sign to him with his hand before he went out.

“I'll tell you. Never mind why I was on the other side of the line. That's my business an' you ain't connected none with it except as this Pilar comes in. He's wanted. I know that. Wanted for stickin' up a stage. I run into his outfit an' I didn't git along so well with it. I figgered they might be contrabandistas, sabe, an' I kep' my ears an' eyes open. I hablo Mejicano, but I didn't let them know. They was mighty close mouthed. W'udn't let me in on much till I'd been what they called initiated. I hadn't said I'd jine 'em, sabe? But I listened in. It looked like there might be money in it.

“An' I heard a lot. First about this stickup. Pilar got shot in the leg. They was after him—yore folks, I reckon—but someone tipped him off. That was one thing. The other was that they're goin' to run contraband through this same valley yore redhead's campin' in. I didn't tell him that. If he runs across 'em that's his lookout. I suppose this drug runnin' is Federal business strictly. Leastwise I figger to collect from the Governmint on that score, but you want him for the stage robbery an' I guess there's some dinero for that turnup. You kin git two birds at the same time, same as I'm doin'. Take the Federal men along if you want to. I'm stayin' here, sittin' sort of pritty, seems to me. You see I had a little trouble with that outfit an' I quit 'em. Now I'm evenin' things up. They don't know I sabe'd their lingo.”

Gates slapped him on the back. “You sure are. Some news. Cardero, this mescal ain't good enough for news like this. How about some brandy?”

Cardero pressed a button, his eyes creased to slits as he smiled.

The man tossed off the stuff, smacked his lips.

“Thet's the genuine art-i—”' His eyes glazed and he slumped in his chair, his head on the table. The four regarded him contemptuously.

“I reckon he's spilled all he knew,” said Gates. “An' that's a damn' sight too much. I'll slap him into jail an' keep him tight till we git back. He wasn't on the other side for nothin'. War-slacker, mebbe. We'll pin suthin' on him.”

Cardero mopped his forehead. “Close call,” he said.

Gates shrugged. “We'll haul in Folger,” he said. “Clean that up. Pilar'll be there, 'cordin' to arrangement. We'll take over his stuff. Cache most of it, Collins is comin' through, damn him, an' this may be the last run. We'll go up through Cumbre an' 'round to the Boca Trail. Longer but better goin', Smiley an' Ramon an' me. An' we'll come back with Folger. Start after we eat.”

THE sheriff had rallied. Margaret had given place to the nurse for the night when Chiquita arrived with her news,

“We'll warn him,” she said instantly. “You must ride to the Bar B. You know how to get to this place?”

“Si. Manuel told me.'

“Tell me now, and then Johnson. And get one of them to tell Owens.”

“That I weel do myself. There may be fighting. There weel be. Did not La Bruja see dead men? But Owens is old. He cannot ride as the vaqueros.”

“He ought to know just the same. Now, where is this place, from the desert?”

“Good,” she said when Chiquita had finished. “Tell Johnson I have gone ahead. They are to follow.”

“You, señorita? To cross the desert? At night?”

“I can ride as well as a man. My horse is strong and I am light. There is no time to lose. Gates may start at any time. Someone must get there first. Get me that sweater.”

They were in Margaret's room and she commenced swiftly to change to riding clothes, slinging a holster across her shoulder with her own gun in it. Chiquita watched, wide eyed, marveling. She had been ready for sacrifice but this, to cross the desert, to start after nightfall, this she could not have done. The desert was an evil place. The blonda Americana was strong, like her man.

“Eet ees far,” she demurred. “You an' yore caballo mus' eat an' dreenk. The caballo ees not good for the desert eef you go fast.”

“We'll get through,” said Margaret briefly. “We must. If I do not, Johnson will. I'll take canteens. Grain for Peter, rice and chocolate for me. Beef extract. I've got to see Miss Conlin. My horse is in the barn at the back, Chiquita. Will you take these things and saddle him? He has mustang blood in him. We'll make it.”

