295 files changed, 25589 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/25043-8.txt b/25043-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb6ae05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8493 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hidden Gold, by Wilder Anthony
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hidden Gold
+
+Author: Wilder Anthony
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2008 [EBook #25043]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN GOLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ HIDDEN GOLD
+
+ BY
+
+ WILDER ANTHONY
+
+ FRONTISPIECE BY
+
+ G. W. GAGE
+
+ NEW YORK
+ THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1922,
+ BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+ [Illustration: At the sharp crack of the rifle, Moran stopped short.]
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+     I THE COMING OF THE SHEEP                               11
+
+    II A MEETING AND A PARTING                               23
+
+   III JEALOUSY                                              35
+
+    IV THE GATHERING STORM                                   44
+
+     V TREACHERY                                             57
+
+    VI MURDER                                                73
+
+   VII THE OLD TRAIL                                         84
+
+  VIII HIGHER THAN STATUTE LAW                               93
+
+    IX THE BATTLE AT THE RANCH                              106
+
+     X THE SENATOR GETS BUSY                                114
+
+    XI TANGLED THREADS                                      129
+
+   XII DESPERATE MEASURES                                   144
+
+  XIII INTO THE DEPTHS                                      156
+
+   XIV A DASTARD'S BLOW                                     171
+
+    XV THE FIRST CLEW                                       181
+
+   XVI TRAPPED                                              200
+
+  XVII A WAR OF WITS                                        212
+
+ XVIII A RESCUE, AND A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE                  234
+
+   XIX BAFFLED, BUT STILL DANGEROUS                         250
+
+    XX THE STORM BURSTS                                     262
+
+   XXI WITH BARE HANDS AT LAST                              272
+
+  XXII CHURCH-GOING CLOTHES                                 283
+
+
+
+
+HIDDEN GOLD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE COMING OF THE SHEEP
+
+
+From his seat on the top of a high ridge, Gordon Wade looked into the
+bowl-shaped valley beneath him, with an expression of amazement on his
+sun-burned face. Pouring through a narrow opening in the environing
+hills, and immediately spreading fan-like over the grass of the valley,
+were sheep; hundreds, thousands of them. Even where he sat, a good
+quarter mile above them, the air was rank with the peculiar smell of the
+animals he detested, and their ceaseless "Ba-a-a, ba-a-a, ba-a-a,"
+sounded like the roar of surf on a distant coast. Driven frantic by the
+appetizing smell of the sweet bunch-grass, the like of which they had
+not seen in months, the sheep poured through the gap like a torrent of
+dirty, yellow water; urged on from the rear and sides by barking dogs
+and shouting herders.
+
+Straightening his six feet of bone and muscle, the cattleman stood up
+and stepped to the extreme edge of the rim-rock, with hardened
+countenance and gleaming eyes. A herder saw him standing there, in open
+silhouette against the sky line, and with many wild gesticulations
+pointed him out to his companions. With a quick motion, Wade half
+raised his rifle from the crook of his arm toward his shoulder, and then
+snorted grimly as the herders scrambled for shelter. "Coyotes!" he
+muttered, reflecting that constant association with the beasts that such
+men tended, seemed to make cowards of them all.
+
+With an ominous shake of his head, he went back on the ridge to his
+waiting horse, eager to bear word of the invasion to Santry, his ranch
+foreman and closest friend. Thrusting the short-barreled rifle into its
+scabbard beneath the stirrup leather, he mounted and rode rapidly away.
+
+Dusk was gathering as he pushed his way through the willows which
+fringed Piah Creek and came out into the clearing which held his ranch
+buildings. Nestling against the foot of a high bluff with the clear
+waters of the creek sparkling a scant fifty yards from the door, the log
+ranch house remained hidden until one was almost upon it. To the left,
+at the foot of a long slope, the corrals and out-buildings were
+situated, while beyond them a range of snow-capped mountains rose in
+majestic grandeur. Back of the house, at the top of the bluff, a broad
+tableland extended for miles; this, with Crawling Water Valley,
+comprising the fine range land, on which fattened three thousand head of
+cattle, carrying the Wade brand, the Double Arrow. Barely an hour
+before, the owner had surveyed the scene with more than satisfaction,
+exulting in the promise of prosperity it seemed to convey. Now all his
+business future was threatened by the coming of the sheep.
+
+After putting his horse in the corral, the ranch owner turned toward the
+house. As he walked slowly up the hill, he made a fine figure of a man;
+tall, straight, and bronzed like an Indian. His countenance in repose
+was frank and cheerful, and he walked with the free, swinging stride of
+an out-door man in full enjoyment of bodily health and vigor. Entering
+the cabin by the open door, he passed through to the rear where a
+rattling of pots and pans and an appetizing smell of frying bacon told
+that supper was in progress.
+
+Bill Santry was standing by the stove, turning the bacon in its sizzling
+grease, with a knack which told of much experience in camp cookery. The
+face which the lean and grizzled plainsman turned toward his friend was
+seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles in the leathery skin, the result of
+years of exposure to all kinds of weather.
+
+"Hello, Gordon!" he exclaimed. His pale blue eyes showed like pin points
+under the shaggy, gray brows. "You're back early, just in time for me to
+remark that if we don't get a pot-wrastler for this here outfit pretty
+durn quick, the boys'll be cookin' their own chuck. I'm blamed if I'll
+herd this stove much longer."
+
+Wade smiled as he passed into the adjoining room to remove his spurs and
+chaps. "There's a Chinese coming up from town to-morrow," he said.
+
+Santry peered across the stove to watch him as he moved about his room.
+The week before, a large picture of an extremely beautiful girl, which
+she had sent to Wade and which at first he had seemed to consider his
+most precious ornament, had fallen face downward on the table. Santry
+was curious to see how long it would be before Wade would set it up
+again, and he chuckled to himself when he saw that no move was made to
+do so. Wade had presented Santry to the girl some months before, when
+the two men were on a cattle-selling trip to Chicago, and the old
+plainsman had not cared for her, although he had recognized her beauty
+and knew that she was wealthy in her own right, and moreover was the
+only child of a famous United States Senator.
+
+"There's thunder to pay over in the valley, Bill." Wade had produced
+"makings," and rolled himself a cigarette as he watched the foreman
+cooking. "Sheep--thousands of them--are coming in."
+
+"What?" Santry straightened up with a jerk which nearly capsized the
+frying pan. "Sheep? On our range? You ain't kiddin' me?"
+
+"Nope. Wish I was, but it's a fact. The sheep are feeding on the grass
+that we hoped to save against the winter. It's the Jensen outfit, I
+could make that out from where I stood."
+
+"Hell!" Stamping angrily across the floor, Santry gazed out into the
+twilight. "That dirty, low-lived Swede? But we'll fix him, boy. I know
+his breed, the skunk! I'll...." The veins in the old plainsman's throat
+stood out and the pupils of his eyes contracted. "I'll run his blamed
+outfit out of the valley before noon termorrer. I'll make Jensen
+wish...."
+
+"Steady, Bill!" Wade interposed, before the other could voice the
+threat. "Violence may come later on perhaps; but right now we must try
+to avoid a fight."
+
+"But by the great horned toad...!"
+
+Santry stretched out his powerful hands and slowly clenched his fingers.
+He was thinking of the pleasure it would give him to fasten them on
+Jensen.
+
+"The thing puzzles me," Wade went on, flecking his cigarette through the
+window. "Jensen would never dare to come in here on his own initiative.
+He knows that we cowmen have controlled this valley for years, and he's
+no fighter. There's lots of good grass on the other side of the
+mountains, and he knows that as well as we do. Why does he take chances,
+then, on losing his stock, and maybe some of his herders by butting in
+here?"
+
+"That's what I want to know," Santry immediately agreed, as though the
+thought were his own. "Answer me that! By the great horned toad! If I
+had my way...."
+
+"This country isn't what it was ten years ago, Bill. We're supposed to
+have courts here now, you know." Santry sighed heavily. "To-morrow,"
+Wade continued, "I'll ride over and have a talk with whoever's in charge
+of the outfit. Maybe I can learn something. You stay here and keep Kelly
+and the rest quiet if they get wind of what's going on and seem inclined
+to show fight. I've been, in a way, looking for trouble ever since we
+refused to let that fellow, Moran, get a foothold in the valley. If he's
+back of this, we've got a clever man to fight."
+
+"There's another _hombre_ I'd like awful well to get my hands on to,"
+declared Santry belligerently. "Damned oily, greedy land shark! All
+right, all right! Needn't say nothin', Don. You're the brains of this
+here outfit, an' 'thout you say the word, I'll behave. But when the time
+comes and you want a fightin' man, just let me at him! When you want to
+run some of these here crooks outer the country, you whisper quiet like
+to old Bill Santry. Until then, I'll wait. That is--" He waved a warning
+finger at Wade.--"That is, up to a certain point! We don't want war,
+that is to say, to want it, you understand me! But by the great horned
+toad, I ain't a-goin' to let no lousy, empty headed, stinkin',
+sheepherdin' Swede wipe his feet on me. No, siree, not by no means!"
+
+Wade made no reply to this, and with a further admonitory shake of his
+grizzled head, the old man resumed his cooking.
+
+"You're sure that Chink'll be over in the mornin'?" he asked anxiously,
+after a little; and Wade nodded abstractedly. "Cookin' ain't no job for
+a white man in this weather. Breakin' rock in Hell would be plumb cool
+alongside of it." He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of
+his hand. "Say, do you remember them biscuits you made over in the
+Painted Rock country? The batch I et ain't digisted yet.
+
+"Every time I cook a meal," he went on, chuckling, "I think about the
+time Flour Sack Jim hired out to wrastle grub for that Englishman. Flour
+Sack was one of your real old timers, rough and ready, with a heart as
+big as a bucket, but he wouldn't bend his knee to no man livin'. The
+English jasper was all kinds of a swell, with money enough to burn a wet
+dog. For family reasons, he'd bought him a ranch and started to raise
+hosses. He wore one of these here two-peaked hats, with a bow on top,
+and he always had an eyeglass screwed into one eye.
+
+"The first night after Flour Sack come on his job, he got up a mess of
+jack-rabbit stew, and stickin' his head out the door, yelled in real
+round-up style--'Come and git it!' Then he piled up his own plate and
+started in ter eat. In about ten minutes, in walks the English dude, and
+when he seen the cook eatin' away, he rares back and says,
+haughty-like--'Bless me soul, I cawn't eat with me servants, doncher
+know.' Flour Sack never bats an eye, but says, with his mouth full 'Take
+a cheer,' he says, 'an' wait until I git through.'"
+
+Although Wade had heard the story before, he laughed pleasantly as
+Santry began to dish up the food; then the latter summoned the hired
+men.
+
+"Mind, now, Bill," Wade admonished. "Not a word about the sheep."
+
+The next morning, after a restless night, the young rancher set out
+alone for the sheep camp. He was more than ever concerned over the
+outlook, because sleep had brought to his pillow visions of cattle
+starving on a denuded range, and of Santry and Race Moran engaged in a
+death struggle. Particularly because of the danger of this, he had
+insisted upon Santry staying at home. The old plainsman, scarred
+veteran of many a frontier brawl, was too quick tempered and too
+proficient with his six-shooter to take back-talk from the despised
+sheep herders or to bandy words with a man he feared and hated. Wade was
+becoming convinced that Moran was responsible for the invasion of the
+range, although still at a loss for his reasons. The whole affair was
+marked with Moran's handiwork and the silent swiftness of his methods.
+
+This Race Moran was a stranger who had come to Crawling Water some
+months before, and for reasons best known to himself, had been trying to
+ingratiate himself in the neighborhood, but, although he seemed to have
+plenty of funds, the ranch and stock men did not take kindly to his
+advances. He posed as the agent of some Eastern capitalists, and he had
+opened an office which for sumptuous appointments had never been equaled
+in that part of the country; but he had not been able to buy or lease
+land at the prices he offered and his business apparently had not
+prospered. Then sheep had begun to appear in great flocks in various
+parts of the surrounding country and some of these flocks to overflow
+into Crawling Water Valley. Moran denied, at first, that they had come
+at his instance, but later on, he tacitly admitted to the protesting
+cattlemen that he had a certain amount of interest in sheep raising.
+
+More far-sighted than some of his neighbors, Wade had leased a large
+strip of land in the valley for use as winter range. Moran had seemed to
+want this land badly, and had offered a really fair price for it, but
+Wade had not cared to sell. Relying upon his privilege as lessee, Wade
+had not feared the approach of the sheep, and he had no reason to wish
+to dispose of his holdings. Now, it began to look as if the purpose was
+to "sheep" him out of his own territory, so that the agent might buy up
+the lease and homestead rights on practically his own terms. The thing
+had been done before in various parts of the cattle country.
+
+Cattle and sheep cannot live on the same range, and when sheep take
+possession of a country, cattle must move out of it, or starve. No
+wonder, then, that the cattlemen of Crawling Water Valley were aroused.
+Their livelihood was slipping away from them, day by day, for unless
+prompt steps were taken the grass would be ruined by the woolly plague.
+
+Thus far, Gordon Wade, a leader in the cattle faction, had been firm for
+peaceful measures though some of the ranchers had threatened an open war
+on the herders. "Avoid bloodshed at almost any cost," had been his
+advice, and he had done his best to restrain the more hot-headed members
+of his party, who were for shooting the sheep and driving out the
+herders at the rifle point. But there was a limit, even to Wade's
+patience, and his jaws squared grimly as he considered the probable
+result, should Moran and his followers, the sheep owners, persist in
+their present course of action.
+
+It was still very early in the morning when Wade arrived at the herder's
+camp. Oscar Jensen, a short, thick-set man, with an unwholesome, heavy
+face, stepped out of the little tent as the rancher rode up.
+
+"Mornin'."
+
+"Good-morning!" The cattleman affected a cheerfulness which he did not
+feel. "Are these your sheep, Mr. Jensen?" He waved in the direction of
+the grazing band, a dirty white patch on the green of the valley.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps you don't know that you are on Double Arrow land? I've ridden
+over to ask you to move your sheep. They're spoiling our grass."
+
+Jensen grinned sardonically, for he had been expecting Wade's visit and
+was prepared for it.
+
+"I got a right here," he said. "There's plenty good grass here and I
+take my sheep where they get fat. This is government land."
+
+"It is government land," Wade quietly acknowledged, "but you have no
+right on it. I control this range, I've paid for it, and unless you move
+within the next twelve hours you'll be arrested for trespass."
+
+The sheepman's sullen face darkened with anger.
+
+"Who'll do it? The sheriff won't, and I'm not afeerd of you cattlemen.
+My sheep must eat as well as your cattle, and I got a good right here. I
+won't move."
+
+"Then remember that I warned you if you get into trouble, Jensen.
+There's plenty of open range and good water on the other side of the
+hills. I advise you to trail your sheep there before it is too late.
+Don't think that Race Moran can save you from the law. Moran is not
+running this valley, and don't you forget it."
+
+"How do you know Moran's backin' me?" The Swede could not conceal his
+surprise. "You can't bluff me, Wade. I know my rights, and I'm goin' to
+stick to 'em."
+
+"The devil you say!" Now that he was sure of Moran's complicity in the
+matter, Wade felt himself becoming angry, in spite of his resolve to
+keep cool. "You'd best listen to reason and pull out while you're able
+to travel. There are men in this valley who won't waste time in talk
+when they know you're here."
+
+"Bah!" Jensen snorted contemptuously. "I can take care of myself. I know
+what I'm doin', I tell you."
+
+"You may, but you don't act like it," was Wade's parting remark, as he
+turned his horse and rode off.
+
+"Go to hell!" the Swede shouted after him.
+
+Heading toward Crawling Water, the ranch owner rode rapidly over the
+sun-baked ground, too full of rage to take notice of anything except his
+own helplessness. The sting of Jensen's impudence lay in Wade's
+realization that to enlist the aid of the sheriff against the sheep man
+would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible. There was very
+little law in that region, and what little there was seemed, somehow, to
+have been taken under the direction of Race Moran.
+
+It was now broad day and the prairie warmed to the blazing sun. Long,
+rolling stretches of grass, topped with rocks and alkaline sand, gave
+back a blinding glare like the reflection of a summer sea, from which
+arose a haze of gray dust like ocean mists over distant reaches. Far to
+the South, a lone butte lifted its corrugated front in forbidding
+majesty.
+
+Beyond the summit of the butte was a greenish-brown plateau of sagebrush
+and bunch-grass. Behind this mesa, a range of snow-topped mountains cut
+the horizon with their white peaks, and in their deep and gloomy canyons
+lurked great shadows of cool, rich green. As far as the eye could see,
+there was no sign of life save Wade and his mount.
+
+The horse's feet kicked up a cloud of yellow dust that hung in the air
+like smoke from a battery of cannon. It enveloped the ranchman, who rode
+with the loose seat and straight back of his kind; it came to lie deeply
+on his shoulders and on his broad-brimmed Stetson hat, and in the
+wrinkles of the leather chaps that encased his legs. He looked steadily
+ahead, from under reddened eyelids, over the trackless plain that
+encompassed him. At a pace which would speedily cover the twenty odd
+miles to Crawling Water, he rode on his way to see Race Moran.
+
+Two hours later Oscar Jensen was shot from behind as he was walking
+alone, a little distance from his camp. He fell dead and his assassin
+disappeared without being seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A MEETING AND A PARTING
+
+
+Had some one of Gordon Wade's multitude of admirers in the East seen him
+as he stood looking out over his Wyoming ranch, he might have recognized
+the true cowboy composure with which the ranchman faced the coming
+storm, but he would not have recognized the stripling who had won
+scholastic and athletic honors at Princeton a few short years before,
+and who had spent a year after graduating in aimless travel and reckless
+adventure.
+
+After flitting rapidly and at random almost all over the habitable
+globe, he had returned to his home in New York with some thought of
+settling down there, but the old family mansion was empty excepting for
+the servants, and his sense of loneliness and sorrow for the loved ones
+who were no longer there to greet him, drove him on speedily and he
+turned toward the West to explore his own country last of all, as so
+many other travelers do.
+
+Attracted by the surpassing beauty of the country, he had lingered in
+Wyoming long enough to feel fascination of the ranch life that was then
+to be found in all its perfection in the wilder part of that State, and
+realizing that he had found the precise location and vocation that
+suited him, he had converted his modest fortune into cash, and invested
+all in the Double Arrow Ranch.
+
+But on his way thither, he had stopped in Chicago, and there he had come
+face to face with Romance.
+
+Before he had gone a dozen steps after getting off the train, some one
+dealt him a mighty blow between the shoulders, that well nigh sent him
+spinning. Before he could recover himself, he was caught from behind and
+hurled headlong into a taxicab.
+
+"I've heard of Western hospitality before," he said, calmly, before he
+could see who his assailant was, "but you seem to be hard up for
+guests."
+
+"No," said his college chum, George Stout, grinning happily as he
+clambered into the taxi, "but I wasn't taking chances; somebody else
+might have seen you first."
+
+Followed three feverish days and nights; then as they sat in pajamas in
+Stout's apartment, Wade said: "I don't imagine there is anything more to
+see or do in this hectic city of yours, and I am free to say I don't
+like it; I think I'll move on."
+
+"Not yet," said Stout, with the grin that endeared him to everybody that
+ever met him. "You've only seen the outside edges so far. To-night you
+are going to break into society."
+
+"Do they have society here?" asked Wade.
+
+"Well, they call it that," still grinning, "anyhow you'll be interested,
+not to say amused. The game is new as yet, but they go through the
+motions, and Oh, boy, how lavish they are! You'll see everything money
+can buy this evening, and probably meet people you wouldn't be likely
+to run across anywhere else.
+
+"You're bidden to appear, sir, at the ornate mansion of a Senator of the
+United States--the Senator, perhaps, I should say, I've secured the
+invitation, and Mrs. Rexhill will never recognize me again if you don't
+go."
+
+"Would that be serious?"
+
+"Very serious. I am counsel for one of the Senator's companies."
+
+"And does that imply social obligation?"
+
+"It does with Mrs. Rexhill."
+
+"Oh, very well, I'll go anywhere once, but who is Mrs. Rexhill? I
+suppose, of course, she is the Senator's wife, but who is she in
+society? I never heard of her."
+
+"You wouldn't; it isn't what she is, it is what she wants to be. You
+must not laugh at her; she is doing the best she can. You'll admit one
+thing readily enough when you see her. She is probably the handsomest
+woman of her age in Chicago, and she isn't more than forty. Where the
+Senator found her, I can't say, but she was his wife when he made his
+first strike in Denver, and I will say to his credit that he has always
+been a devoted husband."
+
+"I'm glad to hear something to his credit," said Wade dryly. "The
+general impression I've gathered from reading the newspapers lately,
+hasn't been of the most exalted sort."
+
+"Oh, well," replied Stout, and his habitual grin faded away as he spoke.
+"A man in public life always makes enemies, and the Senator has plenty
+of them. It almost seems sometimes that he has more enemies than
+friends, and yet he has certainly been a very successful man, not only
+in politics, but in business. He has more irons in the fire than any one
+else I know, and somehow or other he seems to put everything through. I
+doubt if he could do so well if he was not at the same time a political
+power."
+
+"Yes," said Wade, still more dryly. "I have heard the two facts
+mentioned together."
+
+"Come, come," said Stout, more earnestly than he was in the habit of
+speaking, "you mustn't put too much faith in what the newspapers say. I
+know how they talk about him in the other party, but I happen to know
+him pretty well personally, and there is a good side to him as I suppose
+there is to everybody. Anyhow, he pays me well for my professional
+services, and I have seen nothing thus far that leads me to be disloyal
+to him."
+
+It seemed to Wade's sensitive ear that his friend was speaking with a
+large mental reservation, but wisely reflecting that the matter did not
+concern him, he said no more, and when evening came, he went, willingly
+enough, to make the acquaintance of the man who was then counted as one
+of the greatest political powers in the country. Nor had he any
+premonition that in the near future he and his host of the evening would
+be engaged in a life and death struggle.
+
+Of all that, however, there was no present indication whatever. On the
+contrary, the great man welcomed him with all the suavity of manner for
+which he was equally as famous as he was for the over-bearing rudeness
+he often displayed when his will was disputed. This latter trait had won
+for him the nickname of the Czar of American Politics; but he was an
+adroit politician, not lacking in courtesy to guests in his own house.
+Moreover, he was keen in his appraisal of men and quick to see that a
+man of Wade's type would be more valuable to him as an ally than as a
+foe.
+
+Accordingly, he presented the young aristocrat to Mrs. Rexhill, who
+openly showed her delight in meeting one of such distinguished
+appearance, and with a great display of cordiality, she introduced him
+to her daughter Helen.
+
+"It is her coming-out party, Mr. Wade," she said, gushingly, "and you
+must do all you can to make it a happy occasion."
+
+One glance at the beautiful girl who stood before him was enough to
+determine Wade that her evening should be as happy as he could make it.
+The glaring ostentation of the house and its equipment had offended his
+fastidious taste when he entered, and the sight of the really handsome,
+but vulgarly overdressed and richly be-jeweled mother, had made him
+shudder inwardly, but when he looked into Helen's eyes, he forgot all
+his first impressions and imagined himself in Fairyland for the
+remainder of the evening.
+
+An older head than his might easily have been turned and a wiser man
+bewildered by the tender glances of the charming girl who frankly met
+his advances half way, being as much impressed by his appearance as he
+with hers, and showing carelessness equal to his in regard to the
+comment they excited among the other guests. One thing that Helen
+Rexhill had never learned at school, or from the parents who had done
+all that could be done to spoil her, was to conceal her feelings. Just
+now she felt no inclination to do it, and she gave Wade dance after
+dance, with reckless disregard of her engagements and of the
+ill-concealed anger of some of the men she threw over with utter
+carelessness of social obligation.
+
+Wade saw it clearly enough, but the preference she showed for him was so
+flattering as to make him indifferent, even had he considered himself
+responsible. He was therefore amused rather than exultant when man after
+man came up to claim a dance, only to be told "I just promised this one
+to Mr. Wade."
+
+One such there was, who took his rebuff exceeding ill. Instead of
+retiring as the others had done, he stepped up closer to the girl and
+said rudely, "That's all very well, Helen, but you promised me first,
+and I hold you to it."
+
+And he looked contemptuously at Wade who had started in surprise at his
+words, and had stiffened himself instinctively, as if to interfere, but
+who controlled himself instantly and kept silent despite his
+inclination.
+
+A moment later he was glad he had done so. Helen's eyes flashed and she
+straightened her form proudly as she spoke.
+
+"Did I really promise you, Race Moran? If I did, I have forgotten it,
+and anyhow, I am going to sit this dance out with Mr. Wade in the
+conservatory."
+
+Race Moran, as she called him, was a handsome enough man, though rather
+flashy in appearance. But the evil look that came quickly on his face,
+no less than his huge and burly build, indicated that he would have been
+more at home in a barroom or a street fight, than where he was. For just
+a moment he seemed about to say more, but apparently thought better of
+it, and turning away with what sounded like a muttered oath, he walked
+toward the Senator, who stood at the other side of the room.
+
+"I've made an enemy for you, Mr. Wade," said Helen, half laughingly and
+half seriously, as she led the way to the conservatory, closely followed
+by her eager escort.
+
+"Well," said Wade lightly, "they say a man is poor, indeed, who hasn't a
+few enemies. I don't know that one more or less is of great importance,
+but it is well to know something about them. Who is the gentleman?"
+
+"I hardly think you would call him a gentleman," said Helen, "though he
+thinks he's one; I wouldn't tolerate him a moment, only on my father's
+account. Dad calls him a political heeler, and says he is very useful."
+
+"He ought to be that," said Wade, smiling; "I'd hardly call him
+ornamental."
+
+"Indeed he isn't," said Helen, pouting prettily, "and he presumes too
+much on Dad's favor. He actually persecutes me with his attentions, but
+you know a politician's daughter has to put up with a good deal,
+sometimes."
+
+"I don't think you need to suffer much," said Wade, gallantly. "You will
+always find admirers enough to stand between you and any trouble you may
+have. I rather think there is one of them coming this way at the moment.
+I shall certainly take pleasure in recognizing Mr. Moran as an enemy,
+but is this likely to be another one?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Helen, laughingly, as an effeminate looking young man
+came up, evidently in search of her.
+
+"I beg pardon, Miss Helen," he said, with a bow that seemed to include
+Wade, politely enough, in the apology, "But your mother asked me to find
+you. She wants you to meet some new guests who have just arrived."
+
+"Oh, bother," said Helen carelessly. "She can look after them for a
+while. Tell her I'll be with her by-and-by," and she turned back to
+Wade, paying no further attention to the luckless messenger, who
+departed, hiding his chagrin as best he could, though not very
+successfully.
+
+After he had gone, she said, "No, I don't think Maxwell Frayne is likely
+to be an enemy; at least, not one that you need fear. He is a gentleman,
+though he is too insipid to interest me."
+
+"And you think Moran is a man to fear," asked Wade, trying to speak
+gravely, but showing amusement in spite of himself.
+
+"I don't believe you fear the devil," said Helen, with open admiration,
+"but Race Moran can be very dangerous, and I feel sure he will try to
+injure you, if he ever finds a chance."
+
+"Well in that case he will at least be interesting," said Wade, lightly.
+He would have been amazed if he had realized at the time how prophetic
+the girl's words were.
+
+For the moment, however, he had little thought of peril and adventures
+to come. The time, the girl and the place, were all at hand, and he
+plunged headlong into a complication that kept him for weeks in Chicago,
+strongly inclined to stay permanently, yet reluctant to settle in a city
+so little to his liking, when the great out-doors was calling to him so
+urgently.
+
+While the petals of the passion flower were unfolding so rapidly in the
+conservatory, Race Moran had taken the Senator to the latter's private
+room where they had had many secret conferences before. He had done the
+great man favors in New York where he was a valuable cog in the
+political machine, while the Senator was still a newcomer in the field,
+and with accurate judgment he had foreseen that Rexhill would be a
+winner.
+
+Quick to see opportunities, he had cultivated the latter's acquaintance
+and courted his favor until he had become the Senator's most trusted
+adherent, and was admitted to the closest intimacy, so that he had
+become a constant visitor in the Rexhill home, and had definitely
+determined in his own mind, to become one of the family. He knew well
+enough that Helen disliked him, but his ideas of women had been gained
+from association with a class that is easily dominated, and he was
+confident of his own powers, which, in fact, were very considerable.
+
+The Senator was not blind to the other's purpose, but though he was far
+from approving it, having other ideas concerning the daughter he
+idolized, he had not sought to discourage Moran, nor did he intend to.
+He would let him go on until a crisis should come, and in the meantime,
+Moran had not declared himself.
+
+Helen's insolence at the door of the conservatory, however, had stung
+Moran, and as soon as he had the Senator in seclusion, he broke out.
+
+"Who is that puppy Helen has on a string to-night?" he demanded roughly.
+
+But the Senator could overlook rudeness when it suited his purpose to do
+so.
+
+"I wouldn't call him a puppy exactly," he said, pleasantly enough; "he
+is a good deal younger than you and I, but he comes of pretty good stock
+in your town, Moran, and Stout tells me he has distinguished himself
+already in two or three ways. I reckon he'd be a pretty good friend to
+have, if he ever takes an interest in politics."
+
+"Oh, I know the Wade family all right," said Moran impatiently; "they
+belong to the silk stockings, but we have our own way of dealing with
+that kind in New York, and I'm able to do the same thing anywhere else,
+if I have to. Maybe I will have to if he comes between me and Helen.
+Senator, I want to marry that girl myself. I ain't asking your consent,
+exactly, for me and her will be likely to do what we want to, anyhow,
+but I'd a heap rather have you favor the match."
+
+That was almost too much, but the Senator knew his man and also knew
+how valuable he was. There was no sense in breaking with him until it
+was unavoidable, so he still spoke pleasantly, though he had flushed
+with anger for a moment.
+
+"Yes, I reckon you and Helen will do as you like about it, especially as
+Helen likes. It was sort of decent of you to speak to me first, but
+there doesn't seem to be anything particular for me to say till you find
+out what Helen really thinks."
+
+"Oh, I'll find that out, all right," said Moran, boastfully. "But this
+Wade person better look out; I might have him run into the river some
+night, if he pokes his nose in too far."
+
+"I'd go easy on that, if I were you," said the Senator laughing
+heartily, "a dead Wade might interfere with your plans worse than a live
+one."
+
+"Oh, of course," replied Moran, refusing to laugh. "I talk foolish with
+my mouth sometimes, when I'm mad, but all the same, he'd better look
+out."
+
+"Now I wonder," said the Senator thoughtfully, after the other had left
+him, "how long it will be before he does find out, and how serious it
+will be. He's hit pretty hard, but I will have to keep him along some
+way or other; I can't afford to lose him."
+
+And he sat musing over his cigar till one by one his guests had gone,
+but not until the great drawing room was well-nigh empty, did Helen
+leave the conservatory.
+
+For a few weeks thereafter Chicago seemed, to Gordon Wade's fancy, to be
+the very center of the Universe. Gradually, however, the sturdy nature
+of the man asserted itself, and realizing that for him there were many
+more desirable places, he determined to look farther before choosing a
+permanent home. He told Helen frankly of his purpose, and to his great
+satisfaction she approved. There was no definite word of marriage
+between them, though they both looked forward to it and both, at the
+time of parting, deemed the understanding complete between them.
+
+Helen would have had him turn to the East, for her heart was set on city
+life in one of the world's great capitals, but he declared he must see
+the West before deciding, and though she was dissatisfied, she was too
+wise to seek the domination she intended, at that stage of the game.
+
+He departed, therefore, to find in Wyoming later on, his ideal of a
+home. His thought of Chicago thereafter, was that of the place where the
+girl he thought he loved was waiting for him, to claim her, so soon as
+his home was made suitable. There was much to do by way of preparation,
+however, and almost imperceptibly his ardor cooled as he found himself
+becoming prominent among the bold and independent citizens who were
+rapidly putting Wyoming on the map.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JEALOUSY
+
+
+Meantime, many things of great interest to Gordon Wade happened without
+his knowledge.
+
+A national election at which the previously dominant party was defeated,
+was a sad blow to Senator Rexhill, who not only suffered in prestige but
+in pocket. There was no question, even in the minds of his friends, that
+he frequently used his political influence to back up the many business
+enterprises in which he held an interest, and in which the greater part
+of his quickly-made fortune was invested. With the loss of his political
+pull, disaster came to one after another of those enterprises, and his
+successive losses were soon heavy enough to drive him almost to
+desperation.
+
+His previous successes, however, had all been due to the audacity of his
+plans, for his boldness and courage were unquestionable. For a time he
+felt confident of winning again, and accordingly, maintained his lavish
+expenditures and luxurious style of living, with no word of caution to
+his wife and daughter, and he continued to seek for the long chances in
+business that offered the largest risks and the greatest gains.
+
+All the redeeming qualities of his nature (and he had more than his
+enemies gave him credit for), were shown in his family life, and it was
+not surprising that Helen and her mother were both undisturbed by the
+gathering storm, but continued to live as he encouraged them to, having
+perfect confidence in his ability to overcome any and all the
+difficulties he might encounter.
+
+Mrs. Rexhill continued to dream of social distinction. Failing to see
+that she had lost much of her own prestige by the Senator's political
+reverses, she continued to entertain so extravagantly in her palatial
+home, that she was still tolerated and she took infinite satisfaction in
+the position she thought she occupied.
+
+She considered Chicago the greatest city in the world, and she dreamed
+of Helen as its queen. To her mind, the easiest way to accomplish that
+ambition was to persuade Helen to marry Maxwell Frayne. He had
+persistently courted the girl ever since he first met her, and he was
+heir to the great Frayne fortune.
+
+The idea was not entirely revolting to Helen, though she had a small
+opinion of the elegant young trifler who pursued her so persistently,
+for she, too, had social aspirations, though being more clear-sighted
+than her mother, she dreamed of wider circles than those of Chicago. Her
+husband, whoever he was to be, should take her to Paris, or at least to
+New York.
+
+Her infatuation for Gordon Wade, however, was as strong as ever. Perhaps
+she was right in thinking of it as true love, but she was greatly
+annoyed by Wade's choice of a ranchman's life, and by his settling down
+out of the world, as she considered he had done. Her letters to him,
+tender as they were, told him plainly enough of her dissatisfaction, and
+thereby undoubtedly contributed to the slow growth of his indifference.
+
+For a time she failed to perceive this, and enjoying the excitement of
+the life she was leading, she was content to wait till Wade should tire
+of the wilderness, as she fully expected him to do, and should return to
+her. So she drifted, until after a time her suspicions were aroused by
+the tone of his letters, and she became anxious.
+
+As time went on, Senator Rexhill's affairs became more and more
+involved. He realized that he stood little chance of reëlection, when
+his term of office should expire, and meantime, his fortune dwindled
+rapidly, though he was still careful not to betray that fact at home.
+
+Moran knew the situation perfectly well, but he remained outwardly loyal
+to his employer, partly because of the latter's liberality, but more,
+perhaps, because of the hope he still had of winning Helen eventually,
+despite the dislike she took no pains to hide.
+
+Knowing how bold the Senator was in his speculations, he came to him one
+day with an exciting story.
+
+"There's a guy in town," he said, "who may be just a plain nut, but he
+has the name of being a scientific sharp who knows his business from A
+to Izzard, and he's either got something almighty big, or he's got the
+willies.
+
+"What he says is, that he's found gold in a new spot and oodles of it.
+According to what he tells, it beats California in '49. It's so big, he
+says, that he's scared stiff, thinking he can't grab enough of it, and
+he don't know, no more'n a baby, what to do with it. So he's looking for
+somebody to take hold of it in a big way and give him a whack."
+
+"Where is this gold?" asked the Senator incredulously.
+
+"That's the funny part of it," says Moran; "it's in Wyoming, and as near
+as I can make out, it must be close to where that young squirt is that
+Helen thinks she's stuck on. I'm not sure but what it's on his place,
+but even if it is, there is no reason why he should have any of it. The
+expense will be pretty heavy to do the thing up right, but if you're
+game, I reckon we can hog the whole business. We can stall this
+scientific nut off with promises, and probably buy off Wade for the
+price of pasture land, and then file claim on the whole dog-gone tract."
+
+This vision of enormous wealth was captivating to the Senator, who had
+made his first start in mining and knew something of its possibilities.
+Bold as he was, however, he was also cautious, but after several
+conferences with Moran, he fell in with the scheme, first securing the
+services of a skilled metallurgist and an equally capable engineer, who
+were liberally paid and solemnly sworn to secrecy. He sent them out to
+verify the discoverer's story, and sent Moran to Crawling Water, to
+establish himself, and to do such preparatory work as should be
+necessary. In due time, Moran reported by letter that the gold was
+located, and was beyond question abundant. He was having trouble,
+however, in getting the property, as Wade refused to sell.
+
+"Of course," he wrote, "we can file mining claims on the ground we know
+of, and get possession that way, but we want to make more surveys
+before doing that, so as to be sure of getting all there is, and we
+can't do that without giving the whole snap away, and filling the
+mountains full of prospectors. If that damn Wade won't sell, I'll find
+some means to drive him away."
+
+It was just after the receipt of this letter, which filled the Senator
+with hope on the one hand, and anxiety on the other that he came on
+Helen one evening, as she was entering her own sitting room, and
+followed her in for a chat.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" he asked, presently, when she failed to
+notice some trivial question he had asked, and seemed to be in a
+reverie.
+
+She looked at him with laughing eyes.
+
+"Crawling Water."
+
+"Gordon Wade, eh? Well, I wouldn't think of him too much. Better let
+that pass. You've outgrown it."
+
+"Oh, no I haven't."
+
+The Senator sighed.
+
+"Mother said to me a little while ago, that he was probably going with
+other girls and forgetting me, and it made me angry."
+
+"Well, I reckon your mother is about right. Gordon is a likely looking
+chap, you know. I've got nothing against him, except that he isn't good
+enough for you; no man is. You don't really care so much for him, do
+you?"
+
+"Oh, don't I?" She viewed her father through half closed lids, in a
+quizzical way. "I care so very much for him that if I really thought
+there was another girl, I would go to Crawling Water to-morrow. You'd
+have to drop everything and take me."
+
+Her father gently pinched her cheek.
+
+"I would, eh? Well, maybe I'll have to go out there anyway. But do you
+realize what Crawling Water is like,--a rough, frontier town?"
+
+"I wouldn't mind that for a while."
+
+"No, I suppose not. You've got too much of your old dad in you to balk
+at a few difficulties. There's somebody else out there who'd be mighty
+glad to see your pretty face. Race Moran."
+
+"Mr. Moran!"
+
+The sudden change in the girl's tone from tenderness to scorn caused the
+Senator a twinge of uneasiness. His plans were so closely linked with
+Moran's for the present, that the man might prove dangerous if his love
+for Helen were too openly scorned. That she could scarcely tolerate him,
+despite his ability and force of character, her father knew from the
+past; but even in the moment of his need he did not seek to influence
+her in Moran's favor. His love for her was genuine and very deep.
+
+"He's been out there for some time, as my agent."
+
+"Yes, I know that. He--he has written to me, although I've never
+answered his letters. I've been curious to hear from him again, because
+he promised to send me some kodaks of Crawling Water."
+
+"Maybe he hasn't done so because you've ignored his letters."
+
+Helen's lip curled in disdain.
+
+"He'd never let a little thing like that stop him. But perhaps I will
+answer the next one, if only to find out what is going on out there.
+It's all so very mysterious. Do you know, father,"--She playfully shook
+her finger at him--"this is the first time in a long while that you
+haven't taken me into your confidence, and I think it a very ominous
+sign. I'm sure you'll be punished for it."
+
+The Senator winced at the word punished, and Helen laughed at what she
+thought was the effect of her raillery.
+
+"Why don't you tell me? You see, I'm so worried about Gordon. Honestly,
+father, I'm serious about that. I--I love him, and I don't want him
+hurt."
+
+"Hurt? Why, who is thinking of hurting him?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Moran hates him, and has referred to him once or
+twice in a way that I do not understand. Do tell me all about it."
+
+"Oh, well, my dear, there's really nothing to tell. It's all concerned
+with some homestead lands out there that I want to get hold of for an
+investment. Wade will not be hurt, no; that is, he won't be if he beats
+me out. If I win, he'll lose."
+
+"He will?"
+
+"We both can't win, of course. It's to be a fight, yes,--an amicable
+business struggle, I hope. There's no reason for it to be otherwise."
+The Senator appeared strangely nervous, despite his effort at
+self-control. "Wade as a man and a Westerner doesn't expect to be fed on
+pap, you know, any more than I do. May the best man win, that's the way
+of it."
+
+Helen thought this over for a moment.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go out there with you, after all," she remarked,
+half in jest.
+
+Then the Senator thought that over for a moment and left the room.
+
+Next day Helen received a package by mail which proved to contain a
+dozen clear photographs of Crawling Water and its neighborhood.
+
+First of all, as though Moran thought it most important, was a snapshot
+of himself, which had been taken, so he wrote on the back of the print,
+by an obliging cowboy. The girl's face was a study in amused scorn as
+she looked at the photograph, for which Moran has posed with a cigar in
+his mouth, his hands in his pockets.
+
+Then there were a number of views of the town itself; of its main
+street, its hotel, its dance-hall, and of "some of the boys" in various
+poses of photographic self-consciousness. There were also pictures of
+the marvelously beautiful countryside, but as she neared the end of
+them, Helen was disappointed to find none of Wade. "Of course, he
+wouldn't send me one of _him_," she said petulantly to herself, and she
+was rapidly running through the remaining prints only to pause suddenly
+at the very last, while a rosy tide flooded her face and neck.
+
+The little photograph showed a tall, handsome, vigorous looking man, in
+the garb of a cattleman, half turned in his saddle, with one hand
+resting on his pony's flank. The man was Wade. With his other hand, he
+was pointing ahead, apparently for the benefit of a girl--a very good
+looking girl whose fine head was thrown back, as the wind blew her hair
+into pretty disorder.
+
+Helen Rexhill had not hitherto experienced real jealousy, but this
+little photograph excited it. In the highly actinic light of Crawling
+Water at noon the camera had done its work well, and the figures of the
+two stood out from the distant background with stereoscopic clearness.
+Wade was smiling at the girl, who seemed to be laughing back at him,
+although her face in the picture was partially turned away, so that
+Helen got only an impression of charm. But the impression was enough to
+rouse her jealousy.
+
+On the back of the print, Moran had written:
+
+"A surprise picture of Gordon Wade and our new fellow-townswoman, Miss
+Dorothy Purnell, whose beauty and general attractiveness have made her
+the idol of Crawling Water."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GATHERING STORM
+
+
+On the north bank of the river, from which it derived its name, the town
+of Crawling Water lay sprawled out in the shape of an irregular horn.
+Its original settlers had been men of large ideas, and having had plenty
+of space at their disposal, they had used it lavishly. The streets,
+bordered by dusty, weather-beaten, frame buildings, were as wide as
+those of a large city; indeed, in area, the town could compete with many
+a metropolis; but there the resemblance ended. Crawling Water was not
+fated to become a big city. The fact that the nearest railroad point was
+at Sheridan, forty miles away, did away with any ambitions that Crawling
+Water might have had to be more than a neighborhood center.
+
+The mixed population was composed of cattlemen, sheep men, cow punchers
+and herders, with a sprinkling of gamblers and other riff-raff. Rough,
+uncouth, full-blooded men, they were, for the most part; hard working;
+decisive in their likes and dislikes; fearing neither God nor man, they
+met Life as they found it and faced Death with a laugh. They were the
+last of a fast disappearing type, picturesque, but lacking in many of
+the attributes which differentiate mankind from the beasts.
+
+Hardly more than a village, Crawling Water was yet a town, and the seat
+of such machinery of government as had been established, and
+accordingly, Gordon Wade had ridden directly thither after his far from
+satisfactory interview with Oscar Jensen. After he had stabled his horse
+and seen it fed, he started up the street in the direction of Moran's
+office. He was resolved to find out where the agent stood on the sheep
+question without any unnecessary delay. Save for a few dogs, sleeping in
+the blaze of the noon-day sun, which hung overhead like a ball of fire,
+the town seemed deserted.
+
+When Wade entered the office, Moran was seated at his desk, chewing on a
+cigar, above which his closely cropped reddish mustache bristled. Like
+Senator Rexhill, he was a man of girth and bulk, but his ape-like body
+was endowed with a strength which not even his gross life had been able
+to wreck, and he was always muscularly fit. Except for the miner's hip
+boots, which he wore, he was rather handsomely dressed, and would have
+been called tastefully so in the betting ring of a metropolitan
+race-track, where his diamond scarf-pin and ring would have been
+admired.
+
+"Hello!" he boomed as Wade entered. "Have a cigar." He pushed a box of
+an excellent brand toward his visitor and waved him to a chair. His
+greeting was noisy rather than cordial.
+
+Wade declined both the chair and the cigar.
+
+"I dropped in to find out why you told Jensen to run his sheep in on my
+range," he began bluntly.
+
+"Let me see--" The agent very deliberately lifted a large, white hand
+and took the cigar out of his mouth. "Just what range is that?"
+
+"The upper valley range which I have under lease."
+
+"Which you have under lease?" Moran affected sarcastic surprise. "I
+wasn't aware that you had any legal right to that part of the valley.
+It's government land, ain't it?"
+
+"You seem to have forgotten that you once tried to buy the lease from
+me." The rancher bared his teeth in a grim smile. "We'll not quibble
+over that, however. We've got our legal rights, all of us; but we're a
+long distance from the courts here. What I want to know in plain English
+is, will you order Jensen to trail those sheep? Now, wait a moment!"
+
+Moran subsided with a show of tolerance he did not feel.
+
+"Think well before you answer," Wade went on. "I'm not here to threaten
+you, but there are desperate men in this valley who will take matters
+into their own hands, if this business is not stopped. There's plenty of
+grass on the other side of the mountains and your sheep are welcome to
+it. Why don't you make use of it?"
+
+"Why should I? The sheep have a right to be where they are and there
+they'll stay until I get ready to move 'em. You cattlemen think you own
+this country, but when it comes to the show down, you're a bunch of
+bluffers. Now, Wade, I made you an offer once,--I'll admit it, and I'll
+make it again for the last time. Sell me your homestead and lease rights
+at the price I offered you--ten thousand dollars, and get out smiling.
+There isn't room for the two of us in the valley."
+
+"Ten thousand for the homestead and the lease combined!" Wade laughed
+mirthlessly. "You're crazy, man. Why, you offered me that much for the
+lease alone a few weeks ago."
+
+"Did I? I'd forgotten it. Anyway, it's a fair offer. The land is still
+owned by Uncle Sam, you know. You haven't proved up on your claims, and
+you never will if I can help it. We are spending lots of money here, and
+the government will see that our interests are protected. You cattlemen
+can't hog the whole of Crawling Water Valley. Times have changed. Well,
+what do you say?"
+
+The ranchman dismissed the proposition with a gesture, but did not
+immediately speak. Silently, the two big men faced each other, their
+glances crossing like rapiers: the cattleman like a statue in bronze in
+the fixed rigidity of his attitude, but with an expression that showed
+him one dangerous to trifle with; the agent affecting that half tolerant
+amusement which one may feel toward an enemy unworthy of one's prowess.
+Wade presently broke the silence.
+
+"Moran, you may be a big man in the East, but you're not big enough for
+the job you've tackled here. I've held my friends back as long as I
+can--longer than I thought I could--and when they break loose, this
+valley will be a little hell, perhaps a shambles. Men are going to be
+killed, and I have a feeling that you are going to be one of them.
+Against that time, once more, I warn you. Tell Jensen to trail his
+sheep!"
+
+Swinging on his heel, the ranchman left the office, paying no attention
+to the ironical "Good night," which Moran called after him.
+
+In the street, Wade chanced upon a neighboring cattle owner, Lem
+Trowbridge of the Circle Heart outfit, who fell into step with him.
+
+"Gordon, how long are we going to stand for this thing, eh? Say, do you
+know what some are saying about you? Now, I'm your friend, and I'm
+telling you straight that you've gone far enough with this pacifist
+stuff."
+
+"They say I'm afraid, I suppose?" Wade stopped and faced Trowbridge.
+"Have they said that to you?"
+
+"To me? Say, what the ---- kind of a friend do you take me for?"
+Trowbridge flamed up like a match. "No, they haven't said just that,
+Gordon; but they're hinting, and I don't like it."
+
+"Well, if you hear it direct, send the man on to me with it," said Wade,
+his lips compressing ominously. "I'm about through, Lem, not quite, but
+pretty nearly. I've told Moran to have Jensen trail those sheep, and if
+he doesn't...."
+
+Trowbridge nodded and smiled, as they paused at a street corner--one of
+the few that Crawling Water possessed.
+
+"That's the idea, Gordon. We'll all be the readier for the waiting.
+Well, I'll not go any farther with you." He winked with elaborate
+precision and looked in the direction of a snug little cottage, with
+flower boxes in the windows, a biscuit toss away. "She's home. I saw her
+leave the store yonder a little while ago."
+
+Wade blushed like a boy and looked foolish.
+
+"I don't get into town so very often," he began lamely, when Trowbridge
+slapped him heartily on the back.
+
+"You don't need to make any excuses to me, old man," he said, moving
+off. "That little woman has put Crawling Water on edge with admiration.
+You're not the only one--or, maybe, you are."
+
+Secretly eager though Wade was to reach the cottage, the nearer he
+approached it, the slower he walked, fuming at himself for his sudden
+spinelessness. Although no ladies' man, he had never been woman wary
+until lately, and this of itself was a sign, the significance of which
+he was far from realizing. When he was with Dorothy Purnell, he almost
+forgot her sex in the easy companionability of their relationship; when
+away from her, he thought no more of her than he might of some man
+friend; but the approach had become a matter of embarrassing difficulty
+with him. There had even been occasions when he had walked past the
+cottage and ridden home without seeing her, trying speciously to
+convince himself that such had all along been his intention.
+
+Something of the sort might have happened now had she not hailed him
+from the open doorway.
+
+"Whither bound, stranger?" she smilingly demanded, in her low, rich
+contralto. "Better come in where it's cool. Mother'll be glad to see
+you, and I--shan't mind."
+
+She had come to Crawling Water for the restorative effect of the bracing
+mountain air upon the health of her mother, who was threatened with
+nervous invalidism, following the death of Mr. Purnell, two years
+before. The town called them Easterners because their home was as far
+East as Michigan, but they had never been city dwellers, as Dorothy's
+fresh complexion and lithe, alert figure bore witness.
+
+Her chestnut hair, piled in a silken crown on her shapely head, shaded a
+face that made those who saw it for the first time, catch their breath
+in instant admiration. Her radiance was of a glorious, compelling, and
+wholly distinct type, as refreshing as some view of green mountains from
+out a gloomy canyon. She had eyes, blue in repose, but shading to violet
+tints when aglow with vivacity; her nose was not perfect, because a
+trifle tip-tilted, but her face gained character through the defect; her
+very red lips held most delicious allurement in their slightly full
+curves. Her hands and feet were small enough to pay tribute to her birth
+and breeding, but not so small as to be doll-like. She wore a simple,
+white dress, freshly laundered, which made her look cool and inviting.
+
+"You won't mind? Now that's good of you, and no mistake." Wade shook
+hands with her, slowly relinquishing her cool palm. "How is Mrs.
+Purnell? Better?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I think so. You're better, aren't you, mother?" she asked, as
+they entered the cozy little living-room, where the temperature was in
+pleasant contrast to the outer heat. "The air up here does you good,
+doesn't it?"
+
+Mrs. Purnell, a dispirited little person, admitted that she felt very
+well indeed, and seemed cheered at the sight of Wade, who greeted her
+deferentially but with easy geniality. She liked him for his
+wholesomeness, and she frequently declared that he was worth all the
+doctors in the country because of the impression of health and optimism
+which he bore with him. But she was aware that Dorothy liked him, too,
+and so presently made an excuse to leave the two young people together.
+
+"Now, you may tell me all about what's worrying you," the girl said,
+seating herself across from Wade. "Something is. You can't keep the
+signs from me."
+
+"Good girl!" His voice held a suggestion of tenderness, as he rolled and
+lighted a cigarette, in the home-like privilege which they allowed him
+there. "That's your way, always. No matter who's in trouble, you are
+ready to hasten to the rescue."
+
+"Oh--," she deprecatingly began, with a trace of violet showing in her
+eyes, which meant a great deal more than words.
+
+"No wonder every man in the valley considers himself your own, especial
+knight."
+
+"I thought perhaps I could help you," she said briskly, to cover her
+sentimental moment. "But that was foolish of me, too, wasn't it? The
+idea of any one helping _you_."
+
+"I'm likely to need all my friends soon, Dorothy," Wade answered
+soberly. "I came in to-day to see Race Moran. There's a big band of
+sheep on our upper range, and Jensen, who has charge of them, admitted
+to me this morning that Moran is behind him."
+
+"Goodness, more sheep! Wherever do they come from?"
+
+"I don't know where they come from, but they can't stay where they are
+unless I go out of business, that's certain." In a few words, he
+explained to her the significance of the movement, and told her of his
+talk with Moran. "I've no use for the man," he concluded, "and if it
+comes to a showdown between us, he need expect no sympathy. I've held
+back as long as I can. I understand better than he does what the crack
+of the first rifle will lead to."
+
+"You have not liked him since you found that he took that snapshot of
+me," she said whimsically. "I didn't mind, but I can't imagine what he
+wanted it for."
+
+Wade's face darkened.
+
+"It was a confounded impertinence, whatever he wanted with it. But my
+dislike of him goes farther back than that."
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked, resting her chin in her hand, and
+looking him straight in the eyes, as she always did to those with whom
+she talked.
+
+"It largely depends on him. Santry--you know how hot-headed he is--would
+run the herders away by force and kill off the sheep. As a last resort,
+of course, we may have to do something like that, but I want to win this
+fight without open violence if we can. A faction war, in the end, would
+be likely to ruin us all."
+
+"You must be careful," the girl declared earnestly. "Moran is not going
+to be an easy man to handle. He seems to have plenty of money, and they
+say here in town that he stands in with the government; that he has some
+sort of 'pull.' He's clever, I think. He'll trick you if he can."
+
+"I'm sure of that, Dorothy, but we're not going to let him. If only...!
+Say, do you know something else that is being said in this town?
+Something that they're saying about me?"
+
+"Something nice?" her tone was archly inquiring.
+
+He leaned forward and lightly rested his hand on her knee, just as he
+might have done with a man friend, and she took as little notice of it.
+His fingers were trembling a little under the stress of the emotion he
+felt.
+
+"They're saying, those who don't like me, I guess, that I'm afraid of
+Moran and his crowd; afraid of a lot of sheep herders. No, of course, my
+friends don't believe it," he hastened to add when she started to
+interrupt. "But it's not doing me any good, especially now that public
+feeling is running so high."
+
+"But you mustn't mind what they say, Gordon. That's part of the courage
+your friends know that you have; to do what you feel to be right, no
+matter what is said."
+
+Her cheeks were glowing with indignation, and he appreciatively patted
+her hand before sitting erect in his chair again. It was no wonder, he
+reflected, in that almost womanless land, that many a cowpuncher rode
+the range by night, seeing her image in every star. The thought that
+each single man, and many a married one, in Crawling Water, would ride
+into the Pit itself to win one of her smiles, had been Wade's comfort,
+even when he was thinking of the possibility of bloodshed between the
+two hostile factions. But now, in the moment of her sympathy for him, he
+felt that he could not be content without some further assurance of her
+safety.
+
+"What you say sounds well, Dorothy, but my pride's working on me, too,
+now. I can't help it. If my friends, who have been good enough to accept
+my leadership so far, should lose their heads and go to it without me, I
+might talk afterward until Kingdom come. I'd never convince anybody that
+I hadn't funked the thing. You spoke a few minutes ago of helping me.
+You can help me a great deal."
+
+Her lovely face instantly blazed with eagerness.
+
+"Can I? How?"
+
+"By promising me that, if it comes to a fight, you and your mother will
+come out to my ranch. You'd be safer there. That is, of course, unless
+you'd prefer to leave Crawling Water altogether."
+
+"Indeed, I shouldn't prefer to leave Crawling Water at this stage of the
+game, and"--she smiled reassuringly--"I'm sure we should be safe enough
+right here whatever happened. But, if you'd feel better about it, we
+would go to the ranch."
+
+"Thanks. I feel better about it already, more free to show my hand. You
+are safe enough here now, of course, and might be clear through to the
+finish; but cheap whiskey has led many a fairly good man astray."
+
+"If only there were some peaceable way out of it all." Her eyes became
+anxious as she thought of what he might have to face. "Can't you
+telegraph to Washington, or something?"
+
+"Washington doesn't know whether Crawling Water is in the United States
+or in Timbuctoo," Wade laughed. "If we had some one in authority right
+here on the ground we might make him understand, but Mahomet will never
+come to these mountains, and they can't go to Mahomet. Why, what's the
+matter?"
+
+His question was prompted by the sudden elation with which she had
+clapped her hands and sprung to her feet.
+
+"How stupid of me, Gordon, to have forgotten." She stood over him with
+shining eyes and eager countenance, as lovely as a Lorelei. "There is an
+official of the United States Government here at this very moment."
+
+"Here? In Crawling Water?" he exclaimed in amazement. "Who is he?"
+
+"Senator Rexhill, Gordon." Wade stared almost vacuously at her as she
+ran on with her news. "He came in with his daughter last night on the
+Sheridan stage. Isn't that glorious? You must go up to see him at once."
+
+"I will, of course," Wade said slowly, trying to catch his mental
+balance. "And with pleasure, too. It's been a long time since I last saw
+either of them."
+
+"You know them--him?" Dorothy hesitated a little over which pronoun to
+use, with the somewhat disturbing reflection that Helen Rexhill was a
+most beautiful and distinguished looking girl. "That will make it all
+the easier," she added generously.
+
+"Of course, Senator Rexhill has no authority of his own in such a
+matter, you know; but if we can get him interested, he may wake up
+Washington in our behalf. Only, I don't see what can have brought him to
+Crawling Water."
+
+"Do you--do you know the daughter well?" Dorothy asked, with feminine
+cogency. "I suppose you met her back East?"
+
+"We've known each other for a number of years." He arose, his face
+expressive of the delight he felt at the Rexhills' presence in town. "We
+used to be good friends. You'll like her. But it's strange they didn't
+tell me of their coming. You'll pardon me if I hurry over to the hotel,
+won't you, Dorothy?"
+
+She gently urged him out of the house.
+
+"Of course! Don't waste a moment, and let me know just as soon as you
+can what the outcome is. I do hope the Senator can settle all this
+trouble."
+
+"I want you to meet them right away," he called, over his shoulder, and
+when he looked back for his answer, she nodded brightly.
+
+But as she turned back into the cottage after watching him swing up the
+street she was not at all sure that she would like Helen Rexhill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TREACHERY
+
+
+Overjoyed at the prospect of a peaceful solution of the problem which
+confronted him, Wade walked rapidly toward the hotel, happy, too, in the
+thought of meeting Helen Rexhill.
+
+Whether he loved her with the single-hearted devotion which a man should
+feel toward his future wife, he was not sure; but he was confident that
+he did not love any one else. The idea of love in connection with
+Dorothy had never occurred to him; she was his good friend, nothing
+more. To Helen, belonged the romance of his life, fostered in other
+years by the distinct preference she had shown for him. At one time,
+they had been reported engaged, and although the word had never actually
+passed between them, many things more significant than speech had
+contributed to the warm regard which they felt for each other. Beneath
+Helen's reputed coldness of heart lay intense feeling, and on numerous
+occasions she had verged on unwomanliness in baring her moods to Wade,
+in a way that many other men would have been quicker to fathom, and
+perhaps to take advantage of, than he had been.
+
+Now, the knowledge that she was close at hand, and that he might see her
+at any moment, caused his heart to beat rapidly. If to others she had
+been cool, to him she had been ardent, and this warmth had been the one
+thing needful to make her physically captivating. Only when some vital
+cause impends is a young man likely to distinguish between the impulses
+of his body and the cravings of his soul, and no such vital exigency had
+as yet appeared in Wade's life. He wondered if she was as beautiful as
+ever, and began to reproach himself for lack of ardor in his recent
+letters to her, lest he should now be repaid in kind. He wanted to be
+received upon the old, delicious footing, with her in his arms, and her
+lips trembling beneath his.
+
+There were dozens of men in Washington and New York who would almost
+have bartered their souls for such privilege, and Gordon Wade need not
+be decried for his moment of passionate yearning. He was enough of a man
+to put the thought aside, pending his interview with the Senator, which
+was his first purpose. He felt sure that if Senator Rexhill could be
+moved to interest in Crawling Water affairs, his influence would be
+potent enough to secure redress for the cattlemen, and Wade meant to
+pull every string that could bear upon so happy a result. He was glad
+that Mrs. Rexhill had not made the journey, for he was conscious of her
+hostility to him, and he felt that his chances of moving her husband
+were better without her.
+
+When he inquired at the hotel, he was told that the Rexhills were in,
+and he presently found himself shaking hands with the Senator, who
+greeted him with effusive warmth.
+
+"Helen is changing her gown and will be in shortly," the big man
+explained. "I'm mighty glad to see you, Gordon. Only this morning we
+were talking of looking you up. How are you? Sit down, my boy, sit
+down!"
+
+"Senator," Wade began, after they had exchanged commonplaces for a few
+moments. "Glad as I am to see you, on my own account, I am more than
+glad in behalf of my friends, who have not yet had the pleasure of
+meeting you. Your arrival in Crawling Water could not possibly have been
+more opportune. You have come just in time to save us, most likely, from
+an internecine strife which might have ruined us all. I was more glad
+than I can tell you to learn that you were here."
+
+"Indeed, Gordon? I--I am much interested. Perhaps, you will...."
+
+While Wade succinctly sketched the situation, the Senator nervously
+toyed with his eyeglasses, now and then lifting his double chin from the
+confinement of his collar, only to let the mass of flesh settle again
+into inertness. He thought rapidly. Evidently, Moran had not divulged
+the fact that he, the Senator, was concerned in the Crawling Water
+enterprise. Certainly, Moran had done very well in that, and Rexhill
+almost wished now that he had been less precipitate in coming to
+Crawling Water. If he had stayed in the East, his complicity in the
+affair might possibly have been concealed to the very end. He hastily
+considered the advisability of remaining under cover; but now that he
+was on the ground he decided that he had better be open and above
+board, in so far at least as he could be so. It would prove awkward in
+the event of subsequent investigation, if he should be made to appear in
+the guise of a deliberate conspirator.
+
+So, presently, as Wade neared the end of his _résumé_ of the situation,
+Rexhill permitted an oleaginous smile to overspread his countenance. At
+the last, he even chuckled.
+
+"It's really a bit amusing. No, no, not what you have said, my boy; but
+what I am about to say to you. You invoke my influence to stop
+these--er--depredations, as you call them, and up to a certain point,
+you shall have my aid, because I seem to see that matters have gone a
+bit beyond bounds. But when you ask me to go to extremes myself, why,
+I'm bound to tell you that I, too, have interests at stake. Why do you
+suppose I came to Crawling Water?"
+
+"I'll admit that puzzled me."
+
+Rexhill looked keenly at Wade, wondering if he were foolish enough to
+believe the trip a sentimental journey, purely. He concluded that the
+young ranchman had too much sense to jump at such a conclusion.
+
+"Well, the reason is...." The Senator leaned ponderously forward,
+twiddling his glasses upon his thumb. "The reason is that I, if you
+please, am the moving spirit behind the company which Race Moran is
+representing here. You see...." He chuckled plethorically again at
+Wade's start of surprise. "It really is a bit amusing."
+
+"Then Moran is your agent?"
+
+"In a sense, yes."
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" The cattleman's tone was rich in disgust, but
+even more keen was his intense disappointment at this failure of his
+hopes. "Would you mind telling me, Senator, just what the purpose of
+your company is?"
+
+"Certainly not. It's no secret," Rexhill replied briskly. "Certain
+parties back East, myself included, as I've told you, have reason to
+believe that a railroad will be put through this valley in the near
+future. This is an extremely rich and productive section, with natural
+resources which will make it heard from some day, so we are anxious to
+obtain a portion of the valley for speculative purposes. If the railroad
+comes through we'll probably build a town somewhere nearby and open up
+an irrigation project we have in mind. If not, we'll use our holdings to
+raise wheat and livestock. The proposition is a sound investment either
+way you look at it."
+
+"A few years ago," said Wade, "I and several others leased upwards of
+twenty thousand acres of grass land here in the valley for stock grazing
+purposes. I, personally, filed a claim on the land I now call my home
+ranch. Our lease, which is direct from the Government, gives us entire
+control of the land so long as we pay for it.
+
+"Besides ourselves, there are a number of ranches in the valley, all of
+them cattle and horse outfits. There has always been a tacit agreement
+that sheep should not be grazed here because sheep and cattle can't live
+on the same range in large numbers. Until Moran came here, we had no
+trouble whatever--the sheep ranchers kept to their own side of the
+mountains and we cattlemen kept to ours. Since Moran has arrived,
+however, the sheep have crossed the Divide in thousands, until the
+entire valley is being overrun with them.
+
+"Only this morning, Moran admitted to me that the sheep men are acting
+with his authority and backing. Senator Rexhill, this is wrong, and your
+agent, or manager, is making a big mistake. Since you are the prime
+mover in this matter, your arrival is even more opportune than I at
+first thought, because you have the power to immediately correct your
+hired man's mistake. So far as we cattle ranchers can learn, Moran is
+bringing sheep in here with the deliberate intention of starving us out
+of our homes. He seems to want our range and he--I'll not say
+you--thinks that such a course is the cheapest way to gain possession.
+He'll find it the dearest in the end. Unless the sheep are moved mighty
+soon, we shall be mixed up in one of the bloodiest little wars in the
+history of the range country. Mark you, I'm no firebrand,--some call me
+too conservative; but we have about reached the limit, and something is
+bound to happen before many days."
+
+Senator Rexhill drummed with his fingers on the table.
+
+"Um! Does Moran know of this attitude in you and your friends, Gordon?"
+
+"Yes. I have just finished telling him of it. But he merely laughs at
+us. We are a long way from the courts here, Senator, and we can't easily
+appeal to the authorities. We are obliged to settle our differences
+among ourselves. Moran knows this as well as I do; but he forgets that
+the thing can work two ways. Each day that the sheep are here in the
+valley they spoil more grass than all our cattle could eat in a week; in
+two months, if the sheep stay, the range will be as bare as a ball-room
+floor. Can you wonder that we ranchers are becoming desperate?"
+
+"It's strange," Rexhill commented, apparently much perturbed. "Moran is
+not the sort to take useless risks. He's dominant, but he's no fool.
+Well, my boy, I'll talk this over with him; in fact, I really came out
+here to see how things were shaping up. If things can be peacefully
+arranged, that's the way we want them. We're not looking for trouble.
+Certainly, you are quite right to object to sheep being run on your
+leased pasture. I'll look into it right away and see what can be done."
+
+"Thank you." Wade was much relieved and he showed it. "I felt sure that
+an appeal to your sense of fair play would not be fruitless. I'm mighty
+glad you are in town."
+
+"Gordon!" a girl's voice exclaimed softly behind him.
+
+"Helen!" He sprang to his feet and turned to seize her hands.
+
+Those who admired Helen Rexhill at Washington social functions never saw
+her look more lovely than she did at this moment of meeting with Wade,
+for the reason that all the skill of the costumer could not beautify her
+so much as the radiance of love now in her face. The dress she wore was
+far from inexpensive, but it was cut with the art which conceals art,
+and to Wade it appeared simple.
+
+Yet his first sensation was one of acute disappointment, which he strove
+rather ineffectually, to conceal. Doubtless, this was because his
+recollection of her had soared beyond the bounds of human perfection.
+But the gown, which she had chosen with so keen a wish to impress him,
+reminded him of the simple frocks which Dorothy Purnell wore, and in
+Helen Rexhill's face there was not the same sweet simplicity of
+expression which distinguished her rival. Flaming love was there, to
+transform her from the suggestion of a lily to that of a pomegranate;
+but it was the love that demands and devours, rather than the constant
+affection which, in giving all, seeks nothing but the privilege of
+loving in return. Without actually analyzing the impression which Helen
+made upon him, Wade felt something of the truth of this, and was
+disappointed in the realization of his dream of her. Materially she was
+too perfect, too exotic, for the setting of Crawling Water.
+
+"Why, you look just the same," she happily exclaimed. "And I? Have I
+changed? Now, be careful what you say! You're not a bit of a courtier."
+
+"Everything changes, doesn't it?" he said, slowly feeling his way.
+"Except the heart?" His answer pleased her.
+
+"Will you listen to that, Father? In the cattle country, too."
+
+"Very pretty," the Senator observed judicially. "Inspired, perhaps."
+
+"How long are you going to stay?" asked Wade.
+
+Helen laughed happily.
+
+"Perhaps that will depend upon how glad I think you are to have us."
+
+She gave him an ardent glance, which he was not proof against, nor would
+any other man have been so.
+
+"No doubt of that." He laughed with her, his disappointment passing
+before the old love spell, which she knew so well how to cast about him.
+"You couldn't have come at a better time, either, for now there is some
+one here who can be company for you. That is," he added lamely, "when
+you're tired of having me around."
+
+"Really?" Helen was a bit chilled by this obvious _faux pas_. Truly,
+despite his worth as a man, Gordon Wade was no courtier. "Who is it?"
+
+"Of course, you haven't heard of her, but you'll like her. She's Miss
+Dorothy Purnell. Everybody does like her."
+
+Helen affected a gayety which she could scarcely have been expected to
+feel. Although she was not socially adept in concealing her real
+feeling, Wade saw nothing wrong. Only the Senator twisted his mouth in a
+grim smile.
+
+"Oh, but I have heard of her; indeed, I have. Mr. Moran sent me a little
+photograph of you both on horseback. Just see how her fame has crossed
+the continent. I shall be charmed to meet her."
+
+A great light dawned upon Wade.
+
+"Then that was what he wanted with the picture," he exclaimed. "We
+wondered at the time. I thought it pretty impudent of him, but, of
+course, if he wanted it just to send to you, that was all right."
+
+Miss Rexhill winced inwardly. In spite of herself, her face expressed a
+certain amount of pique, for the implication was manifestly that if Race
+Moran had wanted the picture for himself, the idea would have been
+intolerable to Wade.
+
+"Oh, yes, quite all right. You seem...." She checked herself, with the
+reproach upon her tongue, reflecting that, after all, she was most fond
+of Wade because of his naturalness. Maxwell Frayne, for instance, was
+without a peer in spinning graceful phrases; but he spun little else.
+
+"But I don't understand why he should send it to you," Wade said, in a
+low tone, as the Senator turned to bend over an open traveling bag on a
+nearby chair. "Is he--do you--?" A slight rigor of jealousy seemed to
+seize upon him, under the witchery of her slow smile.
+
+"Oh, he's been writing to me, and I suppose he thought I'd be
+interested. Of course, I was." She leaned toward him a trifle, a mere
+swaying of her body, like a lily in a breeze, and impulsively he placed
+his big hand over hers.
+
+"He'd better not--he'd better mind his own business!" he said grimly.
+
+She laughed softly, tantalizingly, and being human, Wade kissed her;
+the Senator being still busy with the contents of the bag.
+
+Thus engaged, none of them heard a knock at the door, which finally
+opened before Moran, who, even if he did not actually see the kiss,
+could hardly have failed to suspect it from their embarrassed manner.
+Helen felt sure from his annoyed expression that he had witnessed the
+caress, and she was rather glad of it.
+
+He exchanged a slightly stiff greeting with the rancher, and then while
+Wade and Helen continued their talk, the agent spoke in a carefully
+guarded undertone with his employer. The news he brought, whatever it
+was, seemed significant, for the Senator appeared worried and presently
+turned to Wade.
+
+"You'll not mind if I go over to the office with Moran, Gordon?"
+
+"Certainly not, Senator. Don't let me interrupt you. But what's the use
+of us staying indoors, Helen? The sun has turned now and it's cooler
+out. I'll show you something of our little metropolis. Or, I tell you
+what we'll do! Why not let me take you over and introduce you to the
+only woman you're likely to find congenial in this neighborhood? She'll
+be glad to meet you, I know."
+
+In any other company, Miss Rexhill would probably have resented an
+invitation to call upon a rival, even apart from the ethics of social
+calls, but not before Race Moran. Before him, she would not humble Wade
+in the least degree, if only because to do so would reflect upon her
+own preference between the men. She could only pretend to welcome the
+prospect of going to see Miss Purnell, and she played her part well.
+
+"We may as well stay here now," Rexhill said, when the two young people
+had left the room. "When did all this happen?"
+
+"I just got word of it," Moran answered, a bit excitedly. "Don't you see
+how it plays right into our hands? It's the greatest thing that could
+have happened for us. It might have been made to order."
+
+"Are you sure it wasn't? Are you sure you didn't have the man shot,
+Race?" Senator Rexhill's tone was very dry and he watched his companion
+keenly as he asked the question.
+
+Moran assumed an attitude of indignation.
+
+"Why, Senator...!"
+
+"Tush! I want to know where we stand. By God, Race, you mustn't go too
+far! We're traveling mighty close to the wind as it is."
+
+"But these brawls are likely to happen at any time. This one in
+particular has been brewing for weeks. Why connect me with it,
+unnecessarily?"
+
+"All right. I see your point, of course. The assassin is unknown;
+suspicion naturally falls upon Wade, who is at the head of the cattle
+faction and who, as you say, threatened Jensen only this morning. If we
+can jail him for awhile his party is likely to fall down."
+
+"Exactly!" Moran cried eagerly. "Fortune has placed him right in our
+hands."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to have him arrested," Rexhill announced doggedly,
+"at least, not on any trumped up charge. He's broken my bread, Helen
+likes him. We call him a friend, in fact. I always play square with my
+friends--as far as possible. Strategy is strategy, nobody can quarrel
+with that; but this thing you propose is something more."
+
+Moran, while listening, had restrained his impatience with difficulty.
+He not only had reason on his side, but personal hate as well. His sense
+of triumph in bringing the news to Rexhill had not been for their mutual
+cause alone; it had seemed to Moran to point toward the end of his
+rivalry with Wade for the love of Helen. To have the fruits of victory
+snatched from him, because of a sentiment of friendship, was almost more
+than the agent could stand for.
+
+"Good God, Senator," he burst out, "don't throw this chance away! Think
+what it means to us! We are running close to the wind, and until this
+moment, it's been a toss up whether we'd get out of here with our lives;
+whether I would, at any rate. I've run a mighty big bluff on these
+cattle people, but I did it because it was the only way. I've held my
+own so far, but when they find out that it's not farm land we're after,
+but ore--why, Senator, there'll be no holding them at all! With Wade at
+their head and forty miles between us and the cars, where would we get
+off? We'd be lucky if we didn't swing from the limb of a tree. Do you
+suppose Wade would remember then that he'd broken your bread? I'll bet
+dollars to doughnuts he wouldn't.
+
+"But"--his voice sank to a significant whisper--"if we land him in
+jail...."
+
+"His friends here would get him out," interposed the Senator, nervously
+wiping his glasses.
+
+"Then Uncle Sam would put him in again, with a troop of cavalry to keep
+order here, and _that_ would be another advantage gained for our side.
+No, sir, once we get him in jail, we've got the law with us and against
+him, don't forget that. Then the cattle party would lay mighty low. Wade
+has been their leader right along. I tell you, it's the only way, and
+you know what it means to us--to you."
+
+"You don't have to tell me that," rasped Rexhill. "If we fail to put
+this through, I'm a ruined man."
+
+Moran's eyes gleamed.
+
+"Well, then, it's the only way, unless--unless...."
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"Unless your daughter marries him, and it all comes into the family."
+Upon that point, Moran wished to know just where he stood.
+
+"I've never made a dollar through my daughter yet, and I never will,"
+said the Senator grimly. "I'm not selling my own flesh and blood. I'll
+rot in the poor-house first."
+
+Moran gently breathed his relief. He would have fought to the fullest
+extent of his power to have aborted such a marriage, but if the Senator
+had favored it, he knew that it would have been difficult to prevent.
+
+"Wade has a foreman he's mighty fond of, an old man named Santry," the
+agent remarked, trying another tack.
+
+"That's a horse of another color." Rexhill appeared aroused, at last. "I
+remember the old fellow. He must be nearly ready for the bone yard by
+this time anyhow. Saddle it on him, if you can. Wade's devoted to him.
+He'd do as much for Santry as for himself, maybe more."
+
+"I've heard about that kind of devotion," the agent sneered, "but I've
+yet to see a sample of it."
+
+"Well, you may before long. Your first proposition's no good anyway. It
+would simply further antagonize Wade's friends. It's quite possible,
+though, that Santry might have been mixed up in such a brawl. Get him
+arrested, and then we'll let Wade know, gradually, that our influence is
+at his command, for a price. I've no objection to that--none at all. By
+Heaven, we've got to do something."
+
+"We'll do it all right. I'll have a warrant sworn out."
+
+"Meanwhile, Race, go easy with those sheep. Wade was telling me about
+them, and as a matter of strategy, I had to pretend that I would help
+him. Move them across the Divide until we see what comes of this Santry
+affair. I can't go too heavy with the boy right at the start."
+
+"All right." Moran arose. "The sheep don't count much now anyway."
+
+"I don't mind saying, Race," Senator Rexhill observed, a trifle
+pompously, "that you've done pretty well so far. If you stick to it,
+you'll not find me ungrateful when the battle is over. You'll be
+entitled to your reward."
+
+Moran hesitated, seeming to summon courage to say something.
+
+"Maybe you've guessed the reward I'll ask, Senator," he said slowly.
+"There are some things that mean more to a man than mere money. I'm
+thinking of Miss Helen."
+
+Rexhill found some difficulty in placing his gaze so that it would
+appear to naturally fall elsewhere than on Moran. He was mortified by a
+sense of shame that he could not deal squarely with this aspirant for
+his daughter's hand. He had been sincere in saying that he would never
+barter her to further his own interests, but so much hung in the balance
+here that until the issue really arose he feared to pass upon it. He
+felt himself stultified by this truth.
+
+"I haven't spoken to her, Senator, because the time has not come, and
+just now she's too much occupied elsewhere, perhaps. But all my hopes
+are fixed on her, sir, and when the time does come, I trust you'll not
+oppose them."
+
+Rexhill coughed to hide what his face might otherwise have shown.
+
+"Well, Race," he said, with a choking sensation that was new to him,
+"you know what I think of you. As for the rest, well, that will depend
+entirely upon Helen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MURDER
+
+
+"How do you think you'd like to live in Crawling Water?"
+
+Wade looked whimsically at Helen, as she picked her way with the grace
+of a kitten through the dust of the main street. Carefully though she
+walked, her shoes and the bottom of her skirt were covered with dust,
+and gray with it.
+
+"I shouldn't like it," she said, with a little moue. "I don't see why
+you stay here. You aren't going to always, are you?"
+
+"I reckon it's likely."
+
+"Not--for always?" She had stopped and was looking up into his face with
+delicious dismay. "That would be awful."
+
+"Most of my friends, and all of my business interests are here. Besides,
+I have a kind of pride in growing up with this country. Back in the
+East, things have been settled for so long that a man's only a cog in a
+machine. Out here, a fellow has a sense of ownership, even in the hills.
+I think it's because he gets closer to the soil, until he comes to love
+it and to be almost a part of it."
+
+"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the girl. "That sounds fine, but the reality isn't
+up to my anticipation of it."
+
+Wade laughed in his hearty way.
+
+"That's only because you haven't been here long enough, Helen."
+
+"There are things that are splendid about the West," she generously
+admitted. "Its vastness and wholesomeness, and especially its men. I'm
+sure that's why I first liked you, Gordon, because you were
+_different_--not like the general run of young men in the East."
+
+"Oh, there are lots of good men East, too."
+
+"Not so very many. At least, I have seen very few who were at all worth
+while. There's one, Maxwell Frayne, who has been plaguing me for months;
+but I don't care for him--much." She was closely watching him as she
+spoke, and she smiled when he started.
+
+"You'd better not."
+
+"But if I really thought you meant to stay here all the time, I'm sure
+I'd love him devotedly. Now"--she eyed him mischievously--"I think this
+would be a nice place to call home, don't you know, just for fun, and
+then spend most of the time in New York and London. See that man staring
+at me!"
+
+"How, staring at you?"
+
+Wade turned and looked in the direction she indicated, surprised at the
+suggestion that she was being annoyed in Crawling Water, where chivalry
+to women ran high.
+
+"Oh, he didn't mean anything, I daresay."
+
+"They're friends of mine, and curious, perhaps." He referred to a group
+of cattlemen across the street, who did seem to be staring and talking,
+with some indecision in their attitude. "I wonder if anything can have
+happened? Oh, I guess not. Well, what would I do in London?"
+
+"I didn't say anything about _you_ being in London, did I?"
+
+"Well, it's safe to say that where you were, I'd want to be, at any
+rate. Haven't I made two trips to Chicago for no real reason except to
+see you?" he demanded, fast slipping into the thralldom of her
+fascination.
+
+She viewed him through half-closed eyes, knowing that the pose has
+always allured him.
+
+"Don't you think you'd be kept busy looking after me?" she playfully
+asked. "Seriously, I hate an idle man, but I don't know what you'd find
+to do there. What a question. You'd have to have investments that would
+take you over every year or two."
+
+"Now you're trying to make a city man of me," he said, half in jest.
+"Besides,"--a dogged note crept into his voice--"I'd have the right to
+expect something of you, wouldn't I?"
+
+"Not the right, but the privilege," she answered softly.
+
+"This is where the Purnells live." He turned her into the pathway to the
+door. "This is what I'd like, a neat little home like this, with a
+couple of kiddies and some dogs. Then I could spend my out-door time at
+the ranch."
+
+Before Helen could reply to this, Mrs. Purnell appeared on the threshold
+to welcome them, but to Wade's surprise, she told them that Dorothy was
+not there.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Helen, with intense relief.
+
+"I don't know where she went either," the mother went on. "She was out
+for a few minutes soon after you left, Gordon. Then she came back and
+called out something to me, but I didn't catch what she said. Before I
+knew what she was doing she had saddled her pony and ridden off. But
+come right in. I don't think she'll be gone long."
+
+They entered and Helen, graciously choosing to overlook the fact that
+this was evidently Wade's second visit there within a very short time,
+sought to impress him with her tactfulness to Mrs. Purnell. She would
+have been amazed could she have guessed that she was actually arousing
+him to resentment. He felt, somehow, that she was patronizing their
+hostess, who was a woman of refinement, even if she lacked the
+artificiality of manner that Helen affected. He was sincerely glad when
+the visit came to an end.
+
+"You must come again," said Mrs. Purnell, in a spirit of friendliness.
+
+"So glad to have met you," Helen replied. "I hope to have the pleasure
+of meeting your daughter, too, before we leave Crawling Water."
+
+"They're splendid women, both of them," Wade remarked, as they walked
+back toward the center of the town.
+
+"Oh, yes," Helen agreed, without much spirit. "Nice, comfortable home
+people, I suppose."
+
+"Best kind in the world."
+
+"Gordon!" Helen laughed good-naturedly, facing him as she walked. "What
+in the world has been the matter with you to-day? We usually get on so
+well together, and to-day, if I do say it, only my unwillingness to
+quarrel has kept us from it."
+
+"Oh, no!" He smiled, too. "Maybe that New York and London business
+rubbed me the wrong way; that's all. I have plenty of faults, but I'm
+loyal to my friends. I don't like even hints that they aren't the best
+friends a man could have."
+
+"Surely, I haven't...."
+
+"Maybe not. Maybe I imagined it. But Crawling Water is a lot more real
+than London, to my way of thinking."
+
+"You haven't been to London."
+
+"I'm not likely to go, either," he retorted.
+
+Her red lips curled in a way that seemed to indicate that she thought he
+would go. Already, she was planning to get him out of Crawling Water and
+beyond the influence of Dorothy Purnell.
+
+As they turned into the main street again, a man leaving a group near
+the livery stable, and mounting a horse, rode toward them.
+
+"I wonder what's up now?" Wade muttered, recognizing the horseman as one
+of the Trowbridge outfit.
+
+"Mr. Wade. Just a minute." With the grace of a Centaur, the rider swung
+his mount in beside them and doffed his hat. "Two of Jensen's herders
+have been shot. I thought you ought to know about it."
+
+"What?" The ranch owner's jaw dropped at the news.
+
+"It's true, sir. Word just came in."
+
+"Thanks, Barker." Wade pulled himself together, as the restless pony
+raced back to the barn. "I must go, Helen," he went on, turning to the
+girl at his side. "There's been fighting--murder, perhaps--out near the
+ranch. Santry will need me." He was uneasy lest the old plainsman should
+have been concerned in the shooting.
+
+"You'll take me to the hotel?"
+
+"Of course, yes! Would you mind walking a little faster?" They quickened
+their pace. "I'm sorry, Helen; but I must hurry to the ranch." Even at
+that moment he could not but reflect that there would have been no need
+to take Dorothy home. Somehow, the ways of the East seemed to fit less
+and less aptly into the life of Crawling Water.
+
+On his way to the livery stable after his horse, Wade did some rapid
+thinking. Santry might have been concerned in the shooting, but his
+employer thought not. The old fellow had promised to stay at home, and
+his word was as good as another man's bond. It was too bad, certainly,
+that the thing should have happened just when Senator Rexhill's promised
+aid had seemed in a fair way to settle the controversy. Now, the whole
+thing was more upset than ever, for Moran and Rexhill could hardly be
+blamed if they backed up their own men, especially if the herders had
+been blameless, as was probably the case. Yet if the Senator did this,
+Wade knew that a bloody little war would be the outcome.
+
+"Where's Trowbridge, Barker?" he asked of the cowpuncher, whom he found
+waiting at the stable.
+
+"At the ranch, I think."
+
+Wade nodded. Ten minutes later he was in the saddle and headed for the
+mountains, just as dusk began to fall. The cool night air, blowing
+against his face as he reached the higher levels, was delightfully
+refreshing after the heat of the day. He took off his hat and opened the
+neck of his shirt to the breeze, which revived his energies like wine.
+He knew that as he felt, so his horse felt, and he was glad, for the
+animal would have to make a fast, hard trip. At the crest of the first
+hills, before dipping into the valley, he turned for an instant in his
+saddle to look backward over his trail toward the twinkling lights of
+Crawling Water in the distance below.
+
+He had covered some five miles of his journey, to no other sound than
+the occasional note of some bird, when his quick ears caught the thud of
+a horse's feet on the trail ahead, with now and then a sharp clatter as
+the animal slipped on the stones. Wade slowed his own horse down to a
+walk, and eased his Colt in its holster. He expected to meet some
+harmless wayfarer, but, under the circumstances, it was just as well to
+be prepared for trouble. Soon, however, he smiled to himself, for
+whoever rode toward him made too much noise for any but a peaceful
+mission. The other horse, too, had been slowed down and the two riders
+approached each other with such caution that the rancher finally became
+impatient and pressed forward recklessly.
+
+Out of the night the stranger came on, still slowly, until a turn in the
+trail brought them face to face.
+
+"Don't shoot!" said a woman's contralto. "I'm a friend."
+
+"Dorothy!" Wade ejaculated, at once recognizing the voice, although he
+could not see the girl distinctly in the darkness. "In Heaven's name,
+what are you doing out here?"
+
+"Is it you, Gordon?" In her relief, she laughed softly as she pulled her
+pony up side of him. "I was a little scared for a second or two. I've
+awfully bad news, I'm afraid," she added, immediately serious. "I've
+been trying to find you. I went to the hotel and they told me you'd gone
+somewhere."
+
+"Miss Rexhill and I went to call on you."
+
+"You did? If I'd only known. I've been clear out to the ranch."
+
+"Is Santry there?" In his anxiety he forgot momentarily the loneliness
+of her long ride. "They say some of Jensen's men have been shot up; and
+I'm anxious to find out what Bill knows."
+
+"That's just what I want to tell you. I heard of the shooting before I
+left town. Whoa, Gypsy!" She reined up her pony, nervously, for it would
+not stand still. Wade seized the animal's bridle and quieted it. "I
+don't know if he's there or not," the girl went on. "I couldn't see. The
+ranch house is full of men."
+
+"Men? What men?" Wade demanded sharply.
+
+"Race Moran's crowd. They went out to arrest Santry. The Sheriff is with
+them. I heard part of it in town, and that's why I tried to find you."
+Wade groaned. "I peeped in at a window, and when I could see neither
+you nor Santry I slipped away without being seen and took the old trail
+back because it was shorter."
+
+"Lord, what a mess!" Wade ground his teeth savagely. "Poor old Bill was
+all alone there and they must have surprised him. But I don't see why
+Barker didn't mention the posse when he told me of the shooting?"
+
+"He didn't know of it, probably. They left town very quietly. I happened
+to be out back of the house and I heard one of them talking as they rode
+by."
+
+"Good Lord!" Wade's head drooped. "I told Bill to stay at the ranch, and
+he promised me...."
+
+"I don't believe he shot Jensen at all," Dorothy declared, with spirit.
+"Yes, it was Jensen himself and one of his herders. Both in the
+back--killed."
+
+"Bill Santry never shot any man in the back," Wade declared, in a
+relieved tone. "If you're sure of the facts, Santry will come clear all
+right."
+
+"It's just a devilish scheme of Moran's, that's all, to put it on you
+and Santry. I'm sure it is. He hates you both. Whoa, Gypsy!" She reined
+the little mare in again. "No, it's all right, Gordon. I can manage
+her," she remonstrated, as he reached for the bridle once more.
+
+"So that's their game, eh? By Heaven, I more than half believe you're
+right." His face grew ugly with rage. "Dorothy," he continued grimly,
+"thanks are useless. You're a brick, that's all. Do one thing more for
+us, will you?"
+
+"Anything," she replied simply, her eyes shining with devotion to him,
+but he was too overwrought to read them in the darkness.
+
+"When you get back to town get word to some of the men for me. You may
+meet them on the way out, if not they'll be around the barn. Tell them
+to meet me at the big pine, on the old trail."
+
+His horse had grown restless and now he allowed it to have its head; he
+was moving past her when she clutched his arm.
+
+"Gordon!"
+
+She loved him dearly, too dearly to let him know how well until he
+should speak, if he ever did speak; but above them was the starlit sky
+and over them hovered the wondrous spirit of the Western night. Her
+pulse was beating, too, to the call of danger, and despite the control
+which she had over her nerves, she was just a bit hysterical beneath the
+surface. She knew that ahead of him was a little army of hostile men,
+and already that day two men had been killed. So, tremulously, she held
+on to his sleeve, until she stopped him.
+
+"What are you going to do? You can't do anything alone against so many.
+They may kill you."
+
+Her sympathy was very sweet to him and he warmly squeezed the little
+hand which had held him back.
+
+"Don't you be afraid, little girl," he said tenderly. "I shall not get
+hurt if I can help it."
+
+"Wait until the others come, won't you?"
+
+"Surely," he answered readily, touched by the anxiety in her voice. "I'm
+going to look around--just as you did--on the quiet. You wouldn't hold
+me back, where you went in, now would you?"
+
+"No--!" She smiled a little into his face.
+
+"That's the stuff! Then I'm coming back to the big pine, and you'll send
+the boys there. They'll not put Santry in jail if we can prevent them.
+They've played their last card to-night. It's war from now on."
+
+"All right, Gordon, I'll go." Her voice was full of courage again; the
+moment of weakness had passed. "Remember now, take good care of
+yourself."
+
+"You bet," he retorted cheerily, and as her mare moved ahead, he caught
+her arm as she had caught his. She went quite limp in her saddle and
+swayed toward him, but he merely added: "You're a wonder, Dorothy."
+
+He released her then, and with a wave of her hand she disappeared into
+the night. Not until she was beyond recall did he realize that he might
+have kissed her; that she had wanted him to kiss her, for the first time
+since they had known each other. He sat in abstraction for several
+moments before he shook the reins in his hand and his horse sprang
+forward.
+
+"I've kissed one girl to-day," he muttered aloud, "and I reckon that's
+enough."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE OLD TRAIL
+
+
+For another mile Wade followed the main road and then diverged sharply
+to the left into what was known as the old, or upper, trail. This had
+formerly been the valley road until made dangerous by a wash-out a year
+or two previous. In the following spring the wash-out had been partially
+repaired, but the going was still so rough that the new road was
+widened, and had been used by preference ever since. The old trail,
+however, was nearly four miles the shorter of the two, and was still
+traveled in cases of emergency, although to do so at speed and in the
+dark was hazardous.
+
+Wade's promise to Dorothy to take good care of himself had been made
+with mental reservation, for, obsessed by his anxiety over Santry, the
+young ranchman was in no mood to spare either himself or his horse. His
+going was marked by a constant shower of stones, sometimes behind him,
+as the wiry cayuse climbed like a mountain goat; but as often in front,
+as horse and rider coasted perilously down some declivity. The horse
+sweated and trembled with nervousness, as a frightened child might, but
+never refused to attempt what its master demanded of it. One might
+almost say that there existed a human understanding between man and
+beast as to the importance of their errand; a common impulse, which
+urged them onward.
+
+When Wade reflected that Dorothy, too, had come over that trail by night
+in his interest, he thought her more than ever a wonderful girl. Even to
+one born and raised in the cattle country, the trip would have been
+difficult; but then he realized that Dorothy seemed much like a
+ranch-bred girl in her courage and frank womanliness, nor was she any
+less charming on that account. After all, he thought, women paid too
+highly for little accomplishments, if to gain them they had to sacrifice
+the vital points of character. He could not help but contrast Helen's
+insistence that she should be escorted back to the hotel with Dorothy's
+brave ride alone, and while he was too loyal to Helen Rexhill to blame
+her in this respect, the thing made a deep impression upon him.
+
+The way was long, and he had time for many thoughts. It was natural, in
+the still night, with Dorothy only a little while gone, that he should
+think tenderly of her, for this cost Santry nothing. For Santry, Wade
+was reserving not thought but action. He was making up his mind that if
+Moran had taken the foreman into custody on a trumped up charge of
+murder, the agent should feel the power of a greater tribunal than any
+court in the locality--the law of the Strong Arm! Behind him in this,
+the ranchman knew, was the whole of the cattle faction, and since war
+had been thrust upon them he would not stop until the end came, whatever
+it might be. His conscience was clean, for he had exerted himself
+manfully in the cause of peace, even to the point where his own
+character had suffered, and now the hour of reprisal was at hand.
+
+He rode, at last, over the top of the Divide and into the little draw
+that led up to the ranch buildings, in the windows of which lights
+gleamed. With an imprecation at sight of them, he tied his horse to a
+post, and, revolver in hand, crept toward the house as quietly as a
+Sioux.
+
+Except for the light, there was no sign of life about the place, and
+Wade craftily advanced into the deeper shadows close to the wall of the
+house. Taking off his hat, so that the crown might not betray him, he
+peeped through a window. What he saw made him clinch his fingers and
+grit his teeth in rage.
+
+Inside were half a dozen men, besides three of his own ranch hands who
+lay trussed up like turkeys in one corner of the room; doubtless they
+had been surprised by the posse before they had opportunity to run or
+put up a fight. Moran was there, stretched comfortably on Wade's own
+cot, smoking a cigar. Once, he looked directly toward the window at
+which the watcher had placed himself, but the latter did not move.
+Instead, he fingered his gun and waited; he was not sure that he really
+wanted to avoid detection; if it came, Moran would pay, and the rest, at
+the moment, did not seem to matter. He had forgotten Dorothy entirely.
+
+But Santry was not there and this fact puzzled Wade. The Sheriff was not
+there either, and presently it occurred to the cattleman that a part of
+the posse, with Santry, might have returned to Crawling Water over the
+main trail. Probably Moran, with the rest, was waiting for him. The
+mere thought of Santry already on his way to jail filled Wade with a
+baffling sense of rage, and creeping from the house, he examined the
+surrounding turf by the faint rays of the moon. It was badly cut up by
+the feet of many horses, and several minutes passed before Wade was
+really sure that a number of mounted men had taken the trail back to
+town. Satisfied of this at length, he untied his horse and swung into
+the saddle.
+
+Before riding away he considered the advisability of driving off the
+horses belonging to Moran's party, but there would still be others in
+the corral, and besides their absence, when discovered, would give
+warning of the impending attack. On second thought, however, he quietly
+made his way to the corral and caught a fresh horse of his own. When he
+had saddled it he set out over the old trail for the big pine.
+
+When he reached the rendezvous his men were not there; but knowing that
+he must meet them if he followed the road from there on he did not stop.
+He came upon them in a few minutes, riding toward him at full speed,
+with Tim Sullivan in the van, too drunk to stand erect, but able to
+balance himself on a horse's back, drunk or sober.
+
+"We come acrost Santry and the Sheriff a while back," explained Big Bob
+Lawson, one of Wade's own punchers. "They must be in town by now. We was
+aimin' to light into 'em, but Santry wouldn't hear of it. Course, we
+took our orders from him same as usual. He said to tell you that you
+wanted him to keep quiet, an' that's what he aimed to do."
+
+"He said we wasn't to tell you that he didn't shoot them Swedes," put in
+another of the men.
+
+"What?" Wade demanded sharply.
+
+"He said--hic!" broke in Tim Sullivan, with drunken gravity. "He
+said--hic!--that if you didn't know that without--hic!--bein' told, you
+wasn't no friend of his'n, an'--hic!--you could go to hell."
+
+"Shut up, you drunken fool!" Lawson snapped out.
+
+"Jensen and his herder were shot in the back, they say. That clears
+Santry," Wade declared, and sat for some moments in deep thought, while
+the men waited as patiently as they could. "Lawson," he said, at last.
+"You're in charge for the present. Take the boys to the big pine and
+camp there quietly until I come back. I'm going into town."
+
+"Hadn't you better take us with you, boss? We'll stick. We're for you
+an' Bill Santry an' ag'in' these--sheepherders, whenever you say the
+word."
+
+"That's--hic--what we are!" Sullivan hiccoughed.
+
+Wade shook his head.
+
+"No. You wait for me at the pine. You'll have to rustle your grub the
+best way you can. I may not get back until to-morrow--until this
+evening--it's morning now. But wait until I come. There will be plenty
+for you to do later on and there is no use of you going back to town
+with me. It might get you into worse trouble than you're headed for
+already, and what I've got to do, I can do alone."
+
+Wheeling his horse, he rode off toward Crawling Water.
+
+That he could take his men with him, storm the jail and release Santry,
+Wade did not doubt, but to do so would be to bring each of the men into
+open conflict with the law, a responsibility which he was resolved to
+bear alone. Then, too, because his long ride had cooled him somewhat, he
+intended to make one more appeal to the Senator. Possibly, Moran had
+exceeded his instructions, and if this were so, it was no more than just
+that Rexhill, who had seemed to evince a willingness to be helpful,
+should have the opportunity to disown the act of his agent. Besides, if
+Santry could be peaceably released, he would be freed of the charge
+hanging over him, which would not be the case if he were taken from the
+jail by strategy or violence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With haggard countenance and inflamed eyes, Wade bore little resemblance
+to his normal self when he again appeared before the Senator, who
+received him in his dressing-gown, being just out of bed. Rexhill
+listened with a show of sympathy to the cattleman's story, but evidently
+he was in a different mood from the day before.
+
+"My boy, your friendship for your foreman is leading you astray. Your
+faith in him, which is natural and does you credit, is blinding you to
+an impartial view of the case. Why not let the law take its course? If
+Santry is innocent his trial will prove it. At any rate, what can I do?"
+
+"Senator--" Wade spoke with intense weariness. "Only yesterday you
+offered to help us. The situation, as I explained it then, is unchanged
+now, except for the worse. Bill Santry is free of any complicity in
+Jensen's death. I am positive of it. He sent me word that he had not
+left the ranch, and he would not lie to save himself from hanging.
+Besides, the men were shot in the back, and that is absolute proof that
+Santry didn't do it."
+
+"Mere sentiment, Gordon; mere sentiment. Proof? Pooh!"
+
+Rexhill's slightly contemptuous tone worked upon Wade in his exhausted,
+overwrought condition, and stung him. A strange look of cunning appeared
+in his eyes, as he leaned across the table which separated them.
+
+"Senator, Moran made me an offer the other day for my land. If--I accept
+that offer, will you exert your influence in Santry's behalf?"
+
+Coming so swiftly upon his planning, the prospect of such signal success
+was so gratifying to Rexhill that only in halting speech could he
+maintain a show of decorous restraint. His countenance expressed
+exultant relief, as well it might, since he seemed to see himself
+snatched out of the jaws of ruin.
+
+"Why, Gordon, I--Of course, my boy, if you were to show such a generous
+spirit as that, I--er--should feel bound...." The sense of his remarks
+was lost in the crash of Wade's fist upon the table.
+
+"Damn you!" The cattleman was beyond himself with fatigue, rage, and a
+rankling sense of injustice. "They told me that was your game. I
+believed it of Moran, but I thought you were square. So you're that
+sort, too, eh? Well, may you rot in hell before you get my land, you
+robber! Now listen to me." He waved his hand in the direction of the
+street. "Out there's a hundred men--real men--who're waiting the word to
+run you out of this country, you and Moran, too, and by God we'll do
+it--we'll do it--and we'll begin right away!" Again his heavy fist
+crashed down on the table "Never mind Bill Santry"--the instinct of
+discretion was gaining in Wade.--"He can stay where he is for the
+present. First, we'll attend to you pirates--then we'll see."
+
+He stopped suddenly at sight of Helen, who attracted by the noise, had
+entered the room, and stood before him in a filmy negligee.
+
+"What is the matter, Gordon?" she demanded anxiously.
+
+"I beg your pardon." Wade spoke awkwardly, unashamed of himself, except
+for her. "I'm worn out and I--I lost my temper."
+
+"Will you--er--leave this room!" The Senator was beginning to pull
+himself together. It was the first time he had ever been ragged in such
+a way, and his composure had suffered; he spoke now with more than his
+usual pomposity.
+
+"I will," Wade answered curtly, as he turned on his heel and departed.
+
+The Senator, puffing slightly, fiddled with his glasses.
+
+"Your young friend has seen fit to accuse me of--of--" For the life of
+him, he could not at once say of just what he had been accused, unless
+he allowed self-accusation to prompt his words. "Some sheepherders have
+been murdered, I believe," he went on, "and Wade seems to think that
+Moran and I are implicated."
+
+"You!" his daughter exclaimed; evidently her amazement did not extend to
+Moran.
+
+"Preposterous nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, of course." Helen walked to the window and stood looking down into
+the street. "I'm afraid Gordon hasn't improved since we saw him last,"
+she added, finally. "He seems quite a different person from the man I
+used to know. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Crush him!" The Senator's lips set in a thin, white line, as his hand
+descended on the table on the spot where Wade's fist had fallen. "This,
+apparently, is his gratitude to me for my interest in him. Now I intend
+to show him the other side of me."