She swept Chiquita before her. “I have got to go away,” she told the sympathetic nurse. “My—friend is in danger. When my brother wakes——”

“I'll attend to that. He still sleeps most of the time. I'll let him think you're off duty. I'll find some good excuse. And I'll pray for you, my dear.”

They kissed, and Margaret went swiftly to where Chiquita had saddled the bay. Margaret examined the cinches, filled a bag with grain.

“We must go far and fast tonight, Peter,” she said to the bay.

“Ah, you are his woman,” said Chiquita. “Better for me ees Manuel,” she added, half to herself. Margaret swung into the saddle. Then they were galloping through the night, to separate presently, Chiquita making for the Bar B and Margaret going down to the desert.

Coyotes slinking from the first water-hole two hours before day drew her attention to the pallid gleam. She loosened Peter's cinches, let him drink a little and get breathed, then take his fill, wisely, as became a horse whose dam had known the desert, who knew there was an arduous task ahead. He was tired but still strong, his sweat dried on him by the sharp air. But she could not let him rest yet. When the sun got high they would have to do so, in some scrap of shade if they could find one, perhaps by another spring if she struck any kind of trail in that shifting waste of sand. If not, the canteens must serve to brace them for the last dash.

She nibbled chocolate as she rode. Later, perhaps, she would use her little stove of solid alcohol, boil some rice and stir in the beef extract. She was no tenderfoot. But thoughts of food were far from her. She had to keep ahead. Those who followed might be riders from the Bar B or they might be a posse. And Gates, if he was guilty, would guess her mission, guess it anyway.

Johnson and his riders would get through if she did not. But she knew she would. Her spirit sustained her and passed into the gallant Peter through the telepathy that existed between them. She had had him since a colt and she spoke to him now, coaxing him, telling him the need of courage and of sure, safe speed.

Sleep she did not need. Sunup, flashing over the world, turning the pale desert to momentary jeweling, found her far beyond the stage that Folger had made with his burros in the same time. There was no trail, no water, but she had ridden straight. The peaks guided her now.

On a rise she looked, half hopefully, half fearfully, for sky-sign of following dust, and saw none. It worried her a little. The punchers at the Bar B might have been absent, started late. Equally Gates and his posse, unless they had chosen another route, were far behind. They might catch up while she was forced to rest the laboring Peter. This she had to do before all shadow vanished at noon. There was not much water left, but it sufficed, and the bay's eyes were still bright when she watered him, after forcing herself to eat. Still there was no dust. She was ahead.

And now the toll of travel took its due. The horse's hoofs sank deep in the sand, he labored over the treacherous malpais, and fear began to creep into her. It was not a horse's work, this desert travel, for all her confidence. But it had to be done.

“Peter,” she said, stooping to pat his lowered, sweat and dust caked crest, “you must not fail me, or him. You must do it, Peter. You must.” And Peter pricked forlorn ears and shambled on, trying once a lope but falling again to a walk. She saw no mirage but the hills swam before her sleepless, aching eyes, appearing to advance and retreat, mocking and encouraging by turns. The sun westered, still hot, its leveling rays fierce, flinging the shadow of herself and the failing Peter far upon the sand. The bay's tongue was lolling from his mouth, her own was swollen like a mushroom. And there was no more water.

The sun sank and the air grew cold and bitter while the aloof and arrogant stars watched the faltering progress. Margaret, afoot now, leading the horse whose slender legs had been strained and wrenched, whose thirst was still an agony despite the relief from the inexorable sun. The constellations wheeled as they crept on, the steed faithful, the girl tortured with cramps and weariness that dragged like a load but her spirit, her love, her faith, still potent, driving her to step after painful step.