+
+"Certainly, no one could blame you for punishing him. Oh, everything
+between him and me is quite over," said the girl, with a peculiar smile.
+"He's a perfect bear."
+
+"I'm glad you feel that way about it, Helen." Her father's set lips
+relaxed into a responsive smile. "You couldn't be my daughter and not
+have some sense."
+
+"Have I any?" Helen naïvely asked.
+
+She was gazing out of the window again, and to her mind's eye the dusty,
+squalid street became a broad highway, with jewelers' shops on either
+side, and _modistes_, and other such charming things, just as they are
+found in New York, or--Paris!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HIGHER THAN STATUTE LAW
+
+
+Wade descended the stairs of the hotel and went into the barroom, fuming
+with rage and chagrin because Helen had seen him in such a temper. Like
+most men of action, he took pride in his self-control, which seldom
+failed him, but the villainy of the Senator's attitude had momentarily
+mastered his patience.
+
+Gathered about the bar were a number of men whom he knew, but beyond a
+nod here and there he took no notice of them, and went to sit down alone
+at a small table in the corner. His friends respected his desire to be
+left alone, although several eyed him curiously and exchanged
+significant remarks at his appearance. They seemed to be of the opinion
+that, at last, his fighting blood had been aroused, and now and then
+they shot approving glances in his direction.
+
+"Whiskey," Wade called to the bartender, and a bottle and glass were
+placed on the table in front of him.
+
+With a steady hand the ranchman poured out and quickly swallowed two
+stiff drinks of the fiery liquor, although he was not ordinarily a
+drinking man. The fact that he drank now showed his mental state more
+clearly than words could have expressed it. Searching in his pockets, he
+found tobacco and papers and rolled and lighted a cigarette. Nothing
+could be done for Santry until night, and meanwhile he intended to get
+something to eat and take the sleep that he needed to fit himself for
+the task ahead of him. He ordered a steak, which on top of the whiskey
+put new life into him.
+
+The more he thought of his outburst of temper before Helen the more it
+annoyed him, for he realized that he had "bitten off a bigger wad than
+he could chew," as Bill Santry would have expressed it. Rascal though
+the Senator was, so far as he was concerned, Wade felt that his hands
+were tied on Helen's account. For her sake, he could not move against
+her father in a country where the average man thought of consequences
+after the act rather than before it. In a sense Wade felt that he stood
+sponsor for Crawling Water in the hospitality which it offered Helen,
+and he could not bring peril down on her head.
+
+But as for Moran and his hirelings, that was a different matter! When
+the ranchman thought of Moran, no vengeance seemed too dire to fit his
+misdeeds. In that direction he would go to the limit, and he only hoped
+that he might get his hands on Moran in the mix-up. He still looked upon
+his final visit to Rexhill as a weakness, but it had been undertaken
+solely on Santry's account. It had failed, and no one now could expect
+tolerance of him except Helen. If the posse was still at the ranch, when
+he and Santry returned there at the head of their men, they would attack
+in force, and shoot to kill if necessary.
+
+He learned from Lem Trowbridge, who presently joined him at the table,
+that the posse would probably still be there, for the report in town
+was that Moran had taken possession of the property and meant to stay
+there.
+
+"He does, eh?" Wade muttered grimly. "Well, he may, but it will be with
+his toes up. I'm done, Lem. By Heaven, it's more than flesh and blood
+can stand!"
+
+"It sure is! We're with you, Gordon. Your men were over at my place a
+few hours ago. We grubbed them and loaned them all the guns we could
+spare. I sent over my new Winchester and a belt of shells for you."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+"That's all right. You're more than welcome to all the help I can give
+you, not only against Moran and his gang, but against Rexhill. If you
+like, we'll run him out of town while you're putting the fear of God
+into Moran. Lord! I sure would like to go back to the ranch with you,
+but it's your own quarrel and I won't butt in."
+
+Wade briefly explained his attitude toward the Rexhills and added that
+their cause would not be helped by violence toward the Senator, who was
+a big man at Washington, and might stir the authorities into action on
+his behalf if he could prove personal abuse. The noise that would be
+made by such a happening might drown out the justice of the cattlemen's
+claim.
+
+"Well, that's true, too," Trowbridge admitted. "I can see the point all
+right. What we want to do is to get something 'on' the Senator. I mean
+something sure--something like this Jensen shooting."
+
+Wade nodded slowly.
+
+"That's the idea, but I'm afraid we can't do it, Lem. I haven't a doubt
+but that Moran is mixed up in the killing, but I hardly believe Rexhill
+is. Anyhow, they've probably covered their tracks so well that we'll
+never be able to connect them with it."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. You can't always tell what time'll bring to light."
+Trowbridge lowered his voice. "What's your idea about Santry? Do you
+want help there?"
+
+"No." Wade spoke with equal caution. "I believe I can manage all right
+alone. The Sheriff will probably be looking for us to rush the jail, but
+he won't expect me to come alone. Bat Lewis goes on duty as the relief,
+about nine o'clock. I mean to beat him to it, and if the Sheriff opens
+up for me I'll be away with Santry before Bat appears. But I must get
+some sleep, Lem."
+
+The two men arose.
+
+"Well, good luck to you, Gordon." Trowbridge slapped his friend on the
+shoulder, and they separated.
+
+"Frank, can you let me have a bed?" Wade asked of the hotel proprietor,
+a freckled Irishman.
+
+"Sure; as many as you want."
+
+"One will do, Frank; and another thing," the ranchman said guardedly.
+"I'll need an extra horse to-night, and I don't want to be seen with him
+until I need him. Can you have him tied behind the school-house a little
+before nine o'clock?"
+
+"You bet I can!" The Irishman slowly dropped an eyelid, for the
+school-house was close by the jail.
+
+Wade tumbled into the bed provided for him and slept like a log, having
+that happy faculty of the healthy man, of being able to sleep when his
+body needed it, no matter what impended against the hour of awakening.
+
+When he did wake up, the afternoon was well advanced, and after another
+hearty meal he walked over to the Purnells' to pass the time until it
+was late enough for him to get to work.
+
+"Now, Gordon will tell you I'm right," Mrs. Purnell proclaimed
+triumphantly, when the young man entered the cottage. "I want Dorothy to
+go with me to call on Miss Rexhill, and she doesn't want to go. The
+idea! When Miss Rexhill was nice enough to call on us first."
+
+Mrs. Purnell set much store upon her manners, as the little Michigan
+town where she was born understood good breeding, and she had not been
+at all annoyed by Helen Rexhill's patronage, which had so displeased
+Wade. To her mind the Rexhills were very great people, and great people
+were to be expected to bear themselves in lofty fashion. Dorothy had
+inherited her democracy from her father and not from her mother, who,
+indeed, would have been disappointed if Helen Rexhill appeared any less
+than the exalted personage she imagined herself to be.
+
+"Oh, I'd like to meet her well enough, only...." Dorothy stopped,
+unwilling to say before Wade that she did not consider the Rexhills
+sufficiently good friends of his, in the light of recent developments,
+for them to be friends of hers.
+
+"Of course, go," he broke in heartily. "She's not responsible for what
+her father does in the way of business, and I reckon she'd think it
+funny if you didn't call."
+
+"There now!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed triumphantly.
+
+"All right, I'll go." In her heart Dorothy was curious to meet the other
+woman and gauge her powers of attraction. "We'll go to-morrow, mother."
+
+Quite satisfied, Mrs. Purnell made some excuse to leave them together,
+as she usually did, for her mother heart had traveled farther along the
+Road to To-morrow than her daughter's fancy. She secretly hoped that the
+young cattleman would some day declare his love for Dorothy and ask for
+her hand in marriage.
+
+In reply to the girl's anxious questions Wade told her of what had
+happened since their meeting on the trail, as they sat together on the
+porch of the little cottage. She was wearing a plain dress of green
+gingham, which, somehow, suggested to him the freshness of lettuce. She
+laughed a little when he told her of that and called him foolish, though
+the smile that showed a dimple in her chin belied her words.
+
+"Then the posse is still at the ranch?" she asked.
+
+"I think so. If they are, we are going to run them off to-morrow
+morning, or perhaps to-night. I've had enough of this nonsense and I
+mean to meet Moran halfway from now on."
+
+"Yes, I suppose you must," she admitted reluctantly. "But do be careful,
+Gordon."
+
+"As careful as I can be under the circumstances," he said cheerfully,
+and told her that his chief purpose in coming to see her was to thank
+her again for the service she had rendered him.
+
+"Oh, you don't need to thank me for that. Do you know"--she puckered up
+her brows in a reflective way--"I've been thinking. It seems very
+strange to me that Senator Rexhill and Moran should be willing to go to
+such lengths merely to get hold of this land as a speculation. Doesn't
+it seem so to you?"
+
+"Yes, it does, but that must be their reason."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that, Gordon. There must be something more behind
+all this. That's what I have been thinking about. You remember that when
+Moran first came here he had an office just across the street from his
+present one?"
+
+"Yes. Simon Barsdale had Moran's present office until he moved to
+Sheridan. You were his stenographer for a while, I remember." Wade
+looked at her curiously, wondering what she was driving at.
+
+"Moran bought Mr. Barsdale's safe." Her voice sounded strange and
+unnatural. "I know the old combination. I wonder if it has been
+changed?"
+
+"Lem Trowbridge was saying only this morning," said Wade thoughtfully,
+for he was beginning to catch her meaning, "that if we could only get
+proof of something crooked we might...."
+
+"Well, I think we can," Dorothy interrupted.
+
+They looked searchingly at each other in the gathering dusk, and he
+tried to read the light in her eyes, and being strangely affected
+himself by their close proximity, he misinterpreted it. He slipped his
+hand over hers and once more the desire to kiss her seized him. He let
+go of her hand and was just putting his arm around her shoulders when,
+to his surprise, she appeared suddenly indignant.
+
+"Don't!"
+
+He was abashed, and for a moment neither said a word.
+
+"What is the combination?" he finally asked hoarsely.
+
+"I promised Mr. Barsdale never to tell any one." Her lips wreathed into
+a little smile. "I'll do it myself."
+
+"No, you won't." Wade shook his head positively. "Do you suppose I'm
+going to let you steal for me? It will be bad enough to do it myself;
+but necessity knows no law. Well, we'll let it go for the present then.
+Don't you think of doing it, Dorothy. Will you promise me?"
+
+"I never promise," she said, smiling again, and ignoring her last words
+in womanly fashion, "but if you don't want me to...."
+
+"Well, I don't," he declared firmly. "Let it rest at that. We'll
+probably find some other way anyhow."
+
+She asked him then about Santry, but he evaded a direct answer beyond
+expressing the conviction that everything would end all right. They
+talked for a while of commonplaces, although nothing that he said seemed
+commonplace to her and nothing that she said seemed so to him. When it
+was fully dark he arose to go. Then she seemed a little sorry that she
+had not let him put his arm around her, and she leaned toward him as
+she had done on the trail; but he was not well versed in woman's
+subtleties, and he failed to guess her thoughts and walked away, leaving
+her, as Shakespeare put it, to
+
+          "Twice desire, ere it be day,
+          That which with scorn she put away."
+
+Having mounted his horse at the livery stable, he first made sure that
+the extra horse was behind the school-house, where he tied his own, and
+then walked around to the jail. On the outside, this building was a
+substantial log structure; within, it was divided into the Sheriff's
+office and sleeping room, the "bull pen," and a single narrow cell, in
+which Wade guessed that Santry would be locked. After examining his
+revolver, he slipped it into the side pocket of his coat and walked
+boldly up to the jail. Then, whistling merrily, for Bat Lewis, the
+deputy, was a confirmed human song-bird, he knocked sharply on the door
+with his knuckles.
+
+"It's me--Bat," he called out, mimicking Lewis' voice, in answer to a
+question from within.
+
+"You're early to-night. What's struck you?" Sheriff Thomas opened the
+door, and turning, left it so, for the "relief" to enter. He had half
+feared that an attempt might be made to liberate Santry, but had never
+dreamed that any one would try the thing alone. He was glad to be
+relieved, for a poker game at which he wanted to sit in would soon start
+at the Gulch Saloon.
+
+He was the most surprised man in Wyoming, when he felt the cold muzzle
+of Wade's Colt boring into the nape of his neck and heard the ranchman's
+stern warning to keep quiet or take the consequences. Sheriff Thomas had
+earned his right to his "star" by more than one exhibition of nerve, but
+he was too familiar with gun ethics to argue with the business end of a
+"45."
+
+"Not a sound!" Outwardly cold as ice, but inwardly afire, Wade shoved
+the weapon against his victim's neck and marched him to the middle of
+the room. "I've got the upper hand, Sheriff, and I intend to keep it."
+
+"You're a damn fool, Wade." The Sheriff spoke without visible emotion
+and in a low tone. "You'll go up for this. Don't you realize that...."
+
+"Can it!" snapped Wade, deftly disarming the officer with his free hand.
+"Never mind the majesty of the law and all that rot. I thought that all
+over before I came. Now that I've got you and drawn your teeth, you'll
+take orders from me. Get my foreman out of that cell and be quick about
+it!"
+
+There was nothing to do but obey, which Thomas quietly did, although
+somewhat in fear of what Santry might do when at liberty. When the cell
+door was unlocked, the old plainsman, in a towering rage at the
+injustice of his incarceration, seemed inclined to choke his erstwhile
+jailer.
+
+"None of that, Bill," Wade admonished curtly. "He's only been a tool in
+this business, although he ought to know better. We'll tie him up and
+gag him; that's all. Rip up one of those blankets."
+
+"I knew you'd come, boy!" The foreman's joy was almost like that of a
+big dog at sight of his master. "By the great horned toad, I knew it!"
+With his sinewy hands he tore the blanket into strips as easily as
+though the wool had been paper. "Now for him, drat him!"
+
+Wade stood guard while the helpless Sheriff was trussed up and his mouth
+stopped by Santry, and if the ranch owner felt any compunction at the
+sight, he had only to think of his own men as he had seen them the night
+before, lying on the floor of the ranch house.
+
+"Make a good job of it, Bill," was his only comment.
+
+"You bet!" Santry chuckled as he drew the last of the knots tight.
+"That'll hold him for a spell, I reckon. How you feel, Sheruff, purty
+comfortable?" The flowing end of the gag so hid the officer's features
+that he could express himself only with his eyes, which he batted
+furiously. "Course," Santry went on, in mock solicitude, "if I'd thought
+I mighta put a bit of sugar on that there gag, to remind you of your
+mammy like, but it ain't no great matter. You can put a double dose in
+your cawfee when you git loose."
+
+"Come on, Bill!" Wade commanded.
+
+"So long, Sheruff," Santry chuckled.
+
+There was no time to waste in loitering, for at any moment Bat Lewis
+might arrive and give an alarm which would summon reënforcements from
+amongst Moran's following. Hurrying Santry ahead of him, Wade swung open
+the door and they looked out cautiously. No one was in sight, and a
+couple of minutes later the two men were mounted and on their way out of
+town.
+
+"By the great horned toad!" Santry exulted, as they left the lights of
+Crawling Water behind them. "It sure feels good to be out of that there
+boardin'-house. It wasn't our fault, Gordon, and say, about this here
+shootin'...."
+
+"I know all about that, Bill," Wade interposed. "The boys told me.
+They're waiting for us at the big pine. But your arrest, that's what I
+want to hear about."
+
+"Well, it was this-a-way," the old man explained. "They sneaked up on
+the house in the dark and got the drop on us. Right here I rise to
+remark that never no more will I separate myself from my six-shooter.
+More'n one good man has got hisself killed just because his gun wasn't
+where it oughter be when he needed it. Of course, we put up the best
+scrap we could, but we didn't have no chance, Gordon. The first thing I
+knew, while I was tusslin' with one feller, somebody fetched me a rap on
+the head with a pistol-butt, an' I went down for the count. Any of the
+boys shot up?"
+
+Wade described the appearance of the ranch house on the previous night,
+and Santry swore right manfully.
+
+"What's on the cards now?" he demanded. "How much longer are we goin' to
+stand for...."
+
+"No longer," Wade declared crisply. "That's why the boys are waiting for
+us at the pine. We're going to run Moran and his gang off the ranch as
+soon as we can get there, and then we're going to run them out of the
+country."
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e-e-e!" The old plainsman's yell of exultation split the
+night like the yelp of a coyote, and he brought his hand down on Wade's
+back with a force which made the latter wince. "By the great horned
+toad, that's talkin! That's the finest news I've heard since my old
+mammy said to the parson, 'Call him Bill, for short.' Whoop-e-e-e-e!"
+
+Wade's warning to keep still was lost on the wind, for Santry stuck his
+spurs into his horse's flanks and charged along the trail like an
+old-time knight. With a grim smile his employer put on speed and
+followed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BATTLE AT THE RANCH
+
+
+When Wade and Santry approached the big pine, the waiting men came out
+from its shadow and rode forward, with the borrowed rifles across their
+saddle horns.
+
+"All right, boys?" the rancher asked, taking Trowbridge's new rifle, a
+beautiful weapon, which Lawson handed to him.
+
+"All right, sir," answered Tim Sullivan, adding the "sir" in extenuation
+of his befuddled condition the night before, while each man gave Santry
+a silent hand-shake to welcome him home.
+
+Grimly, silently, then, save for the dashing of their horses' hoofs
+against the loose stones, and an occasional muttered imprecation as a
+rider lurched in his saddle, the seven men rode rapidly toward the
+mountains. In numbers, their party was about evenly matched with the
+enemy, and Wade meant that the advantage of surprise, if possible,
+should rest with him in order to offset such advantage as Moran might
+find in the shelter of the house. But, however that might be, each man
+realized that the die had been cast and that the fight, once begun,
+would go to a finish.
+
+"I only hope," Santry remarked, as a steep grade forced them to lessen
+their speed, "I can get my two hands on that cussed tin-horn, Moran.
+Him and me has a misunderstandin' to settle, for sure."
+
+"You leave him to me, Bill." Wade spoke vindictively. "He's my meat."
+
+"Well, since you ask it, I'll try, boy. But there's goin' to be some
+fightin' sure as taxes, and when I get to fightin', I'm liable to go
+plumb, hog wild. Say, I hope you don't get into no trouble over this
+here jail business o' mine. That 'ud make me feel bad, Gordon."
+
+"We'll not worry about that now, Bill."
+
+"That's right. Don't worry till you have to, and then shoot instead.
+That's been my motto all my born days, and it ain't such durn bad
+philosophy at that. I wonder"--the old man chuckled to himself--"I
+wonder if the Sheruff et up most of that there gag before Bat let him
+loose?"
+
+Wade laughed out loud, and as though in response, an owl hooted
+somewhere in the timber to their right.
+
+"There's a durned old hoot owl," growled Santry. "I never like to hear
+them things--they most always mean bad luck."
+
+He rode to the head of the little column, and the rest of the way to the
+ranch was passed in ominous silence. When they finally arrived at the
+edge of the clearing and cautiously dismounted, everything seemed from
+the exterior, at least, just as it should be. The night being far gone,
+the lights were out, and there was no sign of life about the place. Wade
+wondered if the posse had gone.
+
+"There ain't no use in speculatin'," declared Santry. "They may be
+asleep, and they may be layin' for us there in the dark. This will take
+a rise out of 'em anyhow."
+
+At sight of the old fellow, pistol in hand, Wade called to him to wait,
+but as he spoke Santry fired two quick shots into the air.
+
+There was an immediate commotion in the ranch house. A man inside was
+heard to curse loudly, while another showed his face for an instant
+where the moonlight fell across a window. He hastily ducked out of
+sight, however, when a rifle bullet splintered the glass just above his
+head. Presently a gun cracked inside the house and a splash on a rock
+behind the attackers told them where the shot had struck.
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e-e!" Santry yelled, discharging the four remaining shots in
+his revolver at the window. "We've got 'em guessin'. They don't know how
+many we are."
+
+"They were probably asleep," said Wade a bit sharply. "We might have
+sneaked in and captured the whole crowd without firing a shot. That's
+what I meant to do before you cut loose."
+
+Santry shook his grizzled head as he loaded his revolver.
+
+"Well, now, that would have been just a mite risky, boy. The way things
+stand we've still got the advantage, an'...." He broke off to take a
+snapshot at a man who showed himself at the window for an instant in an
+effort to get a glimpse of the attacking force. "One!" muttered the old
+plainsman to himself.
+
+By this time Wade had thrown himself down on his stomach behind a
+bowlder to Santry's left and was shooting methodically at the door of
+the house, directly in front of him. He knew that door. It was built of
+inch lumber and was so located that a bullet, after passing through it,
+would rake the interior of the cabin from end to end. The only way the
+inmates could keep out of the line of his fire was by hugging the walls
+on either side, where they would be partially exposed to the leaden hail
+which Santry and the punchers were directing at the windows.
+
+There was a grim, baleful look on the young man's usually pleasant face,
+and his eyes held a pitiless gleam. He was shooting straight, shooting
+to kill, and taking a fierce delight in the act. The blood lust was upon
+him, that primal, instinctive desire for combat in a righteous cause
+that lies hidden at the very bottom of every strong man's nature. And
+there came to his mind no possible question of the righteous nature of
+his cause. He was fighting to regain possession of his own home from the
+marauders who had invaded it. His enemies had crowded him to the wall,
+and now they were paying the penalty. Wade worked the lever of his
+Winchester as though he had no other business in life. A streak of
+yellow clay mingled with a bloody trickle from a bullet scratch on his
+cheek gave his set features a fairly ferocious expression.
+
+Santry, glancing toward him, chuckled again, but without mirth. "The
+boy's woke up at last," he muttered to himself. "They've drove him to
+it, durn 'em. I knew almighty well that this law an' order stunt
+couldn't last forever. Wow!"
+
+The latter exclamation was caused by a bullet which ricocheted from a
+rock near his head, driving a quantity of fine particles into his face.
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e-e!" he howled a moment later. "We got 'em goin'. It's a
+cinch they can't stand this pace for more'n a week."
+
+Indeed, it was a marvel that the defenders kept on fighting as long as
+they did. Already the door, beneath Wade's machine-like shooting, had
+been completely riddled; the windows were almost bare of glass; and
+great splinters of wood had been torn from the log walls by the heavy
+rifle bullets on their way through to the interior. Soon the door sagged
+and crashed inward, and into the gaping hole thus made Wade continued to
+empty his rifle.
+
+At last, the fire of those within slackened and temporarily ceased. Did
+this mean surrender? Wade asked himself and ordered his men to stop
+shooting and await developments. For some moments all was still, and the
+advisability of rushing the house was being discussed when all at once
+the fire of the defenders began again. This time, however, there was
+something very odd about it. There was a loud banging of exploding
+cartridges, but only a few shots whistled around the heads of the
+cattlemen. Nevertheless, Wade told his men to resume shooting, and once
+more settled down to his own task.
+
+"What'n hell they tryin' to do?" Santry demanded. "Sounds like a Fourth
+o' July barbecue to me."
+
+"I don't know," Wade answered, charging the magazine of his rifle, "but
+whatever it is they'll have to stop mighty soon."
+
+Then gradually, but none the less certainly, the fire from within
+slackened until all was still. This seemed more like a visitation of
+death, and again Wade ordered his men to stop shooting. They obeyed
+orders and lay still, keenly watching the house.
+
+"Do you surrender?" Wade shouted; but there was no reply.
+
+Santry sprang to his feet.
+
+"By the great horned toad!" he cried. "I'm a-goin' in there! Anybody
+that wants to come along is welcome."
+
+Not a man in the party would be dared in that way, so, taking advantage
+of such cover as offered, they advanced upon the cabin, stealthily at
+first and then more rapidly, as they met with no resistance--no sign
+whatever of life. A final rush carried them through the doorway into the
+house, where they expected to find a shambles.
+
+Wade struck a light, and faced about with a start as a low groan came
+from a corner of the back room. A man lay at full length on the floor,
+tied hand and foot, and gagged. It was Ed Nelson, one of the Double
+Arrow hands who had been surprised and captured by the posse, and a
+little farther away in the shadow against the wall his two companions
+lay in a like condition. With his knife Wade was cutting them loose,
+and glancing about in a puzzled search for the wounded men he expected
+to find in the house, when Santry shouted something from the kitchen.
+
+"What is it, Bill?" the ranch owner demanded.
+
+Santry tramped back into the room, laughing in a shamefaced sort of way.
+
+"They done us, Gordon!" he burst out. "By the great horned toad, they
+done us! They chucked a bunch of shells into the hot cook-stove, an'
+sneaked out the side door while we was shootin' into the front room. By
+cracky, that beats...."
+
+"That's what they did," spoke up Nelson, as well as his cramped tongue
+would permit, being now freed of the gag. "They gagged us first, so's we
+couldn't sing out; then they filled up the stove an' beat it."
+
+What had promised to be a tragedy had proved a fiasco, and Wade smiled a
+little foolishly.
+
+"The joke's on us, I guess, boys," he admitted. "But we've got the ranch
+back, at any rate. How are you feeling, Ed, pretty stiff and sore?"
+
+"My Gawd, yes--awful!"
+
+"Me, too," declared Tom Parrish, the second of the victims; and the
+third man swore roundly that he would not regain the full use of his
+legs before Christmas.
+
+"Well, you're lucky at that," was Santry's dry comment. "All that saved
+you from gettin' shot up some in the fight was layin' low down in that
+corner where you was." He let his eyes travel around the littered,
+blood-spattered room. "From the looks o' this shebang we musta stung
+some of 'em pretty deep; but nobody was killed, I reckon. I hope Moran
+was the worst hurt, durn him!"
+
+"He'll keep," Wade said grimly. "We've not done with him yet, Bill.
+We've only just begun."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SENATOR GETS BUSY
+
+
+It was daylight when the routed posse, with Race Moran in the lead, his
+left arm tied up in a blood-stained handkerchief, rode into Crawling
+Water. A bullet had pierced the fleshy part of the agent's wrist, a
+trifling wound, but one which gave him more pain than he might have
+suffered from a serious injury. None of the members of the posse had
+been dangerously wounded; indeed, they had suffered more in the spirit
+than in the flesh; but there had been a number of minor casualties
+amongst the men, which made a sufficiently bloody display to arouse the
+little town to active curiosity.
+
+Under instructions from the leader, however, the fugitives kept
+grouchily silent, so that curiosity was able to feed only on
+speculations as to Wade's temper, and the fact that he had brought about
+Santry's release from jail. The story of that achievement had been
+bruited about Crawling Water since midnight, together with the
+probability that the Law would be invoked to punish the ranchman for his
+defiance of it. Popular sentiment was running high over the likelihood
+of such a step being taken, and the members of the posse were the
+targets of many hostile glances from the townspeople. At least
+two-thirds of the citizens were strongly in favor of Wade, but before
+they took active steps in his behalf they waited for the return of a
+horseman, who had hurried out to the ranch to learn at first hand
+exactly what had happened there.
+
+Meanwhile Moran, in an ugly mood, had awakened the Senator from the
+troubled sleep which had come to him after much wakeful tossing.
+Rexhill, with tousled hair, wrapped in a bathrobe, from the bottom of
+which his bare ankles and slippered feet protruded, sat on the edge of
+his bed, impatiently chewing an unlighted cigar while he listened to
+Moran's account of the fracas.
+
+"You went too far, Race,--you went too far," he burst out angrily at
+last. "You had no orders to jump the ranch. I told you...."
+
+"We've been fooling around long enough, Senator," Moran interrupted
+sullenly, nursing his throbbing wrist. "It was high time somebody
+started something, and when I saw my chance I seized it. You seem to
+think"--his voice trailed into scorn--"that we are playing marbles with
+boys, but, I tell you, it's men we're up against. My experience has
+shown me that it's the first blow that counts in any fight."
+
+"Well, who got in the hardest lick, eh?" Rexhill snorted sarcastically.
+"The first blow's all right, provided the second isn't a knockout from
+the other side. Why, confound it, Race, here we had Wade at our mercy.
+He'd broken into jail and set free a suspected murderer--a clear case of
+criminality. Then you had to spoil it all."
+
+Moran smothered an imprecation.
+
+"You seem to forget, Senator, that we had him at our mercy before, and
+you wouldn't hear of it. If you'd taken my advice in the first place,
+we'd have had Wade in jail instead of Santry and things might have been
+different."
+
+"Your advice was worthless under the circumstances; that's why I didn't
+take it." Rexhill deliberately paused and lighted his cigar, from which
+he took several soothing puffs. To have been aroused from his bed with
+such news had flustered him somewhat; but he had never known anything
+worth while to come out of a heated discussion, and he sought now to
+calm himself. Finally, he spoke slowly. "What you proposed to me then
+was a frame-up, and all frame-ups are dangerous, particularly when they
+have little to rest upon. For that reason I refused to fall in with your
+ideas, Race. This release of Santry from jail is--or was--an entirely
+different thing, an overt criminal act, with Sheriff Thomas on our side
+as an unimpeachable witness."
+
+Moran was suffering too keenly from his wound and smarting under his
+defeat too much to be altogether reasonable. His manner was fast losing
+the appearance of respect which he had previously shown his employer.
+His expression was becoming heated and contemptuous.
+
+"You didn't base your refusal on logic at the time, Senator," he said.
+"It was sentiment, if I remember right. Wade had broken bread with you,
+and all that. I don't see but what that applies just as well now as it
+did then."
+
+"It doesn't," the Senator argued smugly, still rankling from Wade's
+arraignment of him the day before, "because even hospitality has its
+limits of obligation. So long as I knew Wade to be innocent, I did not
+care to have him arrested; but I don't admit any sentiment of
+hospitality which compels me to save a _known_ criminal from the hand of
+justice. Sheriff Thomas came in to see me last night and I agreed with
+him that Wade should be brought to account for his contempt of the law.
+Wade forced his way into the jail and released his foreman at the point
+of a gun. Even so, I feel sorry for Wade and I am a little apprehensive
+of the consequences that will probably develop from his foolhardiness."
+
+"Well, by God, if there's any sympathy for him floating around this
+room, it all belongs to you, Senator." Moran tenderly fingered his
+aching wrist. "I'm not one of these 'turn the other cheek' guys; you can
+gamble on that!"
+
+"But now where are we?" Rexhill ignored the other's remarks entirely.
+"We are but little better off than Wade is. He pulled Santry out of
+jail, and we tried to steal his ranch. The only difference is that so
+far he has succeeded, and we have failed. He has as much law on his side
+now as we have on ours."
+
+Moran's head drooped a little before the force of this argument,
+although he was chiefly impressed by the fact that he had failed. His
+failures had been few, because Fortune had smiled upon him in the past;
+and doubtless for this reason he was the less able to treat failure
+philosophically. His plans at the ranch house had gone awry. He had
+counted on meeting Wade there in the daytime, in the open, and upon
+provoking him, before witnesses, into some hot-headed act which would
+justify a battle. The surprise attack had left the agent without this
+excuse for the hostilities which had occurred.
+
+Rexhill arose and walked up and down the room in thought, his slippered
+feet shuffling over the floor, showing now and then a glimpse of his
+fat, hairy legs as the skirt of his bathrobe fluttered about. A cloud of
+fragrant smoke from his cigar trailed him as he walked, and from the way
+he chewed on the tobacco his _confrères_ in the Senate could have
+guessed that he was leading up to one of his Czar-like pronouncements.
+Presently he stopped moving and twisted the cigar in his mouth so that
+its fumes would be out of his eyes, as his glance focused on Moran.
+
+"There's just one way out of this mess, Race," he began. "Now heed what
+I say to you. I'm going to send a telegram to the Department of the
+Interior which will bring a troop of cavalry down here from Fort
+Mackenzie. You must go slow from now on, and let the authorities settle
+the whole matter."
+
+The agent sat up alertly, as his employer, wagging a ponderous
+forefinger impressively, proceeded.
+
+"You were not on the ranch for the purpose of jumping it at all. Mind
+that now! You and I stand for the majesty of the law in this lawless
+community." Moran's eyes began to twinkle at this, but he said nothing.
+"When you and Sheriff Thomas went out to the ranch, you carried two
+warrants with you, one for Santry, as the accessory, and one for Wade,
+as the principal, in the Jensen shooting. Yes, yes, I know what you are
+going to say; but I must save my own bacon now. Since Wade has proved
+himself to be a lawbreaker, I'm not going to protect him."
+
+"Now, you're talking!" exclaimed Moran, delighted at the prospect of
+what such a course would start going.
+
+"I'll have the matter of the warrants fixed up with Thomas," the Senator
+continued. "Now, follow me carefully. Thomas arrested Santry at the
+ranch, and then left you, as his deputy, to serve the other warrant on
+Wade when he came home. It was because of his knowledge of what was in
+store for him that Wade, after getting Santry out of jail, attacked you
+and your men, and it was in defense of the law that you returned their
+fire. It will all work out very smoothly, I think, and any further
+hostilities will come from the other side and be to our great
+advantage."
+
+Moran looked at his employer in admiration, as the latter concluded and
+turned toward his writing table.
+
+"Senator," the agent declared, as Rexhill took up his fountain pen and
+began to write on a telegraph form, "you never should have started in
+Denver. If you'd been born in little old New York, you'd be in the White
+House now. From this minute on you and I are going to carry this whole
+valley in our vest-pockets."
+
+"You take this over and put it on the wire right away, Race. It's to the
+Secretary of the Interior and my signature on it should get immediate
+attention." Senator Rexhill handed over the telegraph form he had
+filled out.
+
+"But what about State rights in this business?" Moran asked, anxiously.
+"Will they send Government troops in here on your say so?"
+
+The Senator waved his hand in dismissal of the objection.
+
+"I'll have Thomas wire the Governor that the situation is beyond
+control. This town is miles from nowhere, and there's no militia within
+easy reach. The State will be glad enough to be saved the expense,
+especially with the soldiers close by at Fort Mackenzie. Besides, you
+know, although Wade's ranch is inside the State, a good deal of his land
+is Government land, or was until he filed on it."
+
+When Moran had left the room in a much easier frame of mind than he came
+into it, the Senator sat down heavily on the bed. He was puffing at his
+cigar and thinking intently, when he caught sight of the white, startled
+face of his daughter in the mirror of the bureau across the room.
+Whirling about, he found her standing in the doorway looking at him.
+Rexhill had never before been physically conscious of the fact that he
+had a spine, but in that moment of discovery a chill crept up and down
+his back, for her expression told him that she had heard a good deal of
+his conversation with Moran. The most precious thing to him in life was
+the respect of his child; more precious even, he knew, than the
+financial security for which he fought; and in her eyes now he saw that
+he was face to face with a greater battle than any he had ever waged.
+
+"Father!"
+
+"What, are you awake, my dear?"
+
+He tried hard to make his tone cheery and natural, as he stood up and
+wrapped the bathrobe more closely around him.
+
+"I heard what you said to Race Moran."
+
+Helen came into the room, with only a dressing wrapper thrown over her
+thin night-dress, and dropped into a chair. She seemed to feel that her
+statement of the fact was accusation enough in itself, and waited for
+him to answer.
+
+"You shouldn't have listened, Helen. Moran and I were discussing private
+business matters, and I thought that you were asleep. It was not
+proper...."
+
+Her lips, which usually framed a smile for him, curled disdainfully and
+he winced in spite of himself. He avoided the keen appraisement of her
+gaze, which seemed now to size him up, as though to probe his most
+secret thoughts, whereas before she had always accepted him lovingly on
+faith.
+
+"Certainly, they were not matters that you would want an outsider to
+hear," she said, in a hard voice, "but I am very glad that _I_ listened,
+father. Glad"--her voice broke a little--"even though I shall never be
+able to think of you again as I...."
+
+He went to her and put his heavy hands on her shoulders, which shrank
+under his touch.
+
+"Now, don't say things that you'll regret, Helen. You're the only girl
+I have, and I'm the only father you have, so we ought to make the best
+of each other, oughtn't we, eh? You're prone to hasty judgments. Don't
+let them run away with you now."
+
+"Don't touch me!" He made way for her as she got to her feet.
+"Father,"--she tremblingly faced him, leaning for support against a
+corner of the bureau,--"I _heard_ all that you said to Mr. Moran. I
+don't want you to tell me what we've been to each other. Don't I know
+that? Haven't I felt it?"
+
+The Senator swallowed hard, touched to the quick at the sight of her
+suffering.
+
+"You want me to explain it--more fully?"
+
+"If you can. Can you?" Her lips twitched spasmodically. "I want you to
+tell me something that will let me continue to believe that you
+are--that you are--Oh, you know what I want to say." Rexhill blushed a
+deep purple, despite his efforts at self-control. "But what can you say,
+father; what _can_ you say, after what I've heard?"
+
+"You mean as regards young Wade? You know, I told you last night about
+his attack on the Sheriff. You know, too"--the blush faded as the
+Senator caught his stride again--"that I said I meant to crush him. You
+even agreed with me that he should be taught a lesson."
+
+"But you should fight fairly," Helen retorted, with a quick breath of
+aggression. "Do you believe that he killed Jensen? Of course you don't.
+The mere idea of such a thing is absurd."
+
+"Perhaps he planned it."
+
+"Father!" The scorn in her tone stung him like a whip-lash. "Did he plan
+the warrants, too? The warrant that hasn't been issued yet, although you
+are going to swear that it was issued yesterday. Did he plan that?"
+
+Once in his political career, the Senator had faced an apparent
+_impasse_ and had wormed out of it through tolerant laughter. He had
+laughed so long and so genially that the very naturalness of his
+artifice had won the day for him. Men thought that if he had had a
+guilty conscience, he could not have seemed so carefree. He tried the
+same trick now with his daughter; but it was a frightful attempt and he
+gave it up when he saw its ill-success.
+
+"See here, Helen," he burst out, "it is ridiculous that you should
+arraign me in this way. It is true that no warrant was out yesterday for
+Wade, but it is also true that the Sheriff intended to issue one, and it
+was only through my influence that the warrant was not issued. Since
+then Wade, besides insulting me, has proved himself a lawbreaker. I have
+nothing to do with the consequences of his actions, which rest entirely
+with him. You have overheard something that you were not intended to
+hear, and as is usually the case, have drawn wrong conclusions. The best
+thing you can do now is to try to forget what you have heard and leave
+the matter in my hands, where it belongs."
+
+He had spoken dominantly and expected her to yield to his will. He was
+totally unprepared, well as he knew her spirit, for what followed.
+
+She faced him with glowing eyes and her trembling lips straightened into
+a thin, firm line of determination. He was her father, and she had
+always loved him for what she had felt to be his worth; she had given
+him the chance to explain, and he had not availed himself of it; he was
+content to remain convicted in her eyes, or else, which was more likely,
+he could not clear himself. She realized now that, despite what she had
+said in pique, only the night before, she really loved Wade, and he, at
+least, had done nothing, except free a friend, who, like himself, was
+unjustly accused. She could not condemn him for that, any more than she
+could forget her father's duplicity.
+
+"I won't forget it!" she cried. "If necessary, I will go to Gordon and
+tell him what you've done. I'll tell it to every one in Crawling Water,
+if you force me to. I don't want to because, just think what that would
+mean to you! But you shall not sacrifice Gordon. Yes, I mean it--I'll
+sacrifice you first!"
+
+"Don't talk so loud," the Senator warned her anxiously, going a little
+white. "Don't be a fool, Helen. Why, it was only a few hours ago that
+you said Wade should be punished."
+
+She laughed hysterically.
+
+"That was only because I wanted to get him away from this awful little
+town. I thought that if he were--punished--a little, if he was made a
+laughing stock, he might be ashamed, and not want to stay here. Now, I
+see that I was wrong. I don't blame him for fighting with every weapon
+he can find. I hope he wins!"
+
+Rexhill, who had been really frightened at her hysterical threat of
+exposure, and assailed by it in his pride as well, felt his fear begin
+to leave him and his confidence in himself return. In the next minute or
+two, he thought rapidly and to considerable purpose. In the past he had
+resolutely refused to use his child in any way to further his own ends,
+but the present occasion was an emergency, and major surgery is often
+demanded in a crisis. If she were willing, as she said, to sacrifice
+him, he felt that he might properly make use of her and her moods to
+save himself and her as well. He realized that if she were to shout
+abroad through Crawling Water the conversation that had passed between
+him and Moran, the likelihood of either of the two men getting out of
+the county alive would be extremely remote.
+
+"So that was it, eh? And I complimented you upon your good sense!" His
+laugh was less of an effort now. "Well, doesn't it hold good now as well
+as it did then? Come, my dear, sit down and we'll thresh this out
+quietly."
+
+She shook her head stubbornly, but the woman in her responded to the new
+note of confidence in his voice, and she waited eagerly for what he had
+to say, hopeful that he might still clear himself.
+
+"You tell me that I must fight fair. Well, I usually do fight that way.
+I'm doing so now. When I spoke yesterday of crushing Wade, I meant it
+and I still mean it. But there are limits to what I want to see happen
+to him; for one thing, I don't want to see him hung for this Jensen
+murder, even if he's guilty."
+
+"You know he isn't guilty."
+
+"I think he isn't." Her eyes lighted up at this admission. "But he must
+be tried for the crime, there's no dodging that. The jury will decide
+the point; we can't. But even if he should be convicted, I shouldn't
+want to see him hung. Why, we've been good friends, all of us. I--I like
+him, even though he did jump on to me yesterday. That was why"--he
+leaned forward, impelled to the falsehood that hung upon his tongue by
+the desperate necessity of saving himself his daughter's love and
+respect--"I arranged with Moran to have the boy arrested on such a
+warrant. He is bound to be arrested"--Rexhill struck the table with his
+fist--"and if he should need a basis for an appeal after conviction, he
+could hardly have a better one than the evidence of conspiracy, which a
+crooked warrant would afford. I wanted to give him that chance because I
+realized that he had enemies here and that his trial might not be a fair
+one. When the right moment came I was going to have that warrant looked
+into."
+
+"Father!"
+
+Helen dropped on her knees before him, her eyelashes moist with tears
+and her voice vibrant with happiness.
+
+"Why didn't you explain all that before, Father? I knew that there must
+be _some_ explanation. I felt that I couldn't have loved you all my
+life for nothing. But do you really believe that any jury would convict
+Gordon of such a thing?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+Never had Senator Rexhill felt himself more hopelessly a scoundrel than
+now as he smoothed her hair from her forehead; but he told himself that
+the pain of this must be less than to be engulfed in bankruptcy, or
+exposure, which would submerge them all. Moreover, he promised himself
+that if future events bore too heavily against Wade, he should be saved
+at the eleventh hour. The thought of this made the Senator's position
+less hard.
+
+"I hope not, Helen," he repeated. "Of course, the serving of the warrant
+at this time will help my own interests, but since a warrant must be
+served, anyway, I feel justified, under the circumstances, in availing
+myself of this advantage."
+
+"Y-e-s, of course," Helen agreed doubtfully. "Oh, it is all too bad. I
+wish none of us had ever heard of Crawling Water."
+
+"Well, maybe the Grand Jury will not indict him, feeling runs so strong
+here," her father continued, and she took fresh hope at this prospect.
+"But, anyway, he will feel the pressure before all is done with, and
+very likely he'll be only too glad to dispose of his ranch and say
+good-by to Wyoming when he is free to do as he pleases. Then you and he
+can make a fresh start, eh? All will be sunshine and roses then, maybe,
+forever and aye."
+
+"That's what I want to do--get away from here; and that was all I meant
+when I said to punish Gordon."
+
+The Senator patted her cheek tenderly and drew a deep breath of relief.
+
+"By the way, father," Helen said casually, when she started back to her
+room, a little later, "I saw Miss Purnell on the street yesterday. You
+know, she was out when Gordon took me to see her."
+
+"Well, is she dangerous?"
+
+Helen looked at him in amusement, and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TANGLED THREADS
+
+
+Relieved though Helen was to some extent, by her father's assurances and
+by the explanation which he had given, she was far from being in a
+tranquil frame of mind.
+
+She knew that whatever might be the outcome of the graver charge against
+Gordon, he would probably have to suffer for his release of Santry, and
+she found herself wishing more than ever that her lover had never seen
+the West. What little it had contributed to his character was not worth
+what it had cost already and would cost in the future. Surely, his
+manhood was alive enough not to have needed the development of such an
+environment, and if his lot had been cast in the East, she could have
+had him always with her. A long letter, which she had recently received
+from Maxwell Frayne, recounting the gayeties of New York and Washington,
+made her homesick. Although she could scarcely think of the two men at
+the same moment, still, as she sat in the crude little hotel, she would
+have welcomed a little of young Frayne's company for the sake of
+contrast. She was yearning for the flesh-pots of her own Egypt.
+
+From the news of the fight at the ranch, which had been brought to town
+by the messenger, she gathered that Wade meant to intrench himself on
+the ranch and defy the law, which would probably embroil him in other
+criminal acts. Crawling Water, too, was rapidly filling up with armed
+cattlemen, who, she thought, would do Gordon's cause more harm than
+good. Toward afternoon, word came of a bloody skirmish on the Trowbridge
+range, between a number of his punchers and some of Moran's hired men,
+and that added to the tension among those crowding the main street.
+
+From the parlor windows of the hotel she watched what was going on
+outside, not without alarm, so high did feeling seem to run. The threats
+of the ranch men, handed about amongst themselves but loud enough for
+her to catch a word now and then, made her wonder if the town was really
+safe for her father, or for herself. A storm was coming up, and the
+rising wind whipped the flimsy lace curtains of the windows and kept
+them fluttering like flags. The distant muttering of the thunder and an
+occasional sharp flash of lightning wore on her tired nerves until she
+could sit still no longer.
+
+For the sake of something to do, she went up to her room, intending to
+write some letters there, but her bed had not been made up, so she
+returned to the parlor with her fountain pen and writing-pad. To Maxwell
+Frayne she wrote a brief note, which was not likely to cheer him much.
+She had become so in the habit of taking her moods out on Maxwell that
+to do so, even with a pen, was second nature to her. She despised him
+for his tolerance of her tyranny, never realizing that he reserved to
+himself the privilege of squaring their account, if she should ever
+become his wife.
+
+Then to ease her mind of the strain it bore, she wrote at some length to
+her mother; not telling the whole truth but enough of it to calm her own
+nervousness. She said nothing of the conversation she had overheard, but
+went fully into the scene between her father and Gordon Wade. With a
+little smile hovering on her lips, she wrote dramatically of the
+Senator's threat to crush the ranchman. "That will please mother," she
+said to herself, as her pen raced over the paper. "Gordon felt, you see,
+that"--she turned a page--"father knew Santry had not killed Jensen,
+and...."
+
+The hotel-keeper poked his head in at the doorway.
+
+"Two ladies to see you, Miss," he announced. "Mrs. Purnell and
+daughter."
+
+He gave Helen no chance to avoid the visit, for with the obviousness of
+the plains, he had brought the visitors upstairs with him, and so,
+blotting what she had written and weighing down her letter against the
+breeze, she arose to greet them.
+
+"This is good of you, Mrs. Purnell, and I am so glad to meet your
+daughter. I've been lonely and blue all day and now you have taken pity
+on me."
+
+Mrs. Purnell shot an "I told you so" glance at Dorothy, which made that
+young lady smile to herself.
+
+"I was sorry not to have been at home when you called, Miss Rexhill."
+
+The two girls looked at each other, each carefully veiling hostility,
+Dorothy beneath a natural sweetness of disposition, and Helen with the
+_savoir faire_ of social experience. Each felt and was stung by a
+realization of the other's points of advantage. Dorothy saw a perfection
+of well-groomed poise, such as she could hardly hope to attain, and
+Helen was impressed with her rival's grace and natural beauty.
+
+"Won't you sit down?"
+
+"But aren't we disturbing you?" Mrs. Purnell asked, with a glance toward
+the writing materials.
+
+"Indeed, you are not. I was writing some duty letters to kill time. I'm
+only too glad to stop because I'm really in no writing mood and I am
+most anxious to hear what is going on outside. Isn't it dreadful about
+Mr. Wade?"
+
+"You mean his helping Santry?" Dorothy asked, with a little touch of
+pride which did not escape her hostess.
+
+"Partly that; but more because he is sure to be arrested himself. I've
+been terribly worried."
+
+Dorothy glanced at her keenly and smiled.
+
+"I have an idea that they may find Gordon hard to arrest," she remarked.
+
+"Yes," Mrs. Purnell put in. "He is so popular. Still, I agree with you
+that there is every cause for anxiety." The good lady did not have a
+chance every day to agree with the daughter of a United States Senator,
+and the opportunity was not to be overlooked.
+
+"The people feel so strongly that Santry should never have been arrested
+that they are not likely to let Gordon be taken just for freeing him,"
+Dorothy explained.
+
+Helen shook her head with every indication of tremulous worry.
+
+"But it isn't that alone," she insisted. "He's to be arrested for the
+Jensen shooting. That was why the posse waited at his ranch after Santry
+had been caught."
+
+"For the Jensen shooting?" Dorothy showed her amazement very plainly.
+"Are you sure?" she demanded, and when Helen nodded, exclaimed: "Why,
+how utterly absurd! I understood that you were with him yourself when he
+received word of it?"
+
+"I was," Helen admitted. "He is supposed only to have planned the crime,
+I believe. He's supposed to have been the principal, isn't that what
+they call it?" She appealed to Mrs. Purnell.
+
+"Oh, but do you think he could do such a thing?" Mrs. Purnell asked,
+much shocked.
+
+"I don't know. I hope not."
+
+"I _do_ know!" Dorothy burst out emphatically. "I know Gordon Wade too
+well to think for one minute that he did it; and every true friend of
+his ought to speak out at once and say the same thing."
+
+The challenge in her voice was unmistakable, and Mrs. Purnell moved
+uneasily in her chair. She glanced anxiously at Helen and was relieved
+to see that the latter had lost none of her poise.
+
+"I hope so as fully as you do," Helen said sweetly, "but things move so
+fast here in these mountains that I find it hard to keep up with them."
+
+"Of course," Mrs. Purnell soothed, with a troubled look at her daughter.
+
+"Who swore out the warrant, I wonder?" Dorothy asked, in a more tranquil
+tone, a bit ashamed of her outburst. "Was it Mr. Moran?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Helen answered. "I supposed it was the Sheriff.
+Why should Mr. Moran have anything to do with it?"
+
+"Because he seems to have been concerned in all the trouble we have
+had," Dorothy replied calmly. "This was a peaceful little community
+until Mr. Moran moved into it."
+
+Helen made no direct reply to this, and for awhile Dorothy allowed her
+mother to sustain the conversation. She had no doubt but that Moran was
+back of it all, and she was thinking of what Lem Trowbridge had said;
+that if they could only "get something on" Moran and the Senator, a
+solution of the whole problem would be at hand. She thought that she had
+detected a defensive note in Helen's voice, and she was wondering why it
+should have been there.
+
+"But you haven't answered my question yet about Mr. Moran," Helen
+presently challenged her. "You seemed to have something more in mind
+than what you said. Would you mind telling me?"
+
+Dorothy looked steadily but not offensively at her.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing, Miss Rexhill. I was only thinking that he has gone
+rather far: been very zealous in your father's interests. Probably...."
+
+"Why, Dorothy--!" her mother interposed, in a shocked tone.
+
+"Miss Rexhill asked me, mother, and you know that I always speak
+frankly."
+
+"Yes, do go on," Helen urged, with even an added touch of sweetness in
+her manner. "I really want to know. I am so out of touch with things
+here, so ill informed."
+
+"Well, you can sit here at the windows and learn all you wish to know.