The pendulum of Night's progress was swinging back toward the realm of day. In the quiet desert one might almost hear the creaking of the sun's chariot climbing up the slope, the hum of the turning world. The bay lifted its heavy head feebly, stretching nostrils whose membranes were still sensitive. Water! The cliffs were very close now. Ordinarily Peter would have sensed the moisture miles back, now it came as a relief to a forlorn hope. Margaret was too far spent to notice anything save that the bay's gait quickened. Now he was almost dragging her, one hand on the saddle horn, helping her along.

Direction was gone for her but not for him. He set a new course, straight for the canyon of Coyote Wells, moving stiff legged, eyes slightly luminous,

Into the corridor of stone he led her to where the tank lay, filled with drowned stars, and broke their setting into a myriad rays as he drank deeply. And Margaret, with a sobbing cry, lay flat beside him, cupping her palms full of the blessed fluid, bathing her head, her inflamed wrists and face.

Peter found a little grass, cropped at it but gave up for the time, subsiding with a grunt to lie there, exhausted but not vanquished.

It seemed to Margaret that she had stayed there for an hour until her spirit rose again to action. In a panic she got to her feet. Peter tried to rise and stayed on splayed forelegs for a moment. She stroked his nose.

“You've done your bit, Peter. You'd never make the trail.”

She feared she herself would succumb as she toiled afoot in darkness up the pitch between the eroded wall and the cliff proper, falling now and then to hands and knees and then going with better, firmer tread as the sky grayed above her and the spangled stars fell away. It was day and she had yet to find Roy in the valley.

HE WAS not there, but awake on the plateau's edge, watching the slumbering camp. A sleepy man or so were replenishing the campfires below as the light strengthened and three men came riding through the notch. Gates, Smiley and Ramon!

There were the two ways to Folger's lookout; the trail from the end of the one that led up from Coyote Wells, and the gorge where the snakes were coiled. He could not defend both of them. To escape across the desert was impossible, there was no good hiding place on the plateau.

He got his rifle and shells, saw to it that Owens' old forty-five six-gun was fully loaded, and awaited events, gazing down while Gates and his two companions were hailed by the firemakers, halted by them, while one went into the woods. Presently he returned with a Mexican whom Folger, livening to the full situation, judged to be Pilar. The greeting was cordial, jovial. Other men came yawning from the sleeping quarters and Gates addressed them. Pilar, gesturing, made pantomimic denial of some sort and then pointed to the cliffs where Folger lay behind a rampart of rock, intent, unhearing, unseeing what they saw until their attitude attracted him.

A girl had reached the summit of the plateau from the canyon of Coyote Wells. He barely believed his eyes, his heart. It was Margaret! She walked wearily, almost reeling, and suddenly halted as she saw the valley crowding with men, coming from the trees, mounting, gesticulating, their shouts and voices dimmed but plain enough.

That she was recognized by Gates, at least, was plain. Her slender figure in its riding-clothes was too well known. And Gates guessed something of what brought her here, saw instantly the danger of her arrival to find him fraternizing with Pilar. He turned with an oath to Smiley.

Smiley, his pocked face asnarl with fear, the fear of a trapped wolverine, snatched carbine from sheath and fired. Gates struck at him and the aim went wild. The deputy was not yet ripe for murder.

But a shot rang out from the cliff top, and Smiley sagged in his saddle, slewing sidewise while up above Folger, slipping another shell into the breech of the old reliable Sharps, called to Margaret who stood as if fascinated. “Get back! Back from the cliff!”

She heard him then, saw him and obeyed, trying to run to him on blistered, aching feet, tottering as he caught her in his arms.

There was no need to talk. She was in no condition for many words. The situation was clear enough, desperate enough.

“Johnson is coming,” she told him. “Chiquita rode to the ranch.”

He nodded. Three riders against this band were sorry odds though they would reinforce them properly on the plateau. Smiley was lying on the ground, squinting unseeing at the sky. The rest had drawn back a little, consulting. Pilar pointed to the trail, and a little cavalcade rode hard to ascend it. If only they did not know, did not discover the other way up from the valley through the snake gorge!