+There isn't a man in this town that would see Gordon arrested and not
+fight to free him. Feeling is running high here now. You know, it's
+something like a violin string. You can stretch it just so far and then
+it snaps. That's all."
+
+"Dorothy, I'm really mortified that you...."
+
+"Oh, you've no occasion to be, Mrs. Purnell," Helen interrupted,
+smiling. "I asked for the plain truth, you know."
+
+Mrs. Purnell laughed feebly.
+
+"Dorothy has known Mr. Wade so long and we both like him so well that
+she can't bear to hear a word against him," she explained. Her sense of
+_lèse majesté_ was running away with her judgment, and Dorothy shot an
+irritated glance at her. "Not that I think he did it at all, you
+understand; but...."
+
+"Oh, perfectly," declared Helen, with rising color and an equal feeling
+of annoyance. "Oh, dear me, do look at my poor letters!"
+
+A gust of wind, stronger than any that had come before, had swept the
+weight to the floor and scattered letter paper, envelopes, and blotter
+about the room. Helen was just able to catch the writing-pad as it slid
+to the floor, while Dorothy and her mother laughingly salvaged the
+rest. The incident happily relieved the awkward drift of their
+conversation, and they all felt relieved.
+
+"Well, now, did you ever?" Mrs. Purnell ejaculated, looking at the
+lithographed blotter, which she held in her hand. "I declare this
+picture of a little girl reminds me of Dorothy when she was that age."
+
+"Oh, mother!"
+
+"Really?" Helen broke in. "How interesting. I hadn't noticed the
+picture. Do let me see."
+
+To be courteous, she agreed with Mrs. Purnell that there was a strong
+likeness, which Dorothy laughingly denied.
+
+"I guess I know what you looked like when you were five better than you
+do," Mrs. Purnell declared. "It's the image of you as you were then, and
+as Miss Rexhill says, there is a facial resemblance even yet."
+
+"Perhaps you would like to take it with you, then," Helen suggested, to
+Mrs. Purnell's delight, who explained that the only picture she had of
+Dorothy at that age had been lost.
+
+"If it wouldn't deprive you?"
+
+"No, indeed. You must take it. I have a large blotter in my writing-pad,
+so I really don't need that one at all. So many such things are sent to
+father that we always have more than we can use up."
+
+When Dorothy and her mother left the hotel, urged homeward by the first
+big drops of the coming rain, Mrs. Purnell tucked the blotter in the
+bosom of her dress, happy to have the suggestion of the picture to
+recall the days when her husband's presence cheered them all. Her world
+had been a small one, and little things like this helped to make it
+bright.
+
+Soon afterward the supper bell rang, and during the meal Helen told the
+Senator, who seemed somewhat morose and preoccupied, of the visit she
+had had.
+
+"Sure tiresome people. Goodness! I was glad to see them at first because
+I thought they would help me to pass the afternoon, but instead I was
+bored to death. That little minx is crazy about Gordon, though. I could
+see that."
+
+"Um!"
+
+"And the worst of it is that she just fits into the scenery here, and I
+don't. You know, father, I never could wax enthusiastic over shooing the
+cows to roost and things like that."
+
+"Um!"
+
+"I feel like a deaf person at a concert, here in this town."
+
+This remark brought a wry laugh from her father, and Helen smiled.
+
+"Well, I've made you laugh, anyway," she said. "You're frightfully
+grouchy this evening."
+
+"My dear, I'm busy, very busy, and I haven't time to think of trifles.
+I'll be at it most of the night."
+
+"Oh, shall you? Goodness, that's cheerful. I wish I had never come to
+this awful little place. I suppose I must go back to my letters for
+something to do. And, father," she added, as he lingered with her for a
+moment in the hallway, "the Purnells seem to think that you and Mr.
+Moran had better not go too far. The people here are very much wrought
+up."
+
+He patted her shoulder affectionately.
+
+"You leave all that to me and go write to your mother."
+
+There was nothing else for her to do, so she returned to the parlor.
+When she had finished her letters, she idly picked up a week-old copy of
+a Denver newspaper which lay on the table and glanced through the
+headlines. She was yawningly thinking of bed, when Moran came into the
+room.
+
+"Oh, are you and father through at last?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, smiling. "That is, we're through upstairs. I'm on my
+way over to the office to straighten up a few loose ends before I turn
+in. There's no rest for the weary, you know."
+
+"Don't let me keep you, then," she said dryly, as he lingered. "I'm
+going to bed."
+
+"You're not keeping me. I'm keeping myself." He quite understood her
+motive, but he was not thin-skinned, and he had learned that he had to
+make his opportunities with her. "Your father told me you were getting
+anxious."
+
+"Not anxious, tired."
+
+"Things are getting a little warm here, but before there's any real
+danger we expect to have the soldiers here to take charge."
+
+He rather ostentatiously displayed his bandaged wrist, hoping to win her
+sympathy, but she professed none. Instead, she yawned and tapped her
+lips with her fingers, and her indifference piqued him.
+
+"I was talking with Dorothy Purnell this afternoon," Helen finally
+remarked, eyeing him lazily, "and she seems to be of the opinion that
+you'll have hard work arresting Gordon Wade. I rather hope that you do."
+
+"Well--" He teetered a little on his feet and stroked his mustache. "We
+may have, at that. Miss Purnell is popular and she can make a lot of
+trouble for us if she wants to. Being very fond of Wade, she's likely to
+do all that she can."
+
+"Would she really have so much influence?" Helen asked, carefully
+guarding her tongue.
+
+He laughed softly as though amused at the thought.
+
+"Influence? Evidently you don't realize what a good looking girl means
+in a frontier town like this. She's part sister, part mother, sweetheart
+and a breath from Heaven to every man in Crawling Water. On that
+account, with one exception, I've had to import every last one of my
+men. The exception is Tug Bailey, who's beyond hope where women are
+concerned. To all the rest, Dorothy Purnell is 'Wade's girl,' and they
+wouldn't fight against her, or him, for all the money in Wyoming."
+
+He was watching her keenly as he spoke, and was gratified to see spots
+of color spring to her cheeks.
+
+"How interesting!" Helen could make her tone indifferent to the point of
+languor, but she could not keep the gleam of jealousy out of her eyes.
+"Gordon is a fortunate man to have such an able ally, isn't he?"
+
+"The finish will decide that, I should say," Moran replied sneeringly.
+"She may stir up more trouble than all her friends can take care of."
+
+For all of her social schooling, Helen was not proof against the sneer
+in his words, even though she fully saw through his purpose to wound
+her. She felt her temper rising, and with it came curiosity to learn how
+far the relationship between Wade and Dorothy Purnell had really gone.
+That Moran would exaggerate it, she felt sure, for he had his own ends
+to gain, but possibly from out of his exaggeration she could glean some
+truth. Yet she did not want to go so far in her anger as to gratify his
+malice, and this placed her in something of a dilemma.
+
+"I don't believe that she is 'Wade's girl,' as you call her, at all,"
+she said coldly. "They may be good friends, and if so, I'm glad; but
+they are nothing more than that. There is no 'understanding' between
+them."
+
+Moran carelessly waved his hand in the direction of the rain-swept
+street, illuminated now and then by the lightning.
+
+"Ask any one in Crawling Water."
+
+"That sounds well, but it's impracticable, even if I wanted to do it. I
+prefer to draw my own conclusions."
+
+The agent drew up a chair with his well hand, and sat down with that
+easy familiarity that came so natural to him. Helen watched him, lazily
+impertinent.
+
+"I've been wanting to have a talk with you, Helen," he began, "and this
+looks like a good chance to me. You've been foolish about Wade. Yes, I
+know that you're thinking that I've got my own ends to further, which is
+true enough. I have. I admit it. But what I am going to tell you is
+true, also. Fortune's been playing into my hand here lately. Now, if
+you'll be reasonable, you'll probably be happier. Shall I go on?"
+
+"Wild horses couldn't stop you," she answered, amused that he seemed
+flattered. "But if we were in Washington, I fancy I'd have you shown
+out."
+
+"We're not in Washington, my dear girl." He wagged his finger at her, in
+the way her father had, to give emphasis to his words. "That's where
+you've made your mistake with Wade. We're all just plain men and women
+out here in the cattle country, and I'm talking its language, not the
+language of drawing-rooms." He was himself a little surprised at the
+swift dilation of her pupils, but his words had probed deeper than he
+knew, reminding her as they did of the truth which she had so fully
+realized that afternoon. "Wade liked you--loved you, maybe, in Chicago,
+but this ain't the East. He cares nothing for you here, and he'd never
+be happy away from here. You know that picture of yourself that you sent
+to him?" She nodded. "Well, we found it on the floor of his room,
+covered with dust. He hadn't even troubled to pick it up from where it
+must have fallen weeks ago."
+
+She looked at him dumbly, unable to keep her lips from twitching. He
+knew that she believed him, and he was glad; that she had to believe
+him, because his story bore the impress of truth. It was not something
+that he could have made up.
+
+"And while your picture was lying there, Wade and this Purnell girl were
+making goo-goo eyes at each other. Why, it was she that rode out to warn
+him that we were after Santry." Helen's lips curled. "I can't swear to
+that, but I heard it and I believe it myself. They must've met on the
+trail somewhere in the dark, and you can bet he was grateful. I don't
+imagine that they stopped at a hand-shake. I imagine they kissed, don't
+you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm tired, worn out," Helen declared, forcing a smile so artificial
+that it could not deceive him. "Do go, please. I am going upstairs to
+bed."
+
+"Wait one minute." He put out his injured arm, and, thinking that he
+reached for her hand, she brushed it aside, accidentally striking his
+wound.
+
+"I'm sorry if I hurt you," she said coldly, as he winced.
+
+"Maybe I've hurt you worse," he persisted, with a tenderness that was
+intolerable to her, "but, if I have, your wound'll heal just as mine
+will." He gently pushed her back into her chair as she started to get
+up.
+
+"Are you making love to me, Race?" Under the ridicule of her tone his
+face darkened. "If you are, it's insufferable in you."
+
+"Go easy, now," he warned her. "I'll not be made a fool of."
+
+She did not heed his warning. Glad to have him on the rack, where she
+had been, she laughed at him.
+
+"Haven't you sense enough to know that, for that very reason, I'd refuse
+to believe anything you might say against Gordon Wade? I know how you
+hate him. Listen to me. Oh, this is absurd!" She laughed again at the
+picture he made. "You've pursued me for months with your attentions,
+although I've done everything but encourage you. Now I want you to know
+that I shall never again even listen to you. What Gordon is to Dorothy
+Purnell is for him, and her, and perhaps for me to be interested in, but
+not for you. Now I'm going to bed. Good night!"
+
+He caught her by the arm as she stood up, but immediately released her,
+and stepped in front of her instead.
+
+"Hold on," he begged, with a smile that meant wonderful mastery of
+himself. "I've got feelings, you know. You needn't walk on them. I love
+you, and I want you. What I want, I usually get. I mean to get you." She
+looked up at him with heavy-lidded insolence. "I may fail, but if I do,
+it'll be one more notch in my account against Wade. I know now where to
+strike him--to hurt."
+
+"You be reasonable, and _you'll_ be happier," she retorted. "May I go?"
+
+"Certainly." He stepped out of her way. "Good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+DESPERATE MEASURES
+
+
+If Moran or Helen, early in their conversation, had looked out of the
+window of the hotel, during one of those vivid lightning flashes, they
+might have seen a woman stealthily approaching the agent's office across
+the street. Taking advantage of the deeper shadows and of the darkness
+between lightning flashes, she stole to the rear of the building, where
+she found an unlatched window, through which she scrambled with the
+agility of a boy.
+
+Within, the place was pitch dark, but like one amid familiar
+surroundings, she crossed the hall and found the room she sought; the
+office room now of Moran, but formerly occupied by Simon Barsdale. She
+bent over the big safe, and was twirling the combination knob in her
+slim, cold fingers, when she was startled by a noise in the hallway
+outside. With a gasp of fright, she stood motionless, listening acutely,
+but there was no further sound; reassured, she produced a bit of candle,
+which she lighted and placed to one side of the safe, so that the flame
+was shaded from the windows. She was in the act of manipulating the
+combination again when, her whole body rigid with fear, she stood erect
+once more, holding her breath and striving for self-control. There was
+no doubt about the noise this time. Some one had entered the adjoining
+room.
+
+Hastily snuffing out the candle, she crouched into the darkness of a
+corner. She never doubted that the newcomer was Race Moran, or that he
+would almost immediately discover her. She tried to summon enough
+resolution to bluff things through when the moment of discovery should
+come.
+
+But, as the seconds slipped by and the lights were not turned on, she
+began to regain her courage. Perhaps Moran was sitting in the dark of
+the other room, smoking and thinking, and perhaps she could complete her
+task without being caught, if she moved swiftly and silently. She bent
+again over the shining knob, at the same time watching in the direction
+of the door, which was still closed as she had left it. It was difficult
+to work the lock in the dark, and, as she became engrossed with her
+purpose, she ceased temporarily to listen acutely. She had just
+succeeded in effecting the combination, when something touched her side.
+
+"Don't move!" a voice hissed behind her. "I'll shoot if you do!"
+
+She wanted to cry out, "Please don't shoot!" but her tongue clove to the
+roof of her mouth, which had suddenly gone dry. She had fallen forward
+against the door of the safe, and was curiously conscious how cold it
+felt. She was on the point of fainting, when in a rush of relief it
+dawned upon her that she knew the voice; it was not Moran's.
+
+"Gordon!" she cried joyously, finding the use of her tongue as quickly
+as she had lost it, and scrambling to her feet. "It's me--Dorothy!"
+
+With an exclamation as joyous as her own and equally surprised, he
+seized her by the shoulders, peering through the darkness into her face.
+
+"Dorothy! What the...?" A lightning flash revealed them clearly to each
+other. "I told you not to try this."
+
+"But what are you doing in town?" She clutched his arms, overcome by a
+fear greater than that for her own safety. "Gordon, Gordon, you must not
+stay here. There's a warrant out for you--no, no, not for that--for the
+Jensen shooting. You'll be arrested on sight."
+
+"What?" He stared at her, amazed, and she nodded. "So that's their game
+now, eh? They've stooped even to that. By God!" He struck a match.
+
+"Be careful," she warned him instantly. "The light--put it out. They'll
+see it from the street. But, oh, Gordon, why did you come?"
+
+He thrilled at the anxiety in her voice.
+
+"To find out what Moran is hiding here; and you're after the same thing,
+of course."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Impulsively, he squeezed her fingers, until she could have cried out in
+pain but for the sweetness of it; there are some agonies which do not
+hurt. Her throat swelled with joy, her breast heaved, and her eyelids
+fluttered. She was grateful for the darkness, which hid these outward
+signs of love from him. She blushed; she could feel the warm tide
+pulsing in her temples; and she laughed brokenly from sheer happiness.
+
+"You shouldn't have taken such a risk, Dorothy. I told you not to."
+
+"You're taking that risk, Gordon, and more."
+
+"That's different. It's so dark a night, I thought I'd chance it."
+
+"There's not much risk for me," she declared. "I can reach home in five
+minutes. Isn't it odd, though, that we both should have thought of doing
+it at exactly the same time. But come, Gordon, we must hurry!"
+
+Now that the safe was open, to remove its contents took only a moment,
+and they tossed all the papers they found into a corner. Then, when Wade
+had swung the safe around on its casters, they had a snug shelter behind
+it, where by shaded candle-light they ran rapidly through their loot.
+Most of the documents related to land purchases and development, but at
+the bottom of the pile Wade came upon a bundle of papers and
+blue-prints, held together by a rubber band, which he stripped off.
+
+"Oh, if we should find nothing, after all," Dorothy whispered, bending
+with him over the blue-prints. "What are they, Gordon?"
+
+"Maps of my own range, Dorothy!" His tone was tense with excitement, as
+he leaned nearer to the light. "Well, what do you know about that? By
+Heaven"--He fairly glared at the sheet before his eyes.--"It's all
+there!"
+
+"What's all there? What is it?"
+
+"Gold!" He looked at her in the flickering light, like a man gone mad.
+
+"Gold? On your range? Oh, Gordon!"
+
+"Yes; on my range. It's inconceivable, almost; but it seems to be true.
+See! Look here!" Their heads were almost touching, so that her soft hair
+caressed his face. "This is a map of the upper valley, and the
+description says these red crosses indicate the location of gold. One is
+near the head of Piah Creek, not half a mile from my buildings."
+
+"Oh, Gordon, I _am_ so glad!" Dorothy exclaimed. "How wonderful it all
+is. You'll be rich, won't you?" She was not too excited to remember that
+his wealth would probably be shared by another woman, but she was too
+generous to be any the less glad on that account.
+
+"That remains to be seen," he replied. "It may not prove to amount to
+much, you know. At any rate, Moran won't get any of it. That's worth a
+whole lot."
+
+She nodded vehemently.
+
+"I thought it must be something like that, Gordon. They would never have
+done the things they have without some powerful reason."
+
+"Yes, you were right, Dorothy. You're usually right." He caught her hand
+and squeezed it again, and in this moment of their triumph together she
+could not help returning the pressure. "You're a jewel, a brick, a
+trump--all those things and then some. The sweet...."
+
+"Now, we haven't time for that sort of thing, Mr. Man. We...."
+
+"Must get away while we can, yes," he finished for her. "But just the
+same I...."
+
+Her cold fingers on his lips stopped him.
+
+"Listen!"
+
+She put out the candle and they crouched down beside the safe. Some one
+was coming up the stairs, not stealthily this time but boldly, as one
+who had a right there, whistling softly. Wade could feel the girl's
+shoulder tremble against his side, as he slipped his revolver out of its
+holster.
+
+"Don't, Gordon! You--you mustn't shoot, no matter what happens." Her
+teeth were chattering, for she was far more frightened now than she had
+been for herself alone. "That's Moran. He mustn't see you here. Remember
+that warrant. Hide behind the safe. Please!"
+
+"Never!" he muttered grimly. "He'd find us anyhow."
+
+"Yes, yes. Please!" She was almost hysterical in her excitement. "I can
+bluff him till you can get away. He won't hurt me. If he does you can
+show yourself. Do it for me, for your friends. Please! Remember, he
+mustn't know that _you've_ learned his secret."
+
+It was Moran, for they heard him now in conversation with some passer-by
+in the hallway. Dorothy was grateful for the respite, for it gave them
+time to throw the loose papers back into the safe and close it. Wade
+then pushed the safe to its original position, the casters making little
+noise as they rolled. Then he crouched behind it.
+
+"I don't like this stunt!" he protested; but yielded to her beseeching
+"Please." She was right, too, he knew. It would be far better if Moran
+could be kept in ignorance of his visit there.
+
+The office now bore little sign of their invasion of it, and, drawing a
+deep breath, Dorothy schooled herself to calmness as she awaited Moran,
+who was walking down the hall toward the entrance to the room. A plan
+had flashed into her mind by means of which she might save both Wade and
+herself, if he and her heart would only be quiet. The unruly heart was
+beating so violently that it shook her thin dress, and that her voice
+must tremble, she knew.
+
+Moran was almost at the threshold, when Dorothy opened the door for him.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Moran. Did I startle you?"
+
+"Well, not exactly," he said, striking a match, after an instant's
+pause. "What are you doing here?"
+
+Passing her, he lighted the large oil lamp, and swept the room with a
+quick, keen glance. Finding nothing apparently wrong, he turned again to
+his visitor with a puzzled expression in his face.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I wanted to see you and I thought you'd be here. The door was unlocked
+so I just walked in. I've been here only a minute or two." Fortified by
+another deep breath, drawn while his back was turned, Dorothy found her
+voice steadier than she expected.
+
+The agent looked at her keenly.
+
+"That's strange," he commented. "I don't know what the door was doing
+unlocked. I always lock it when I leave."
+
+"You must have forgotten to do so to-night."
+
+"I surely must have, if you found it open."
+
+Half convinced that she was telling the truth, Moran could see but one
+reason for her evident fright: she was afraid of him. The suggestion of
+that strengthened the impulse which her beauty stirred in him. If she
+thought so, why not?
+
+"Say, you're a good-looking kid, all right," he leered. "What did you
+want to see me for?"
+
+A slight sound from behind the safe, or perhaps she imagined it, caused
+Dorothy's heart to flutter wildly. She had not anticipated this attitude
+in Moran, and she instantly realized that it brought a fresh danger into
+the situation. She knew that Wade would not remain in concealment if the
+agent insulted her. She must avoid the chance of that, if possible; must
+get him out of the office so that Gordon might escape.
+
+"This is no place to talk that way," she said bravely. "It isn't a good
+place for me to be anyway. If people knew I was here, there would be a
+terrible scandal. I've something important to tell you. Won't you come
+for a walk?"
+
+"In this rain? Not much," he chuckled. "Come here!" She shook her head
+and tried to smile. "Well, if you won't, I'll have to go to you." She
+shrank back from him, as he approached her, with an evil smile. "Say,
+little one," he went on, "this is a damned funny game of yours, coming
+here at night. What's the idea, eh?"
+
+"There isn't any, really." She snatched her hands away from him. "I've
+already tried to explain that I have important news for you; but I won't
+tell you what it is here."
+
+"Why not? We're dry and cozy here. Go ahead."
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, come on!" He had driven her to the wall, and now he slipped an arm
+about her waist and pulled her toward him. "Say, kiss me once, won't
+you?"
+
+"Hands up, you low-lived hound!"
+
+With an oath, Moran whirled around to find himself staring into the
+muzzle of Wade's revolver. The ranchman moved his weapon significantly.
+
+"Up!"
+
+As the agent's hands went above his head, Dorothy leaned against the
+wall for support. She had not made a sound, but she was the color of
+chalk, and her heart seemed to be trying to jump out of her mouth. She
+was no whiter than Wade, whose fury had driven every vestige of color
+from his face and fired his eyes with a murderous light.
+
+"Shall I kill him?" he asked Dorothy, and at the frightful tone of his
+voice she found the power to shake her head, although her mouth was too
+dry for speech.
+
+"Take his gun," said Wade sharply and the girl stepped forward.
+
+She reeled toward Moran, who, to do him justice, showed little fear,
+and pulled his revolver from his hip pocket. She held it out to Wade,
+who broke it with his free hand by pressing the butt against the top of
+the safe, and spilled the cartridges on the floor.
+
+"Now you can leave us, Dorothy," he said quietly.
+
+"No. I'll stay, Gordon," she answered.
+
+"Moran," Wade continued evenly, without paying any more attention to
+her, "the only reason why I shall not kill you is because Miss Purnell
+does not want your worthless life upon her conscience. A man like you
+ought to die. You're not fit to live."
+
+"Can I put my hands down?"
+
+"No; keep 'em where they are!" Wade gestured again with the gun. "I wish
+I had a string on each of your thumbs so I could hoist them higher. I've
+just been through this safe of yours." The agent started. "I've got
+those maps of my range in my pocket."
+
+"Much good they'll do you."
+
+"They'll do me more good alive than they will you dead, and you're going
+to die. So help me God, you are! We'll come together again some day."
+
+"I hope so," Moran declared venomously, and even Dorothy was struck by
+the courage he showed.
+
+"And then there won't be anybody to be held responsible but me." Wade
+grinned in a slow, horrible fashion. "It'll rest light on me, I promise
+you. And another thing. I'm going to leave you trussed up here in this
+office, like I left your friend the Sheriff a few days ago, and along
+about morning somebody'll find you and turn you loose. When you get
+loose, you want to forget that you saw Miss Purnell here to-night. I've
+meant to have her and her mother leave town for a bit until this mess
+blows over, but things aren't fixed right for that just now. Instead,
+I'm going to leave her in the personal care--the _personal_ care, you
+understand me, of every decent man in Crawling Water. If anything
+happens to her, you'll toast over a slow fire before you die. Do you get
+that?"
+
+"She's a good kid," said Moran, with a grin. Nor did he flinch when the
+weapon in Wade's hand seemed actually to stiffen under the tension of
+his grasp.
+
+"I guess it's a good thing you stayed, Dorothy," the latter remarked
+grimly. "This fellow must be tied up. I wonder what we can find to do it
+with?"
+
+"My cloak?" Dorothy suggested. "It's an old one."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"It's hard to tear that rain-proof stuff, and besides you'd get wet
+going home. There's no sense in that. Isn't there something else?"
+
+She blushed a little and turned away for a moment, during which she
+slipped off her underskirt. Then, as Moran watched her cynically, she
+tore it into strips. When she had thus made several stout bands, Wade
+spoke again.
+
+"You take the first throw or two about him," he directed, "and when you
+have him partly tied you can take my gun and I'll finish the job. Start
+with his feet, that's right. Now draw it as tight as you can. Put your
+arms down back of you! Tie them now, Dorothy. That's fine! Here, you
+take the gun. You know how to use it, if he struggles."
+
+Wade tightened up the linen bands, and kicked forward a straight-backed
+chair, into which he forced Moran and lashed him fast there, to all of
+which the agent made no great protest, knowing that to do so would be
+useless. He grunted and swore a bit under his breath, but that was all.
+When he was well trussed up, the ranchman made a gag out of what was
+left of the linen and his own handkerchief and strapped it into his
+prisoner's mouth with his belt.
+
+When the job was done, and it was a good one, he grinned again in that
+slow, terrible way. A grin that bore no semblance to human mirth, but
+was a grimace of combined anger and hatred. Once before, during the
+fight at the ranch, Bill Santry had seen this expression on his
+employer's face, but not to the degree that Dorothy now saw it. It
+frightened her.
+
+"Oh, Gordon, don't, please!" She closed her eyes to shut out the sight.
+"Come, we must hurry away."
+
+"Good night," Wade said ironically, with a last look at Moran.
+
+He let Dorothy draw him away then, and by the time they reached the
+street he was his old boyish self again. Aping Moran, he slipped his arm
+around her waist, but she did not shrink from _his_ embrace, unexpected
+though it was.
+
+"Say, kid," he laughed mockingly. "Kiss me once, won't you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+INTO THE DEPTHS
+
+
+"Good Lord, Race! What's happened?"
+
+Senator Rexhill, on the next morning, surprised that Moran did not show
+up at the hotel, had gone in search of him, and was dumbfounded when he
+entered the office.
+
+Moran, in his desperate efforts to free himself, had upset the chair
+into which he was tied, and being unable to right it again, had passed
+most of the night in a position of extreme discomfort. Toward morning,
+his confinement had become positive agony, and he had inwardly raved at
+Wade, the gag in his mouth making audible expression impossible, until
+he was black in the face.
+
+"My God, Race!" the Senator exclaimed, when, having cut the lashings and
+withdrawn the gag, he saw his agent in a state bordering on collapse,
+"what has happened to you?" He helped the man to his feet and held him
+up.
+
+"My throat--dry--whiskey!" Moran gasped, and groaned as he clutched at
+the desk, from which he slid into a chair, where he sat rubbing his
+legs, which ached with a thousand pains.
+
+Rexhill found a bottle of whiskey and a glass on a shelf in the closet.
+He poured out a generous drink of the liquor and handed it to Moran,
+but the agent could not hold it in his swollen fingers. The Senator
+picked up the glass, which had not broken in its fall and, refilling it,
+held it to Moran's lips. It was a stiff drink, and by the time it was
+repeated, the agent was revived somewhat.
+
+"Now, tell me," urged Rexhill.
+
+Prepared though he was for an outburst of fury, he was amazed at the
+torrent of blasphemous oaths which Moran uttered. He caught Wade's name,
+but the rest was mere incoherence, so wildly mouthed and so foul that he
+began to wonder if torture had unbalanced the man's mind. The expression
+of Moran's eyes, which had become mere slits in his inflamed and puffy
+face, showed that for the time he was quite beyond himself. What with
+his blued skin and distended veins, his puffed lips and slurred speech,
+he seemed on the brink of an apoplectic seizure. Rexhill watched him
+anxiously.
+
+"Come, come, man. Brace up," he burst out, at length. "You'll kill
+yourself, if you go on that way. Be a man."
+
+The words seemed to have their effect, for the agent made a supreme
+effort at the self-control which was seldom lacking in him. He appeared
+to seize the reins of self-government and to force himself into a state
+of unnatural quiet, as one tames a frantic horse.
+
+"The safe!" he muttered hoarsely, scrambling to his feet.
+
+His stiffened legs still refused to function, however, and Rexhill,
+hastening to the safe, threw open the door. One glance at the
+disordered interior told him the whole story. Moran watched feverishly
+as he dragged the crumpled papers out on the floor and pawed through
+them.
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"Gone!"
+
+They looked at each other, a thin tide of crimson brightening the
+congestion of Moran's visage, while Rexhill's face went ghastly white.
+With shaking fingers, the agent poured himself a third drink and tossed
+it down his throat.
+
+"It was Wade who tied you up?"
+
+Moran nodded.
+
+"Him and that--girl--the Purnell girl." Stirred more by the other's
+expression of contempt than by the full half pint of whiskey he had
+imbibed, he crashed his fist down on the desk. "Mind what you say now,
+because, by God, I'm in no mood to take anything from you. He got the
+drop on me, you understand. Let it go at that."
+
+"It's gone right enough--all gone." Rexhill groaned. "Why, he only needs
+to publish those plots to make this a personal fight between us and
+every property owner in the valley. They'll tar and feather us, if they
+don't kill us outright. It'll be gold with them--gold. Nothing else will
+count from now on."
+
+"I'll get back at him yet!" growled Moran.
+
+"You'll...." The Senator threateningly raised his gorilla-like arms, but
+let them drop helplessly again. "How did they get into the safe? Did you
+leave it open?"
+
+"Do you think I'm a fool?" Moran fixed his baleful eyes upon his
+employer, as he leaned heavily, but significantly, across the flat desk.
+"Say, let's look ahead to to-morrow, not back to last night. Do you
+hear? I'll do the remembering of last night; you forget it!"
+
+Rexhill tried to subdue him with his own masterful gaze, but somehow the
+power was lacking. Moran was in a dangerous frame of mind, and past the
+dominance of his employer. He had but one thought, that of vengeance
+upon the man who had misused him, to which everything else had for the
+time being to play second.
+
+"You talk like I let them truss me up for fun," he went on. "I did it
+because I had to, because I was looking into the muzzle of a six-shooter
+in the hands of a desperate man; that was why. Do you get me? And I
+don't need to be reminded of it. No, by Heaven! My throat's as dry yet
+as a fish-bone, and every muscle in me aches like hell! I'll remember it
+all right, and _he'll_ pay. Don't you have any worries about that."
+
+Rexhill was sufficiently a captain of men to have had experience of such
+moods in the past, and he knew the futility of arguing. He carefully
+chose a cigar from his case, seated himself, and began to smoke.
+
+Moran, apparently soothed by this concession to his temper, and a bit
+ashamed of himself, watched him for some moments in silence. When at
+last he spoke, his tone was more conciliatory.
+
+"Have you heard from Washington?" he asked.
+
+"I got a telegram this morning, saying that the matter is under
+advisement."
+
+"Under advisement!" Moran snorted, in disgust. "That means that they'll
+get the cavalry here in time to fire a volley over our graves--ashes to
+ashes and dust to dust. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+Rexhill blew a huge mouthful of fragrant smoke into the air.
+
+"Frankly, Race, I don't think you're in a proper mood to talk."
+
+"You're right." Something in Moran's voice suggested the explosion of a
+fire-arm, and the Senator looked at him curiously. "I'm through talking.
+We've both of us talked too damn much, and that's a fact."
+
+"I'll be obliged to you," the Senator remarked, "if you'll remember that
+you draw a salary from me and that you owe me a certain amount of
+respect."
+
+Moran laughed raucously.
+
+"Respect! I don't owe you a damn thing, Senator; and what you owe me you
+won't be able to pay if you sit here much longer waiting for something
+to turn up. You'll be ruined, that's what you'll be--ruined!" He brought
+his big hand down on the table with a thump.
+
+"By your own carelessness. Now, look here, Race, I've made allowances
+for you, because...."
+
+"You don't need to soft soap me, Senator; save that for your office
+seekers." The agent was fast working himself into another passion. "I've
+not ruined you, and you know it. A safe's a safe, isn't it? Instead of
+ruining you, I'm trying to save you. If you go broke, you'll do it
+yourself with your pap and sentiment. But if I am to pull your chestnuts
+out of the fire for you, you've got to give me a free hand. I've got to
+fight fire with fire."
+
+Rexhill wiped his glasses nervously, for despite his assumption of calm,
+his whole future swung upon the outcome of his Crawling Water venture.
+If he appeared calm, it was not because he felt so, but because the
+schooling of a lifetime had taught him that the man who keeps cool
+usually wins.
+
+"There's nothing to do but go on as we are headed now," he declared.
+"Wade's discovery of our purpose is most unfortunate"--his voice shook a
+trifle--"but it can't be helped. In the legal sense, he has added to the
+list of his crimes, and we have more against him than we ever had. He
+now has three charges to face--murder, assault, and robbery. It rests
+with us whether he shall be punished by the courts for any of the
+three."
+
+The Senator spoke emphatically in the effort to convince himself that
+his statements were practically true, but he avoided Moran's eyes as he
+did so. His show of optimism had little substance behind it, because now
+that his motives were likely to be bared to the public, he was too good
+a lawyer not to realize how little standing he would have before a jury,
+in that section at least; of course, Wade must realize this equally well
+and feel fortified in his own position. Rexhill's chief hope had been
+that the support of the cavalry from Fort Mackenzie would enable him to
+control the situation; but here, too, he was threatened by the
+unexpected hesitation of the authorities at Washington.
+
+Moran, however, was frankly contemptuous of the prospect of help from
+that source. He had never believed greatly in it, although at the time
+it was first mentioned his enthusiasm for any plan of action had
+inspired him with some measure of the Senator's confidence. Now that his
+lust of revenge made him intolerant of all opposition, he was thoroughly
+exasperated by the telegram received from Washington, and had no faith
+in aid from such a quarter.
+
+"What if your cavalry doesn't come?" he demanded.
+
+"Then we must rely upon the Sheriff here to maintain the law that he is
+sworn to support."
+
+"Bah! He's weakening now. He's not forgetting that he's to spend the
+rest of his days in this town, after we've gone back East, or perhaps to
+hell. Who's to look after him, then, if he's got himself in bad with the
+folks here? Senator"--Moran clumped painfully over to the safe and
+leaned upon it as he faced his employer--"it isn't cavalry that'll save
+you, or that old turkey buzzard of a sheriff either. I'm the man to do
+it, if anybody is, and the only way out is to lay for this man Wade and
+kidnap him." Rexhill started violently. "Kidnap him, and take him into
+the mountains, and keep him there with a gun at his head, until he signs
+a quit-claim. I've located the very spot to hide him in--Coyote Springs.
+It's practically inaccessible, a natural hiding-place."
+
+Rexhill turned a shade or two paler as he nervously brushed some cigar
+ashes from his vest and sleeve. He had already gone farther along the
+road of crime than he felt to be safe, but the way back seemed even more
+dangerous than the road ahead. The question was no longer one of ethics,
+but purely of expediency.
+
+"We haven't time to wait on cavalry and courts," Moran went on. "I'm
+willing to take the risk, if you are. If we don't take it, you know what
+the result will be. We may make our get-away to the East, or we _may_
+stop here for good--under ground. You have little choice either way. If
+you get out of this country, you'll be down and out. Your name'll be a
+byword and you'll be flat broke, a joke and an object of contempt the
+nation over. And it's not only yourself you've got to think of; you've
+got to consider your wife and daughter, and how they'll stand poverty
+and disgrace. Against all that you've got a chance, a fighting chance.
+Are you game enough to take it?"
+
+All that Moran said was true enough, for Rexhill knew that if he failed
+to secure control of Crawling Water Valley, his back would be broken,
+both politically and financially. He would not only be stripped of his
+wealth, but of his credit and the power which stood him in lieu of
+private honor. He would be disgraced beyond redemption in the eyes of
+his associates, and in the bosom of his family he would find no solace
+for public sneers. Failure meant the loss forever of his daughter's
+respect, which might yet be saved to him through the glamour of success
+and the reflection of that tolerance which the world is always ready to
+extend toward the successful.
+
+"You are right," he admitted, "in saying that I have my wife and
+daughter to consider, and that reminds me. I haven't told you that Helen
+overheard our conversation about Wade, in my room, the other day." He
+rapidly explained her indignation and threat of exposure. "I don't mean
+to say that your suggestion hasn't something to recommend it," he summed
+up, "but if Wade were to disappear, and she felt that he had been
+injured, I probably could not restrain her."
+
+The agent leaned across the desk, leeringly.
+
+"Tell her the truth, that I found Wade here in this room with Dorothy
+Purnell, at night; that they came here for an assignation, because it
+was the one place in Crawling Water...."
+
+Rexhill got to his feet with an exclamation of disgust.
+
+"Well, say, then, that they came here to rifle the place, but that when
+I caught them they were spooning. Say anything you like, but make her
+believe that it was a lovers' meeting. See if she'll care then to save
+him."
+
+The Senator dropped heavily back into his chair without voicing the
+protest that had been upon his tongue's end. He was quick to see that,
+contemptible though the suggestion was, it yet offered him a means
+whereby to save himself his daughter's respect and affection. The whole
+danger in that regard lay in her devotion to Wade, which was responsible
+for her interest in him. If she could be brought to feel that Wade was
+unworthy, that he had indeed wronged her, her own pride could be trusted
+to do the rest.
+
+"If I thought that Wade were the man to make her happy," Rexhill puffed
+heavily, in restraint of his excitement.
+
+"Happy? Him?" Moran's eyes gleamed.
+
+"Or if there was a shred of truth--but to make up such a story out of
+whole cloth...."
+
+"What's the matter with you, Senator? Why, I thought you were a master
+of men, a general on the field of battle!" The agent leaned forward
+again until his hot, whiskey-laden breath fanned the other man's face.
+
+"I'm a father, Race, before I'm anything else in God's world."
+
+"But it's true, Senator. True as I'm speaking. Ask any one in Crawling
+Water. Everybody knows that Wade and this Purnell girl are mad in love
+with each other."
+
+"Is that true, Race?"
+
+Rexhill looked searchingly into the inflamed slits which marked the
+location of the agent's eyes.
+
+"As God is my witness. It's the truth now, whatever he may have thought
+of Helen before. He's been making a fool of her, Senator. I've tried to
+make her see it, but she won't. You'll not only be protecting yourself,
+but you'll do her a service." He paused as Rexhill consulted his watch.
+
+"Helen will be over here in a few minutes. I promised to take a walk
+with her this morning."
+
+"Are you game?"
+
+"I'll do it, Race." Rexhill spoke solemnly. "We might as well fry for
+one thing as another." Grimacing, he shook the hand which the other
+offered him. "When will you start?"
+
+"Now," Moran answered promptly. "I'll take three or four men with me,
+and we'll hang around Wade's ranch until we get him. He'll probably be
+nosing around the range trying to locate the gold, and we shouldn't have
+much trouble. When we've got him safe...." His teeth ground audibly upon
+each other as he paused abruptly, and the sound seemed to cause the
+Senator uneasiness.
+
+"By the way, since I've turned near-assassin, you might as well tell me
+who shot Jensen." Rexhill spoke with a curious effort. "If Wade gets
+you, instead of you getting Wade, it may be necessary for me to know all
+the facts."
+
+Moran answered from the window, whither he had stepped to get his hat,
+which lay on the broad sill.
+
+"It was Tug Bailey, Senator. Here comes Helen now. You needn't tell her
+that I was tied up all night." He laid Wade's quirt on the desk. "He
+left that behind him."
+
+Rexhill grunted.
+
+"Yes, I will tell her," he declared sulkily, "and about the Jensen
+affair, if I've got to be a rascal, you'll be the goat. Give Bailey some
+money and get him out of town before he tanks up and tells all he
+knows."
+
+Helen came in, looking very sweet and fresh in a linen suit, and was at
+first inclined to be sympathetic when she heard of Moran's plight,
+without knowing the source of it. Before she did know, the odor of
+liquor on his breath repelled her. He finally departed, not at the
+bidding of her cool nod, but urged by his lust of revenge, which, even
+more than the whiskey, had fired his blood.
+
+"Intoxicated, isn't he? How utterly disgusting!"
+
+Her father looked at her admiringly, keenly regretting that he must
+dispel her love dream. But he took some comfort from the fact that Wade
+was apparently in love with another woman. The thought of this had been
+enough to make him seize upon the chance of keeping all her affection
+for himself.
+
+"He's had a drink or two," he admitted, "but he needed them. He had a
+hard night. Poor fellow, he was nearly dead when I arrived. Wade handled
+him very roughly."
+
+Helen looked up in amazement.
+
+"Did _Gordon_ do it? What was he doing here?" The Senator hesitated, and
+while she waited for his answer she was struck by a sense of humor in
+what had happened. She laughed softly. "Good for him!"
+
+"We think that he came here to--to see what he could find, partly,"
+Rexhill explained. "That probably was not his only reason. He wasn't
+alone."
+
+"Oh!" Her tone expressed disappointment that his triumph had not been a
+single-handed one. "Did they tie him with these?" she asked, picking up
+one of the crumpled strips of linen, which lay on the floor. Suddenly
+her face showed surprise. "Why--this is part of a woman's skirt?"
+
+Her father glanced at the strip of linen over his glasses.
+
+"Yes," he nodded. "I believe it is."
+
+"Somebody was here with Race?" Her voice was a blend of attempted
+confidence and distressing doubt.
+
+"My dear, I have painful news for you...."
+
+"With Gordon?" The question was almost a sob. "Who, father? Dorothy
+Purnell?"
+
+Helen dropped into a chair, and going to her, the Senator placed his
+hands on her shoulders. She looked shrunken, years older, with the bloom
+of youth blighted as frost strikes a flower, but even in the first and
+worst moments of her grief there was dignity in it. In a measure Race
+Moran had prepared her for the blow; he, and what she herself had seen
+of the partisanship between Dorothy and Gordon.
+
+"You must be brave, my dear," her father soothed, "because it is
+necessary that you should know. Race came upon them here last night, in
+each other's embrace, I believe, and with the girl's help, Wade got the
+upper hand."
+
+"Are you sure it was Gordon?" Her cold fingers held to his warm ones as
+in her childhood days, when she had run to him for protection.
+
+"His quirt is there on the desk."
+
+"But why should they have come here, father--here of all places? Doesn't
+that seem very improbable to you? That is what I can't understand. Why
+didn't he go to her house?"
+
+"For fear of arrest, I suppose. Their reason for coming here, you have
+half expressed, Helen, because it offered them the safest refuge, at
+that time of night, in Crawling Water. The office has not been used at
+night since we rented it, and besides Moran has been doubly busy with
+me at the hotel. But I don't say that was their sole reason for coming
+here. The safe had been opened, and doubtless their chief motive was
+robbery."
+
+She sprang to her feet and stood facing him with flaming cheeks, grieved
+still but aroused to passionate indignation.
+
+"Father, do you stand there and tell me that Gordon Wade has not only
+been untrue to me, but that he came here at night to steal from _you_;
+broke in here like a common thief?" Her breast heaved violently, and in
+her eyes shone a veritable fury of scorn.
+
+The Senator met her outburst gravely as became a man in his position. He
+spoke with judicial gravity, which could leave no doubt of his own
+convictions, while conveying a sense of dignified restraint, tempered
+with regret.
+
+"He not only did so, my dear, but he succeeded in escaping with
+documents of the greatest value to us, which, if prematurely published,
+may work us incalculable harm and subject our motives to the most
+grievous misconception."
+
+She lifted her head with so fine a gesture of pride that the Senator was
+thrilled by his own paternity. Before him, in his child, he seemed to
+see the best of himself, purified and exalted.
+
+"Then, if that is true, you may do with him what you will. I am
+through."
+
+He knew her too well to doubt that her renunciation of Wade had been
+torn from the very roots of her nature, but for all that, when she had
+spoken, she was not above her moment of deep grief.
+
+"My little girl, I know--I know!" Putting his arms around her, he held
+her while she wept on his shoulder. "But isn't it better to find out
+these things now, in time, before they have had a chance to really wreck
+your happiness?"
+
+"Yes, of course." She dried her eyes and managed to smile a little.
+"I--I'll write to Maxwell to-day and tell him that I'll marry him. That
+will please mother."
+
+It pleased the Senator, too, for it meant that no matter what happened
+to him, the women of his family would be provided for. He knew that
+young Frayne was too much in love to be turned from his purpose by any
+misfortune that might occur to Helen's father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A DASTARD'S BLOW
+
+
+At about the time when Rexhill was freeing Moran from his bonds, Wade
+and Santry, with rifles slung across their backs were tramping the banks
+of Piah Creek. In the rocky canyon, which they finally reached, the
+placid little stream narrowed into a roaring torrent, which rushed
+between the steep banks and the huge, water-worn bowlders, with fury
+uncontrolled.
+
+Neither of the cattlemen greatly feared the coming of a second posse, at
+least immediately, but for the sake of prudence, they went armed and
+kept a careful watch. Wade mounted guard while Santry, who in his
+younger days had prospected in California, squatted over a sandy,
+rock-rimmed pool and deftly "washed out" a pan of gravel. One glance at
+the fine, yellow residue in the bottom of the pan decided him. With a
+triumphant yell that echoed and reechoed through the gorge, he sprang to
+his feet.
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e! I've struck it!" he shouted excitedly, as Wade ran up to
+him. "Look there!" The old man held out a small handful of the yellow
+dust.
+
+Wade drew a long breath.
+
+"Gold! It's true, then!"
+
+"You betcher, and it's the richest pay-dirt I ever met up with. No
+wonder Moran has been willin' to do murder to get a-holt of this land.
+You're a rich man, boy; a millionaire, I reckon."
+
+"You mean that _we_ are rich, Bill." The younger man spoke slowly and
+emphatically. "Whatever comes out of here"--he waved his hand toward the
+creek--"is one-half yours. I decided on that long ago. Never mind asking
+me why." He clapped Santry on the back. "It's because we're partners in
+fact, if not in name. Because you've stuck with me through all the lean
+years. That's reason enough."
+
+The old plainsman carefully emptied the dust back into the pan before he
+said anything.
+
+"Have you gone clean crazy?" he finally demanded. "Givin' away a fortune
+like it was the makin's of a cigareet? If you have, I ain't. This
+stuff's yourn. I'm not sayin' that I won't take a ounce or two, maybe,
+of this here dust, for old times' sake, if you offer it to me, but
+that's all." His wrinkled face twisted into a grin. "You'll be needin'
+it all one o' these days to pay for your honeymoonin', if I read the
+signs right. Ain't that so, son?" He laughed softly as Wade flushed.
+"Shake, boy! Put 'er there! I wish you all the luck that's comin' to any
+white man, by the great horned toad, I do!"
+
+During the whole of the morning they examined the creek bed and they
+found signs of the yellow metal almost everywhere. At one point, Wade
+broke a knob of rock from the face of the cliff, the under surface of
+which was seamed and streaked with golden veins. Santry could scarcely
+restrain himself; usually taciturn, he was for once as light-hearted and
+joyous as a boy. But on the way back to the ranch-house he became
+serious.
+
+"Say, ain't the bulk of that lode on that forty-acre tract that you took
+up as a timber claim?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Wade answered. "That is, I think so. We can run over the lines
+this afternoon and make sure."
+
+"I reckon we'd better make sure, and if it is, you'll have to lay low
+until you get your deed. Your homestead rights might be hard to claim
+now that there's mineral in the ground. Moran'll most likely keep his
+mouth shut for reasons of his own, and he may not know about your not
+havin' proved up yet, but some other jasper might get wise."
+
+"I don't think any one around here would contest my right to the land,
+Bill," Wade replied thoughtfully. "Still, as you say, we'd better be
+careful. The gold will keep. We haven't heard the last of Moran and his
+crowd yet, not by a jugful." He chuckled grimly. "I wonder if anybody's
+cut him loose yet."
+
+"I reckon they have, boy. He'll keep monkeyin' around this territory
+until he meets up with some feller like me, with a bad temper and a
+quick gun hand, who'll make him good the same way we useter make good
+Injuns. Hullo, steady!"
+
+Although they were now in sight of the house and the men hanging about
+it for the noon-day meal, Santry had not relaxed his caution and his
+eyes had picked out two moving dots in the distance, which presently
+developed into galloping horses. He smiled instantly.
+
+"Can't be nobody lookin' for trouble," he observed, and presently his
+eyes twinkled. "Take a good look, boy. I reckon you know _one_ of 'em,
+anyhow."
+
+The horses came on rapidly, until upon the foremost of them Wade could
+see the fluttering skirt of a woman, while the other he recognized as
+belonging to Lem Trowbridge even before he could clearly make out the
+rider.
+
+"Tell the cook we'll have company to dinner," Wade called to Santry as
+he untied a horse from the hitching rack near the barn and rode off to
+meet the newcomers.
+
+With fine prescience, Trowbridge, when he saw him ride toward them, drew
+his horse down to a walk, and so was discreetly in the rear when Dorothy
+and Wade met.
+
+"Mighty glad to see you," he greeted her, "but that goes without
+saying."
+
+"Thanks," she responded, hoping that he would attribute the heightened
+color of her cheeks to the exertion of the ride. "We thought we'd ride
+out to see how you were getting along."
+
+Despite her blush, that had come at the recollection of his kiss the
+night before, she still looked him straight in the eyes, but with a
+sweet humility, an attitude of surrender, which he understood and which
+touched him. There was nothing bold about her look, but an engaging
+womanliness, which would have appealed to any decent man, even while it
+stirred his pulse. She wore a wide felt hat, from beneath the brim of
+which her hair floated, shaken out of its moorings by the jolting of
+her gallop. A flannel blouse, which was most becoming, and a divided
+skirt completed a sensible costume, which seemed to Wade more attractive
+than any he had ever seen in the East. She rode with the straight
+stirrups of the cattle country, and sat her mount with the grace of a
+born horsewoman.
+
+"What's happened to Moran?" he asked, waving his hat to Trowbridge, as
+the latter rode toward them.
+
+"He's out and around again. I saw him this morning. He was an awful
+sight. You must keep your eyes open, Gordon, really you must. He'll be
+more dangerous than ever now."
+
+"Oh, I guess we've clipped his claws for a while," he said lightly,
+unwilling that she should be anxious for his safety, sweet though he
+found her sympathy to be. "Hello, Lem!"
+
+"Hello, yourself!" They shook hands, the firm handclasp of strong men,
+and then all three rode on together to the house.
+
+After dinner, the plainness of which meant nothing to such appetites as
+their out-door living had aroused, they sat on the porch, the men over
+their cigarettes and Dorothy quite content in the contemplation of the
+sweetness which her heart had found.
+
+"How are things going on your place, Lem?" asked Wade.
+
+"Badly, Gordon. That's one reason I rode over to see you. Have you heard
+about the fight on my range? You haven't?"
+
+"I didn't have time last night to tell him," Dorothy interposed.
+
+"A number of my boys got into a shooting affray with some herders,"
+Trowbridge explained. "Two of the boys were hurt and one of the herders,
+I understand, was badly shot."
+
+"Too bad," Wade commented. "Confound it, Lem, what are these fellows
+thinking of? They must know that our patience won't last always, and
+when it breaks we're ten to their one."
+
+"Well,"--Trowbridge deftly flecked his cigarette stub over the porch
+railing,--"I'm through now, Gordon. I've given my men orders to stand
+for no more nonsense. I've told them to shoot at the drop of the hat,
+and I'll stand behind 'em, law or no law. The next time there's trouble,
+and it's likely to come any hour, I'm going to lead my outfit into a
+fight that'll be some fight, believe me. And I'm not going to quit until
+every sheep man in the county is headed East on the run."
+
+"We'll be with you," Wade said heartily. "Tip us the word and we'll be
+right after you."
+
+Trowbridge nodded.
+
+"I'll take you up on that, Gordon. Not that we need help, you
+understand, but because it'll be best for us to present a united front
+in this business. United, we stand; divided, we fall; that's the word,
+eh?"
+
+Dorothy leaned forward, with an anxious look.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I hope neither one of you will get shot."
+
+Trowbridge made her a bow from his chair.
+
+"We'll try not to," he said mockingly, and she was obliged to join in
+the general laugh.
+
+"If you feel that you ought to do it, of course you will--fight, I
+mean," she said, helplessly. "But I think it's dreadful, all the same."
+
+"What has Thomas done about me?" Wade asked. "I understand that he's
+holding quite a bunch of warrants up his sleeve?"
+
+"I don't think he's done anything, and I don't believe he's anxious to,"
+Trowbridge answered. "He's shown some courage, that fellow, in the past,
+but I always thought he had a yellow streak in him somewhere. I don't
+think you need fear him much."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to know that, not that I've been very uneasy, but we've
+had to keep a pretty close look-out here, and it's doubled us up
+uncomfortably. I want to go out to my timber claim this afternoon, and
+but for what you've said, I know Bill would insist on going along. Now I
+can leave him here to attend to his work."
+
+Dorothy was opposed to the idea and she said so, but her opinion was
+overridden by the two men. Trowbridge declared that there was absolutely
+nothing to fear from Sheriff Thomas, at least immediately.
+
+"I'm positive of that," he summed up. "If there was any new move on
+foot, I'd have heard of it."
+
+"That may be," Dorothy argued, "but you know Senator Rexhill is behind
+him to urge him on."
+
+"That's another man we ought to run out of this neighborhood,"
+Trowbridge declared. "The only trouble is that the old fox has laid so
+low that we haven't anything definite on him. We can suspect all we
+like; but when it comes right down to facts, he has us guessing. We
+can't prove a thing against him, and he's too big game to flush without
+powder. Well, we'd better be off."
+
+"Stay a while," Wade urged. "It's early yet. I didn't mean to hurry you
+when I spoke of going out to the claim. I've got plenty of time."
+
+"I haven't told him about the gold," Dorothy whispered, as he helped her
+into her saddle. "I thought you might want to keep it quiet for the
+present."
+
+"Sure, we'll tell him," he said, pressing her hand. "We're all on the
+same side in this business."
+
+He explained his good fortune to Trowbridge, who was delighted and
+enthusiastic over the prospect of the vein impinging upon his own range.
+
+"Well, that _is_ some luck, eh?" Trowbridge skillfully managed his
+horse, which was high-spirited enough to still be sportive in spite of
+the long ride of the morning. "Every cloud's got a silver lining, as the
+poet says. And another thing, it shows Rexhill's real motive, don't
+forget that. Oh, we'll get 'em by and by. Sure thing, we will. Well, so
+long."
+
+"So long, Lem! Call on us when you want us."
+
+"Good-by!" Dorothy waved to him as the horses sped away in the direction
+of Crawling Water.
+
+Wade watched them out of sight, and then entered the house to tell
+Santry that he would not be needed on the afternoon trip to the timber
+claim. The old man growled a little at the idea of Wade going alone,
+but he finally gave in.
+
+"I'll take my gun and keep my eye peeled," his employer promised. "If I
+can't stand off trouble until I get home, or you can get to me, I'll
+lose my bet. You've got your work to do, Bill. If you're going to nurse
+me all the time, I'll have to get another foreman to run the crew."
+
+He rode away, then, toward the foothills, confident of his ability to
+look after himself in case of trouble. There was nothing in the peaceful
+aspect of the range to suggest an enemy, but he kept his rifle ready and
+his ears and eyes open. Once he paused abruptly when a rabbit jumped out
+of a clump of quaking-aspens, a hundred yards ahead, only to chuckle at
+his own overcaution.
+
+The sun, which was still high, was shining as only a Wyoming sun can
+shine, from out of a blue-vaulted canopy, flecked with fleecy clouds.
+Swinging from the tops of the sagebrush, or an occasional cottonwood,
+yellow-breasted meadowlarks were singing sweetly. At intervals a flock
+of curlews circled above the rider, uttering their sharp, plaintive
+cries; then they would drop to the ground and run rapidly to and fro on
+their frail, stilt-like legs, their long ungainly bills darting from
+side to side in search of food.
+
+Over the plains, from which Wade now turned, hundreds of red and white
+cattle, their hides as sleek as velvet, were grazing, singly and in
+scattered groups, as far as the eye could see. Toward its mouth, the
+valley was spotted with many fenced alfalfa fields, and traversed by
+irrigation ditches; while to the right, in the direction in which Wade
+now rode, rose the timber belt. A fresh, soft breeze, fragrant with the
+odor of clean, damp earth, rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods, some
+of which were of enormous size, as the horseman pushed his way farther
+into the shadow of the mountains.
+
+After a careful scrutiny, which satisfied him that the vicinity harbored
+no enemies, he dismounted, but still actuated by caution, kept the
+bridle reins looped over his wrist, as he searched for further evidence
+of gold. Unlike Santry, the ranchman was not trained in the ways of
+prospecting, and he began to regret that he had not allowed the foreman
+to accompany him. He followed what he thought were promising signs
+deeper into the silence of the tall timber, and finally dropped on his
+knees to make sure of some outcroppings of quartz near the base of a
+huge bowlder. He was so crouched when a sudden movement of his horse
+warned him of danger; but he had not time to arise before a crushing
+blow on the head, delivered from behind, shook him to the very marrow of
+his spine. With a low groan, he toppled over onto his face, senseless.
+
+"Have you got him?" Moran peered around the side of the bowlder, and
+smiled exultantly when he saw Wade's still figure. "Throw him across
+your saddle," he commanded, "and follow me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FIRST CLEW
+
+
+"Let's see!" Trowbridge reined in his horse and meditated, when he and
+Dorothy had covered several miles of their ride back to Crawling Water.
+"Jensen was shot around here somewhere, wasn't he?"
+
+"I think it was over there." She pointed with her quirt in the direction
+of a distant clump of jack-pines. "Why?"
+
+"Suppose we ride over and take a look at the spot." He smiled at her
+little shudder of repugnance. "We haven't any Sherlock Holmes in this
+country, and maybe we need one. I'll have a try at it. Come on!"
+
+In response to the pressure of his knees, the trained cow-pony whirled
+toward the jack-pines, and Dorothy followed, laughing at the idea that
+so ingenuous a man as Lem Trowbridge might possess the analytical gift
+of the trained detective.
+
+"You!" she said mockingly, when she had caught up with him. "You're as
+transparent as glass; not that it isn't nice to be that way, but still
+you are. Besides, the rain we've had must have washed all tracks away."
+
+"No doubt, but we'll have a look anyhow. It won't do any harm.
+Seriously, though, the ways of criminals have always interested me. I'd
+rather read a good detective story than any other sort of yarn."
+
+"I shouldn't think that you had any gift that way."
+
+"That's got nothing to do with it," he laughed. "It's always like that.
+Haven't you noticed how nearly every man thinks he's missed his calling;
+that if he'd only gone in for something else he'd have been a rattling
+genius at it? Just to show you! I've got a hand over at the ranch, a
+fellow named Barry, who can tie down a steer in pretty close to the
+record. He's a born cowman, if I ever saw one, but do you suppose he
+thinks that's his line?"
+
+"Doesn't he?" she asked politely. One of the secrets of her popularity
+lay in her willingness to feed a story along with deft little
+interjections of interest.
+
+"He does not. Poetry! Shakespeare! That's his 'forty'! At night he gets
+out a book and reads Hamlet to the rest of the boys. Thinks that if he'd
+ever hit Broadway with a show, he'd set the town on fire."
+
+When Dorothy laughed heartily, as she now did, the sound of it was worth
+going miles to hear. There are all shades of temperament and character
+in laughter, which is the one thing of which we are least
+self-conscious; hers revealed not only a sense of humor, rare in her
+sex, but a blithe, happy nature, which made allies at once of those upon
+whose ears her merriment fell. Trowbridge's eyes sparkled with his
+appreciation of it.
+
+"Well, maybe he would," she said, finally.
+
+"Maybe I'll make good along with Sherlock Holmes." He winked at her as
+he slipped from his horse's back, on the edge of a rocky knoll, fronting
+the jack-pines. "This is the place, I reckon." His quick eyes had
+caught a dark stain on a flat rock, which the rain had failed to cleanse
+entirely of the dead herders' blood.
+
+When Dorothy saw it, too, her mirth subsided. To her mind, the thought
+of death was most horrible, and especially so in the case of a murderous
+death, such as had befallen the sheep men. Not only was the thing
+horrible in itself, but still more so in its suggestion of the dangers
+which threatened her friends.
+
+"Do hurry!" she begged. "There can't be anything here."
+
+"Just a minute or two." Struck by the note of appeal in her voice, so
+unlike its lilt of the moment before, he added: "Ride on if you want
+to."
+
+"No," she shuddered. "I'll wait, but please be quick."
+
+It was well for her companion that she did wait, or at least that she
+was with him for, when he had inspected the immediate vicinity of the
+shooting, he stepped backward from the top of the knoll into a little,
+brush-filled hollow, in which lay a rattlesnake. Deeply interested in
+his search, he did not hear the warning rattle, and Dorothy might not
+have noticed it either had not her pony raised its head, with a start
+and a snort. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the snake and called
+out sharply.
+
+"Look out, behind you, Lem!"
+
+There are men, calling themselves conjurors, who perform prodigies of
+agility with coins, playing-cards, and other articles of legerdemain,
+but they are not so quick as was Trowbridge in springing sidewise from
+the menacing snake. In still quicker movement, the heavy Colt at his
+side leaped from its holster. The next second the rattle had ceased
+forever, for the snake's head had been neatly cut from its body.
+
+"Close call! Thanks!" Trowbridge slid his weapon back into its resting
+place and smiled up at her.
+
+So close, indeed, had the call been that, coming upon the dreadful
+associations of the spot, Dorothy was unnerved. Her skin turned a sickly
+white and her lips were trembling, but not more so than were the flanks
+of the horses, which seemed to be in an agony of fear. When the girl saw
+Trowbridge pick up a withered stick and coolly explore the recesses of a
+small hole near which the snake had been coiled, she rebelled.
+
+"I'm not going to stay here another minute," she declared hotly.
+
+"Just a second. There may be another one.... Oh, all right, go on,
+then," he called out, as she whirled her pony and started off. "I'll
+catch you. Ride slow!"
+
+He looked after her with a smile of amusement, before renewing his
+efforts with the stick, holding his bridle reins with one hand so that
+his horse could not follow hers. To his disappointment there seemed to
+be nothing in the hole, but his prodding suddenly developed an amazing
+fact. He was on the point of dropping the stick and mounting his horse,
+when he noticed a small piece of metal in the leaves and grass at the
+mouth of the hole. It was an empty cartridge shell.
+
+"By Glory!" he exclaimed, as he examined it. "A clew, or I'm a sinner!"
+
+Swinging into his saddle, he raced after Dorothy, shouting to her as he
+rode. In her pique, she would not answer his hail, or turn in her
+saddle; but he was too exultant to care. He was concerned only with
+overtaking her that he might tell her what he had found.
+
+"For the love of Mike!" he said, when by a liberal use of his spurs he
+caught up with her. "What do you think this is, a circus?"
+
+"You can keep up, can't you?" she retorted banteringly.
+
+"Sure, I can keep up, all right." He reached out and caught her bridle
+rein, pulling her pony down to a walk in spite of her protests. "I want
+to show you something. You can't see it riding like a jockey. Look
+here!" He handed her the shell. "You see, if I had come when you wanted
+me to, I wouldn't have found it. That's what's called the detective
+instinct, I reckon," he added, with a grin. "Guess I'm some little
+Sherlock, after all."
+
+"Whose is it?" She turned the shell over in her palm a trifle gingerly.
+
+"Look!" He took it from her and pointed out where it had been dented by
+the firing-pin. "I reckon you wouldn't know, not being up in fire-arms.
+The hammer that struck this shell didn't hit true; not so far off as to
+miss fire, you understand, but it ain't in line exactly. That tells me a
+lot."
+
+"What does it tell you?" She looked up at him quickly.
+
+"Well," he spoke slowly, "there ain't but one gun in Crawling Water that
+has that peculiarity, that I know of, and that one belongs, or did
+belong, to Tug Bailey."
+
+She caught at his arm impulsively so that both horses were brought to a
+standstill.
+
+"Then _he_ shot Jensen, Lem?"
+
+Her voice was tremulous with eagerness, for although she had never
+doubted Wade or Santry; had never thought for a moment that either man
+could have committed the crime, or have planned it, she wanted them
+cleared of the doubt in the eyes of the world. Her disappointment was
+acute when she saw that Trowbridge did not deem the shell to be
+convincing proof of Bailey's guilt.
+
+"Don't go too fast now, Dorothy," he cautioned. "This shell proves that
+Bailey's gun was fired, but it doesn't prove that Bailey's finger pulled
+the trigger, or that the gun was aimed at Jensen. Bailey might have
+loaned the rifle to somebody, or he might have fired at a snake, like I
+did a few minutes ago."
+
+"Oh, he might have done anything, of course. But the shell is some
+evidence, isn't it? It casts the doubt on Tug Bailey, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes, it does that, all right. It casts it further than him." The
+cattleman spoke positively. "It's a clew, that's what it is. We've got a
+clew and we've got a motive, and we didn't have either of them
+yesterday."
+
+"How do you suppose that shell got where you found it?" she asked, her
+voice full of hope.
+
+"Bailey must have levered it out of his rifle, after the shooting, and
+it fell into that hole. You see,"--he could not resist making the
+triumphant point once more,--"if I hadn't stopped to look for another
+rattler, I never would have found it. Just that chance--just a little
+chance like that--throws the biggest criminals. Funny, ain't it?" But
+she was too preoccupied with the importance of the discovery to dwell on
+his gifts as a sleuth.
+
+"What can we do about it, Lem?" She gave her pony her head and they
+began to move slowly. "What ought we to do?"
+
+"I'll find this fellow, Bailey, and wring the truth out of him," he
+answered grimly; and her eyes sparkled. "If I'm not greatly mistaken,
+though, he was only the tool."
+
+"Meaning that Moran...."
+
+"And Rexhill," Trowbridge snapped. "They are the men higher up, and the
+game we're really gunning for. They hired Bailey to shoot Jensen so that
+the crime might be fastened on to Gordon. I believe that as fully as I'm
+alive this minute; the point is to prove it."
+
+"Then we've no time to waste," she said, touching her pony with the
+quirt. "We mustn't loiter here. Suppose Bailey has been sent away?"
+
+The thought of this caused them to urge their tired horses along at
+speed. Many times during the ride which followed Trowbridge looked
+admiringly at his companion as she rode on, untiringly, side by side
+with him. A single man himself, he had come to feel very tenderly toward
+her, but he had no hope of winning her. She had never been more than
+good friends with him, and he realized her feeling for Wade, but this
+knowledge did not make him less keen in his admiration of her.
+
+"Good luck to you, Lem," she said, giving him her hand, as they paused
+at the head of Crawling Water's main street. "Let me know what you do as
+soon as you can. I'll be anxious."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I know about where to find him, if he's in town. Oh, we're slowly
+getting it on them, Dorothy. We'll be ready to 'call' them pretty soon.
+Good-by!"
+
+Tug Bailey, however, was not in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte
+Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the
+stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale
+tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had
+gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a
+woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from the floor
+above.
+
+"Wait a minute."
+
+Trowbridge waited and the woman came down to him. He knew her by
+ill-repute, as did every man in the town, for she was Pansy Madder, one
+of the dance-hall habitués, good-looking enough by night to the inflamed
+fancy, but repulsive by day, with her sodden skin and hard eyes.
+
+"You want to know where Tug is?" she demanded.
+
+"Yes, where is he?"
+
+"He's headed for Sheridan, I reckon. If he ain't headed there, he'll
+strike the railroad at some other point; him and that--Nellie Lewis,
+that he's skipped with." Her lusterless eyes were fired by the only
+thing that could fire them: her bitter jealousy.
+
+"You're sure?" Trowbridge persisted, a little doubtfully.
+
+"Sure? Of course, I'm sure. Say,"--she clutched at his arm as he turned
+away,--"if he's wanted for anything, bring him back here, will you?
+Promise me that! Let me"--her pale lips were twisted by an ugly
+smile--"get my hands on him!"
+
+From the dance-hall, Trowbridge hastened to the jail to swear out a
+warrant for Bailey's arrest and to demand that Sheriff Thomas telegraph
+to Sheridan and to the two points above and below, Ranchester and
+Clearmont, to head off the fugitive there. Not knowing how far the
+Sheriff might be under the dominance of the Rexhill faction, the
+cattleman was not sure that he could count upon assistance from the
+official. He meant, if he saw signs of indecision, to do the
+telegraphing himself and to sign at the bottom of the message the name
+of every ranch owner in the district. That should be enough to awaken
+the law along the railroad without help from Thomas, and Trowbridge knew
+that such action would be backed up by his associates.
+
+He had no trouble on this score, however, for Sheriff Thomas was away on
+the trail of a horse-thief, and the deputy in charge of the jail was of
+sturdier character than his chief.
+
+"Will I help you, Lem?" he exclaimed. "Say, will a cat drink milk? You
+bet I'll help you. Between you and me, I've been so damned ashamed of
+what's been doing in this here office lately that I'm aching for a
+chance to square myself. I'll send them wires off immediate."
+
+"I reckon you're due to be the next Sheriff in this county, Steve,"
+Trowbridge responded gratefully. "There's going to be a change here
+before long."
+
+"That so? Well, I ain't sayin' that I'd refuse, but I ain't doin' this
+as no favor, either, you understand. I'm doin' it because it's the law,
+the good old-fashioned, honest to Gawd, s'help me die, law!"
+
+"That's the kind we want here--that, or no kind. So long, Steve!"
+
+With a nod of relief, Trowbridge left the jail, well-satisfied that he
+had done a good turn for Wade, and pleased with himself for having lived
+so well up to the standards set by the detectives of popular fiction.
+Since Bailey had not had time to reach the railroad, his arrest was now
+almost a certainty, and once he was back in Crawling Water, a bucket of
+hot tar and a bundle of feathers, with a promise of immunity for
+himself, would doubtless be sufficient to extract a confession from him
+which would implicate Rexhill and Moran.
+
+Feeling that he had earned the refreshment of a drink, the cattleman was
+about to enter the hotel when, to his consternation, he saw tearing
+madly down the street toward him Bill Santry, on a horse that had
+evidently been ridden to the very last spurt of endurance. He ran
+forward at once, for the appearance of the old man in Crawling Water,
+with a warrant for murder hanging over his head, could only mean that
+some tragedy had happened at the ranch.
+
+"Hello, Lem!" Santry greeted him. "You're just the man I'm lookin' for."
+
+"What's the trouble?" Trowbridge demanded.
+
+"The boy!" The old plainsman slid from his horse, which could hardly
+keep its feet, but was scarcely more spent in body than its rider was in
+nerve. His face was twitching in a way that might have been ludicrous
+but for its significance. "They've ambushed him, I reckon. I come
+straight in after you, knowin' that you'd have a cooler head for this
+here thing than--than I have."
+
+"My God!" The exclamation shot from Trowbridge like the crack of a gun.
+"How did it happen?"
+
+Santry explained the details, in so far as he knew them, in a few
+breathless sentences. The old man was clearly almost beside himself with
+grief and rage, and past the capacity to act intelligently upon his own
+initiative. He had not been satisfied, he said, to remain behind at the
+ranch and let Wade go to the timber tract alone, and so after a period
+of indecision he had followed him. Near the edge of the timber he had
+come upon Wade's riderless horse, trailing broken bridle reins. He had
+followed the animal's tracks back to the point of the assault, but
+there was no sign of Wade, which fact indicated that he had been carried
+away by those who had overcome him.
+
+"I could see by the tracks that there was a number of 'em; as many as
+five or six," the old man summed up. "I followed their sign as far as I
+could, but I lost it at the creek. Then I went back to the house and
+sent some of the boys out to scout around before I come down here after
+you."
+
+"Where do you suppose they could have taken him?" Trowbridge asked.
+"They'd never dare bring him to town."
+
+"Gawd knows, Lem! There's more pockets and drifts up in them hills than
+there is jack-rabbits. 'Tain't likely the boys'll find any new sign,
+leastways not in time; not before that ---- of a Moran--it was him did
+it, damn him! I know it was. Lem, for Gawd's sake, what are we goin' to
+do?"
+
+"The first thing to do, Bill, is to get you out of this town, before
+Thomas shows up and jumps you."
+
+"I don't keer for myself. I'll shoot the...."
+
+"Luckily, he's away just now," Trowbridge went on, ignoring the
+interruption. "Come with me!" He led the way into the hotel. "Frank," he
+said to the red-headed proprietor, "is Moran in town to-day?"
+
+"Nope." The Irishman regarded Santry with interest. "He went out this
+morning with four or five men."
+
+"Rexhill's here, ain't he?" Trowbridge asked then. "Tell him there's two
+gentlemen here to see him. Needn't mention any names. He doesn't know
+me."
+
+When Santry, with the instinct of his breed, hitched his revolver to a
+more convenient position on his hip, Trowbridge reached out and took it
+away from him. He dared not trust the old man in his present mood. He
+intended to question the Senator, to probe him, perhaps to threaten him;
+but the time had not come to shoot him.
+
+"I'll keep this for you, Bill," he said soothingly, and dropped the
+weapon into his coat pocket. "I'm going to take you up with me, for the
+sake of the effect of that face of yours, looking the way it does right
+now. But I'll do the talking, mind! It won't take long. We're going to
+act some, too."
+
+Their visit had no visible effect upon Rexhill, however, who was too
+much master of himself to be caught off his guard in a game which had
+reached the point of constant surprise. His manner was not conciliatory,
+for the meeting was frankly hostile, but he did not appear to be
+perturbed by it. He had not supposed that the extremes he had sanctioned
+could be carried through without difficulty, and he was prepared to meet
+any attack that might be offered by the enemy.
+
+"Senator Rexhill," Trowbridge introduced himself, "you've never met me.
+I'm from the Piah Creek country. My name is Trowbridge."
+
+"Yes," the Senator nodded. "I've heard of you. I know your friend there
+by sight." He lingered slightly over the word "friend" as he glanced
+toward Santry, "There's a warrant out for him, I believe."
+
+"Yes. There's a warrant out for one of your--friends, too, Tug Bailey,"
+Trowbridge retorted dryly, hoping that something would eventuate from
+his _repartee_; but nothing did. If the news surprised Rexhill, as it
+must have, he did not show it. "I've just sworn it out," the rancher
+continued, "but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to tell you that
+Gordon Wade, whom you know, has been kidnaped."
+
+Santry stifled an exclamation of rage in answer to a quick look from his
+friend.
+
+"Kidnaped from his own range in broad daylight," the latter went on. "I
+represent his friends, who mean to find him right away, and it has
+occurred to me that you may be able to assist us in our search."
+
+"Just why has that idea occurred to you?" Rexhill asked calmly, as
+though out of mere curiosity. "I'd like to know."
+
+A bit baffled by this attitude of composure, Trowbridge hesitated, for
+it was not at all what he had expected to combat. If the Senator had
+flown into a passion, the cattleman would have responded with equal
+heat; now he was less sure of himself and his ground. It was barely
+possible, after all, that Tug Bailey had shot Jensen out of personal
+spite; or, at the worst, had been the tool of Moran alone. One could
+hardly associate the thought of murder with the very prosperous looking
+gentleman, who so calmly faced them and twirled his eyeglasses between
+his fingers.
+
+"Why should that idea have occurred to you?" the Senator asked again.
+"So far as I am informed, Wade is also liable to arrest for complicity
+in the Jensen murder; in addition to which he has effected a jail
+delivery and burglarized my office. It seems to me, if he has been
+kidnaped as you say, that I am the last person to have any interest in
+his welfare, or his whereabouts. Why do you come to me?"
+
+This was too much for Santry's self-restraint.
+
+"What's the use of talkin' to him?" he demanded. "If he ain't done it
+himself, don't we know that Moran done it for him? To hell with
+talkin'!" He shook a gnarled fist at Rexhill, who paid no attention
+whatever to him, but deliberately looked in another direction.
+
+"That is why we are here," said Trowbridge, when he had quieted Santry
+once more. "Because we have good reason to believe that, if these acts
+do not proceed from you, they do proceed from your agent, and you're
+responsible for what he does, if I know anything about law. This man
+Moran has carried things with a high hand in this community, but now
+he's come to the end of his rope, and he's going to be punished. That
+means that you'll get yours, too, if he's acted under your orders." The
+cattleman was getting into his stride now that the first moments of his
+embarrassment were passed. His voice rang with authority, which the
+Senator was quick to recognize, although he gave no evidence that he was
+impressed. "Has Moran been acting for you, that's what we want to know?"
+
+"My dear fellow,"--Rexhill laughed rumblingly,--"if you'll only stop for
+an instant to think, you'll see how absurd this is."
+
+"A frank answer to a frank question," Trowbridge persisted. "Has he
+been acting for you? Do you, at this moment, know what has become of
+Wade, or where he is?"
+
+"That's the stuff!" growled Santry, whose temples were throbbing under
+the effort he put forth to hold himself within bounds.
+
+"I do not!" the Senator said, bluntly. "And I'll say freely that I would
+not tell you if I did."
+
+Santry's hands opened and shut convulsively. He was in the act of
+springing upon Rexhill when Trowbridge seized him.
+
+"You're a liar!" he roared, struggling in his friend's grasp. "Let me at
+him. By the great horned toad, I'll make him tell!"
+
+"Put that man out of this room!" Rexhill had arisen in all of his
+ponderous majesty, roused to wrath at last. His pudgy finger shook as he
+pointed to the door, and his fat face was congested. "I'm not here to be
+insulted by a jail-bird. Put him out!"
+
+Trowbridge's eyes gleamed exultantly, although he still kept a tight
+hold on Santry, for this was the sort of thing he had expected to meet.
+He had not thought that Rexhill would confess complicity in the
+kidnaping this early in the game; but he had looked for an outburst of
+anger which would give him the chance he wanted to free his own mind of
+the hate that was in it. He had wanted the chance to make Rexhill feel
+that his hour of atonement was close at hand, and getting nearer every
+minute.
+
+"Easy, now!" he admonished. "We're going, both of us, but we won't be
+put out. You've said just what I looked for you to say. You've denied
+knowledge of this thing. I think with Santry here that you're a liar, a
+God-forsaken liar." He drew closer to the Senator, who seemed about to
+burst with passion, and held him with a gaze his fury could not daunt.
+"May Heaven help you, Senator, when we're ready to prove all this
+against you. If you're in Crawling Water then, we'll ride you to hell on
+a rail."
+
+"Now," Trowbridge said to Santry, when they were downstairs again, "you
+get out of town hot-foot. Ride to my place. Take this!" He scribbled a
+few lines on the back of an envelope. "Give it to my foreman. Tell him
+to meet me with the boys where the trail divides. We'll find Wade, if we
+have to trade our beds for lanterns and kill every horse in the valley."
+
+The two men shook hands, and Santry's eyes were fired with a new hope.
+The old man was grateful for one thing, at least: the time for action
+had arrived. He had spent his youth on the plains in the days when every
+man was a law unto himself, and the years had not lessened his spirit.
+
+"I'll be right after you, Bill," Trowbridge concluded. "I'm going first
+to break the news to Miss Purnell. She'd hear it anyway and be anxious.
+She'd better get it straight from me."
+
+Lem Trowbridge had seen only one woman faint, but the recollection was
+indelibly impressed upon his mind. It had happened in his boyhood, at
+the ranch where he still lived, when a messenger had arrived with word
+of the death of the elder Trowbridge, whose horse had stepped into a
+prairie-dog hole and fallen with his rider. The picture of his mother's
+collapse he could never forget, or his own horrible thought that she,
+too, had passed away, leaving him parentless. For months afterwards he
+had awakened at night, crying out that she was dead.
+
+The whole scene recurred to him when he told Dorothy of Wade's
+disappearance, and saw her face flush and then pale, as his mother's had
+done. The girl did not actually faint, for she was young and wonderfully
+strong, but she came so near to it that he was obliged to support her
+with his arm to keep her on her feet. That was cruel, too, for he loved
+her. But presently she recovered, and swept from his mind all thought of
+himself by her piteous appeal to him to go instantly in search of Wade.
+
+"We'll find him, Dorothy, don't you worry," he declared, with an
+appearance of confidence he was far from feeling. "I came around to tell
+you myself because I wanted you to know that we are right on the job."
+
+"But how can you find him in all those mountains, Lem? You don't even
+know which side of the range they've hidden him on."
+
+He reminded her that he had been born in Crawling Water Valley, and that
+he knew every draw and canyon in the mountains; but in his heart he
+realized that to search all these places would take half a lifetime. He
+could only hope that chance, or good fortune, might lead them promptly
+to the spot they sought.
+
+"Do you think that Senator Rexhill knows where Gordon is?" she asked.
+"Is he in this, too?"
+
+"I don't know for sure," he answered. "I believe Moran is acting under
+Rexhill's orders, but I don't know how much Rexhill knows of the
+details. If I knew that, it would be fairly easy. I'd...." His strong
+hands gripped the back of a chair until his knuckles showed white under
+their tan. "I'd choke it out of him!"
+
+"Oh, if there was only something I could do!" Dorothy wailed helplessly.
+"A woman never can do anything in a crisis but _wait_!" Her distress was
+so pitiable to witness that Trowbridge averted his gaze.
+
+"We'll do all that can be done, Dorothy," he assured her. "Trust me for
+that. Besides--" A thought had just flashed into his head which might
+relieve her sense of helplessness. "Besides, we're going to need you
+here in town to keep us informed of what goes on."
+
+"If I learn anything, how can I get word to you?" she asked, her face
+brightening somewhat. "You'll be up in the hills."
+
+"I'll try to keep a man at the big pine all the time. If you find out
+anything send word to him."
+
+"Oh, yes, I will, I will. That'll be something anyhow." Her eyes
+sparkling with tears, she gave him both her hands. "Good-by, Lem!"
+
+"Good-by, Dorothy," he said solemnly, wringing her hands. "I know just
+how it is. We'll find him for you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TRAPPED
+
+
+When Wade first opened his eyes, after he had been stricken senseless,
+he was first conscious of his throbbing head, and on seeking the reason
+of the pain, was amazed to find his fingers stained with the blood which
+matted his hair. With an exclamation he struggled to his feet, still too
+dazed to think clearly, but sufficiently aroused to be startled by the
+predicament in which he found himself.
+
+He was at the bottom of a rock-walled fissure, about six feet wide by
+twenty feet in length. There was no way to climb out of this natural
+prison, for its granite sides, fifteen feet in height, were without
+crack, projection, or other foothold; indeed, in the light of the
+afternoon sun, one _façade_ shone smooth as glass. If he should be left
+there without sustenance, he told himself, he might as well be entombed;
+then, to his delight, he caught the sound of splashing water. At least,
+he would not perish of thirst, for at one end of the rocky chamber a
+tiny stream fell down the face of the cliff, to disappear afterward
+through a narrow cleft. A draught of the cool water refreshed him
+somewhat, and when he had bathed his head as well as he could, he sat
+down on the warm sand to think over the situation.
+
+Now that his brain was clearing he felt sure that his capture was the
+work of Moran, doubtless planned as a revenge for the events of their
+last meeting, although what shape this revenge was to take the cattleman
+could not guess. He feared that he would either be shot or left to
+starve in this _cul-de-sac_ in the hills. The thought of all that he and
+his friends had suffered through Moran lashed the ranchman temporarily
+to fury; but that he soon controlled as well as he could, for he found
+its only result was to increase the pain in his head, without aiding to
+solve the problem of escape. The prospect of getting out of his prison
+seemed remote, for one glance at its precipitate walls had shown him
+that not even a mountain goat could scale them. Help, if it came at all,
+must come through Santry, who could be counted on to arouse the
+countryside. The thought of the state the old man must be in worried
+Wade; and he was too familiar with the vast number of small canyons and
+hidden pockets in the mountains to believe that his friends would soon
+find him. Before help could reach him, undoubtedly Moran would show his
+hand, in which for the present were all the trumps.
+
+It was characteristic of the cattleman that, with the full realization
+of his danger, should come a great calm. He had too lively an
+imagination to be called a man of iron nerve, for that quality of
+courage is not so often a virtue as a lack of sensitiveness. He who is
+courageous because he knows no fear is not so brave by half as he who
+gauges the extent of his peril and rises superior to it. Wade's courage
+was of the latter sort, an ascendancy of the mind over the flesh.
+Whenever danger threatened him, his nerves responded to his need with
+the precision of the taut strings of a perfectly tuned fiddle under a
+master hand. He had been more nervous, many a time, over the thought of
+some one of his men riding a dangerous horse or turning a stampede, than
+he was now that his own life seemed threatened.
+
+Shrugging his broad shoulders, he rolled and smoked a cigarette. The
+slight exhilaration of the smoke, acting on his weakened condition,
+together with the slight dizziness still remaining from the blow on his
+head, was far from conducing to clear thinking, but he forced himself to
+careful thought. He was less concerned about himself than he was about
+Santry and Dorothy; particularly Dorothy, for he had now come to
+appreciate how closely she had come into his life. Her sympathy had been
+very sweet to him, but he told himself that he would be sorry to have
+her worry about him now, when there was so little chance of their seeing
+each other again. He had no great hope of rescue. He expected to die,
+either by violence or by the slower process of starvation, but in either
+case he meant to meet his fate like a man.
+
+Of Helen Rexhill, he thought now with a sense of distaste. It was
+altogether unlikely that she had been privy to her father's
+depredations, but certainly she countenanced them by her presence in
+Crawling Water, and she had shown up so poorly in contrast with Dorothy
+Purnell that Wade could not recall his former tenderness for his early
+sweetheart. Even if great good fortune should enable him to escape from
+his prison, the interests of the Rexhill family were too far removed
+from his own to be ever again bridged by the tie of love, or even of
+good-feeling. He could not blame the daughter for the misdeeds of her
+parent, but the old sentiment could never be revived. It was not for
+Helen that the instinct of self-preservation stirred within him, nor was
+it in her eyes that he would look for the light of joy over his rescue,
+if rescue should come.
+
+He smoked several cigarettes, until the waning of his supply of tobacco
+warned him to economize against future cravings. Realizing that even if
+his friends were within a stone's throw of him they would not be likely
+to find him unless he gave some sign of his presence, he got to his feet
+and, making a trumpet out of his hands, shouted loudly. He repeated this
+a dozen times, or more, and was about to sink back upon the sand when he
+heard footsteps approaching on the ground overhead. He had little idea
+that a friend was responding to his call, but being unarmed he could do
+no more than crouch against the wall of the cliff while he scanned the
+opening above him.
+
+Presently there appeared in the opening the head of a Texan, Goat Neale,
+whom Wade recognized as a member of Moran's crew and a man of some note
+as a gunfighter.
+
+"How," drawled the Texan, by way of greeting. "Feelin' pretty good?"
+When the ranchman did not reply, his inquisitor seemed amused. "A funny
+thing like this here always makes me laff," he remarked. "It sure does
+me a heap of good to see you all corraled like a fly in a bottle. Mebbe
+you'd take satisfaction in knowin' that it was me brung you down out
+yonder in the timber. I was sure mighty glad to take a wallop at you,
+after the way you all done us up that night at the ranch."
+
+"So I'm indebted to you for this, eh?" Wade spoke casually, as though
+the matter were a trifling thing. He was wondering if he could bribe
+Neale to set him free. Unfortunately he had no cash about him, and he
+concluded that the Texan would not think promises worth while under the
+circumstances.
+
+"Sure. I reckon you'd like to see the boss? Well, he's comin' right on
+over. Just now he's eatin' a mess o' bacon and beans and cawfee, over to
+the camp. My Gawd, that's good cawfee, too. Like to have some, eh?" But
+Wade refused to play Tantalus to the lure of this temptation and kept
+silent. "Here he comes now."
+
+"Is he all right?" Wade heard Moran ask, as Neale backed away from the
+rim of the hole.
+
+"Yep," the Texan answered.
+
+The ranchman instinctively braced himself to meet whatever might befall.
+It was quite possible, he knew, that Moran had spared him in the
+timber-belt to torture him here; he did not know whether to expect a
+bullet or a tongue lashing, but he was resolved to meet his fate
+courageously and, as far as was humanly possible, stoically. To his
+surprise, the agent's tone did not reveal a great amount of venom.
+
+"Hello, Wade!" he greeted, as he looked down on his prisoner. "Find your
+quarters pretty comfortable, eh? It's been a bit of a shock to you, no
+doubt, but then shocks seem to be in order in Crawling Water Valley just
+now."
+
+"Moran, I've lived in this country a good many years." Wade spoke with a
+suavity which would have indicated deadly peril to the other had the two
+been on anything like equal terms. "I've seen a good many blackguards
+come and go in that time, but the worst of them was redeemed by more of
+the spark of manhood than there seems to be in you."
+
+"Is that so?" Moran's face darkened in swift anger, but he restrained
+himself. "Well, we'll pass up the pleasantries until after our business
+is done. You and I've got a few old scores to settle and you won't find
+me backward when the times comes, my boy. It isn't time yet, although
+maybe the time isn't so very far away. Now, see here." He leaned over
+the edge of the cliff to display a folded paper and a fountain-pen. "I
+have here a quit-claim deed to your ranch, fully made out and legally
+witnessed, needing only your signature to make it valid. Will you sign
+it?"
+
+Wade started in spite of himself. This idea was so preposterous that it
+had never occurred to him as the real motive for his capture. He could
+scarcely believe that so good a lawyer as Senator Rexhill could be blind
+to the fact that such a paper, secured under duress, would have no
+validity under the law. He looked up at the agent in amazement.
+
+"I know what you're thinking, of course," Moran went on, with an evil
+smile. "We're no fools. I've got here, besides the deed, a check made
+out to you for ten thousand dollars." He held it up. "You'll remember
+that we made you that offer once before. You turned it down then, but
+maybe you'll change your mind now. After you indorse the check I'll
+deposit it to your credit in the local bank."
+
+The cattleman's face fell as he caught the drift of this complication.
+That ten thousand dollars represented only a small part of the value of
+his property was true, but many another man had sold property for less
+than it was worth. If a perfectly good check for ten thousand dollars,
+bearing his indorsement, were deposited to the credit of his banking
+account, the fact would go far to offset any charge of duress that he
+might later bring. To suppose that he had undervalued his holdings would
+be no more unreasonable than to suppose that a man of Senator Rexhill's
+prominence would stoop to physical coercion of an adversary. The
+question would merely be one of personal probity, with the presumption
+on the Senator's side.
+
+"Once we get a title to the land, a handle to fight with, we sha'n't
+care what you try to do," Moran explained further. "We can afford to
+laugh at you." That seemed to Wade to be true. "If you accept my offer
+now, I will set you free as soon as this check is in the bank, and the
+settlement of our personal scores can go over to another time. I assure
+you that I am just as anxious to get at you as you are to get at me, but
+I've always made it a rule never to mix pleasure and business. You'll
+have a fair start to get away. On the other hand, if you refuse, you'll
+be left here without food. Once each day I'll visit you; at other times
+you'll be left alone, except when Goat may care to entertain himself by
+baiting you. You'll be perfectly safe here, guard or no guard, believe
+me."
+
+Moran chuckled ominously, his thoughts divided between professional
+pride, excited by the thought of successfully completing the work he had
+come to Crawling Water to do, and exultation at the prospect that his
+sufferings while gagged the previous night might be atoned for a
+thousand times if Wade should refuse to sign the quit-claim.
+
+"In plain speech," said Wade, pale but calm, "you propose to starve me
+to death."
+
+"Exactly," was the cheerful assurance. "If I were you, I'd think a bit
+before answering."
+
+Because the cattleman was in the fullest flush of physical vigor, the
+lust of life was strong in him. Never doubting that Moran meant what he
+said, Wade was on the point of compliance, thinking to assume the burden
+later on, of a struggle with Rexhill to regain his ranch. His manhood
+rebelled at the idea of coercion, but, dead, he could certainly not
+defend himself; it seemed to him better that he should live to carry on
+the fight. He would most likely have yielded but for the taunt of
+cowardice which had already been noised about Crawling Water. True, the
+charge had sprung from those who liked him least, but it had stung him.
+He was no coward, and he would not feed such a report now by yielding to
+Moran. Whatever the outcome of a later fight might be, the fact that he
+had knuckled under to the agent could never be lived down. Such success
+as he had won had been achieved by playing a man's part in man's world.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, Moran," he said, finally. "Give me a hand
+out of this hole, or come down here yourself. Throw aside your gun, but
+keep your knife. I'll allow you that advantage. Meet me face to face!
+Damn you, be a man! Anything that you can gain by my signature, you can
+gain by my death. Get the best of me, if you can, in a man's fight.
+Pah!" He spat contemptuously. "You're a coward, Moran, a white-livered
+coward! You don't dare fight with me on anything like equal terms. I'll
+get out of here somehow, and when I do--by Heaven, I'll corner you, and
+I'll make you fight."
+
+"Get out? How?" Moran laughed the idea to scorn. "Your friends can look
+for you from now till snowfall. They'll never find even your bones. Rot
+there, if you choose. Why should I take a chance on you when I've got
+you where I want you? You ought to die. You know too much."
+
+"Yes," Wade retorted grimly. "I know too much. I know enough to hang
+you, you murderer. Who killed Oscar Jensen? Answer that! You did it, or
+you had it done, and then you tried to put it on Santry and me, and I'm
+not the only one who knows it. This country's too small to hold you,
+Moran. Your fate is settled already, whatever may happen to me."
+
+"Still, I seem to be holding four aces now," Moran grinned back at him.
+"And the cards are stacked."
+
+Left alone, Wade rolled himself a cigarette from his scant hoard of
+tobacco. Already he was hungry, for deep shadows in his prison marked
+the approach of night, and he had the appetite of a healthy man. The
+knowledge that he was to be denied food made him feel the hungrier,
+until he resolutely put the thought of eating out of his mind. The
+water, trickling down the face of the rock, was a God-send, though, and
+he drank frequently from the little stream.
+
+By habit a heavy smoker, he viewed with dismay the inroads which he had
+already made on his store of tobacco for that deprivation he felt would
+be the most real of any that he could suffer. He tried to take shorter
+puffs upon his cigarette, and between them shielded the fire with his
+hand, so that the air-draughts in the fissure might not cheat him of any
+of the smoke. He figured that he had scarcely enough tobacco left for a
+dozen cigarettes, which was less than his usual daily allowance.
+
+On searching his pockets, in the hope of finding a second sack of
+Durham, he chanced upon his clasp-knife, and viewed the find with joy.
+The thought of using it as a weapon did not impress him, for his captors
+would keep out of reach of such a toy, but he concluded that he might
+possibly use it to carve some sort of foothold in the rock. The idea of
+cutting the granite was out of the question, but there might be strata
+of softer stone which he could dig into. It was a forlorn hope, in a
+forlorn cause, and it proved futile. At his first effort the knife's
+single blade snapped off short, and he threw the useless handle away.
+
+Darkness fell some time before the cool night air penetrated the
+fissure; when it did so the cold seemed likely to be added to his other
+physical discomforts. In the higher altitudes the nights were distinctly
+chilly even in mid-summer, and he had on only a light outing shirt,
+above his waist. As the hour grew late, the cold increased in severity
+until Wade was forced to walk up and down his narrow prison in the
+effort to keep warm. He had just turned to retrace his steps, on one
+such occasion, when his ears caught the soft pat-pat of a footfall on
+the ground above. He instantly became motionless and tensely alert,
+wondering which of his enemies was so stealthily returning, and for what
+reason.
+
+He thought it not unlikely that Moran had altered his purpose and come
+back to shoot him while he slept. Brave though he was, the idea of being
+shot down in such a manner made his flesh crawl. Stooping, he picked up
+a fragment of rock; although he realized the futility of the weapon, it
+was all he had. Certainly, whoever approached was moving with the utmost
+stealth, which argued an attack of some kind. Drawing back the hand that
+held the stone, the cattleman shrank into a corner of the fissure and
+waited. Against the starlit sky, he had an excellent view of the opening
+above him, and possibly by a lucky throw the stone would serve against
+one assailant, at least.
+
+The pat-pat-pat drew nearer and stopped, at last, on the extreme edge
+of the hole. A low, long-drawn sniff showed that this was no human
+enemy. If the sound had been louder, Wade would have guessed that it was
+made by a bear; but as it was he guessed the prowler to be a
+mountain-lion. He had little fear of such a beast; most of them were
+notorious cowards unless cornered, and when presently a pair of glowing
+eyes peered down into the fissure, he hurled the stone at them with all
+his might. His aim was evidently true, for with a snarl of pain the
+animal drew back.
+
+But just as amongst the most pacific human races there are some brave
+spirits, so amongst the American lions there are a few which possess all
+the courage of their jungle brothers. Actuated by overweening curiosity,
+or else by a thirst for blood, the big cat returned again and again to
+the edge of the hole. After his first throw Wade was unable to hit the
+beast with a stone, although his efforts had the temporary effect of
+frightening it. Gradually, however, it grew bolder, and was restrained
+from springing upon him only, as it seemed, by some sixth sense which
+warned it of the impossibility of getting out of the fissure after once
+getting in. Baffled and furious, the lion sniffed and prowled about the
+rim of the hole until the ranchman began to think it would surely leap
+upon him.
+
+He picked up his broken pocket-knife and waited for this to happen. The
+shattered blade would be of little use, but it might prove better than
+his bare hands if he had to defend himself against the brute's teeth and
+claws.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A WAR OF WITS
+
+
+"Kidnaped? Gordon Wade?"
+
+At Dorothy's announcement, Mrs. Purnell sank, with a gasp, into her
+rocking-chair, astonished beyond expression. She listened, with anxiety
+scarce less than her daughter's, to the girl's account of the event as
+she had it from Trowbridge. Her mouth opened and shut aimlessly as she
+picked at her gingham apron. If Wade had been her own son, she could
+hardly have loved him more. He had been as tender to her as a son, and
+the news of his disappearance and probable injury was a frightful shock.
+
+Weakly she attempted to relieve her own anxiety by disputing the fact of
+his danger.
+
+"Oh, I guess nothing's happened to him--nothing like that, anyway. He
+may have had a fall from his horse. Or maybe it broke away from him and
+ran off."
+
+"Bill Santry found their trail," Dorothy said, with a gesture so tragic
+that it wrung her mother's heart strings. "He followed it as far as he
+could, then lost it." In any other case she would have tried to keep the
+bad news from her mother, because of her nerves, but just now the girl
+was too distraught to think of any one but the man she loved. "Oh, if I
+could only do something myself," she burst out. "It's staying here,
+helpless, that is killing me. I wish I'd gone with Lem up into the
+mountains. I would have if he hadn't said I might better stay in town.
+But how can I help? There's nothing to do here."
+
+"The idea!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed. "They'll be out all night. How could
+you have gone with them? I don't believe Gordon has been kidnaped at
+all. It's a false alarm, I tell you. Who could have done such a thing?"
+
+"Who?" The question broke Dorothy's patience. "Who's done everything
+that's abominable and contemptible lately here in Crawling Water? That
+Moran did it, of course, with Senator Rexhill behind him. Oh!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said her mother, indignantly.
+
+"Lem Trowbridge thinks so. Nearly everybody does."
+
+"Then he hasn't as good sense as I thought he had." Mrs. Purnell arose
+and moved toward the kitchen. "You come on and help me make some waffles
+for supper. Perhaps that will take such foolishness out of your head.
+The idea of a Senator of the United States going about kidnaping
+people."
+
+Dorothy obeyed her mother's wish, but not very ably. Her face was
+flushed and her eyes hot; ordinarily she was a splendid housekeeper and
+a dutiful daughter, but there are limits to human endurance. She mixed
+the batter so clumsily and with such prodigal waste that her mother had
+to stop her, and she was about to put salt into the sugar bowl when
+Mrs. Purnell snatched it out of her hands. "Go into the dining-room and
+sit down, Dorothy," she exclaimed. "You're beside yourself." It is
+frequently the way with people, who are getting on in years and are
+sick, to charge their own shortcomings on any one who may be near. Mrs.
+Purnell was greatly worried.
+
+"What's the matter now?" she demanded, when Dorothy left her supper
+untasted on her plate.
+
+"I was thinking."
+
+"Well, can't you tell a body what you're thinking about? What are you
+sitting there that way for?"
+
+"I was wondering," said Dorothy in despair, "if Helen Rexhill knows
+where Gordon is."
+
+Mrs. Purnell snorted in disdain.
+
+"Land's sakes, child, what put that into your head? Drink your tea.
+It'll do you good."
+
+"Why shouldn't she know, if her father does?" The girl pushed her
+tea-cup farther away from her. "She wouldn't have come all the way out
+here with him--he wouldn't have brought her with him--if they weren't
+working together. She must know. But I don't see why...."
+
+"Dorothy Purnell, I declare to goodness, I believe you're going crazy."
+Mrs. Purnell dropped her fork. "All this about Gordon is bad enough
+without my being worried so...."
+
+"I'd even give him up to her, if she'd tell me that." Dorothy's voice
+was unsteady, and she seemed to be talking to herself rather than to her
+mother. "I know she thinks I've come between her and Gordon, but I
+haven't meant to. He's just seemed to like me better; that's all. But
+I'd do anything to save him from Moran."
+
+"I should say that you might better wait until he asks you, before you
+talk of giving him up to somebody." Mrs. Purnell spoke with the primness
+that was to be expected, but her daughter made no reply. She had never
+mentioned the night in Moran's office, and her mother knew nothing of
+Wade's kiss. But to the girl it had meant more than any declaration in
+words. She had kept her lips inviolate until that moment, and when his
+kiss had fallen upon them it had fallen upon virgin soil, from out of
+which had bloomed a white flower of passion. Before then she had looked
+upon Wade as a warm friend, but since that night he had appeared to her
+in another guise; that of a lover, who has come into his own. She had
+met him then, a girl, and had left him a woman, and she felt that what
+he had established as a fact in the one rare moment of his kiss,
+belonged to him and her. It seemed so wholly theirs that she had not
+been able to bring herself to discuss it with her mother. She had won it
+fairly, and she treasured it. The thought of giving him up to Helen
+Rexhill, of promising her never to see Wade again, was overwhelming, and
+was to be considered only as a last resource, but there was no suffering
+that she would not undertake for his sake.
+
+Mrs. Purnell was as keenly alive as ever to the hope that the young
+ranch owner might some day incline toward her little girl, but she was
+sensitive also to the impression which the Rexhills had made upon her.
+Her life with Mr. Purnell had not brought her many luxuries, and perhaps
+she over-valued their importance. She thought Miss Rexhill a most
+imposing young woman and she believed in the impeccability of the
+well-to-do. Her heart was still warmed by the memory of the courtesy
+with which she had been treated by the Senator's daughter, and was not
+without the gratification of feeling that it had been a tribute to her
+own worth. She had scolded Dorothy afterward for her frank speech to
+Miss Rexhill at the hotel, and she felt that further slurs on her were
+uncalled for.
+
+"I'm sure that Miss Rexhill treated us as a lady should," she said
+tartly. "She acted more like one than you did, if I do have to say it.