Twice he fired, and a horse and rider went down. Again, and a man reeled. But the rest got under the cliff where he could not reach them. He heard the clatter of their horses' hoofs, and moved to where he could command the head of the trail, motioning Margaret to cover, taking what cover he could himself. Now they were shooting from below, trying to dislodge him. They began to get the range, scraps of rock flew from his insufficient screen and he moved back a little, to find Margaret close to him, with her eyes shining, her gun ready for action.

The attackers had halted on the trail. They could hear Pilar cursing them, urging them on. There was a little silence that seemed an eternity of suspense with Folger's mind ever holding the peril of the other trail. A stone clicked. There was a sudden rush of men, dismounted; clambering up the rocky way, taking cover, firing as he fired back.

The bullets sang. They passed through his clothes, they seared his ribs as he returned the fire, discarding his rifle. Two stormers went rolling down but a dozen more came on. Now his six-gun was empty and there was no time to reload. They were hard upon him, close to the top, their swarthy faces exultant. In despair he stooped for his rifle with its one bullet intending then to use it as a club. From beside him flame spat and lead sped. The leading man went down, dislodging the next. Another flung up his arms and spun about, half falling, half leaping down, throwing all into confusion while Folger slipped cartridges into his pistol once more with Margaret emptying her own gun.

The assault was over. Folger turned anxious eyes on her. Blood was seeping through his shirt, but it was only a surface, bone-brushing wound. Margaret was unharmed and swollen lips formed a smile that changed as she pointed to where men were coming up through the snake gorge. He had been a fool to suspect that Pilar did not know of the place.

He fired his rifle and the riders spread out, coming on.

He and Margaret were done for. What Margaret's fate might be flashed through his desperate mind. He would go out fighting, but what of her?

Their eyes met, in a brief instant of understanding and farewell. She was thrusting shells into her pistol. The riders came on, exultant, forming a half circle, closing in. More men were coming up the other trail now. It was the end.

Desperate, not wishing to waste shells on the moving targets, knowing there would be no more reloads, Folger saw the riders nearest the desert cliff, falter, wheel. He heard shouts, the yip-yippy of the range. Hard faced, hard riding punchers were pouring onto the plateau, their mounts leaping under the spur, guns barking. Not just three men from the Bar B, but a small squadron of them, driving back the horsemen, dropping two of them before they disappeared, hard chased. Johnson, with Buck Peters and Rogers in the lead, Rand of the Circle K with them, charged down the trail full tilt after Pilar and his demoralized men, who were flying for the notch, pell-mell.

Pilar set no faith in the fact that the border line crossed the valley. He wanted to get well into Mexico. He had seen the handwriting on the cliffs. Something had gone wrong. Let Gates take care of it.

But Buck Peters was after him and Rogers was trailing Ramon. Buck's second string pony drummed the grass. The bandit chief crossed the line. He turned to fling back a shot from his pistol when a bullet from Peters took him in between the shoulders and he went down.

Rogers swung his loop as he raced. Sent it circling out, the dally about his saddle horn. His sturdy mount slid to a halt. Ramon was at the other end of the lariat, struggling in vain to release himself, protesting.

“You have not the right,” he said. “Thees ees Mexico.”

“I roped you in the United States, hombre. Thats where my end of the rope was when I dropped it over you. You're plumb lucky it ain't 'round yore neck. May be, at that, before long.” The breed's dark skin turned gray, his teeth chattering as Rogers towed him to where Gates sat, bluffing assurance and authority before Johnson and Rand, who had him circled.

“What in hell does this mean?” he demanded.

Johnson surveyed him coldly. “Reckon you'll find out right soon. Quite a bunch of folks never had much use for you, Gates. You was in an almighty hurry to pin the shootin' of Collins on Folger. But you slipped up some. Smiley slipped up when he got his woman to write that note an' sign it “Chiquita.” You slipped when you sent word to Pilar you was comin' to take him, that time he was hid out with his leg after the stage robbery. An' now we run right on to you chummin' up with him. We didn't exactly expect that, though we knew you was in with him. But I reckon we'll find contraband right on you. Likewise Cardero's come across. You're likely to spend quite a time behind the bars, first for attempted murder, you an' Ramon, an' then Uncle Sam'll board you free.”

Gates' defiance had fled. Rand turned to two of his men.

“Rope 'em up, boys,” he said.

The deputy sheriff snarled inwardly. Cardero had talked! They knew he had deliberately warned Pilar! There was the informer he had left in jail! The sunshine had no warmth for him as the ropes tightened, and the shadow of the penitentiary seemed suddenly to fall on him. Ramon, also bound, went to pieces.

“I am State's weetness,” he cried. “I weel tell what I know. Eet was Smiley who shot the sheriff, an' Gates, who plan eet. I——”

“Shut up,” said Rand sternly. “You kin tell that to Collins when he gits out to yore trial.”

“It broke this way,” said Johnson to Folger and Margaret. “Chiquita comes out to the ranch with the news. We're at chow. Of co'se we start to come, an' then Pedro pipes up. He thinks the sun rises an' sets in you, Folger, an' when he hears Chiquita comin' through with her talk he decides to speak himself. Wanted to right along but he was scared. Said he didn't see how it c'ud help you any. His head ain't over strong. But he tells that it was his nephew that rode to warn Pilar an' that Gates sent him.

“That was enough. We figgered on warnin' you an' mebbe rescuin' you. But now we had suthin' on Gates. I knew Rand was with you from what I heard him say to Gates one day, so I calls up the Circle K. Rand says he'll be right along with his outfit, an' when we meet up he's been doin' some phonin' on his own account. There was quite a li'l bunch of us. All friends of your'n. Roundin' up Gates. Didn't figger we'd land Pilar, too, but you kin never tell yore luck when the kyards begin to come yore way.

“We sure rode some an' we had remounts. But we never caught Miss Margaret. Her hawss is down in the canyon, sorter tuckered out but he'll come through.”

“How about Cardero?” asked Folger, his arm frankly about Margaret.

“Well, Chiquita tells Cardero's in with Pilar an' Gates, an' so I sorter bluffed that across the board. Ramon fell for it, if Gates didn't, an' it was good poker.” He grinned. “Cardero'll talk later, I reckon,” he said.

They were halfway back when they met Owens, plodding on behind his burro toward Coyote Wells.

“Didn't figger I c'ud git thar in time,” he said, “but as I told thet Mexican gal, I'd do my dernedest. Her hawss was played out ridin' hell bent for my place, an' she stayed behind.”

IT AIN'T my gold, them ain't Sam's packs, nor that ain't his six-gun,” said Owens doggedly. “I oughter know, I reckon. The gold's your'n, Folger, an' I'm plumb glad of it. Now you kin git yore herd-sire an' run yore ranch right.”

“But the mine's yours. It's recorded in your name. I worked it for you. There's more'n half the seam untouched.”

They pleaded with him. At last he stubbornly yielded. “I'll go pardners with you,” he said. “I ain't got long to last, an' my share'll go to your children.”

“Chiquita should hev a share,” said Folger as they rode away together through the trees.

“For a wedding present when she marries Manuel. Roy, Owens didn't tell the truth. He lied, like the gentleman he is, perhaps because he doesn't want to give up his dream, but I think it was because he wanted you—us—to have it.”

Behind them, Owens, fingering the broken packs and the rusted gun he knew so well, gazed out toward the desert. His dream had vanished like the mirages of the waste. Youth and love were riding down the trail together. But the old prospector's thoughts were on a lonely grave that was in a gorge, reached from the Pass of the Wind.