+She was as kind and sweet as could be. She's got a tender heart. I could
+see that when she up and gave me that blotter, just because I remarked
+that it reminded me of your childhood."
+
+"Oh, that old blotter!" Dorothy exclaimed petulantly. "What did it
+amount to? You talk as though it were something worth having." She was
+so seldom in a pet that her mother now strove to make allowance for her.
+
+"I'm not saying that it's of any value, Dorothy, except to me; but it
+was kind of her to seem to understand why I wanted it."
+
+"It wasn't kind of her. She just did it to get rid of us, because we
+bored her. Oh, mother, you're daffy about the Rexhills, why not admit it
+and be done with it? You think they're perfect, but I tell you they're
+not--they're not! They've been behind all our troubles here.
+They've...." Her voice broke under the stress of her emotion and she
+rose to her feet.
+
+"Dorothy, if you have no self-respect, at least have some...."
+
+"I won't have that blotter in the house." The strain was proving more
+than the girl's nerves could stand. "I won't hear about it any longer.
+I'm going to--to tear it up!"
+
+"Dorothy!"
+
+For all the good that Mrs. Purnell's tone of authority did, it might as
+well have fallen upon the wind. She hastily followed her daughter, who
+had rushed from the room, and overtook her just in time to prevent her
+from destroying the little picture. Her own strength could not have
+sufficed to deter the girl in her purpose, if the latter had not
+realized in her heart the shameful way in which she was treating her
+mother.
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, child? Look in that glass at your face!
+No wonder you don't think you look like the sweet child in the picture.
+You don't look like her now, nor act like her. That was why I wanted the
+blotter, to remind me of the way you used to look."
+
+"I'm sorry, mother."
+
+Blushing deeply as she recovered her self-control, Dorothy stole a
+glance at her reflection in the looking-glass of the bureau, before
+which she stood, and shyly contrasted her angry expression of
+countenance with the sweet one of the child on the blotter. Suddenly
+she started, and leaned toward the mirror, staring at something she saw
+there. The blood seemed driven from the surface of her skin; her lips
+were parted; her eyes dilated. She drew a swift breath of amazed
+exultation, and turned to her mother, who had viewed the sudden
+transformation with surprise.
+
+"I'll be back soon, mother. I can't tell you what it is." Dorothy's
+voice rang with the suggestion of victory. "But I've discovered
+something, wonderful!"
+
+Before Mrs. Purnell could adjust herself to this new mood, the girl was
+down the stairs and running toward the little barn. Slipping the bridle
+on her pony, she swung to its back without thought of a saddle, and
+turned the willing creature into the street. As she passed the house,
+she waved her hand to her mother, at the window, and vanished like a
+specter into the night.
+
+"Oh, hurry, Gypsy, hurry!" she breathed into the pony's twitching ear.
+
+Her way was not far, for she was going first to the hotel, but that
+other way, into the mountains after Gordon, would be a long journey, and
+no time could be wasted now. She was going to see Helen Rexhill, not as
+a suppliant bearing the olive branch, but as a champion to wage battle
+in behalf of the missing ranchman. She no longer thought of giving him
+up, and the knowledge that she might now keep the love which she had won
+for her very own made her reel on the pony's back from pure joy. She was
+his as he was hers, but the Rexhills were his enemies: she knew that
+positively now, and she meant to defeat them at their own game. If they
+would tell her where Gordon was, they might go free for all she cared;
+if they would not, she would give them over to the vengeance of Crawling
+Water, and she would not worry about what might happen to them.
+Meanwhile she thanked her lucky stars that Trowbridge had promised to
+keep a man at the big pine.
+
+She tied her pony at the hitching-rack in front of the hotel and entered
+the office. Like most of the men in the town, the proprietor was her
+ardent admirer, but he had never seen her before in such radiant mood.
+He took his cigar from between his lips, and doffed his Stetson hat,
+which he wore indoors and out, with elaborate grace.
+
+"Yes, Miss, Miss Rexhill's in, up in the parlor, I think. Would you like
+me to step up and let her know you're here?"
+
+"No, thank you, I'll go right up myself," said Dorothy; her smile doubly
+charming because of its suggestion of triumph.
+
+Miss Rexhill, entirely unaware of what was brewing for her, was
+embroidering by the flickering light of one of the big oil lamps, with
+her back to the doorway, and so did not immediately note Dorothy's
+presence in the room. Her face flushed with annoyance and she arose,
+when she recognized her visitor.
+
+"You will please pardon me, but I do not care to receive you," she said
+primly.
+
+This beginning, natural enough from Helen's standpoint, after what her
+father had told her in Moran's office, convinced Dorothy that she had
+read the writing on the blotter correctly. She held her ground,
+aggressively, between Miss Rexhill and the door.
+
+"You must hear what I have to say to you," she declared quietly. "I have
+not come here to make a social call."
+
+"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I do not wish to talk to you?"
+Helen lifted her brows and shrugged her shoulders. "Surely, it should be
+enough. Will you please stand aside so that I may go to my room?"
+
+"No, I won't! You can't go until you've heard what I've got to say."
+Stung by the other woman's contemptuous tone, and realizing that the
+situation put her at a social disadvantage, Dorothy forced an aggressive
+tone into her voice, ugly to the ear.
+
+"Very well!" Miss Rexhill shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and
+resumed her seat. "We must not engage in a vulgar row. Since I must
+listen to you, I must, but at least I need not talk to you, and I
+won't."
+
+"You know that Gordon Wade has disappeared?" Helen made no response to
+this, and Dorothy bit her lip in anger. "I know that you know it," she
+continued. "I know that you know where he is. Perhaps, however, you
+don't know that his life is in danger. If you will tell me where he is,
+I can save him. Will you tell me?" The low throaty note of suffering in
+her voice brought a stiletto-like flash into the eyes of the other
+woman, but no response.
+
+"Miss Rexhill," Dorothy went on, after a short pause. "You and Mr. Wade
+were friends once, if you are not now. Perhaps you don't realize just
+how serious the situation is here in this town, where nearly everybody
+likes him, and what would happen to you and your father, if I told what
+I know about you. I don't believe he would want it to happen, even after
+the way you've treated him. If you will only tell me...."
+
+Helen turned abruptly in her chair, her face white with anger.
+
+"I said that I would not talk to you," she burst out, "but your
+impertinence is so--so insufferable--so absolutely insufferable, that I
+must speak. You say you will tell people what you know about me. What _do_
+you know about me?" She arose to face Dorothy, with blazing eyes.
+
+"I am sure that you know where Gordon is."
+
+"You are sure of nothing of the kind. I do not know where Mr. Wade is,
+and why should I tell you if I did? Suppose I were to tell what I know
+about you? I don't believe the whole of it is known in Crawling Water
+yet. You--you must be insane."
+
+"About me?" Dorothy's surprise was genuine. "There is nothing you could
+tell any one about me."
+
+Miss Rexhill laughed scornfully, a low, withering laugh that brought a
+flush to the girl's cheeks, even though her conscience told her that she
+had nothing to be ashamed of. Dorothy stared at the other woman with
+wide-open, puzzled eyes, diverted for the moment from her own purpose.
+
+"At least, you need not expect me to help you," Helen said acidulously.
+"I have my own feelings. I respected Mr. Wade at one time and valued his
+friendship. You have taken from me my respect for him, and you have
+taken from him his self-respect. Quite likely you had no respect for
+yourself, and so you had nothing to lose. But if you'll stop to
+consider, you may see how impertinent you are to appeal to me so
+brazenly."
+
+"What are you talking about?" Dorothy's eyes, too, were blazing now, but
+more in championship of Wade than of herself. She still did not fully
+understand the drift of what Miss Rexhill had said.
+
+"Really, you are almost amusing." Helen looked at her through
+half-closed lids. "You are quite freakish. I suppose you must be a moral
+degenerate, or something of the sort." She waited for the insult to sink
+in, but Dorothy was fairly dazed and bewildered. "Do you want me to call
+things by their true names?"
+
+"Yes," answered Dorothy, "I do. Tell me what you are talking about."
+
+"I don't mind, I'm sure. Plain speaking has never bothered me. It's the
+deed that's horrible, not the name. You were found in Mr. Moran's office
+with Mr. Wade, late at night, misbehaving yourself. Do you dare to come
+now to me and...."
+
+"That is not true!" The denial came from Dorothy with an intensity that
+would have carried conviction to any person less infuriated than the
+woman who faced her. "Oh!" Dorothy raised her hands to her throat as
+though struggling for breath. "I never dreamed you meant that. It's a
+deliberate lie!"
+
+In the grip of their emotions, neither of the girls had noticed the
+entrance of Senator Rexhill. Helen saw him first and dramatically
+pointed to him.
+
+"There is my father. Ask him!"
+
+"I do not need to ask him what I've done." Dorothy felt as though she
+would suffocate. "No one would believe that story of Gordon, whatever
+they might think of me."
+
+"Ask me? Ask me what?" the Senator nervously demanded. He had in his
+pocket a telegram just received from Washington, stating that the
+cavalry would be sent from Fort Mackenzie only at the request of the
+Governor of Wyoming. The Governor was not at all likely to make such a
+request, and Rexhill was more worried than he had been before, in years.
+He could only hope that Tug Bailey would escape capture. "Who is this?"
+He put on his glasses, and deliberately looked Dorothy over. "Oh, it's
+the young woman whom Race found in his office."
+
+"She has come here to plead for Gordon Wade--to demand that I tell her
+where he is now. I don't know, of course; none of us know; but I
+wouldn't tell her if I did." Helen spoke triumphantly.
+
+"You had better leave us," Rexhill said brusquely to Dorothy. "You are
+not wanted here. Go home!"
+
+While they were talking, Dorothy had looked from one to the other with
+the contempt which a good woman naturally feels when she is impugned.
+Now she crossed the room and confronted the Senator.
+
+"Did you tell your daughter that I was caught in your office with Gordon
+Wade?" she demanded; and before her steady gaze Rexhill winced.
+
+"You don't deny it, do you?" he blustered.
+
+"I don't deny being there with him, and I won't deny anything else to
+such a man as you. I'm too proud to. For your own sake, however, you
+would have done better not to have tried to blacken me." She turned
+swiftly to his daughter. "Perhaps you don't know all that I supposed you
+did. We were in Moran's office--Mr. Wade and myself--because we felt
+sure that your father had some criminal purpose here in Crawling Water.
+We were right. We found papers showing the location of gold on Mr.
+Wade's ranch, which showed your father's reasons for trying to seize the
+land."
+
+Helen laughed scornfully.
+
+"Do you expect me to believe that?"
+
+"No, of course not," her father growled. "Come on up to our rooms. Let
+her preach here until she is put out." He was on his way to the door
+when the vibrant command in Dorothy's voice halted him.
+
+"Wait. You'd better listen to me, for it's the last chance you'll have.
+I have you absolutely at my mercy. I've caught you! You are trapped!"
+There was no doubting that the girl believed what she said, and the
+Senator's affairs were in a sufficiently precarious state to bid him
+pause.
+
+"Nonsense!" He made his own tone as unconcerned as he could, but there
+was a look of haunting dread in his eyes.
+
+"Senator Rexhill,"--Dorothy's voice was low, but there was a quality in
+it which thrilled her hearers,--"when my mother and I visited your
+daughter a few days ago, she gave my mother a blotter. There was a
+picture on it that reminded my mother of me as a child; that was why she
+wanted it. It has been on my mother's bureau ever since. I never noticed
+anything curious about it until this evening." She looked, with a quiet
+smile at Helen. "Probably you forgot that you had just blotted a letter
+with it."
+
+Helen started and went pale, but not so pale as her father, who went so
+chalk-white that the wrinkles in his skin looked like make-up, against
+its pallor.
+
+"I was holding that blotter before the looking-glass this evening,"
+Dorothy continued, in the same low tone, "and I saw that the ink had
+transferred to the blotter a part of what you had written. I read it. It
+was this: 'Father knew Santry had not killed Jensen....'"
+
+The Senator moistened his lips with his tongue and strove to chuckle,
+but the effort was a failure. Helen, however, appeared much relieved.
+
+"I remember now," she said, "and I am well repaid for my moment of
+sentiment. I was writing to my mother and was telling her of a scene
+that had just taken place between Mr. Wade and my father. I did not
+write what you read; rather, it was not all that I wrote. I
+said--'Gordon thought that father knew Santry had not killed Jensen.'"
+
+"Have you posted that letter?" her father asked, repressing as well as
+he could his show of eagerness.
+
+"No. I thought better about sending it. I have it upstairs."
+
+"If you hadn't it, of course you could write it again, in any shape you
+chose," Dorothy observed crisply, though she recognized, plainly enough,
+that the explanation was at least plausible.
+
+"There is nothing in that," Rexhill declared, when he had taken a deep
+breath of relief. "Your championship of Wade is running away with you.
+What other--er!--grave charges have you to bring against me?"
+
+"I have one that is much more grave," she retorted, so promptly that he
+could not conceal a fresh start of uneasiness. "This morning, Mr.
+Trowbridge and I were out for a ride. We rode over to the place where
+Jensen was shot, and Mr. Trowbridge found there a cartridge shell which
+fits only one gun in Crawling Water. That gun belongs to a man named Tug
+Bailey."
+
+By now Rexhill was thoroughly aroused, for although he was too good a
+jurist not to see the flaws in so incomplete a fabric of evidence
+against him, he was impressed with the influence such a story would
+exert on public opinion. If possible, this girl's tongue must be
+stopped.
+
+"Pooh!" He made a fine show of indifference. "Why bring such tales to
+me? You'd make a very poor lawyer, young woman, if you think that such
+rumors will serve to impeach a man of my standing."
+
+"There is a warrant out for Bailey," Dorothy went on quietly. "If he is
+caught, and I choose to make public what I know and can guess, I am
+sure that you will never reach a court. You underestimate the people
+here. I would not have to prove what I have told you. I need only to
+proclaim it, and--I don't know what they'd do to you. It makes me a bit
+sick to think about it."
+
+The thought made the Senator sick, too, for of late he had seen that
+things were going very badly for him. He was prepared to temporize, but
+there was no need for him to contemplate surrender, or flight, so long
+as Bailey remained at large. If the man were captured, and there was
+likelihood of a confession being wrung from him, then most decidedly
+discretion would be the better part of valor.
+
+"Oh, of course," he confessed, "I am willing to admit that in such a
+community as this you might make trouble, unjustly, for me and my
+daughter. I am anxious to avoid that, because my interests are valuable
+here and I have my daughter's safety to consider."
+
+"Don't think of me," Helen interposed quickly. Above all fear for
+herself would be the shame of being beaten by Dorothy and of having her
+triumph go to the making of Wade's happiness. The thought of that
+appeared far worse to her mind than any physical suffering. "Do what you
+think is right. We are not cowards."
+
+"But I must think of you, my dear. I am responsible to your mother." He
+turned to Dorothy again. "How much do you want?"
+
+"How much? Oh!" She flushed hotly beneath the insult, but she chose to
+ignore it. "There is only one price that will purchase my silence. Tell
+me where Mr. Wade is?"
+
+"Bless my soul, I don't know." The Senator affected a display of injured
+innocence, which sat oddly upon his harried countenance. "I am willing
+to do what I can to save trouble, but I can't do the impossible."
+
+For a moment, in a wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her
+conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking
+the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also
+the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told
+herself that she must keep her countenance, and she did so.
+
+"There is not a man in Crawling Water who does not believe that Race
+Moran is responsible for Mr. Wade's disappearance," she declared. "That
+is another thing that you should consider, for it is one more link in
+the chain of evidence--impressions, you may call them, but they will be
+accepted as evidence by Wade's friends."
+
+Rexhill was considering it, and swiftly, in the light of the visit he
+had had from Trowbridge. The cattleman had left him with a distinct
+feeling that every word spoken had been meant. "If we can prove it
+against you, we'll ride you to hell on a rail." The language was
+melodramatic, but it seemed very suggestive as the Senator called it to
+mind. He regretted that he had supported Moran in his lust for revenge.
+The lawless spirit of the West seemed to have poisoned his own blood,
+but somehow the feeling of indifference as to suffering personal
+violence had been left out, and he realized that the West was no place
+for him.
+
+"Even so," he said pompously, "even if what you say of Moran should
+prove true, it does not follow that I know it, or am a party to it. Race
+Moran is his own master."
+
+"He is your employee--your agent--and you are responsible for what he
+does in your behalf," Dorothy retorted desperately. "Why do you bandy
+words with me like this? You may be able to do it with me, but don't
+think that you can do it with Mr. Trowbridge, and the others, if I tell
+them what I know. I tell you, you can't. You feel safe before me alone,
+but you are in much greater danger than you think. You don't seem to
+realize that I am holding your lives in my hand."
+
+Helen's cheeks blanched at this.
+
+"I do realize it." There was a slight quaver in the Senator's voice,
+although he tried to speak with easy grace. "I assure you, I do and I
+shall be very grateful to you"--his anxiety was crowding out his
+discretion--"if you will help me to save my daughter...."
+
+"I say just what I said before," Helen interposed, courageous to the
+last. There is, many times, in the woman a finer fiber of courage than
+runs in the man.
+
+Dorothy regarded the Senator scornfully, her feminine intuition assuring
+her that he was weakening. She no longer doubted that he knew; she was
+certain of it and happy to feel that she had only to press him harder to
+wring the truth from him.
+
+"Grateful? For helping you? I am not trying to help you. You deserve any
+punishment that could be inflicted upon you, I would say that, even if
+you had not insulted me and lied about me. You are an evil man. I am
+offering you your safety, so far as I can grant, only for the sake of
+Mr. Wade. If it were not for him, I should not have come here at all."
+
+Her sense of approaching triumph had carried her a little too far. It
+aroused Helen to bitter resentment, and when she began to speak Dorothy
+was sorry that she had not kept silent.
+
+"Father, don't do it!" Miss Rexhill burst out. "It is insufferable that
+this woman should threaten us so. I would rather run any risk, I don't
+care what, than give in to her. I won't tolerate such a thing."
+
+"You may be urging him to his death," Dorothy warned her. "I will not
+stop at anything now. If I tell the cattlemen what I know they will go
+wild. I mean what I say, believe me!"
+
+"I know you will not stop at anything. I have seen that," Helen
+admitted. "A woman who can do what you've already done...."
+
+"Helen!" The Senator was carrying with him a sense of gratitude toward
+Dorothy, and in the light of her spirit he was a little ashamed of the
+part he had played against her. "Let's try to forget what has past. At
+least, this young woman is offering us a chance."
+
+"Listen!" Dorothy cried out suddenly.
+
+Outside, in the street, a galloping horseman was shouting to some one as
+he rode. The girl ran to the window and raised the shade to look out.
+The lusty voice of the horseman bore well into the room. "They've caught
+Bailey at Sheridan. He'll be here to-morrow."
+
+"Senator Rexhill," said Dorothy, turning away from the window, "you'd
+better take the chance I've offered you, while you can. Do it for the
+sake of the old friendship between you and Gordon Wade, if for no other
+reason. No matter how bitter he may feel toward you, he would not want
+you in Crawling Water when Tug Bailey confesses. It would be too awful."
+She shuddered at the thought. "Tell me where he is and get out of town
+at once."
+
+"Bailey hasn't confessed yet," Helen cut in gamely.
+
+"No; but he will," Dorothy declared positively. "They'll put a rope
+around his neck, and he'll confess. Such men always do. Try to remember
+the position you are in. You'd be sorry if your father were lynched. Go
+with him, while you can. I know these people better than you do."
+
+The Senator swallowed hard and mopped his damp forehead with his
+handkerchief. There was nothing to do but follow the girl's advice, and
+that quickly, he knew. After all, in the face of death, financial ruin
+seemed a mere bagatelle.
+
+"So far as I have been informed, Wade is confined at Coyote Springs,
+somewhere in the mountains," he said bluntly. "That's all I know of the
+matter. I hope you will find him all right there. He ought to be very
+proud of you."
+
+Dorothy caught her hands to her breast in a little gesture of
+exultation, and the expression on her face was a wonderful thing to see.
+
+"You'll go?"
+
+"In the morning," Senator Rexhill answered.
+
+Eager as Dorothy was to reach the big pine with her message, she could
+not leave without giving Helen such a glance of triumph as made her
+wince.
+
+Then, hurrying to her pony, she rode rapidly out of town into the black
+night which cloaked the trail leading to the pine. She knew that her
+mother would miss her and be anxious, but the minutes were too precious
+now to be wasted even on her mother. She did not know what peril Gordon
+might be in, and her first duty was to him. She was almost wild with
+anxiety lest the courier should not be at his post, but he was there
+when she dashed up to the pine.
+
+"Take me to Mr. Trowbridge. Quick!" she panted.
+
+"He's somewhere between Bald Knob and Hatchet Hill," the man explained,
+knocking the ashes from his pipe. "It's some dark, too, miss, for ridin'
+in this country. Can't you wait until morning?"
+
+"I can't wait one second. I have found out where Mr. Wade is, and I
+mean to be with you all when you find him."
+
+"You have, eh?" The man, who was one of Trowbridge's punchers, swung
+into his saddle. "That bein' so, we'd get there if this here night was
+liquid coal."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A RESCUE AND A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
+
+
+At the end of an hour, or so, the lion withdrew and Wade thought he had
+seen the last of it. He began to pace up and down the fissure once more,
+for now that his thin shirt was damp with perspiration, set flowing by
+the nervous strain he had been under, he began to get chilly again. He
+had just begun to warm up, when he heard the animal returning. He
+crouched back against the cavern wall, but the lion had evidently lost
+the zest for such impossible prey. It walked about and sniffed at the
+edges of the fissure for some minutes; then it sneaked off into the
+timber with a cat-like whimper.
+
+The exhausted ranchman kept his feet as long as he could, but when the
+first rays of the morning sun cast purple shadows into the depths of the
+hole, he could no longer keep awake. With his hands, he drifted the
+loose sand about him, as travelers do when exposed to a snow-blizzard,
+and slept until Goat Neale aroused him, in broad daylight. The Texan
+performed this service by deftly dropping a small stone upon the
+sleeping man's face.
+
+"I just stepped over to inquire what you-all'd like for breakfast this
+mornin'," he said with a grin. "Not that it matters much, 'cause the
+dumb-waiter down to where you be ain't waitin' to-day, but it's
+manners, kinder, to ask."
+
+Wade looked up at him grimly, but said nothing. Just awake as he was,
+his healthy stomach clamored for food, but since none would be given
+him, he knew that he might as well try to be patient.
+
+"Mebbe you'd like to step over to our hotel an' take your meals, eh?"
+The Texan went on, after a short pause. "I've got a pot of coffee bilin'
+an' a mess o' bacon fryin'. No?" He grinned sardonically. "How'd you
+like me to give you some o' this here cabareet stuff, while you're
+waitin'? I ain't no great shucks as a entertainer, but I'll do what I
+can. Mebbe, you'd like to know how I happened to catch you that clump on
+the head yesterday. Huh?
+
+"I was up in the low branches of a thick pine, where you was moseyin'
+along. You was that busy watchin' the ground, you never thought to raise
+them eyes o' yourn. I just reached down and lammed you good with a piece
+of stick, an' here you be, safe an' sound as a beetle in a log. Here
+you'll stay, too, likely, on-less you get some sense, and I don't know
+when that there dumbwaiter'll get to runnin'. It's a shame, too, if you
+ask me, 'cause a man needs his three or four squares a day in this here
+climate."
+
+"How much do you want to give me a hand out of here, Neale?" the
+cattleman demanded abruptly, tired of listening to the fellow's
+monotonous drawl; and after all the chance was worth taking.
+
+The eyes of the Texan glittered.
+
+"Got the money on you?"
+
+"You'd get the money all right."
+
+"Sure, son, I know that--if you had it! I'd just hold my gun on you, an'
+you'd toss the roll up here, without puttin' me to the trouble o' givin'
+you no hand." He chuckled in appreciation of his own humor. "But I know
+you ain't got it on you--we frisked you down yonder in the timber--an' I
+don't deal in no promises. This here is a cash game. If I thought
+tha...."
+
+He whirled about suddenly, looking behind him and seemed to listen for
+an instant; then his hand dropped to the gun at his hip. He never drew
+the weapon, however, for with a horrible facial grimace, as his body
+contorted under the impact of a bullet, he threw his arms into the air
+and reeled over the edge of the hole. A second afterward the report of a
+rifle came to Wade's ears.
+
+"Hello!" the rancher shouted, springing from under the Texan's falling
+body. The instant it struck the sand, Wade snatched Neale's revolver
+from its holster and waited for him to try to rise; but he did not move.
+A bloody froth stained his lips, while a heavier stain on his shirt,
+just under the heart, told where the bullet had struck. The man was
+dead.
+
+"Hello! Hello!" Wade shouted repeatedly, and discharged the revolver
+into the sand. He realized that, although a friend must have fired the
+rifle, there was nothing to show where he was. "Hello!"
+
+"Hello!" The hail was answered by the newcomer, who, thus guided,
+approached the spot until his voice was near at hand. "Hello!"
+
+"Hello! Come on!" The prisoner threw his hat up out of the hole. "Here I
+am!"
+
+The next moment Bill Santry, with tears streaming down his
+weather-beaten cheeks, was bending over the edge of the fissure with
+down-stretched hands. Beneath his self-control the old man was
+soft-hearted as a woman, and in his delight he now made no attempt to
+restrain himself.
+
+"Thank Gawd for this minute!" he exclaimed. "Give me your hands, boy. I
+can just reach 'em if I stretch a little an' you jump." Wade did so and
+was drawn up out of the hole. "Thank Gawd! Thank Gawd!" the old fellow
+kept exclaiming, patting his employer on the back. "Didn't hurt you
+much, did they?"
+
+Before Wade could answer, a patter of hoofs caused him to turn, as
+Dorothy slipped from Gypsy's bare back and ran toward him. She stumbled
+when she had almost reached him, and he caught her in his arms.
+
+"Are you all right? Oh, your head! It's hurt--see, the blood?" She clung
+to him and searched his face with her eyes, while he tried to soothe
+her.
+
+"It's nothing, just a bad bruise, but how--?" He checked the question
+upon his lips. "We mustn't stay here. Moran may have...."
+
+"There ain't nobody here. I wish to Gawd he was here. I'd...." Santry's
+face was twisted with rage. "'Course," he added, "I knew it was him,
+so'd Lem Trowbridge. But we come right smack through their camp, and
+there was nobody there. This here skunk that I plugged, he must be the
+only one. I got him, I reckon."
+
+"Yes," Wade answered simply, as he watched three men from the Trowbridge
+ranch ride up to them. "Where's Lem?"
+
+Dorothy explained that she had set out to find him in company with the
+man she had met at the big pine; but on the way they had met Santry and
+the three cowboys. One of the men had then ridden on to Bald Knob after
+Trowbridge, while the rest had come straight to Coyote Springs. She
+tried to speak quietly, but she could not keep the song of happiness out
+of her voice, or the love out of her eyes.
+
+"Then you did this, too?" Wade wrung her hands and looked at her
+proudly. "But how--I don't understand?"
+
+"I'll tell you, when we're in the saddle," she said shyly. "There's so
+much to tell."
+
+"Santry!" The ranch owner threw his arm fondly across the shoulders of
+his foreman. "You, too, and Lem. I've got all my friends to thank. Say,
+dig a grave for this fellow, Neale. There was a lion around here last
+night, and I'd hate to have him get Neale, bad as he was. Then--" His
+voice became crisp with determination. "Hunt up Trowbridge and ask him
+to pass the word for everybody to meet at the ranch, as soon as
+possible. There's going to be open war here in the valley from now on."
+He turned again to Dorothy. "Dorothy, I'm going to take you right on
+home with me."
+
+"Oh, but...." The gleam in his eyes made her pause. She was too glad to
+have found him safe, besides, to wish to cross him in whatever might be
+his purpose.
+
+"No buts about it. I'll send for your mother, too, of course. Town won't
+be any place for either of you until this business is settled. George!"
+he called to one of the three cowmen, who rode over to him. "I suppose
+it'll be all right for you to take orders from me?"
+
+"I reckon so."
+
+"I want you to ride into Crawling Water. Get a buckboard there and bring
+Mrs. Purnell out to my place. Tell her that her daughter is there, and
+she'll come. Come now, little girl." He caught Dorothy in his arms and
+lifted her on to Gypsy's back. "All right, boys, and much obliged." He
+waved the little cavalcade on its way, and swung into the saddle on the
+extra horse, which Santry had provided.
+
+On the way down through the timber, Dorothy modestly told him of the
+part she had played, with the help of Lem Trowbridge. He listened with
+amazement to the story of her generalship, and was relieved to hear that
+the Rexhills were probably already out of Crawling Water, for that left
+him a free hand to act against Moran. This time the agent must suffer
+the penalty of his misdeeds, but greater even than his pleasure at that
+thought, was Wade's gratitude to Dorothy for all she had done for him.
+He was filled with a wonderful tenderness for her, which made him see in
+the play of her facial expression; the shy lowering of her lashes; the
+color which ebbed and flowed in her cheeks; the free use which she made
+of her red lips, a greater fascination than she had ever before exerted
+over him. There, in the fissure, he had expected never to be at her side
+again, and now that he was so, and knew what she had come to mean to
+him, the old friendship between them seemed no longer possible;
+certainly not from his side. He felt, in its place, all the confusion of
+a lover, anxious to speak and yet struck dumb with clumsiness and the
+fear, never absent no matter what the degree of encouragement, that his
+suit might not find favor with the lady when put into words.
+
+"You're a wonderful girl," he burst out, at last, with a heartiness
+that, in bringing a flush to her cheeks, made the old phrase seem new to
+her ears.
+
+"I'm not at all," she denied shyly. "I just had to do it, that was all.
+People always do what they have to do."
+
+"They do not. Lots of them can't, but you--you're always capable; that's
+what makes you so wonderful, Dorothy!" He pulled his horse closer to
+hers, meaning to put his arm around her, but he dared not attempt it,
+when her dress brushed his sleeve.
+
+"Yes?" She was trembling now far more than when she had faced the
+Rexhills. "What is it?"
+
+His arm dropped to his side, and he suddenly became acutely conscious of
+his appearance, what with his blood-matted hair; his blood-stained and
+soiled face; his generally woe-begone and desperate state. At least,
+before he risked his future on such a question, he ought to make
+himself as presentable as he could.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"But--" She looked at him curiously. "You were going to say something,
+weren't you?"
+
+"Yes; but I'm not going to do it until I can get to a hair-brush, and a
+wash-basin, and a clean shirt," he answered lugubriously. "What I've got
+on my mind is a church-going sentiment and I want to be in church-going
+clothes." The expression of his countenance contributed more than his
+words to the humor he strove for, and she laughed at him, merrily with
+her mouth, very tenderly with her eyes.
+
+"There's the house." She pointed ahead. "Even though I'm riding
+bareback, I can beat you to it. Come on!"
+
+Once Wade was within reach of food, his hunger became insistent, and he
+could not wait for the cook to prepare a meal of fried chicken. He
+foraged in the larder beforehand, and then did full justice to the meal
+put before him. By the time this was over, Mrs. Purnell arrived, and he
+had no chance to get into his "church-going clothes," as he called them.
+He had to tell the old lady all that had befallen him.
+
+"I never would have thought it of that Miss Rexhill," Mrs. Purnell
+declared.
+
+"It wasn't Miss Rexhill, it was her father and Race Moran," Dorothy
+interposed.
+
+"Or the Senator either, speaking merely from the looks of him," her
+mother retorted. "And think of the position he holds, a Senator of the
+United States!"
+
+"That's no hall-mark of virtue these days," Wade laughed.
+
+"Well, it should be. If we're to have people like him running the
+Nation, there's no telling where we'll end."
+
+"It just goes to show how an honest man, for I think Rexhill was an
+honest man when I first knew him, can go wrong by associating with the
+wrong people," said Wade. He could not forget his earlier friendship for
+the Rexhills, and to him the word friendship meant much. "He not only
+got in with a bad crowd, but he got going at a pace that wrung money out
+of him every time he moved. Then, in the last election, he was hit hard,
+and I suppose he felt that he had to recoup, even if he had to sacrifice
+his friends to do it. We mustn't judge a man like that too hard. We live
+differently out here, and maybe we don't understand those temptations.
+I'm mighty glad they've gone away. I can get right down to work now,
+without any qualms of conscience."
+
+"But think of you, Dorothy, out all night in those mountains!" Mrs.
+Purnell exclaimed.
+
+"Mother--" Dorothy smiled tenderly. "You always think backward to
+yesterday, instead of forward to to-morrow."
+
+By then, the first of the neighboring ranchers were drifting in, in
+response to Wade's summons. When all were present, and Trowbridge had
+wrung Wade's hand in a hearty pressure of congratulation, they were
+asked into the living-room, where Santry stood in a corner, munching
+slowly on a mouthful of tobacco and smiling grimly to himself.
+
+"Gentlemen," began Wade, facing the little group of stern-faced men,
+"you all know why we are here. To a greater or lesser extent, we've all
+suffered from Race Moran's depredations, although until lately none of
+us knew his motive. Now, however, we know that there is gold here in the
+valley--on our land--which Moran is trying to get possession of. He has
+proved that he is willing to resort to any villainy to get what he
+wants, and while he and his men are at large our lives and most of our
+ranches are in danger.
+
+"We have tried the law, but it has not helped us. Such little law as we
+have here is entirely in the hands of the enemy. We must now assume the
+direction of our own affairs. Many of you have already served in a
+vigilance committee, and you all know the purpose of such an
+organization. My idea is to form one now to take possession of Crawling
+Water and run Moran and his hired bullies out of the county. Between us,
+we can muster about a hundred men; more than enough to turn the trick,
+and the quicker we get to work the sooner we'll be able to go about our
+business affairs without fear of being shot in the back. My plan is
+this: Let us assemble our force quietly, ride into Crawling Water,
+capture Moran and his followers, and escort them out of the county.
+There must be no lynching or unnecessary bloodshed; but if they resist,
+as some of them will, we must use such force as is needed to overcome
+them."
+
+He stopped speaking, and for some minutes silence prevailed. Then Bill
+Santry shifted the quid in his cheek, spat unerringly through the open
+window, and began to talk. His loose-jointed figure had suddenly become
+tense and forceful; his lean face was determined and very grim.
+
+"Being as I've suffered some from this skunk, and have lived here some
+while, so to say, mebbe I can horn in?" he began.
+
+"Go ahead!" said Wade heartily.
+
+"Gordon here has stated the gist o' this business a whole lot better'n I
+could, but I'd like to make a few additional remarks. We've all been
+neighbors for some years, and in the natural course of things we've been
+pretty good friends. Until this feller, Moran, got to monkeyin' around
+here, there wasn't no trouble to talk about, and we was all able to
+carry on our work calm and peaceful like. But since this skunk camped
+among us, we ain't hardly knowed what a decent sleep is like; he's
+grabbed our range, butchered our stock, shot up our men, lied, and
+carried on high, in general. We've given the law a chance to do the
+square thing by us. All we asked was a fair shake, and we turned the
+other cheek, as the Bible says, hopin' that we could win through without
+too much fightin', but we've been handed the muddy end of the stick
+every time. It's come to a showdown, gents. We either got to let Moran
+do as he damn pleases 'round here, or show him that he's tackled a
+buzz-saw. Most of us was weaned some earlier than the day before
+yisterday. We gradooated from the tenderfoot class some time back, and
+it's up to us to prove it."
+
+He paused and looked around him earnestly for a moment; then, as his
+audience remained silent, he went on:
+
+"I'm older'n you men, an' I've lived a heap in my time. For nearly forty
+years I've been knockin' 'round this Western country without no nurse or
+guardeen to look after me. I've mixed with all kinds, and I've been in
+some scrapes; there's notches on my gun handles to prove that I ain't
+been no quitter. I've rode with the vigilantes more'n once, and the
+vigilantes has rode after me--more'n once; in my young days I wa'n't
+exactly what you'd call a nickel-plated saint. But I never killed a man,
+'cept in a fair fight, an' I don't believe in violence unless it's
+necessary. It's necessary right now, fellers! Moran's gone too far!
+Things have drawed to a point where we've got to fight or quit. In my
+experience, I ain't never seen but one judge that couldn't be bought;
+money an' influence don't count a whoop with him. It's Judge Colt,
+gents! You all know him; an' with him on our side we can round up Moran
+an' his crew of gun-fighters, an' ship 'em out of the country for keeps.
+Now's the time! The quicker we get busy, the quicker the air in these
+hills will be fit for a white man to breathe."
+
+"It's a go with me," Lem Trowbridge declared grimly. "That's what I'm
+here for. How about the rest of you?"
+
+When the other stock men assented, Wade smiled, for he knew their type.
+Honest, hard-working, peace-loving men though they were, when aroused
+they possessed the courage and tenacity of bull-dogs. They were aroused
+now, and they would carry on to the end, with a step as firm and
+relentless as the march of Time. Woe to whoever attempted to thwart them
+in their purpose!
+
+Wade's neighbor to the north, Dave Kelly, spoke up in his slow, nasal
+drawl. "You say there's to be no lynchin'," he remarked. "How about Tug
+Bailey, when he gets here from Sheridan? According to what Lem says,
+Bailey shot Jensen."
+
+"Sure, he did," Trowbridge put in. "We'll just slip a noose over his
+head and make him confess. That'll publicly clear Gordon and Bill. Then
+we'll give him a good coat of tar and feathers and run him out of town."
+
+"That's right," said Santry. "Jensen was only a Swede and a sheepherder.
+This here committee's to protect men."
+
+Kelly chuckled. "Have it your own way," he said. "I'm not particular. As
+it is, there'll be plenty doing."
+
+For an hour or more the cattlemen went over the plan of their campaign,
+which worked out into simplicity itself. Early the next evening they
+would marshal their force outside of Crawling Water, each man armed and
+mounted. After dark they would ride up the main street, where they would
+halt at each crossing, while a squad detailed for the purpose searched
+each saloon and other gathering place for members of Moran's gang. After
+the prisoners were rounded up they would be assembled in a compact body
+and marched to the railroad where they would be set free, under threat
+of instant death if they ever returned to Crawling Water.
+
+Although counting on superior numbers and the morale of his men, Wade,
+who had been chosen to command the little army, knew that there would be
+considerable hard fighting. Moran's people would probably be scattered
+and otherwise unprepared for the attack, but many of them would resist
+to the death. If Moran should attempt an organized resistance, the
+cattlemen meant to storm the town. Once the first shot was fired, the
+fight would be to a finish, for any other outcome than victory would
+spell ruin for the cattle interests in that section.
+
+The prospect was more than serious. Moran had established himself in
+Crawling Water and practically ruled it, surrounded as he was by some
+sixty adherents, the off-scouring of a dozen lawless communities. The
+decent citizens held aloof from him, but on the other hand the lower
+element viewed his reign with favor. The gamblers, particularly Monte
+Joe, who proclaimed himself Moran's lieutenant, had welcomed him, as had
+the saloonkeepers, to all of whom the presence of his men meant gainful
+trade. The better class, in the town itself, was in the minority and
+unable to restrain the unbridled license which flourished everywhere.
+
+No matter how stiff Moran's resistance proved, however, Wade felt very
+sure of the final result. He knew the men in his party and he knew that
+they meant business. He was relieved to believe that Dorothy and her
+mother would be safe at the ranch until after the trouble was over, and
+that Helen and Senator Rexhill had left Crawling Water. The two factions
+were now arrayed against each other almost like opposing armies, and the
+cattleman shuddered to think what his state of mind would have been had
+Dorothy and Mrs. Purnell remained in Crawling Water.
+
+"You'll be entirely safe here," he told them, when he was ready to leave
+for Crawling Water on the following evening. "I shall leave Barker to
+look after your wants, but you won't really need him. There isn't a
+sheepherder, or any of the Moran gang, between here and Crawling Water.
+The fighting will all be in town, thank goodness."
+
+At the word "fighting" Dorothy caught her breath sharply, too proud to
+urge him against his duty and yet afraid for him. He had not been able
+to muster courage enough to speak to her of what was in his heart,
+foolish though that was in him, and he sat there in the saddle for a
+moment, looking tenderly down on her as she stood smoothing out his
+horse's forelock.
+
+"Do be careful of yourself, Gordon," Mrs. Purnell called to him from the
+porch, but he did not hear her.
+
+"I haven't had a chance yet to get into my church-going clothes, have
+I?" he said whimsically to Dorothy, who flushed prettily and looked
+away.
+
+"I don't see what clothes have to do with talking to me," she said half
+coyly and half mischievously.
+
+"Neither do I," he agreed. She had stepped aside and his horse's head
+was free. "I guess they haven't a thing to do with it, but I haven't
+been seeing things exactly straight lately. I reckon I've been half
+locoed."
+
+Touching his horse with the spurs, he loped away to join Santry, who was
+waiting for him on ahead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+BAFFLED, BUT STILL DANGEROUS
+
+
+When Trowbridge left Dorothy Purnell, promising to find his friend for
+her sake, he had assumed a confidence that he was far from feeling. No
+man knew the country thereabout any better than he did, and he realized
+that there was, at best, only a meager chance of trailing the miscreant
+who had succeeded in trapping his victim somewhere in the mountains. A
+weaker man would have paused in dismay at the hopelessness of the task
+he had undertaken, but Lem Trowbridge was neither weak nor capable of
+feeling dismay, or of acknowledging hopelessness. Time enough for all
+that after he should have failed. In the meantime it was up to him to
+follow Moran. He had learned from Santry of the place where Wade was
+stricken down, but how far from there, or in what direction he had been
+taken, was a matter of conjecture only, and the only way to learn was to
+trail the party that had undoubtedly carried the helpless man away
+perhaps to his death, but possibly, and more probably, to hold him
+captive.
+
+Desperate as he knew Moran to be, he did not believe that the immediate
+murder of Gordon Wade was planned. That would be poor strategy and Moran
+was too shrewd to strike in that fashion.
+
+It seemed clear enough that parley of some sort was intended but knowing
+both Wade and Moran as he did, Trowbridge realized that in order to be
+of any assistance, he must be on the spot without delay. He had planned
+rapidly and he now acted rapidly.
+
+One of his men was stationed at the big pine, as he had told Dorothy,
+but all the others in his employ rode with him as swiftly as the best
+horses on his ranch could carry them, to the spot Santry had told him
+of. There they found unmistakable traces of half a dozen or more horses,
+besides the footprints of Wade's mount, and a brief examination was
+enough to show which way the party had gone. Undoubtedly they had taken
+Wade with them, so the pursuing party followed.
+
+It was one thing to follow, however, and another thing to overtake.
+Moran was better versed in the intricacies of big cities than in those
+of the wilderness, but he was shrewd enough to realize that Wade's
+friends would start an instant search, as soon as they should miss the
+ranchman, and it was no part of his plans to be taken by surprise.
+
+Therefore, as soon as he had had his victim thrown into the prison from
+which escape seemed impossible, Moran selected a camp site nearby, from
+which he had a view of the surrounding country for miles around in every
+direction, and scanning the horizon carefully after his vain attempt to
+intimidate Wade, he saw Trowbridge's party approaching, while they were
+still half a dozen miles away.
+
+His first thought was to stay where he was and give battle. In this he
+would have had a good chance of victory, for, by opening fire on
+Trowbridge and his followers as they came up, he could undoubtedly have
+picked off three or four of them before they reached him, and so secured
+odds in his own favor, if it should come to an immediate encounter.
+
+Second thought, however, showed him the folly of such a course. There
+was too much remaining for him to do, and the temporary advantage he
+might gain would not compensate him for the havoc it would make in his
+ultimate designs. He therefore called Goat Neale aside and said:
+"There's a party of Wade's friends coming up from the East, looking for
+him, and I've got to lead them away. You stay here, but keep in hiding
+and take care that nobody learns where Wade is. He'll live for a few
+days without grub and I'll come back and tend to his case after I've got
+this party going round in circles.
+
+"You stay, and the rest of us will all ride off to the north, and
+they'll think we have Wade with us, so they'll follow us, but we'll lose
+them somewhere on the way. Sabe?"
+
+Neale demurred at first to the plan, but consented willingly enough when
+Moran promised him extra pay; so he stayed, and we already know the
+result. Moran, however, followed out his plans successfully enough, and
+before night he reached Crawling Water in safety, while Trowbridge,
+getting word through one of his scouts of Wade's rescue, abandoned the
+pursuit. He had been prepared to shoot Moran down at sight, but he was
+ready enough to leave that work to the man who had a better claim to
+the privilege than he had.
+
+Accordingly Moran had ridden into town, exhausted by the exertions of
+his trip, and had slept for twelve hours before thinking of anything
+else. When he learned on awakening of all that had happened during his
+absence, he was furious with rage. Tug Bailey had been arrested and was
+on his way to Crawling Water in custody. Senator Rexhill and Helen had
+taken an Eastward-bound train without leaving any word for him, and to
+crown it all, he presently learned that Neale had been shot and Wade had
+been found, and that the whole countryside was aflame with indignation.
+
+It was characteristic of the man that even in this emergency he had no
+thought of following his cowardly accomplice in flight. It might be
+hopeless to stay and fight, but he was a fighting man, and he really
+exulted in the thought of the inevitable struggle that was coming.
+
+Sitting alone in his office studying the situation, he felt the need of
+liquor even more strongly than usual, though the habit had grown on him
+of late, and accordingly he drank again and again, increasing his rage
+thereby, but getting little help towards a solution of his difficulties.
+
+He was enraged most of all at Wade's escape from Coyote Springs and was
+still puzzled to think how this had happened, for Senator Rexhill in
+leaving had kept his own counsel on that point, and Moran did not dream
+of his having betrayed the secret.
+
+Not only had the ranchman been able to turn another trick in the game
+by escaping, but he had also evaded Moran's intended vengeance, for the
+latter had had no thought of letting his prisoner go alive. He had meant
+first to secure Wade's signature, and then to make away with him so
+cleverly as to escape conviction for the act.
+
+He realized now, when it was too late, that he had acted too
+deliberately in that matter, and he was sorry for it. He considered the
+departure of the Rexhills a cowardly defection. He was furious to think
+that Helen had refused to listen to him while she stayed, or to say
+good-by to him before leaving. The sting of these various reflections
+led him to take further pull at a silver flask which he kept in his
+pocket, and which bore the inscription, "To Race Moran from his friends
+of the Murray Hill Club."
+
+"So," he muttered, chewing his mustache, "that's what I get for sticking
+to Rexhill." Leaning back in his swivel chair, he put his feet up on the
+desk and hooked his fingers in the arm-holes of his vest. "Well, I ain't
+ready to run yet, not by a jugful."
+
+In his decision to remain, however, he was actuated by a desire to close
+with Wade, and not by any enthusiasm for the cause of the hired rascals
+who were so loudly singing his praise. They were not cowards, nor was
+he, but he had had too much experience with such people to be deluded
+into believing that, when the showdown came, they would think of
+anything but their own precious skins. He had heard rumors of the
+activity of the cattlemen but he discounted such rumors because of many
+false alarms in the past. He would not be frightened off; he determined
+to remain until there was an actual clash of arms, in the hope that
+events would so work out as to allow him a chance to get back, and
+severely, at Wade.
+
+He got to his feet and rolled about the room, like a boozy sailor,
+puffing out volumes of smoke and muttering beneath his breath. When he
+had worked off some of his agitation, the big fellow seated himself
+again, shrugged his massive shoulders, and lapsed into an alcoholic
+reverie. He was applying his inflamed brain to the problem of vengeance,
+when hurried footsteps on the stairs aroused him. Going to the door, he
+flung it open and peered out into the dimly lighted hallway.
+
+"Hello, Jed!" he exclaimed, upon finding that the newcomer was one of
+his "heelers." "What d'you want? Hic!" He straightened up with a
+ludicrous assumption of gravity.
+
+"The night riders! They've...." The man was breathless and visibly
+panic-stricken.
+
+"Riders? Hic! What riders?" Moran growled. "Out with it, you
+jelly-fish!"
+
+"The ranchers--the cattlemen--they've entered the town: they're on the
+warpath. Already a lot of our fellows have been shot up."
+
+"The hell they have! How long ago? Where?"
+
+"Other end of town. Must be two hundred or more. I hustled down here to
+put you wise to the play."
+
+"Thanks!" said Moran laconically. "You're headed in the right direction,
+keep going!"
+
+But the man lingered, while Moran, as lightly as a cat, despite his
+great bulk and the liquor he carried, sprang to the nearest window. Far
+up the street, he could distinguish a huddled mass, pierced by flashes
+of fire, which he took to be horsemen; as he watched, he heard scattered
+shots and a faint sound of yelling. The one hasty glance told him all
+that he needed to know; he had not thought this move would come so soon,
+but luck seemed to be against him all around. Something of a fatalist,
+in the final analysis, he no longer wasted time in anger or regrets. He
+was not particularly alarmed, and would not have been so could he have
+known the truth, that the yelling he had heard marked the passing of Tug
+Bailey, who had confessed but had made his confession too late to please
+the crowd, which had him in its power. Nevertheless, Moran realized that
+there was no time now to form his men into anything like organized
+resistance. The enemy had caught him napping, and the jig was up. He had
+seen the vigilantes work before, and he knew that if he intended to save
+his own skin he must act quickly. When he turned from the window, short
+though the interval had been, he had formed a plan of escape.
+
+"They've brought every man they could rake up," Jed added. "I reckon
+they've combed every ranch in the county to start this thing."
+
+Moran looked up quickly, struck by the significance of the remark. If it
+were true, and it probably was, then Wade's ranch also would be
+deserted. He half opened his mouth, as though to confide in his
+companion, when he evidently concluded to keep his own counsel.
+
+"All right," he said simply. "I guess there's still plenty of time. I've
+got a good horse at the lower end of the street. Take care of yourself.
+So long!"
+
+The man clattered down the stairs, and Moran turned to his desk, from
+which he took some papers and a roll of money, which he stuffed into his
+pockets. In the hallway he paused for a moment to examine a wicked
+looking revolver, which he took from his hip pocket; for, contrary to
+the custom of the country, he did not wear his gun openly in a holster.
+Convinced that the weapon was in good working order, he walked calmly
+down to the street, sobered completely by this sudden call on his
+reserve powers.
+
+His horse, a large, rawboned gray, was where he had left it, and shaking
+his fist in the direction of the vigilantes, he mounted and rode off. He
+meant to make a wide detour and then work back again to the Double Arrow
+range. If the ranch were really deserted, he meant to fire the
+buildings, before attempting his escape. Such a revenge would be a
+trifle compared to that which he had planned, but it would be better
+than nothing, while one more offense would not lengthen his term in jail
+any, if he were caught afterward. He felt in his pocket for the whiskey
+flask, and swore when he found it missing. He wanted the liquor, but he
+wanted the flask more, for its associations; he drew rein and thought of
+returning to search for it, but realizing the folly of this, he pressed
+on again.
+
+The round-about way he took was necessarily a long one and the ride
+entirely sobered him, except for a crawling sensation in his brain, as
+though ants were swarming there, which always harassed him after a
+debauch. At such times he was more dangerous than when under the first
+influence of whiskey. It was close upon noon, and the silvery sagebrush
+was shimmering beneath the direct rays of the sun, when he rode his
+lathered horse out of a cottonwood grove to gaze, from the edge of a
+deep draw, at Wade's ranch buildings. That very morning a gaunt, gray
+timber-wolf had peered forth at almost the same point; and despite
+Moran's bulk, there was a hint of a weird likeness between man and beast
+in the furtive suspicious survey they made of the premises. The wolf had
+finally turned back toward the mountains, but Moran advanced. Although
+he was reasonably certain that the place was deserted, a degree of
+caution, acquired overnight, led him first to assure himself of the
+fact. He tied his horse to a fence post and stealthily approached the
+house to enter by the back door.
+
+Dorothy was alone in the building, for her mother had gone with the
+overly confident Barker to pick blackberries, and the Chinese cook was
+temporarily absent. The girl was making a bed, when the door swung open,
+and she turned with a bright greeting, thinking that her mother had
+returned. When she saw Moran leering at her, the color fled from her
+cheeks, in a panic of fright which left her unable to speak or move. She
+was looking very pretty and dainty in a cool, fresh gown, which fitted
+her neatly, and her sleeves were rolled up over her shapely forearms,
+for the task of housekeeping which she had assumed. In her innocent way,
+she would have stirred the sentiment in any man, and to the inflamed
+brute before her she seemed all the more delectable because helpless.
+Here was a revenge beyond Moran's wildest dreams. To her he appeared the
+incarnation of evil, disheveled, mud-splashed and sweaty, as his puffed
+and blood-shot eyes feasted on her attractiveness.
+
+"Good morning!" He came into the room and closed the door. "I didn't
+expect to find you, but since you're here, I'll stop long enough to
+return your visit of the other night. That's courteous, ain't it?"
+
+Dorothy gulped down the lump in her throat, but made no reply. Realizing
+the importance of a show of bravery, she was fighting to conquer her
+panic.
+
+"You're sure a good-looking kid," he went on, trying to approach her;
+but she put the width of the bed between him and herself. "Each time I
+see you, you're better looking than you were the last time. Say, that
+last time, we were talking some about a kiss, weren't we, when we were
+interrupted?"
+
+"Mr. Wade may come in at any moment," Dorothy lied desperately, having
+found her tongue at last. "You'd better not let him find you here."
+
+"I shouldn't mind," Moran said nonchalantly. "Fact is, on my way out of
+the country, I thought I'd pay a farewell call on my good friend, Wade.
+I'm real sorry he ain't here--and then again I'm not. I'll--I'll leave
+my visiting card for him, anyhow." He chuckled, a nasty, throaty,
+mirthless chuckle that sent chills up and down the girl's spine. "Say,
+what's the matter with giving me that kiss now? There's nobody around to
+interrupt us this time."
+
+Dorothy shuddered, for already she had divined what was in his mind. The
+avid gleam in his eyes had warned her that he would not restrain himself
+for long, and summoning all her strength and courage, she prepared to
+meet the fearful crisis she must face.
+
+"Will you please go?"
+
+"No!" Moran chuckled again, and stepped toward her. "Will you come to me
+now, or shall I go after you?"
+
+"You brute! You coward!" she cried, when she found herself, after a
+desperate struggle, held firmly in his grasp.
+
+She screamed, then, at the top of her lung power until his hand fell
+firmly across her mouth, and she could only struggle with the mad
+strength of desperation. Her muscles could offer him no effective
+resistance, although for a moment the sudden fury of her attack drove
+him back, big though he was; but it was only for a moment. It gave her a
+chance to scream once more; then, closing in upon her, he seized her
+again in his ape-like embrace. She fought like a cornered wild-cat, but
+slowly and surely he was bending her to his will. Her nails were leaving
+raw marks upon him, until the blood ran down his face, and presently
+catching between her teeth one of the fingers of the hand which gagged
+her, she bit it so fiercely that he cried out in pain.
+
+"Curse you, you little she-devil," he grunted savagely. "I'll make you
+pay twice for that!"
+
+"Gordon! Oh, come to me! Quick! Quick!"
+
+Quivering all over, she sank on her knees before the brute who
+confronted her, a figure of distress that must have appealed to the
+heart of any man above the level of a beast. But in the heat of passion
+and rage, Moran had lost kinship with even the beasts themselves. Lust
+burned in his eyes and twisted his features horribly as he seized her
+again, exhausted by the brave struggle she had made, and all but
+helpless in his grasp.
+
+"Gordon! Mother! Barker! Save me! Oh, my God!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE STORM BURSTS
+
+
+The vigilantes had entered Crawling Water at about ten o'clock, when the
+saloons and gambling joints were in full swing. Ribald songs and oaths
+from the players, drinkers, and hangers-on floated into the street, with
+now and then the bark of a six-shooter telling of drunken sport or
+bravado. Few people were abroad; good citizens had retired to their
+homes, and the other half was amusing itself.
+
+So it was, at first, that few noticed the troop of horsemen which swung
+in at one end of the town, to ride slowly and silently down the main
+street. Each of the hundred men in the troop carried a rifle balanced
+across his saddle pommel; each was dressed in the garb of the
+range-rider; and the face of each, glimpsed by the light from some
+window or doorway, was grimly stern. The sight was one calculated to
+make Fear clutch like an ice-cold hand at the hearts of those with
+guilty consciences; a spectacle which induced such respectable men as
+saw it to arm themselves and fall in behind the advancing line. These
+knew without being told what this noiseless band of stern-eyed riders
+portended, and ever since the coming of Moran into Crawling Water
+Valley, they had been waiting for just this climax.
+
+Before the first of the dives, the troop halted as Wade raised his right
+arm high in the air. Twenty of the men dismounted to enter the
+glittering doorway, while the remainder of the vigilantes waited on
+their horses. A few seconds after the twenty had disappeared, the music
+of the piano within abruptly ceased. The shrill scream of a frightened
+woman preceded a couple of pistol shots and the sounds of a scuffle;
+then, profound silence. Presently the twenty reappeared guarding a
+handful of prisoners, who were disarmed and hustled across the street to
+an empty barn, where they were placed under a guard of citizen
+volunteers.
+
+So they proceeded, stopping now and then to gather in more prisoners,
+who were in turn escorted to the temporary jail, while the column
+continued its relentless march. The system in their attack seemed to
+paralyze the activities of the Moran faction and its sycophants; there
+was something almost awe-inspiring in the simple majesty of the thing.
+By now the whole town was aware of what was taking place; men were
+scurrying hither and thither, like rats on a sinking ship. Occasionally
+one, when cornered and in desperation, put up a fight; but for the most
+part, the "bad men" were being captured without bloodshed. Few bad men
+are so "bad" that they would not rather live, even in captivity, than
+come to their full reward in the kingdom of Satan. Frightened and
+disorganized, the enemy seemed incapable of any concentrated resistance.
+As Santry succinctly put it: "They've sure lost their goat."
+
+Not until the troop reached Monte Joe's place, which was the most
+imposing of them all, was real opposition encountered. Here a number of
+the choicer spirits from the Moran crowd had assembled and barricaded
+the building, spurred on by the knowledge that a rope with a running
+noose on one end of it would probably be their reward if captured alive.
+Monte Joe, a vicious, brutal ruffian, was himself in command and spoke
+through the slats of a blind, when the vigilantes stopped before the
+darkened building.
+
+"What d'you want?" he hoarsely demanded.
+
+"You, and those with you," Wade curtly answered.
+
+The gambler peered down into the street, his little blood-shot eyes
+blinking like a pig's. "What for?" he growled.
+
+"We'll show you soon enough," came in a rising answer from the crowd.
+"Open up!"
+
+Monte Joe withdrew from the window, feeling that he was doomed to death,
+but resolved to sell his life dearly. "Go to hell!" he shouted.
+
+Wade gave a few tersely worded orders. Half a dozen of his men ran to a
+nearby blacksmith shop for sledge hammers, with which to beat in the
+door of the gambling house, while the rest poured a hail of bullets into
+the windows of the structure. Under the onslaught of the heavy hammers,
+swung by powerful arms, the door soon crashed inward, and the besiegers
+poured through the opening. The fight which ensued was short and fierce.
+Outnumbered though the defenders were, they put up a desperate battle,
+but they were quickly beaten down and disarmed.
+
+Shoved, dragged, carried, some of them cruelly wounded and a few dead
+but all who lived swearing horribly, the prisoners were hustled to the
+street. Last of all came Monte Joe, securely held by two brawny
+cow-punchers. At sight of his mottled, blood-besmeared visage, the crowd
+went wild.
+
+"Hang him! Lynch the dirty brute! Get a rope!" The cry was taken up by
+fifty voices.
+
+Hastily running the gambler beneath a convenient tree, they proceeded to
+adjust a noose about his neck. In another instant Monte Joe's soul would
+have departed to the Great Beyond but for a series of interruptions.
+Wade created the first of these by forcing his big, black horse through
+the throng.
+
+"Listen, men!" he roared. "You must stop this! This man--all of
+them--must have a fair trial."
+
+"Trial be damned!" shouted a bearded rancher. "We've had enough law in
+this valley. Now we're after justice."
+
+Cheering him the crowd roared approbation of the sentiment, for even the
+law-abiding seemed suddenly to have gone mad with blood-lust. Wade, his
+face flushed with anger, was about to reply to them when Santry forced
+his way to the front. Ever since Wade had released the old man from
+jail, he had been impressed with the thought that, no matter what his
+own views, gratitude demanded that he should instantly back up his
+employer.
+
+"Justice!" snapped the old man, pushing his way into the circle that had
+formed around the prisoner, a pistol in each hand. "Who's talkin' o'
+justice? Ain't me an' Wade been handed more dirt by this bunch o'
+crooks than all the rest o' you combined? Joe's a pizenous varmint, but
+he's goin' to get something he never gave--a square deal. You hear me?
+Any man that thinks different can settle the p'int with me!"
+
+He glared at the mob, his sparse, grizzled mustache seeming actually to
+bristle. By the dim light of a lantern held near him his aspect was
+terrifying. A gash on his forehead had streaked one side of his face
+with blood, while his eyes, beneath their shaggy thatch of brows,
+appeared to blaze like live coals. Involuntarily, those nearest him
+shrank back a pace but only for a moment for such a mob was not to be
+daunted by threats. A low murmur of disapproval was rapidly swelling
+into a growl of anger, when Sheriff Thomas appeared.
+
+"Gentlemen!" he shouted, springing upon a convenient box. "The law must
+be respected, and as its representative in this community...."
+
+"Beat it, you old turkey buzzard!" cried an irate puncher, wildly
+brandishing a brace of Colts before the officer. "To hell with the law
+and you, too. You ain't rep'sentative of nothin' in this community!"
+
+"Men!" Wade began again.
+
+"String the Sheriff up, too," somebody yelled.
+
+"By right of this star...." Thomas tapped the badge on his vest. "I
+am...."
+
+"Pull on the rope!" cried the bearded rancher, and his order would have
+been executed but for Wade's detaining hand.
+
+"I'm Sheriff here." Thomas was still trying to make himself heard,
+never noticing three men, who were rolling in behind him a barrel, which
+they had taken from a nearby store. "I demand that the law be respected,
+and that I be permitted to--to...." He stopped to sneeze and sputter,
+for having knocked in the top of the barrel, which contained flour, the
+three men had emptied its contents over the officer's head.
+
+His appearance as he tried to shake himself free of the sticky stuff,
+which coated him from head to foot, was so ludicrous that a roar of
+laughter went up from the mob. It was the salvation of Monte Joe, for
+Wade, laughing himself, took advantage of the general merriment to urge
+his plea again in the gambler's behalf. This time the mob listened to
+him.
+
+"All right, Wade," a man cried. "Do as you like with the cuss. This is
+mostly your funeral, anyhow."
+
+"Yes, let the ---- go," called out a dozen voices.
+
+By this time the close formation of the vigilantes was broken. From time
+to time, men had left the ranks in pursuit of skulkers, and finding the
+way back blocked by the crowd, had taken their own initiative
+thereafter. Wade and Santry could not be everywhere at once, and so it
+happened that Lem Trowbridge was the only one of the leaders to be
+present when Tug Bailey was taken out of the jail. Trowbridge had not
+Wade's quiet air of authority, and besides, he had allowed his own blood
+to be fired by the "clean up." He might have attempted to save the
+murderer had time offered, but when the confession was wrung from him,
+the mob, cheated of one lynching, opened fire upon him as by a common
+impulse. In the batting of an eyelash, Bailey fell in a crumpled heap,
+his body riddled by bullets.
+
+Meanwhile, Wade and Santry were searching for the chief cause of all
+their trouble, Race Moran. They were not surprised to find his office
+vacant, but as the night wore on and the saffron hues of dawn appeared
+in the sky, and still he was not found, they became anxious. Half of the
+gratification of their efforts would be gone, unless the agent was made
+to pay the penalty of his crimes. Wade inquired of the men he met, and
+they too had seen nothing of the wily agent. The search carried them to
+the further end of the town without result, when Wade turned to Santry.
+
+"Hunt up Lem and see if he knows anything," he said. "I'll meet you in
+front of the hotel. I'm going to ride out and see if I can dig up any
+news on the edge of town. Moran may have made a get-away."
+
+With a nod, Santry whirled his horse and dashed away, and Wade rode
+forward toward an approaching resident, evidently of faint heart, who
+meant, so it seemed, to be in for the "cakes" even though he had missed
+the "roast." A little contemptuously, the ranchman put his question.
+
+"Yes, I seen him; leastwise, I think so," the man answered. "He went
+past my house when the shootin' first started. How are the boys makin'
+out?"
+
+"Which way did he go?" the cattleman demanded, ignoring the other's
+question. The resident pointed in the direction taken by Moran. "Are you
+sure?"
+
+"If it was him, I am, and I think it was."
+
+Wade rode slowly forward in the indicated direction, puzzled somewhat,
+for it led away from Sheridan, which should have been the agent's
+logical objective point. But a few moments' consideration of the
+situation made him think that the route was probably chosen for
+strategic reasons. Very likely Moran had found his escape at the other
+end of the town blocked, and he meant to work to some distant point
+along the railroad. Wade drew rein, with the idea of bringing his
+friends also to the pursuit, but from what his informant had told him
+Moran already had a long start and there was no time to waste in
+summoning assistance. Besides, if it were still possible to overtake the
+quarry, the ranchman preferred to settle his difference with him, face
+to face, and alone.
+
+He urged his horse into a lope, and a little beyond the town dismounted
+to pick up the trail of the fugitive, if it could be found. Thanks to a
+recent shower, the ground was still soft, and the cattleman soon picked
+up the trail of a shod horse, leading away from the road and out upon
+the turf. By the growing light, he was able to follow this at a fairly
+rapid pace, and as he pressed on the reflection came to him that if the
+agent continued as he was now headed, he could hope to come out
+eventually upon the Burlington Railroad, a full seventy miles from
+Sheridan. The pursuit was likely to be a long one, in this event, and
+Wade was regretting that he had not left some word to explain his
+absence, when he suddenly became aware of the fact that he had lost the
+trail.
+
+With an exclamation of annoyance, he rode back a hundred yards or so,
+until he picked up the tracks again, when he found that they turned
+sharply to the right, altogether away from the railroad. Puzzled again,
+he followed it for half a mile, until convinced that Moran had
+deliberately circled Crawling Water. But why? What reason could the man
+have which, in a moment of desperate danger to himself, would lead him
+to delay his escape? What further deviltry could he have on foot? There
+was nothing to lead him in the direction he was now traveling,
+unless...! Wade's heart suddenly skipped a beat and beads of cold sweat
+bedewed his forehead, for Dorothy Purnell and her mother had come into
+his mind. There was nothing ahead of Moran but the Double Arrow ranch!
+If that were the agent's objective point, there would be nothing between
+him and the women save Barker, and the "drop" of a gun might settle
+that!
+
+Never had the big black horse been spurred as cruelly as he was then,
+when Wade plunged his heels into his flanks. With a snort the horse
+bolted and then settled into his stride until the gentle breeze in the
+rider's face became a rushing gale. But the pain which the animal had
+felt was nothing to the fear which tugged at the ranchman's
+heartstrings, as he reproached himself bitterly for having left only one
+man at the ranch, although at the time the thought of peril to the women
+had never occurred to him. With the start that Moran had, Wade reasoned
+that he stood small chance of arriving in time to do any good. He could
+only count upon the watchfulness and skill of Barker to protect them.
+
+Failing that, there was but one hope, that the rider who had gone on
+ahead might not be Moran after all. But presently all doubt of the man's
+identity was removed from the ranchman's mind, for on the soggy turf
+ahead his quick eyes caught the glitter of something bright. Sweeping
+down from his saddle, he picked it up without stopping, and found that
+it was a half emptied whiskey flask. Turning it over in his hand, he
+read the inscription: "To Race Moran from his friends of the Murray Hill
+Club."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+WITH BARE HANDS AT LAST
+
+
+In after years, when Wade tried to recall that mad ride, he found it
+only a vague blur upon his memory. He was conscious only of the fact
+that he had traveled at a speed which, in saner moments, he would have
+considered suicidal. Urging the big black over the rougher ground of the
+higher levels, he rode like a maniac, without regard for his own life
+and without mercy for the magnificent horse beneath him. Time and again
+the gelding stumbled on the rocky footing and almost fell, only to be
+urged to further efforts by his rider.
+
+Five miles out of Crawling Water, the cattleman thought of a short-cut,
+through a little used timber-trail, which would save him several miles;
+but it was crossed by a ravine cut by a winter avalanche like the slash
+of a gigantic knife. To descend into this ravine and ascend on the
+farther side would be a tortuous process, which would take more time
+than to continue by the longer route. But if the gelding could jump the
+narrow cleft in the trail, the distance saved might decide the issue
+with Moran. On the other hand, if the leap of the horse was short,
+practically certain death must befall both animal and rider.
+
+Wade decided, in his reckless mood, that the chance was worth taking and
+he rode the black to the edge of the cleft, where trembling with
+nervousness, the animal refused the leap. Cursing furiously, Wade drove
+him at it again, and again the gelding balked. But at the third try he
+rose to the prick of the spurs and took the jump. The horse's forelegs
+caught in perilous footing and the struggling, slipping animal snorted
+in terror, but the ranchman had allowed the impulse of the leap to carry
+him clear of his saddle. Quickly twisting the bridle reins around one
+wrist, he seized the horse's mane with his free hand, and helped by the
+violent efforts the animal made, succeeded in pulling him up to a firmer
+footing. For some minutes afterward he had to soothe the splendid brute,
+patting him and rubbing his trembling legs; then, with a grim expression
+of triumph on his face, he resumed his journey. The chance had won!
+
+There was less likelihood now that he would be too late, although the
+thought that he might be so still made him urge the horse to the limit
+of his speed. He kept his eyes fastened on a notch in the hills, which
+marked the location of the ranch. He rode out on the clearing which held
+the house just in time to hear Dorothy's second scream, and plunged out
+of his saddle, pulling his rifle from the scabbard beneath his right leg
+as he did so. From the kitchen chimney a faint wisp of smoke curled
+upward through the still air; a rooster crowed loudly behind the barn
+and a colt nickered in the corral. Everywhere was the atmosphere of
+peace, save for that scream followed now by another choking cry, and a
+barking collie, which danced about before the closed door of the house
+in the stiff-legged manner of his breed, when excited.
+
+Wade burst into the house like a madman and on into the back room, where
+Moran, his face horribly distorted by passion, was forcing the girl
+slowly to the floor. But for the protection which her supple body
+afforded him, the ranchman would have shot him in his tracks.
+
+"Gordon!" The overwhelming relief in her face, burned into Wade's soul
+like a branding-iron. "Don't shoot! Oh, thank God!" She fell back
+against the wall, as Moran released her, and began to cry softly and
+brokenly.
+
+Snarling with baffled rage and desire, Moran whirled to meet the
+cattleman. His hand darted, with the swift drop of the practised gun
+man, toward his hip pocket; but too late, for he was already covered by
+the short-barreled rifle in Wade's hands. More menacing even than the
+yawning muzzle was the expression of terrible fury in the ranchman's
+face. For a space of almost a minute, broken only by the tense breathing
+of the two men and a strangled sob from Dorothy, Moran's fate hung on
+the movement of an eyelash. Then Wade slowly relaxed the tension of his
+trigger finger. Shooting would be too quick to satisfy him!
+
+Moran breathed more freely at this sign, for he knew that he had been
+nearer death than ever before in all his adventurous life, and the sway
+of his passion had weakened his nervous control. Courage came back to
+him rapidly, for with all his faults he was, physically at least, no
+coward. He took hope from his belief that Wade would not now shoot him
+down.
+
+"Well, why don't you pull that trigger?" His tone was almost as cool as
+though he had asked a commonplace question.
+
+"I've heard," said Wade slowly, "that you call yourself a good
+rough-and-tumble fighter; that you've never met your match. I want to
+get my--hands--on you!"
+
+Moran's features relaxed into a grin; it seemed strange to him that any
+man could be such a fool. It was true that he had never met his match in
+rough fighting, and he did not expect to meet it now.
+
+"You're a bigger man than I am," the cattleman went on. "I'll take a
+chance on you being a better one. I believe that I can break you with
+my--hands--like the rotten thing you are." He paid no heed to Dorothy's
+tearful protests. "Will you meet me in a fair fight?" Wade's face
+suddenly contorted with fury. "If you won't...." His grip on the rifle
+tightened significantly.
+
+"No, Gordon, no! Oh, please, not that!" the girl pleaded.
+
+"Sure, I'll fight," Moran answered, a gleam of joy in his eyes. He
+gloried in the tremendous strength of a body which had brought him
+victory in half a hundred barroom combats. He felt that no one lived,
+outside the prize-ring, who could beat him on an even footing.
+
+"Take his gun away from him," Wade told Dorothy. "It's the second time
+you've disarmed him, but it'll be the last. He'll never carry a gun
+again. Take it!" he repeated, commandingly, and when she obeyed, added:
+"Toss it on the bed." He stood his rifle in a corner near the door.
+
+"You're a fool, Wade," Moran taunted as they came together. "I'm going
+to kill you first and then I'll take my will of her." But nothing he
+could say could add to Wade's fury, already at its coldest, most deadly
+point.
+
+He answered by a jab at the big man's mouth, which Moran cleverly
+ducked; for so heavy a man, he was wonderfully quick on his feet. He
+ducked and parried three other such vicious leads, when, by a clever
+feint, Wade drew an opening and succeeded in landing his right fist,
+hard as a bag of stones, full in the pit of his adversary's stomach. It
+was an awful blow, one that would have killed a smaller man; but Moran
+merely grunted and broke ground for an instant. Then he landed a
+swinging left on the side of Wade's head which opened a cut over his ear
+and nearly floored him.
+
+Back and forth across the little room they fought, with little advantage
+either way, while Dorothy watched them breathlessly. Like gladiators
+they circled each other, coming together at intervals with the shock of
+two enraged bulls. Both were soon bleeding from small cuts on the head
+and face, but neither was aware of the fact. Occasionally they collided
+with articles of furniture, which were overturned and swept aside
+almost unnoticed; while Dorothy was forced to step quickly from one
+point to another to keep clear of them. Several times Wade told her to
+leave the room, but she would not go.
+
+Finally the ranchman's superior condition began to tell in his favor. At
+the end of ten minutes' fighting, the agent's breathing became labored
+and his movements slower. Wade, still darting about quickly and lightly,
+had no longer much difficulty in punishing the brutal, leering face
+before him. Time after time he drove his fists mercilessly into Moran's
+features until they lost the appearance of anything human and began to
+resemble raw meat.
+
+But suddenly, in attempting to sidestep one of his opponent's bull-like
+rushes, the cattleman slipped in a puddle of blood and half fell, and
+before he could regain his footing Moran had seized him. Then Wade
+learned how the big man's reputation for tremendous strength had been
+won. Cruelly, implacably, those great, ape-like arms entwined about the
+ranchman's body until the very breath was crushed out of it. Resorting
+to every trick he knew, he strove desperately to free himself, but all
+the strength in his own muscular body was powerless to break the other's
+hold. With a crash that shook the house to its foundation, they fell to
+the floor, and by a lucky twist Wade managed to fall on top.
+
+The force of the fall had shaken Moran somewhat, and the cattleman, by
+calling on the whole of his strength, succeeded in tearing his arms
+free. Plunging his fingers into the thick, mottled throat, he squeezed
+steadily until Moran's struggles grew weaker and weaker. Finally they
+ceased entirely and the huge, heavy body lay still.
+
+Wade stumbled to his feet and staggered across the room.
+
+"It's all right," he said thickly, and added at sight of Dorothy's wide,
+terror-stricken eyes: "Frightened you, didn't we? Guess I should have
+shot him and made a clean job of it; but I couldn't, somehow."
+
+"Oh, he's hurt you terribly!" the girl cried, bursting into fresh tears.
+
+Wade laughed and tenderly put his arms around her, for weak though he
+was and with nerves twitching like those of a recently sobered drunkard,
+he was not too weak or sick to enjoy the privilege of soothing her. The
+feel of her in his arms was wonderful happiness to him and her tears for
+him seemed far more precious than all the gold on his land. He had just
+lifted her up on the sill of the open window, thinking that the fresh
+air might steady her, when she looked over his shoulder and saw Moran,
+who had regained consciousness, in the act of reaching for his revolver,
+which lay on the bed where she had tossed it.
+
+"Oh, see what he's doing! Look out!"
+
+Her cry of warning came just too late. There was a flash and roar, and a
+hot flame seemed to pass through Wade's body. Half turning about, he
+clutched at the air, and then pitched forward to the floor, where he lay
+still. Flourishing the gun, Moran got unsteadily to his feet and turned
+a ghastly, dappled visage to the girl, who, stunned and helpless, was
+gazing at him in wide-eyed horror. But she had nothing more to fear
+from him, for now that he believed Wade dead, the agent was too
+overshadowed by his crime to think of perpetrating another and worse
+one. He had already wasted too much valuable time. He must get away.
+
+"I got him," he croaked, in a terrible voice. "I got him like I said I
+would, damn him!" With a blood-curdling attempt at a laugh, he staggered
+out of the house into the sunshine.
+
+For a moment Dorothy stared woodenly through the empty doorway; then,
+with a choking sob, she bent over the man at her feet. She shook him
+gently and begged him to speak to her, but she could get no response and
+under her exploring fingers his heart apparently had ceased to beat. For
+a few seconds she stared at the widening patch of red on his torn shirt;
+then her gaze shifted and focused on the rifle in the corner by the
+door. As she looked at the weapon her wide, fear-struck eyes narrowed
+and hardened with a sudden resolve. Seizing the gun, she cocked it and
+stepped into the doorway.
+
+Moran was walking unsteadily toward the place where he had tied his
+horse. He was tacking from side to side like a drunken man, waving his
+arms about and talking to himself. Bringing the rifle to her shoulder,
+Dorothy steadied herself against the door-frame and took long, careful
+aim. As she sighted the weapon her usually pretty face, now scratched
+and streaked with blood from her struggles with the agent, wore the
+expression of one who has seen all that is dear in life slip away from
+her. At the sharp crack of the rifle Moran stopped short and a
+convulsive shudder racked his big body from head to foot. After a single
+step forward he crumpled up on the ground. For several moments his arms
+and legs twitched spasmodically; then he lay still.
+
+Horrified by what she had done, now that it was accomplished Dorothy
+stepped backward into the house and stood the rifle in its former
+position near the door, when a low moan from behind made her turn
+hurriedly. Wade was not dead then! She hastily tore his shirt from over
+the wound, her lips twisted in a low cry of pity as she did so. To her
+tender gaze, the hurt seemed a frightful one. Dreading lest he should
+regain consciousness and find himself alone, she decided to remain with
+him, instead of going for the help she craved; most likely she would be
+unable to find her mother and Barker, anyway. She stopped the flow of
+blood as best she could and put a pillow under the ranchman's head,
+kissing him afterward. Then for an interval she sat still. She never
+knew for how long.
+
+Santry reached the house just as Mrs. Purnell and Barker returned with
+their berries, and the three found the girl bathing the wounded man's
+face, and crying over him.
+
+"Boy, boy!" Santry sobbed, dropping on his knees before the unconscious
+figure. "Who done this to you?"
+
+Dorothy weepingly explained, and when she told of her own part in
+shooting Moran the old fellow patted her approvingly on the back. "Good
+girl," he said hoarsely. "But I wish that job had been left for me."
+
+"Merciful Heavens!" cried Mrs. Purnell. "I shall never get over this."
+With trembling hands she took the basin and towel from her daughter and
+set them one side, then she gently urged the girl to her feet.
+
+"You!" said Santry, so ferociously to Barker that the man winced in
+spite of himself. "Help me to lay him on the bed, so's to do it
+gentle-like."
+
+Dorothy, who felt certain that Wade was mortally hurt, struggled
+desperately against the feeling of faintness which was creeping over
+her. She caught at a chair for support, and her mother caught her in her
+arms.
+
+"My poor dear, you're worn out. Go lie down. Oh, when I think...!"
+
+"Don't talk to me, mother!" Dorothy waved her back, for the presence
+close to her of another person could only mean her collapse. "I'm all
+right. I'm of no consequence now. He needs a doctor," she added, turning
+to Santry, who stood near the bed bowed with grief. He, too, thought
+that Wade would never be himself again.
+
+"I'll go," said Barker, eager to do something to atone for his absence
+at the critical moment, but Santry rounded upon him in a rage.
+
+"You--you skunk!" he snarled, and gestured fiercely toward the bed. "He
+left you here to look after things and you--you went _berry pickin'_!"
+Barker seemed so crushed by the scorn in the old man's words that
+Dorothy's sympathy was stirred.
+
+"It wasn't Barker's fault," she said quickly. "There seemed to be no
+danger. Gordon said so himself. But one of you go, immediately, for the
+doctor."
+
+"I'll go," Santry responded and hurried from the room, followed by
+Barker, thoroughly wretched.
+
+Dorothy went to the bedside and looked down into Wade's white face; then
+she knelt there on the floor and said a little prayer to the God of all
+men to be merciful to hers.
+
+"Maybe if I made you a cup of tea?" Mrs. Purnell anxiously suggested,
+but the girl shook her head listlessly. Tea was the elder woman's
+panacea for all ills.
+
+"Don't bother me, mother, please. I--I've just been through a good deal.
+I can't talk--really, I can't."
+
+Mrs. Purnell, subsiding at last, thereafter held her peace, and Dorothy
+sat down by the bed to be instantly ready to do anything that could be
+done. She had sat thus, almost without stirring, for nearly an hour,
+when Wade moved slightly and opened his eyes.
+
+"What is it?" She bent over him instantly, forgetting everything except
+that he was awake and that he seemed to know her.
+
+"Is it you, Dorothy?" He groped weakly for her fingers.
+
+"Yes, dear," she answered, gulping back the sob in her throat. "Is there
+anything you want? What can I do for you?"
+
+He smiled feebly and shook his head.
+
+"It's all right, if it's you," he said faintly, after a moment. "You're
+all right--always!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+CHURCH-GOING CLOTHES
+
+
+After his few words to Dorothy the wounded man lapsed again into coma,
+in which condition he was found by the physician, who returned with
+Santry from Crawling Water. During the long intervening time the girl
+had not moved from the bedside, though the strain of her own terrible
+experience with Moran was making itself felt in exhaustive fatigue.
+
+"Go and rest yourself," Santry urged. "It's my turn now."
+
+"I'm not tired," she declared, trying to smile into the keen eyes of the
+doctor, who had heard the facts from the old plainsman as they rode out
+from town.
+
+Wade lay with his eyes closed, apparently in profound stupor, but gave
+signs of consciousness when Dr. Catlin gently shook him. Dorothy felt
+that he should not be disturbed, although she kept her own counsel, but
+Catlin wanted to see if he could arouse his patient at all, for the
+extent of the injury caused by the bullet, which had entered the back in
+the vicinity of the spinal cord, could be gauged largely by the amount
+of sensibility remaining. The wounded man was finally induced to answer
+monosyllabically the questions put to him, but he did so with surly
+impatience. The physician next made a thorough examination, for which
+he was better fitted than many a fashionable city practitioner, by
+reason of his familiarity with wounds of all kinds.
+
+When he arose Santry, who had watched him as a cat watches a mouse,
+forced himself to speak, for his throat and mouth were dry as a bone.
+
+"Well, Doc, how about it?"
+
+"Oh, he won't die this time; but he may lie there for some weeks. So far
+as I can tell the bullet just grazed the spinal cord, and it's the shock
+of that which makes him so quiet now. A fraction of an inch closer and
+he would have died or been paralyzed, a cripple, probably for life. At
+is it, however, barring the possibility of infection, he should pull
+through. The bullet passed straight through the body without injury to
+any vital organ, and there is no indication of severe internal
+hemorrhage."
+
+Santry moistened his lips with his tongue and shook his head heavily.
+
+"What gets me," he burst out, "is that Gawd A'mighty could 'a' let a
+skunk like Moran do a thing like that! And then"--his voice swelled as
+though the words he was about to utter exceeded the first--"and then let
+the varmint get away from me!"
+
+Dr. Catlin nodded sympathy with the statement and turned to Dorothy. She
+had been anxiously searching his face to discover if he were encouraging
+them unduly, and when she felt that he was not stretching the facts a
+tremendous weight was lifted from her mind.
+
+"You are going to stay here?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; oh, yes!" she answered.
+
+"That's good." He opened his medicine case and mixed a simple
+antipyretic. "I'll explain what you're to do then. After that you better
+lay down and try to sleep. Wade won't need much for some days, except
+good nursing."
+
+"I'm not tired," she insisted, at which he smiled shrewdly.
+
+"I'm not asking you if you're tired. I'm telling you that you are. Those
+nerves of yours are jumping now. You've got our patient to consider
+first, and you can't look after him unless you keep well yourself. I'm
+going to mix something up for you in a few minutes and then you're going
+to rest. A nurse must obey orders."
+
+He explained to her what she was to do for the patient and then gave her
+something to offset the effects of her own nervous shock. Then
+counseling them not to worry too much, for there would be no fatal
+result if his directions were followed, the physician mounted his horse
+and rode back to town. Such journeys were all in the day's work to him,
+and poor pay they often brought him, except as love of his fellow-men
+rewarded his spirit.
+
+During the long days and nights that followed Dorothy scarcely left
+Wade's bedside, for to her mother now fell the burdens of the ranch
+household. From feeling that she never would be equal to the task of
+caring for so many people, Mrs. Purnell came to find her health greatly
+improved by her duties, which left her no opportunity for morbid
+introspection.
+
+Santry, too, was in almost constant attendance upon the sick man, and
+was as tender and solicitous in his ministrations as Dorothy herself. He
+ate little and slept less, relieving his feelings by oaths whispered
+into his mustache. He made the ranch hands move about their various
+duties as quietly as mice. Dorothy grew to be genuinely fond of him,
+because of their common bond of sympathy with Wade. Frequently they sat
+together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from
+town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth
+awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without
+permitting a single crackle, she softly laughed at him.
+
+"You needn't be so careful. I don't think it would disturb him."
+
+The old fellow sagely shook his head.
+
+"Just the same, I ain't takin' no chances," he said.
+
+A moment afterward he tiptoed over to her, grinning from ear to ear, and
+with a clumsy finger pointed out the item he had been reading. An
+expression of pleased surprise flooded her face when she read it; they
+laughed softly together; and, finding that he was through with the
+paper, she put it away in a bureau drawer, meaning to show that item
+some day to Gordon.
+
+Under the care of Dr. Catlin who rode out from Crawling Water each day,
+and even more because of Dorothy's careful nursing, the wounded man was
+at last brought beyond the danger point and started on the road to
+health. He was very weak and very pale, but the one danger that Catlin
+had feared and kept mostly to himself, the danger of blood-poisoning,
+was now definitely past, and the patient's physical condition slowly
+brought about a thorough and complete recovery.
+
+"Some of it you owe to yourself, Wade, as the reward of decent living,
+and some of it you owe to the Lord," Catlin told him smilingly. "But
+most of it you owe to this little girl here." He patted Dorothy on the
+shoulder and would not permit her to shirk his praise. "She's been your
+nurse, and I can tell you it isn't a pleasant job for a woman, tending a
+wound like yours."
+
+"Is that so?" said Dorothy, mischievously. "That's as much as you know
+about it. It's been one of the most delightful jobs I ever had."
+
+"She's a wonderful girl," said Wade, with a tender look at her, after
+they had laughed at her outburst.
+
+"Oh, you just think that because I'm the only girl around here," she
+blushingly declared, and the physician kept right on laughing.
+
+"There _was_ another girl here once," said Wade. "Or at least she acted
+somewhat differently from anything you've done lately."
+
+He was well enough now to receive his friends on brief visits, and
+Trowbridge was the first to drop in. Dorothy did not mind having Lem,
+but she was not sure she enjoyed having the others, for she had found
+the close association with Gordon so very sweet; but she told herself
+that she must not be foolish, and she welcomed all who came. Naturally
+so pretty a girl doing the honors of the house so well, and so closely
+linked with the fortunes of the host, gave rise to the usual deductions.
+Many were the quiet jokes which the cattlemen passed amongst themselves
+over the approaching wedding, and the festival they would make of the
+occasion.
+
+"Well, good-by, Miss Purnell," said Trowbridge one day, smiling and yet
+with a curiously pathetic droop to his mouth.
+
+"_Miss_ Purnell?" Dorothy exclaimed, in the act of shaking hands.
+
+"That's what I said." He nodded wisely. "Good-by, Miss Purnell."
+Refusing to be envious of his friend's good fortune, he laughed cheerily
+and was gone before she saw through his little joke.
+
+The next afternoon she was reading to Gordon when the far-away look in
+his eyes told her that he was not listening. She stopped, wondering what
+he could be dreaming about, and missing the sound of her voice, he
+looked toward her.
+
+"You weren't even listening," she chided, smilingly.
+
+"I was thinking that I've never had a chance to get into those
+church-going clothes," he said, with a return of the old whimsical mood.
+"But I look pretty clean, don't I?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, suddenly shy.
+
+"Hair brushed? Tie right? Boots clean?"
+
+To each question she had nodded assent. Her heart was beating very fast
+and the rosy color was mounting to the roots of her hair, but she
+refused to lower her eyes in panic. She looked him straight in the face
+with a sweet, tender, cool gaze.
+
+"Yes," she said again.
+
+"Well, then, give me your hand." He hitched his rocker forward so as to
+get closer to her, and took both her hands in this. "Dorothy, I've got
+something to tell you. I guess you know what it is." Her eyes suddenly
+became a little moist as she playfully shook her head. "Oh, yes, you do,
+dear, but I've got to say it, haven't I? I love you, Dorothy. It sort of
+chokes me to say it because my heart's so full."
+
+"Mine is, too," she whispered, a queer catch in her voice. "But are you
+sure you love me?"
+
+"Sure? Why, that other was only...."
+
+Withdrawing her hands from his, she laid her fingers for an instant on
+his lips.
+
+"I want to show you something," she said.
+
+She went to the bureau, and taking out the paper which she had hidden
+there, brought it to him. It was a moment before she could find the item
+again, then she pointed it out. They read it together, as she and Santry
+had done the first time she had seen it. The item was an announcement
+from the Rexhills of the engagement of their daughter Helen to Mr.
+Maxwell Frayne.
+
+Dorothy watched Wade's face eagerly as he read, and she was entirely
+content when she saw there no trace of his former sentiment for Helen
+Rexhill. He expressed genuine pleasure that Helen was not to be carried
+down with her father's ruin, but the girl knew that otherwise the news
+had left him untouched. She had always thought that this would be so,
+but she was comforted to be assured of it.
+
+"Why, that was only an infatuation," he explained. "Now I'm really in
+love. Thank Heaven, I...." When she looked at him there was a light in
+her glorious violet-shaded eyes that fairly took his breath away.
+
+"Hush, dear," she said softly. "You've said enough. I understand, and
+I'm so...."
+
+The rest was lost to the world as his arms went around her.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Minor changes have been made to make spelling and punctuation consistent
+through the text; otherwise, every effort has been made to be true to
+the original book.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hidden Gold, by Wilder Anthony
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN GOLD ***
+
+***** This file should be named 25043-8.txt or 25043-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/0/4/25043/
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/25043-8.zip b/25043-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cef3ff4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-8.zip
diff --git a/25043-h.zip b/25043-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b945538
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-h.zip
diff --git a/25043-h/25043-h.htm b/25043-h/25043-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef4410c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-h/25043-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8587 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hidden Gold, by Wilder Anthony.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         }
+    hr { width: 33%;
+	 margin-top: 2em;
+	 margin-bottom: 2em;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         clear: both;
+       }
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    div.centered {text-align:center;} /*work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 1 */
+    div.centered table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; text-align:left;} /* work around for IE problem part 2 */
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
+              } /* page numbers */
+
+    .gap      {margin-top: 8em;}
+    .smallgap {margin-top: 6em;}
+    .ispace   {margin-top: 2em;}
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .caption  {font-weight: bold;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem span.i10     {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hidden Gold, by Wilder Anthony
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hidden Gold
+
+Author: Wilder Anthony
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2008 [EBook #25043]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN GOLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>HIDDEN GOLD</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>WILDER ANTHONY</h2>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>FRONTISPIECE BY</h3>
+
+<h2>G. W. GAGE</h2>
+
+<p class="smallgap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK</h3>
+<h2>THE MACAULAY COMPANY</h2>
+
+<p class="space">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1922,</h4>
+<h3><span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACAULAY COMPANY</h3>
+
+<p class="smallgap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 396px;">
+<img src="images/i003.jpg" class="ispace" width="396" height="600" alt="At the sharp crack of the rifle, Moran stopped short." title="" />
+<span class="caption">At the sharp crack of the rifle, Moran stopped short.</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="65%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="10" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">CHAPTER</td>
+<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">I</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Coming of the Sheep</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#HIDDEN_GOLD">11</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">II</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Meeting and a Parting</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">23</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">III</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Jealousy</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">35</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IV</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Gathering Storm</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">44</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">V</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Treachery</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">57</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VI</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Murder</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">73</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Old Trail</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">84</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VIII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Higher Than Statute Law</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">93</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IX</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Battle at the Ranch</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">106</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">X</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Senator Gets Busy</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">114</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XI</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Tangled Threads</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">129</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Desperate Measures</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">144</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Into the Depths</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">156</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIV</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Dastard's Blow</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">171</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XV</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The First Clew</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">181</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVI</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Trapped</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">200</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A War of Wits</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">212</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVIII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Rescue, and a Vigilance Committee</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">234</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIX</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Baffled, But Still Dangerous</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">250</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XX</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Storm Bursts</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">262</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXI</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">With Bare Hands at Last</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">272</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXII</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Church-Going Clothes</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">283</a></td></tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="HIDDEN_GOLD" id="HIDDEN_GOLD"></a>HIDDEN GOLD</h2>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMING OF THE SHEEP</h3>
+
+<p>From his seat on the top of a high ridge, Gordon Wade looked into the
+bowl-shaped valley beneath him, with an expression of amazement on his
+sun-burned face. Pouring through a narrow opening in the environing
+hills, and immediately spreading fan-like over the grass of the valley,
+were sheep; hundreds, thousands of them. Even where he sat, a good
+quarter mile above them, the air was rank with the peculiar smell of the
+animals he detested, and their ceaseless "Ba-a-a, ba-a-a, ba-a-a,"
+sounded like the roar of surf on a distant coast. Driven frantic by the
+appetizing smell of the sweet bunch-grass, the like of which they had
+not seen in months, the sheep poured through the gap like a torrent of
+dirty, yellow water; urged on from the rear and sides by barking dogs
+and shouting herders.</p>
+
+<p>Straightening his six feet of bone and muscle, the cattleman stood up
+and stepped to the extreme edge of the rim-rock, with hardened
+countenance and gleaming eyes. A herder saw him standing there, in open
+silhouette against the sky line, and with many wild gesticulations
+pointed him out to his companions. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>With a quick motion, Wade half
+raised his rifle from the crook of his arm toward his shoulder, and then
+snorted grimly as the herders scrambled for shelter. "Coyotes!" he
+muttered, reflecting that constant association with the beasts that such
+men tended, seemed to make cowards of them all.</p>
+
+<p>With an ominous shake of his head, he went back on the ridge to his
+waiting horse, eager to bear word of the invasion to Santry, his ranch
+foreman and closest friend. Thrusting the short-barreled rifle into its
+scabbard beneath the stirrup leather, he mounted and rode rapidly away.</p>
+
+<p>Dusk was gathering as he pushed his way through the willows which
+fringed Piah Creek and came out into the clearing which held his ranch
+buildings. Nestling against the foot of a high bluff with the clear
+waters of the creek sparkling a scant fifty yards from the door, the log
+ranch house remained hidden until one was almost upon it. To the left,
+at the foot of a long slope, the corrals and out-buildings were
+situated, while beyond them a range of snow-capped mountains rose in
+majestic grandeur. Back of the house, at the top of the bluff, a broad
+tableland extended for miles; this, with Crawling Water Valley,
+comprising the fine range land, on which fattened three thousand head of
+cattle, carrying the Wade brand, the Double Arrow. Barely an hour
+before, the owner had surveyed the scene with more than satisfaction,
+exulting in the promise of prosperity it seemed to convey. Now all his
+business future was threatened by the coming of the sheep.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p><p>After putting his horse in the corral, the ranch owner turned toward the
+house. As he walked slowly up the hill, he made a fine figure of a man;
+tall, straight, and bronzed like an Indian. His countenance in repose
+was frank and cheerful, and he walked with the free, swinging stride of
+an out-door man in full enjoyment of bodily health and vigor. Entering
+the cabin by the open door, he passed through to the rear where a
+rattling of pots and pans and an appetizing smell of frying bacon told
+that supper was in progress.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Santry was standing by the stove, turning the bacon in its sizzling
+grease, with a knack which told of much experience in camp cookery. The
+face which the lean and grizzled plainsman turned toward his friend was
+seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles in the leathery skin, the result of
+years of exposure to all kinds of weather.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Gordon!" he exclaimed. His pale blue eyes showed like pin points
+under the shaggy, gray brows. "You're back early, just in time for me to
+remark that if we don't get a pot-wrastler for this here outfit pretty
+durn quick, the boys'll be cookin' their own chuck. I'm blamed if I'll
+herd this stove much longer."</p>
+
+<p>Wade smiled as he passed into the adjoining room to remove his spurs and
+chaps. "There's a Chinese coming up from town to-morrow," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Santry peered across the stove to watch him as he moved about his room.
+The week before, a large picture of an extremely beautiful girl, which
+she had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>sent to Wade and which at first he had seemed to consider his
+most precious ornament, had fallen face downward on the table. Santry
+was curious to see how long it would be before Wade would set it up
+again, and he chuckled to himself when he saw that no move was made to
+do so. Wade had presented Santry to the girl some months before, when
+the two men were on a cattle-selling trip to Chicago, and the old
+plainsman had not cared for her, although he had recognized her beauty
+and knew that she was wealthy in her own right, and moreover was the
+only child of a famous United States Senator.</p>
+
+<p>"There's thunder to pay over in the valley, Bill." Wade had produced
+"makings," and rolled himself a cigarette as he watched the foreman
+cooking. "Sheep&mdash;thousands of them&mdash;are coming in."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" Santry straightened up with a jerk which nearly capsized the
+frying pan. "Sheep? On our range? You ain't kiddin' me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope. Wish I was, but it's a fact. The sheep are feeding on the grass
+that we hoped to save against the winter. It's the Jensen outfit, I
+could make that out from where I stood."</p>
+
+<p>"Hell!" Stamping angrily across the floor, Santry gazed out into the
+twilight. "That dirty, low-lived Swede? But we'll fix him, boy. I know
+his breed, the skunk! I'll...." The veins in the old plainsman's throat
+stood out and the pupils of his eyes contracted. "I'll run his blamed
+outfit out of the valley before noon termorrer. I'll make Jensen
+wish...."</p>
+
+<p>"Steady, Bill!" Wade interposed, before the other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>could voice the
+threat. "Violence may come later on perhaps; but right now we must try
+to avoid a fight."</p>
+
+<p>"But by the great horned toad...!"</p>
+
+<p>Santry stretched out his powerful hands and slowly clenched his fingers.
+He was thinking of the pleasure it would give him to fasten them on
+Jensen.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing puzzles me," Wade went on, flecking his cigarette through the
+window. "Jensen would never dare to come in here on his own initiative.
+He knows that we cowmen have controlled this valley for years, and he's
+no fighter. There's lots of good grass on the other side of the
+mountains, and he knows that as well as we do. Why does he take chances,
+then, on losing his stock, and maybe some of his herders by butting in
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I want to know," Santry immediately agreed, as though the
+thought were his own. "Answer me that! By the great horned toad! If I
+had my way...."</p>
+
+<p>"This country isn't what it was ten years ago, Bill. We're supposed to
+have courts here now, you know." Santry sighed heavily. "To-morrow,"
+Wade continued, "I'll ride over and have a talk with whoever's in charge
+of the outfit. Maybe I can learn something. You stay here and keep Kelly
+and the rest quiet if they get wind of what's going on and seem inclined
+to show fight. I've been, in a way, looking for trouble ever since we
+refused to let that fellow, Moran, get a foothold in the valley. If he's
+back of this, we've got a clever man to fight."</p>
+
+<p>"There's another <i>hombre</i> I'd like awful well to get <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>my hands on to,"
+declared Santry belligerently. "Damned oily, greedy land shark! All
+right, all right! Needn't say nothin', Don. You're the brains of this
+here outfit, an' 'thout you say the word, I'll behave. But when the time
+comes and you want a fightin' man, just let me at him! When you want to
+run some of these here crooks outer the country, you whisper quiet like
+to old Bill Santry. Until then, I'll wait. That is&mdash;" He waved a warning
+finger at Wade.&mdash;"That is, up to a certain point! We don't want war,
+that is to say, to want it, you understand me! But by the great horned
+toad, I ain't a-goin' to let no lousy, empty headed, stinkin',
+sheepherdin' Swede wipe his feet on me. No, siree, not by no means!"</p>
+
+<p>Wade made no reply to this, and with a further admonitory shake of his
+grizzled head, the old man resumed his cooking.</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure that Chink'll be over in the mornin'?" he asked anxiously,
+after a little; and Wade nodded abstractedly. "Cookin' ain't no job for
+a white man in this weather. Breakin' rock in Hell would be plumb cool
+alongside of it." He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of
+his hand. "Say, do you remember them biscuits you made over in the
+Painted Rock country? The batch I et ain't digisted yet.</p>
+
+<p>"Every time I cook a meal," he went on, chuckling, "I think about the
+time Flour Sack Jim hired out to wrastle grub for that Englishman. Flour
+Sack was one of your real old timers, rough and ready, with a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>heart as
+big as a bucket, but he wouldn't bend his knee to no man livin'. The
+English jasper was all kinds of a swell, with money enough to burn a wet
+dog. For family reasons, he'd bought him a ranch and started to raise
+hosses. He wore one of these here two-peaked hats, with a bow on top,
+and he always had an eyeglass screwed into one eye.</p>
+
+<p>"The first night after Flour Sack come on his job, he got up a mess of
+jack-rabbit stew, and stickin' his head out the door, yelled in real
+round-up style&mdash;'Come and git it!' Then he piled up his own plate and
+started in ter eat. In about ten minutes, in walks the English dude, and
+when he seen the cook eatin' away, he rares back and says,
+haughty-like&mdash;'Bless me soul, I cawn't eat with me servants, doncher
+know.' Flour Sack never bats an eye, but says, with his mouth full 'Take
+a cheer,' he says, 'an' wait until I git through.'"</p>
+
+<p>Although Wade had heard the story before, he laughed pleasantly as
+Santry began to dish up the food; then the latter summoned the hired
+men.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind, now, Bill," Wade admonished. "Not a word about the sheep."</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, after a restless night, the young rancher set out
+alone for the sheep camp. He was more than ever concerned over the
+outlook, because sleep had brought to his pillow visions of cattle
+starving on a denuded range, and of Santry and Race Moran engaged in a
+death struggle. Particularly because of the danger of this, he had
+insisted upon Santry staying at home. The old plainsman, scarred
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>veteran of many a frontier brawl, was too quick tempered and too
+proficient with his six-shooter to take back-talk from the despised
+sheep herders or to bandy words with a man he feared and hated. Wade was
+becoming convinced that Moran was responsible for the invasion of the
+range, although still at a loss for his reasons. The whole affair was
+marked with Moran's handiwork and the silent swiftness of his methods.</p>
+
+<p>This Race Moran was a stranger who had come to Crawling Water some
+months before, and for reasons best known to himself, had been trying to
+ingratiate himself in the neighborhood, but, although he seemed to have
+plenty of funds, the ranch and stock men did not take kindly to his
+advances. He posed as the agent of some Eastern capitalists, and he had
+opened an office which for sumptuous appointments had never been equaled
+in that part of the country; but he had not been able to buy or lease
+land at the prices he offered and his business apparently had not
+prospered. Then sheep had begun to appear in great flocks in various
+parts of the surrounding country and some of these flocks to overflow
+into Crawling Water Valley. Moran denied, at first, that they had come
+at his instance, but later on, he tacitly admitted to the protesting
+cattlemen that he had a certain amount of interest in sheep raising.</p>
+
+<p>More far-sighted than some of his neighbors, Wade had leased a large
+strip of land in the valley for use as winter range. Moran had seemed to
+want this land badly, and had offered a really fair price for it, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>but
+Wade had not cared to sell. Relying upon his privilege as lessee, Wade
+had not feared the approach of the sheep, and he had no reason to wish
+to dispose of his holdings. Now, it began to look as if the purpose was
+to "sheep" him out of his own territory, so that the agent might buy up
+the lease and homestead rights on practically his own terms. The thing
+had been done before in various parts of the cattle country.</p>
+
+<p>Cattle and sheep cannot live on the same range, and when sheep take
+possession of a country, cattle must move out of it, or starve. No
+wonder, then, that the cattlemen of Crawling Water Valley were aroused.
+Their livelihood was slipping away from them, day by day, for unless
+prompt steps were taken the grass would be ruined by the woolly plague.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, Gordon Wade, a leader in the cattle faction, had been firm for
+peaceful measures though some of the ranchers had threatened an open war
+on the herders. "Avoid bloodshed at almost any cost," had been his
+advice, and he had done his best to restrain the more hot-headed members
+of his party, who were for shooting the sheep and driving out the
+herders at the rifle point. But there was a limit, even to Wade's
+patience, and his jaws squared grimly as he considered the probable
+result, should Moran and his followers, the sheep owners, persist in
+their present course of action.</p>
+
+<p>It was still very early in the morning when Wade arrived at the herder's
+camp. Oscar Jensen, a short, thick-set man, with an unwholesome, heavy
+face, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>stepped out of the little tent as the rancher rode up.</p>
+
+<p>"Mornin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning!" The cattleman affected a cheerfulness which he did not
+feel. "Are these your sheep, Mr. Jensen?" He waved in the direction of
+the grazing band, a dirty white patch on the green of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you don't know that you are on Double Arrow land? I've ridden
+over to ask you to move your sheep. They're spoiling our grass."</p>
+
+<p>Jensen grinned sardonically, for he had been expecting Wade's visit and
+was prepared for it.</p>
+
+<p>"I got a right here," he said. "There's plenty good grass here and I
+take my sheep where they get fat. This is government land."</p>
+
+<p>"It is government land," Wade quietly acknowledged, "but you have no
+right on it. I control this range, I've paid for it, and unless you move
+within the next twelve hours you'll be arrested for trespass."</p>
+
+<p>The sheepman's sullen face darkened with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Who'll do it? The sheriff won't, and I'm not afeerd of you cattlemen.
+My sheep must eat as well as your cattle, and I got a good right here. I
+won't move."</p>
+
+<p>"Then remember that I warned you if you get into trouble, Jensen.
+There's plenty of open range and good water on the other side of the
+hills. I advise you to trail your sheep there before it is too late.
+Don't think that Race Moran can save you from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>law. Moran is not
+running this valley, and don't you forget it."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know Moran's backin' me?" The Swede could not conceal his
+surprise. "You can't bluff me, Wade. I know my rights, and I'm goin' to
+stick to 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"The devil you say!" Now that he was sure of Moran's complicity in the
+matter, Wade felt himself becoming angry, in spite of his resolve to
+keep cool. "You'd best listen to reason and pull out while you're able
+to travel. There are men in this valley who won't waste time in talk
+when they know you're here."</p>
+
+<p>"Bah!" Jensen snorted contemptuously. "I can take care of myself. I know
+what I'm doin', I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"You may, but you don't act like it," was Wade's parting remark, as he
+turned his horse and rode off.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to hell!" the Swede shouted after him.</p>
+
+<p>Heading toward Crawling Water, the ranch owner rode rapidly over the
+sun-baked ground, too full of rage to take notice of anything except his
+own helplessness. The sting of Jensen's impudence lay in Wade's
+realization that to enlist the aid of the sheriff against the sheep man
+would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible. There was very
+little law in that region, and what little there was seemed, somehow, to
+have been taken under the direction of Race Moran.</p>
+
+<p>It was now broad day and the prairie warmed to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>the blazing sun. Long,
+rolling stretches of grass, topped with rocks and alkaline sand, gave
+back a blinding glare like the reflection of a summer sea, from which
+arose a haze of gray dust like ocean mists over distant reaches. Far to
+the South, a lone butte lifted its corrugated front in forbidding
+majesty.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the summit of the butte was a greenish-brown plateau of sagebrush
+and bunch-grass. Behind this mesa, a range of snow-topped mountains cut
+the horizon with their white peaks, and in their deep and gloomy canyons
+lurked great shadows of cool, rich green. As far as the eye could see,
+there was no sign of life save Wade and his mount.</p>
+
+<p>The horse's feet kicked up a cloud of yellow dust that hung in the air
+like smoke from a battery of cannon. It enveloped the ranchman, who rode
+with the loose seat and straight back of his kind; it came to lie deeply
+on his shoulders and on his broad-brimmed Stetson hat, and in the
+wrinkles of the leather chaps that encased his legs. He looked steadily
+ahead, from under reddened eyelids, over the trackless plain that
+encompassed him. At a pace which would speedily cover the twenty odd
+miles to Crawling Water, he rode on his way to see Race Moran.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours later Oscar Jensen was shot from behind as he was walking
+alone, a little distance from his camp. He fell dead and his assassin
+disappeared without being seen.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>A MEETING AND A PARTING</h3>
+
+<p>Had some one of Gordon Wade's multitude of admirers in the East seen him
+as he stood looking out over his Wyoming ranch, he might have recognized
+the true cowboy composure with which the ranchman faced the coming
+storm, but he would not have recognized the stripling who had won
+scholastic and athletic honors at Princeton a few short years before,
+and who had spent a year after graduating in aimless travel and reckless
+adventure.</p>
+
+<p>After flitting rapidly and at random almost all over the habitable
+globe, he had returned to his home in New York with some thought of
+settling down there, but the old family mansion was empty excepting for
+the servants, and his sense of loneliness and sorrow for the loved ones
+who were no longer there to greet him, drove him on speedily and he
+turned toward the West to explore his own country last of all, as so
+many other travelers do.</p>
+
+<p>Attracted by the surpassing beauty of the country, he had lingered in
+Wyoming long enough to feel fascination of the ranch life that was then
+to be found in all its perfection in the wilder part of that State, and
+realizing that he had found the precise location and vocation that
+suited him, he had converted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>his modest fortune into cash, and invested
+all in the Double Arrow Ranch.</p>
+
+<p>But on his way thither, he had stopped in Chicago, and there he had come
+face to face with Romance.</p>
+
+<p>Before he had gone a dozen steps after getting off the train, some one
+dealt him a mighty blow between the shoulders, that well nigh sent him
+spinning. Before he could recover himself, he was caught from behind and
+hurled headlong into a taxicab.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard of Western hospitality before," he said, calmly, before he
+could see who his assailant was, "but you seem to be hard up for
+guests."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said his college chum, George Stout, grinning happily as he
+clambered into the taxi, "but I wasn't taking chances; somebody else
+might have seen you first."</p>
+
+<p>Followed three feverish days and nights; then as they sat in pajamas in
+Stout's apartment, Wade said: "I don't imagine there is anything more to
+see or do in this hectic city of yours, and I am free to say I don't
+like it; I think I'll move on."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," said Stout, with the grin that endeared him to everybody that
+ever met him. "You've only seen the outside edges so far. To-night you
+are going to break into society."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they have society here?" asked Wade.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they call it that," still grinning, "anyhow you'll be interested,
+not to say amused. The game is new as yet, but they go through the
+motions, and Oh, boy, how lavish they are! You'll see everything money
+can buy this evening, and probably meet people <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>you wouldn't be likely
+to run across anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>"You're bidden to appear, sir, at the ornate mansion of a Senator of the
+United States&mdash;the Senator, perhaps, I should say, I've secured the
+invitation, and Mrs. Rexhill will never recognize me again if you don't
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"Would that be serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very serious. I am counsel for one of the Senator's companies."</p>
+
+<p>"And does that imply social obligation?"</p>
+
+<p>"It does with Mrs. Rexhill."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well, I'll go anywhere once, but who is Mrs. Rexhill? I
+suppose, of course, she is the Senator's wife, but who is she in
+society? I never heard of her."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't; it isn't what she is, it is what she wants to be. You
+must not laugh at her; she is doing the best she can. You'll admit one
+thing readily enough when you see her. She is probably the handsomest
+woman of her age in Chicago, and she isn't more than forty. Where the
+Senator found her, I can't say, but she was his wife when he made his
+first strike in Denver, and I will say to his credit that he has always
+been a devoted husband."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to hear something to his credit," said Wade dryly. "The
+general impression I've gathered from reading the newspapers lately,
+hasn't been of the most exalted sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," replied Stout, and his habitual grin faded away as he spoke.
+"A man in public life always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>makes enemies, and the Senator has plenty
+of them. It almost seems sometimes that he has more enemies than
+friends, and yet he has certainly been a very successful man, not only
+in politics, but in business. He has more irons in the fire than any one
+else I know, and somehow or other he seems to put everything through. I
+doubt if he could do so well if he was not at the same time a political
+power."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Wade, still more dryly. "I have heard the two facts
+mentioned together."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," said Stout, more earnestly than he was in the habit of
+speaking, "you mustn't put too much faith in what the newspapers say. I
+know how they talk about him in the other party, but I happen to know
+him pretty well personally, and there is a good side to him as I suppose
+there is to everybody. Anyhow, he pays me well for my professional
+services, and I have seen nothing thus far that leads me to be disloyal
+to him."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Wade's sensitive ear that his friend was speaking with a
+large mental reservation, but wisely reflecting that the matter did not
+concern him, he said no more, and when evening came, he went, willingly
+enough, to make the acquaintance of the man who was then counted as one
+of the greatest political powers in the country. Nor had he any
+premonition that in the near future he and his host of the evening would
+be engaged in a life and death struggle.</p>
+
+<p>Of all that, however, there was no present indication whatever. On the
+contrary, the great man welcomed him with all the suavity of manner for
+which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>he was equally as famous as he was for the over-bearing rudeness
+he often displayed when his will was disputed. This latter trait had won
+for him the nickname of the Czar of American Politics; but he was an
+adroit politician, not lacking in courtesy to guests in his own house.
+Moreover, he was keen in his appraisal of men and quick to see that a
+man of Wade's type would be more valuable to him as an ally than as a
+foe.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, he presented the young aristocrat to Mrs. Rexhill, who
+openly showed her delight in meeting one of such distinguished
+appearance, and with a great display of cordiality, she introduced him
+to her daughter Helen.</p>
+
+<p>"It is her coming-out party, Mr. Wade," she said, gushingly, "and you
+must do all you can to make it a happy occasion."</p>
+
+<p>One glance at the beautiful girl who stood before him was enough to
+determine Wade that her evening should be as happy as he could make it.
+The glaring ostentation of the house and its equipment had offended his
+fastidious taste when he entered, and the sight of the really handsome,
+but vulgarly overdressed and richly be-jeweled mother, had made him
+shudder inwardly, but when he looked into Helen's eyes, he forgot all
+his first impressions and imagined himself in Fairyland for the
+remainder of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>An older head than his might easily have been turned and a wiser man
+bewildered by the tender glances of the charming girl who frankly met
+his advances half way, being as much impressed by his appearance as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>he
+with hers, and showing carelessness equal to his in regard to the
+comment they excited among the other guests. One thing that Helen
+Rexhill had never learned at school, or from the parents who had done
+all that could be done to spoil her, was to conceal her feelings. Just
+now she felt no inclination to do it, and she gave Wade dance after
+dance, with reckless disregard of her engagements and of the
+ill-concealed anger of some of the men she threw over with utter
+carelessness of social obligation.</p>
+
+<p>Wade saw it clearly enough, but the preference she showed for him was so
+flattering as to make him indifferent, even had he considered himself
+responsible. He was therefore amused rather than exultant when man after
+man came up to claim a dance, only to be told "I just promised this one
+to Mr. Wade."</p>
+
+<p>One such there was, who took his rebuff exceeding ill. Instead of
+retiring as the others had done, he stepped up closer to the girl and
+said rudely, "That's all very well, Helen, but you promised me first,
+and I hold you to it."</p>
+
+<p>And he looked contemptuously at Wade who had started in surprise at his
+words, and had stiffened himself instinctively, as if to interfere, but
+who controlled himself instantly and kept silent despite his
+inclination.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later he was glad he had done so. Helen's eyes flashed and she
+straightened her form proudly as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I really promise you, Race Moran? If I did, I have forgotten it,
+and anyhow, I am going to sit this dance out with Mr. Wade in the
+conservatory."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>Race Moran, as she called him, was a handsome enough man, though rather
+flashy in appearance. But the evil look that came quickly on his face,
+no less than his huge and burly build, indicated that he would have been
+more at home in a barroom or a street fight, than where he was. For just
+a moment he seemed about to say more, but apparently thought better of
+it, and turning away with what sounded like a muttered oath, he walked
+toward the Senator, who stood at the other side of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I've made an enemy for you, Mr. Wade," said Helen, half laughingly and
+half seriously, as she led the way to the conservatory, closely followed
+by her eager escort.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Wade lightly, "they say a man is poor, indeed, who hasn't a
+few enemies. I don't know that one more or less is of great importance,
+but it is well to know something about them. Who is the gentleman?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly think you would call him a gentleman," said Helen, "though he
+thinks he's one; I wouldn't tolerate him a moment, only on my father's
+account. Dad calls him a political heeler, and says he is very useful."</p>
+
+<p>"He ought to be that," said Wade, smiling; "I'd hardly call him
+ornamental."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed he isn't," said Helen, pouting prettily, "and he presumes too
+much on Dad's favor. He actually persecutes me with his attentions, but
+you know a politician's daughter has to put up with a good deal,
+sometimes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>"I don't think you need to suffer much," said Wade, gallantly. "You will
+always find admirers enough to stand between you and any trouble you may
+have. I rather think there is one of them coming this way at the moment.
+I shall certainly take pleasure in recognizing Mr. Moran as an enemy,
+but is this likely to be another one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," said Helen, laughingly, as an effeminate looking young man
+came up, evidently in search of her.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon, Miss Helen," he said, with a bow that seemed to include
+Wade, politely enough, in the apology, "But your mother asked me to find
+you. She wants you to meet some new guests who have just arrived."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, bother," said Helen carelessly. "She can look after them for a
+while. Tell her I'll be with her by-and-by," and she turned back to
+Wade, paying no further attention to the luckless messenger, who
+departed, hiding his chagrin as best he could, though not very
+successfully.</p>
+
+<p>After he had gone, she said, "No, I don't think Maxwell Frayne is likely
+to be an enemy; at least, not one that you need fear. He is a gentleman,
+though he is too insipid to interest me."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think Moran is a man to fear," asked Wade, trying to speak
+gravely, but showing amusement in spite of himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe you fear the devil," said Helen, with open admiration,
+"but Race Moran can be very dangerous, and I feel sure he will try to
+injure you, if he ever finds a chance."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p><p>"Well in that case he will at least be interesting," said Wade, lightly.
+He would have been amazed if he had realized at the time how prophetic
+the girl's words were.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, however, he had little thought of peril and adventures
+to come. The time, the girl and the place, were all at hand, and he
+plunged headlong into a complication that kept him for weeks in Chicago,
+strongly inclined to stay permanently, yet reluctant to settle in a city
+so little to his liking, when the great out-doors was calling to him so
+urgently.</p>
+
+<p>While the petals of the passion flower were unfolding so rapidly in the
+conservatory, Race Moran had taken the Senator to the latter's private
+room where they had had many secret conferences before. He had done the
+great man favors in New York where he was a valuable cog in the
+political machine, while the Senator was still a newcomer in the field,
+and with accurate judgment he had foreseen that Rexhill would be a
+winner.</p>
+
+<p>Quick to see opportunities, he had cultivated the latter's acquaintance
+and courted his favor until he had become the Senator's most trusted
+adherent, and was admitted to the closest intimacy, so that he had
+become a constant visitor in the Rexhill home, and had definitely
+determined in his own mind, to become one of the family. He knew well
+enough that Helen disliked him, but his ideas of women had been gained
+from association with a class that is easily dominated, and he was
+confident of his own powers, which, in fact, were very considerable.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>The Senator was not blind to the other's purpose, but though he was far
+from approving it, having other ideas concerning the daughter he
+idolized, he had not sought to discourage Moran, nor did he intend to.
+He would let him go on until a crisis should come, and in the meantime,
+Moran had not declared himself.</p>
+
+<p>Helen's insolence at the door of the conservatory, however, had stung
+Moran, and as soon as he had the Senator in seclusion, he broke out.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that puppy Helen has on a string to-night?" he demanded roughly.</p>
+
+<p>But the Senator could overlook rudeness when it suited his purpose to do
+so.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't call him a puppy exactly," he said, pleasantly enough; "he
+is a good deal younger than you and I, but he comes of pretty good stock
+in your town, Moran, and Stout tells me he has distinguished himself
+already in two or three ways. I reckon he'd be a pretty good friend to
+have, if he ever takes an interest in politics."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know the Wade family all right," said Moran impatiently; "they
+belong to the silk stockings, but we have our own way of dealing with
+that kind in New York, and I'm able to do the same thing anywhere else,
+if I have to. Maybe I will have to if he comes between me and Helen.
+Senator, I want to marry that girl myself. I ain't asking your consent,
+exactly, for me and her will be likely to do what we want to, anyhow,
+but I'd a heap rather have you favor the match."</p>
+
+<p>That was almost too much, but the Senator knew his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>man and also knew
+how valuable he was. There was no sense in breaking with him until it
+was unavoidable, so he still spoke pleasantly, though he had flushed
+with anger for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I reckon you and Helen will do as you like about it, especially as
+Helen likes. It was sort of decent of you to speak to me first, but
+there doesn't seem to be anything particular for me to say till you find
+out what Helen really thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll find that out, all right," said Moran, boastfully. "But this
+Wade person better look out; I might have him run into the river some
+night, if he pokes his nose in too far."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd go easy on that, if I were you," said the Senator laughing
+heartily, "a dead Wade might interfere with your plans worse than a live
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course," replied Moran, refusing to laugh. "I talk foolish with
+my mouth sometimes, when I'm mad, but all the same, he'd better look
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I wonder," said the Senator thoughtfully, after the other had left
+him, "how long it will be before he does find out, and how serious it
+will be. He's hit pretty hard, but I will have to keep him along some
+way or other; I can't afford to lose him."</p>
+
+<p>And he sat musing over his cigar till one by one his guests had gone,
+but not until the great drawing room was well-nigh empty, did Helen
+leave the conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>For a few weeks thereafter Chicago seemed, to Gordon Wade's fancy, to be
+the very center of the Universe. Gradually, however, the sturdy nature
+of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>the man asserted itself, and realizing that for him there were many
+more desirable places, he determined to look farther before choosing a
+permanent home. He told Helen frankly of his purpose, and to his great
+satisfaction she approved. There was no definite word of marriage
+between them, though they both looked forward to it and both, at the
+time of parting, deemed the understanding complete between them.</p>
+
+<p>Helen would have had him turn to the East, for her heart was set on city
+life in one of the world's great capitals, but he declared he must see
+the West before deciding, and though she was dissatisfied, she was too
+wise to seek the domination she intended, at that stage of the game.</p>
+
+<p>He departed, therefore, to find in Wyoming later on, his ideal of a
+home. His thought of Chicago thereafter, was that of the place where the
+girl he thought he loved was waiting for him, to claim her, so soon as
+his home was made suitable. There was much to do by way of preparation,
+however, and almost imperceptibly his ardor cooled as he found himself
+becoming prominent among the bold and independent citizens who were
+rapidly putting Wyoming on the map.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>JEALOUSY</h3>
+
+<p>Meantime, many things of great interest to Gordon Wade happened without
+his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>A national election at which the previously dominant party was defeated,
+was a sad blow to Senator Rexhill, who not only suffered in prestige but
+in pocket. There was no question, even in the minds of his friends, that
+he frequently used his political influence to back up the many business
+enterprises in which he held an interest, and in which the greater part
+of his quickly-made fortune was invested. With the loss of his political
+pull, disaster came to one after another of those enterprises, and his
+successive losses were soon heavy enough to drive him almost to
+desperation.</p>
+
+<p>His previous successes, however, had all been due to the audacity of his
+plans, for his boldness and courage were unquestionable. For a time he
+felt confident of winning again, and accordingly, maintained his lavish
+expenditures and luxurious style of living, with no word of caution to
+his wife and daughter, and he continued to seek for the long chances in
+business that offered the largest risks and the greatest gains.</p>
+
+<p>All the redeeming qualities of his nature (and he had more than his
+enemies gave him credit for), were shown in his family life, and it was
+not surprising that Helen and her mother were both undisturbed by the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>gathering storm, but continued to live as he encouraged them to, having
+perfect confidence in his ability to overcome any and all the
+difficulties he might encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rexhill continued to dream of social distinction. Failing to see
+that she had lost much of her own prestige by the Senator's political
+reverses, she continued to entertain so extravagantly in her palatial
+home, that she was still tolerated and she took infinite satisfaction in
+the position she thought she occupied.</p>
+
+<p>She considered Chicago the greatest city in the world, and she dreamed
+of Helen as its queen. To her mind, the easiest way to accomplish that
+ambition was to persuade Helen to marry Maxwell Frayne. He had
+persistently courted the girl ever since he first met her, and he was
+heir to the great Frayne fortune.</p>
+
+<p>The idea was not entirely revolting to Helen, though she had a small
+opinion of the elegant young trifler who pursued her so persistently,
+for she, too, had social aspirations, though being more clear-sighted
+than her mother, she dreamed of wider circles than those of Chicago. Her
+husband, whoever he was to be, should take her to Paris, or at least to
+New York.</p>
+
+<p>Her infatuation for Gordon Wade, however, was as strong as ever. Perhaps
+she was right in thinking of it as true love, but she was greatly
+annoyed by Wade's choice of a ranchman's life, and by his settling down
+out of the world, as she considered he had done. Her letters to him,
+tender as they were, told him plainly enough of her dissatisfaction, and
+thereby undoubtedly contributed to the slow growth of his indifference.</p>
+
+<p>For a time she failed to perceive this, and enjoying <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>the excitement of
+the life she was leading, she was content to wait till Wade should tire
+of the wilderness, as she fully expected him to do, and should return to
+her. So she drifted, until after a time her suspicions were aroused by
+the tone of his letters, and she became anxious.</p>
+
+<p>As time went on, Senator Rexhill's affairs became more and more
+involved. He realized that he stood little chance of re&euml;lection, when
+his term of office should expire, and meantime, his fortune dwindled
+rapidly, though he was still careful not to betray that fact at home.</p>
+
+<p>Moran knew the situation perfectly well, but he remained outwardly loyal
+to his employer, partly because of the latter's liberality, but more,
+perhaps, because of the hope he still had of winning Helen eventually,
+despite the dislike she took no pains to hide.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing how bold the Senator was in his speculations, he came to him one
+day with an exciting story.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a guy in town," he said, "who may be just a plain nut, but he
+has the name of being a scientific sharp who knows his business from A
+to Izzard, and he's either got something almighty big, or he's got the
+willies.</p>
+
+<p>"What he says is, that he's found gold in a new spot and oodles of it.
+According to what he tells, it beats California in '49. It's so big, he
+says, that he's scared stiff, thinking he can't grab enough of it, and
+he don't know, no more'n a baby, what to do with it. So he's looking for
+somebody to take hold of it in a big way and give him a whack."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p><p>"Where is this gold?" asked the Senator incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the funny part of it," says Moran; "it's in Wyoming, and as near
+as I can make out, it must be close to where that young squirt is that
+Helen thinks she's stuck on. I'm not sure but what it's on his place,
+but even if it is, there is no reason why he should have any of it. The
+expense will be pretty heavy to do the thing up right, but if you're
+game, I reckon we can hog the whole business. We can stall this
+scientific nut off with promises, and probably buy off Wade for the
+price of pasture land, and then file claim on the whole dog-gone tract."</p>
+
+<p>This vision of enormous wealth was captivating to the Senator, who had
+made his first start in mining and knew something of its possibilities.
+Bold as he was, however, he was also cautious, but after several
+conferences with Moran, he fell in with the scheme, first securing the
+services of a skilled metallurgist and an equally capable engineer, who
+were liberally paid and solemnly sworn to secrecy. He sent them out to
+verify the discoverer's story, and sent Moran to Crawling Water, to
+establish himself, and to do such preparatory work as should be
+necessary. In due time, Moran reported by letter that the gold was
+located, and was beyond question abundant. He was having trouble,
+however, in getting the property, as Wade refused to sell.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he wrote, "we can file mining claims on the ground we know
+of, and get possession that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>way, but we want to make more surveys
+before doing that, so as to be sure of getting all there is, and we
+can't do that without giving the whole snap away, and filling the
+mountains full of prospectors. If that damn Wade won't sell, I'll find
+some means to drive him away."</p>
+
+<p>It was just after the receipt of this letter, which filled the Senator
+with hope on the one hand, and anxiety on the other that he came on
+Helen one evening, as she was entering her own sitting room, and
+followed her in for a chat.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you thinking of?" he asked, presently, when she failed to
+notice some trivial question he had asked, and seemed to be in a
+reverie.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with laughing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Crawling Water."</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon Wade, eh? Well, I wouldn't think of him too much. Better let
+that pass. You've outgrown it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no I haven't."</p>
+
+<p>The Senator sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother said to me a little while ago, that he was probably going with
+other girls and forgetting me, and it made me angry."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I reckon your mother is about right. Gordon is a likely looking
+chap, you know. I've got nothing against him, except that he isn't good
+enough for you; no man is. You don't really care so much for him, do
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't I?" She viewed her father through half closed lids, in a
+quizzical way. "I care so very much <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>for him that if I really thought
+there was another girl, I would go to Crawling Water to-morrow. You'd
+have to drop everything and take me."</p>
+
+<p>Her father gently pinched her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"I would, eh? Well, maybe I'll have to go out there anyway. But do you
+realize what Crawling Water is like,&mdash;a rough, frontier town?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't mind that for a while."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I suppose not. You've got too much of your old dad in you to balk
+at a few difficulties. There's somebody else out there who'd be mighty
+glad to see your pretty face. Race Moran."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Moran!"</p>
+
+<p>The sudden change in the girl's tone from tenderness to scorn caused the
+Senator a twinge of uneasiness. His plans were so closely linked with
+Moran's for the present, that the man might prove dangerous if his love
+for Helen were too openly scorned. That she could scarcely tolerate him,
+despite his ability and force of character, her father knew from the
+past; but even in the moment of his need he did not seek to influence
+her in Moran's favor. His love for her was genuine and very deep.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been out there for some time, as my agent."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know that. He&mdash;he has written to me, although I've never
+answered his letters. I've been curious to hear from him again, because
+he promised to send me some kodaks of Crawling Water."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe he hasn't done so because you've ignored his letters."</p>
+
+<p>Helen's lip curled in disdain.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p><p>"He'd never let a little thing like that stop him. But perhaps I will
+answer the next one, if only to find out what is going on out there.
+It's all so very mysterious. Do you know, father,"&mdash;She playfully shook
+her finger at him&mdash;"this is the first time in a long while that you
+haven't taken me into your confidence, and I think it a very ominous
+sign. I'm sure you'll be punished for it."</p>
+
+<p>The Senator winced at the word punished, and Helen laughed at what she
+thought was the effect of her raillery.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you tell me? You see, I'm so worried about Gordon. Honestly,
+father, I'm serious about that. I&mdash;I love him, and I don't want him
+hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"Hurt? Why, who is thinking of hurting him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. Moran hates him, and has referred to him once or
+twice in a way that I do not understand. Do tell me all about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, my dear, there's really nothing to tell. It's all concerned
+with some homestead lands out there that I want to get hold of for an
+investment. Wade will not be hurt, no; that is, he won't be if he beats
+me out. If I win, he'll lose."</p>
+
+<p>"He will?"</p>
+
+<p>"We both can't win, of course. It's to be a fight, yes,&mdash;an amicable
+business struggle, I hope. There's no reason for it to be otherwise."
+The Senator appeared strangely nervous, despite his effort at
+self-control. "Wade as a man and a Westerner doesn't expect to be fed on
+pap, you know, any more than I do. May the best man win, that's the way
+of it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p><p>Helen thought this over for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I'd better go out there with you, after all," she remarked,
+half in jest.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Senator thought that over for a moment and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Next day Helen received a package by mail which proved to contain a
+dozen clear photographs of Crawling Water and its neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, as though Moran thought it most important, was a snapshot
+of himself, which had been taken, so he wrote on the back of the print,
+by an obliging cowboy. The girl's face was a study in amused scorn as
+she looked at the photograph, for which Moran has posed with a cigar in
+his mouth, his hands in his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>Then there were a number of views of the town itself; of its main
+street, its hotel, its dance-hall, and of "some of the boys" in various
+poses of photographic self-consciousness. There were also pictures of
+the marvelously beautiful countryside, but as she neared the end of
+them, Helen was disappointed to find none of Wade. "Of course, he
+wouldn't send me one of <i>him</i>," she said petulantly to herself, and she
+was rapidly running through the remaining prints only to pause suddenly
+at the very last, while a rosy tide flooded her face and neck.</p>
+
+<p>The little photograph showed a tall, handsome, vigorous looking man, in
+the garb of a cattleman, half turned in his saddle, with one hand
+resting on his pony's flank. The man was Wade. With his other hand, he
+was pointing ahead, apparently for the benefit <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>of a girl&mdash;a very good
+looking girl whose fine head was thrown back, as the wind blew her hair
+into pretty disorder.</p>
+
+<p>Helen Rexhill had not hitherto experienced real jealousy, but this
+little photograph excited it. In the highly actinic light of Crawling
+Water at noon the camera had done its work well, and the figures of the
+two stood out from the distant background with stereoscopic clearness.
+Wade was smiling at the girl, who seemed to be laughing back at him,
+although her face in the picture was partially turned away, so that
+Helen got only an impression of charm. But the impression was enough to
+rouse her jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>On the back of the print, Moran had written:</p>
+
+<p>"A surprise picture of Gordon Wade and our new fellow-townswoman, Miss
+Dorothy Purnell, whose beauty and general attractiveness have made her
+the idol of Crawling Water."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GATHERING STORM</h3>
+
+<p>On the north bank of the river, from which it derived its name, the town
+of Crawling Water lay sprawled out in the shape of an irregular horn.
+Its original settlers had been men of large ideas, and having had plenty
+of space at their disposal, they had used it lavishly. The streets,
+bordered by dusty, weather-beaten, frame buildings, were as wide as
+those of a large city; indeed, in area, the town could compete with many
+a metropolis; but there the resemblance ended. Crawling Water was not
+fated to become a big city. The fact that the nearest railroad point was
+at Sheridan, forty miles away, did away with any ambitions that Crawling
+Water might have had to be more than a neighborhood center.</p>
+
+<p>The mixed population was composed of cattlemen, sheep men, cow punchers
+and herders, with a sprinkling of gamblers and other riff-raff. Rough,
+uncouth, full-blooded men, they were, for the most part; hard working;
+decisive in their likes and dislikes; fearing neither God nor man, they
+met Life as they found it and faced Death with a laugh. They were the
+last of a fast disappearing type, picturesque, but lacking in many of
+the attributes which differentiate mankind from the beasts.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p><p>Hardly more than a village, Crawling Water was yet a town, and the seat
+of such machinery of government as had been established, and
+accordingly, Gordon Wade had ridden directly thither after his far from
+satisfactory interview with Oscar Jensen. After he had stabled his horse
+and seen it fed, he started up the street in the direction of Moran's
+office. He was resolved to find out where the agent stood on the sheep
+question without any unnecessary delay. Save for a few dogs, sleeping in
+the blaze of the noon-day sun, which hung overhead like a ball of fire,
+the town seemed deserted.</p>
+
+<p>When Wade entered the office, Moran was seated at his desk, chewing on a
+cigar, above which his closely cropped reddish mustache bristled. Like
+Senator Rexhill, he was a man of girth and bulk, but his ape-like body
+was endowed with a strength which not even his gross life had been able
+to wreck, and he was always muscularly fit. Except for the miner's hip
+boots, which he wore, he was rather handsomely dressed, and would have
+been called tastefully so in the betting ring of a metropolitan
+race-track, where his diamond scarf-pin and ring would have been
+admired.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" he boomed as Wade entered. "Have a cigar." He pushed a box of
+an excellent brand toward his visitor and waved him to a chair. His
+greeting was noisy rather than cordial.</p>
+
+<p>Wade declined both the chair and the cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"I dropped in to find out why you told Jensen to run his sheep in on my
+range," he began bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see&mdash;" The agent very deliberately lifted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>a large, white hand
+and took the cigar out of his mouth. "Just what range is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The upper valley range which I have under lease."</p>
+
+<p>"Which you have under lease?" Moran affected sarcastic surprise. "I
+wasn't aware that you had any legal right to that part of the valley.
+It's government land, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to have forgotten that you once tried to buy the lease from
+me." The rancher bared his teeth in a grim smile. "We'll not quibble
+over that, however. We've got our legal rights, all of us; but we're a
+long distance from the courts here. What I want to know in plain English
+is, will you order Jensen to trail those sheep? Now, wait a moment!"</p>
+
+<p>Moran subsided with a show of tolerance he did not feel.</p>
+
+<p>"Think well before you answer," Wade went on. "I'm not here to threaten
+you, but there are desperate men in this valley who will take matters
+into their own hands, if this business is not stopped. There's plenty of
+grass on the other side of the mountains and your sheep are welcome to
+it. Why don't you make use of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I? The sheep have a right to be where they are and there
+they'll stay until I get ready to move 'em. You cattlemen think you own
+this country, but when it comes to the show down, you're a bunch of
+bluffers. Now, Wade, I made you an offer once,&mdash;I'll admit it, and I'll
+make it again for the last time. Sell me your homestead and lease rights
+at the price I offered you&mdash;ten thousand dollars, and get out smiling.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>There isn't room for the two of us in the valley."</p>
+
+<p>"Ten thousand for the homestead and the lease combined!" Wade laughed
+mirthlessly. "You're crazy, man. Why, you offered me that much for the
+lease alone a few weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I? I'd forgotten it. Anyway, it's a fair offer. The land is still
+owned by Uncle Sam, you know. You haven't proved up on your claims, and
+you never will if I can help it. We are spending lots of money here, and
+the government will see that our interests are protected. You cattlemen
+can't hog the whole of Crawling Water Valley. Times have changed. Well,
+what do you say?"</p>
+
+<p>The ranchman dismissed the proposition with a gesture, but did not
+immediately speak. Silently, the two big men faced each other, their
+glances crossing like rapiers: the cattleman like a statue in bronze in
+the fixed rigidity of his attitude, but with an expression that showed
+him one dangerous to trifle with; the agent affecting that half tolerant
+amusement which one may feel toward an enemy unworthy of one's prowess.
+Wade presently broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Moran, you may be a big man in the East, but you're not big enough for
+the job you've tackled here. I've held my friends back as long as I
+can&mdash;longer than I thought I could&mdash;and when they break loose, this
+valley will be a little hell, perhaps a shambles. Men are going to be
+killed, and I have a feeling that you are going to be one of them.
+Against that time, once more, I warn you. Tell Jensen to trail his
+sheep!"</p>
+
+<p>Swinging on his heel, the ranchman left the office, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>paying no attention
+to the ironical "Good night," which Moran called after him.</p>
+
+<p>In the street, Wade chanced upon a neighboring cattle owner, Lem
+Trowbridge of the Circle Heart outfit, who fell into step with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon, how long are we going to stand for this thing, eh? Say, do you
+know what some are saying about you? Now, I'm your friend, and I'm
+telling you straight that you've gone far enough with this pacifist
+stuff."</p>
+
+<p>"They say I'm afraid, I suppose?" Wade stopped and faced Trowbridge.
+"Have they said that to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"To me? Say, what the &mdash;&mdash; kind of a friend do you take me for?"
+Trowbridge flamed up like a match. "No, they haven't said just that,
+Gordon; but they're hinting, and I don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you hear it direct, send the man on to me with it," said Wade,
+his lips compressing ominously. "I'm about through, Lem, not quite, but
+pretty nearly. I've told Moran to have Jensen trail those sheep, and if
+he doesn't...."</p>
+
+<p>Trowbridge nodded and smiled, as they paused at a street corner&mdash;one of
+the few that Crawling Water possessed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the idea, Gordon. We'll all be the readier for the waiting.
+Well, I'll not go any farther with you." He winked with elaborate
+precision and looked in the direction of a snug little cottage, with
+flower boxes in the windows, a biscuit toss away. "She's home. I saw her
+leave the store yonder a little while ago."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p><p>Wade blushed like a boy and looked foolish.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't get into town so very often," he began lamely, when Trowbridge
+slapped him heartily on the back.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't need to make any excuses to me, old man," he said, moving
+off. "That little woman has put Crawling Water on edge with admiration.
+You're not the only one&mdash;or, maybe, you are."</p>
+
+<p>Secretly eager though Wade was to reach the cottage, the nearer he
+approached it, the slower he walked, fuming at himself for his sudden
+spinelessness. Although no ladies' man, he had never been woman wary
+until lately, and this of itself was a sign, the significance of which
+he was far from realizing. When he was with Dorothy Purnell, he almost
+forgot her sex in the easy companionability of their relationship; when
+away from her, he thought no more of her than he might of some man
+friend; but the approach had become a matter of embarrassing difficulty
+with him. There had even been occasions when he had walked past the
+cottage and ridden home without seeing her, trying speciously to
+convince himself that such had all along been his intention.</p>
+
+<p>Something of the sort might have happened now had she not hailed him
+from the open doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Whither bound, stranger?" she smilingly demanded, in her low, rich
+contralto. "Better come in where it's cool. Mother'll be glad to see
+you, and I&mdash;shan't mind."</p>
+
+<p>She had come to Crawling Water for the restorative effect of the bracing
+mountain air upon the health <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>of her mother, who was threatened with
+nervous invalidism, following the death of Mr. Purnell, two years
+before. The town called them Easterners because their home was as far
+East as Michigan, but they had never been city dwellers, as Dorothy's
+fresh complexion and lithe, alert figure bore witness.</p>
+
+<p>Her chestnut hair, piled in a silken crown on her shapely head, shaded a
+face that made those who saw it for the first time, catch their breath
+in instant admiration. Her radiance was of a glorious, compelling, and
+wholly distinct type, as refreshing as some view of green mountains from
+out a gloomy canyon. She had eyes, blue in repose, but shading to violet
+tints when aglow with vivacity; her nose was not perfect, because a
+trifle tip-tilted, but her face gained character through the defect; her
+very red lips held most delicious allurement in their slightly full
+curves. Her hands and feet were small enough to pay tribute to her birth
+and breeding, but not so small as to be doll-like. She wore a simple,
+white dress, freshly laundered, which made her look cool and inviting.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't mind? Now that's good of you, and no mistake." Wade shook
+hands with her, slowly relinquishing her cool palm. "How is Mrs.
+Purnell? Better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I think so. You're better, aren't you, mother?" she asked, as
+they entered the cozy little living-room, where the temperature was in
+pleasant contrast to the outer heat. "The air up here does you good,
+doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Purnell, a dispirited little person, admitted that she felt very
+well indeed, and seemed cheered at the sight of Wade, who greeted her
+deferentially but with easy geniality. She liked him for his
+wholesomeness, and she frequently declared that he was worth all the
+doctors in the country because of the impression of health and optimism
+which he bore with him. But she was aware that Dorothy liked him, too,
+and so presently made an excuse to leave the two young people together.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you may tell me all about what's worrying you," the girl said,
+seating herself across from Wade. "Something is. You can't keep the
+signs from me."</p>
+
+<p>"Good girl!" His voice held a suggestion of tenderness, as he rolled and
+lighted a cigarette, in the home-like privilege which they allowed him
+there. "That's your way, always. No matter who's in trouble, you are
+ready to hasten to the rescue."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;," she deprecatingly began, with a trace of violet showing in her
+eyes, which meant a great deal more than words.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder every man in the valley considers himself your own, especial
+knight."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought perhaps I could help you," she said briskly, to cover her
+sentimental moment. "But that was foolish of me, too, wasn't it? The
+idea of any one helping <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm likely to need all my friends soon, Dorothy," Wade answered
+soberly. "I came in to-day to see Race Moran. There's a big band of
+sheep on our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>upper range, and Jensen, who has charge of them, admitted
+to me this morning that Moran is behind him."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness, more sheep! Wherever do they come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know where they come from, but they can't stay where they are
+unless I go out of business, that's certain." In a few words, he
+explained to her the significance of the movement, and told her of his
+talk with Moran. "I've no use for the man," he concluded, "and if it
+comes to a showdown between us, he need expect no sympathy. I've held
+back as long as I can. I understand better than he does what the crack
+of the first rifle will lead to."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not liked him since you found that he took that snapshot of
+me," she said whimsically. "I didn't mind, but I can't imagine what he
+wanted it for."</p>
+
+<p>Wade's face darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a confounded impertinence, whatever he wanted with it. But my
+dislike of him goes farther back than that."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" she asked, resting her chin in her hand, and
+looking him straight in the eyes, as she always did to those with whom
+she talked.</p>
+
+<p>"It largely depends on him. Santry&mdash;you know how hot-headed he is&mdash;would
+run the herders away by force and kill off the sheep. As a last resort,
+of course, we may have to do something like that, but I want to win this
+fight without open violence if we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>can. A faction war, in the end, would
+be likely to ruin us all."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be careful," the girl declared earnestly. "Moran is not going
+to be an easy man to handle. He seems to have plenty of money, and they
+say here in town that he stands in with the government; that he has some
+sort of 'pull.' He's clever, I think. He'll trick you if he can."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure of that, Dorothy, but we're not going to let him. If only...!
+Say, do you know something else that is being said in this town?
+Something that they're saying about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something nice?" her tone was archly inquiring.</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward and lightly rested his hand on her knee, just as he
+might have done with a man friend, and she took as little notice of it.
+His fingers were trembling a little under the stress of the emotion he
+felt.</p>
+
+<p>"They're saying, those who don't like me, I guess, that I'm afraid of
+Moran and his crowd; afraid of a lot of sheep herders. No, of course, my
+friends don't believe it," he hastened to add when she started to
+interrupt. "But it's not doing me any good, especially now that public
+feeling is running so high."</p>
+
+<p>"But you mustn't mind what they say, Gordon. That's part of the courage
+your friends know that you have; to do what you feel to be right, no
+matter what is said."</p>
+
+<p>Her cheeks were glowing with indignation, and he appreciatively patted
+her hand before sitting erect in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>his chair again. It was no wonder, he
+reflected, in that almost womanless land, that many a cowpuncher rode
+the range by night, seeing her image in every star. The thought that
+each single man, and many a married one, in Crawling Water, would ride
+into the Pit itself to win one of her smiles, had been Wade's comfort,
+even when he was thinking of the possibility of bloodshed between the
+two hostile factions. But now, in the moment of her sympathy for him, he
+felt that he could not be content without some further assurance of her
+safety.</p>
+
+<p>"What you say sounds well, Dorothy, but my pride's working on me, too,
+now. I can't help it. If my friends, who have been good enough to accept
+my leadership so far, should lose their heads and go to it without me, I
+might talk afterward until Kingdom come. I'd never convince anybody that
+I hadn't funked the thing. You spoke a few minutes ago of helping me.
+You can help me a great deal."</p>
+
+<p>Her lovely face instantly blazed with eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I? How?"</p>
+
+<p>"By promising me that, if it comes to a fight, you and your mother will
+come out to my ranch. You'd be safer there. That is, of course, unless
+you'd prefer to leave Crawling Water altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I shouldn't prefer to leave Crawling Water at this stage of the
+game, and"&mdash;she smiled reassuringly&mdash;"I'm sure we should be safe enough
+right here whatever happened. But, if you'd feel better about it, we
+would go to the ranch."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p><p>"Thanks. I feel better about it already, more free to show my hand. You
+are safe enough here now, of course, and might be clear through to the
+finish; but cheap whiskey has led many a fairly good man astray."</p>
+
+<p>"If only there were some peaceable way out of it all." Her eyes became
+anxious as she thought of what he might have to face. "Can't you
+telegraph to Washington, or something?"</p>
+
+<p>"Washington doesn't know whether Crawling Water is in the United States
+or in Timbuctoo," Wade laughed. "If we had some one in authority right
+here on the ground we might make him understand, but Mahomet will never
+come to these mountains, and they can't go to Mahomet. Why, what's the
+matter?"</p>
+
+<p>His question was prompted by the sudden elation with which she had
+clapped her hands and sprung to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"How stupid of me, Gordon, to have forgotten." She stood over him with
+shining eyes and eager countenance, as lovely as a Lorelei. "There is an
+official of the United States Government here at this very moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Here? In Crawling Water?" he exclaimed in amazement. "Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Senator Rexhill, Gordon." Wade stared almost vacuously at her as she
+ran on with her news. "He came in with his daughter last night on the
+Sheridan stage. Isn't that glorious? You must go up to see him at once."</p>
+
+<p>"I will, of course," Wade said slowly, trying to catch <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>his mental
+balance. "And with pleasure, too. It's been a long time since I last saw
+either of them."</p>
+
+<p>"You know them&mdash;him?" Dorothy hesitated a little over which pronoun to
+use, with the somewhat disturbing reflection that Helen Rexhill was a
+most beautiful and distinguished looking girl. "That will make it all
+the easier," she added generously.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Senator Rexhill has no authority of his own in such a
+matter, you know; but if we can get him interested, he may wake up
+Washington in our behalf. Only, I don't see what can have brought him to
+Crawling Water."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you&mdash;do you know the daughter well?" Dorothy asked, with feminine
+cogency. "I suppose you met her back East?"</p>
+
+<p>"We've known each other for a number of years." He arose, his face
+expressive of the delight he felt at the Rexhills' presence in town. "We
+used to be good friends. You'll like her. But it's strange they didn't
+tell me of their coming. You'll pardon me if I hurry over to the hotel,
+won't you, Dorothy?"</p>
+
+<p>She gently urged him out of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! Don't waste a moment, and let me know just as soon as you
+can what the outcome is. I do hope the Senator can settle all this
+trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to meet them right away," he called, over his shoulder, and
+when he looked back for his answer, she nodded brightly.</p>
+
+<p>But as she turned back into the cottage after watching him swing up the
+street she was not at all sure that she would like Helen Rexhill.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>TREACHERY</h3>
+
+<p>Overjoyed at the prospect of a peaceful solution of the problem which
+confronted him, Wade walked rapidly toward the hotel, happy, too, in the
+thought of meeting Helen Rexhill.</p>
+
+<p>Whether he loved her with the single-hearted devotion which a man should
+feel toward his future wife, he was not sure; but he was confident that
+he did not love any one else. The idea of love in connection with
+Dorothy had never occurred to him; she was his good friend, nothing
+more. To Helen, belonged the romance of his life, fostered in other
+years by the distinct preference she had shown for him. At one time,
+they had been reported engaged, and although the word had never actually
+passed between them, many things more significant than speech had
+contributed to the warm regard which they felt for each other. Beneath
+Helen's reputed coldness of heart lay intense feeling, and on numerous
+occasions she had verged on unwomanliness in baring her moods to Wade,
+in a way that many other men would have been quicker to fathom, and
+perhaps to take advantage of, than he had been.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the knowledge that she was close at hand, and that he might see her
+at any moment, caused his heart to beat rapidly. If to others she had
+been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>cool, to him she had been ardent, and this warmth had been the one
+thing needful to make her physically captivating. Only when some vital
+cause impends is a young man likely to distinguish between the impulses
+of his body and the cravings of his soul, and no such vital exigency had
+as yet appeared in Wade's life. He wondered if she was as beautiful as
+ever, and began to reproach himself for lack of ardor in his recent
+letters to her, lest he should now be repaid in kind. He wanted to be
+received upon the old, delicious footing, with her in his arms, and her
+lips trembling beneath his.</p>
+
+<p>There were dozens of men in Washington and New York who would almost
+have bartered their souls for such privilege, and Gordon Wade need not
+be decried for his moment of passionate yearning. He was enough of a man
+to put the thought aside, pending his interview with the Senator, which
+was his first purpose. He felt sure that if Senator Rexhill could be
+moved to interest in Crawling Water affairs, his influence would be
+potent enough to secure redress for the cattlemen, and Wade meant to
+pull every string that could bear upon so happy a result. He was glad
+that Mrs. Rexhill had not made the journey, for he was conscious of her
+hostility to him, and he felt that his chances of moving her husband
+were better without her.</p>
+
+<p>When he inquired at the hotel, he was told that the Rexhills were in,
+and he presently found himself shaking hands with the Senator, who
+greeted him with effusive warmth.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p><p>"Helen is changing her gown and will be in shortly," the big man
+explained. "I'm mighty glad to see you, Gordon. Only this morning we
+were talking of looking you up. How are you? Sit down, my boy, sit
+down!"</p>
+
+<p>"Senator," Wade began, after they had exchanged commonplaces for a few
+moments. "Glad as I am to see you, on my own account, I am more than
+glad in behalf of my friends, who have not yet had the pleasure of
+meeting you. Your arrival in Crawling Water could not possibly have been
+more opportune. You have come just in time to save us, most likely, from
+an internecine strife which might have ruined us all. I was more glad
+than I can tell you to learn that you were here."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, Gordon? I&mdash;I am much interested. Perhaps, you will...."</p>
+
+<p>While Wade succinctly sketched the situation, the Senator nervously
+toyed with his eyeglasses, now and then lifting his double chin from the
+confinement of his collar, only to let the mass of flesh settle again
+into inertness. He thought rapidly. Evidently, Moran had not divulged
+the fact that he, the Senator, was concerned in the Crawling Water
+enterprise. Certainly, Moran had done very well in that, and Rexhill
+almost wished now that he had been less precipitate in coming to
+Crawling Water. If he had stayed in the East, his complicity in the
+affair might possibly have been concealed to the very end. He hastily
+considered the advisability of remaining under cover; but now that he
+was on the ground he decided that he had better be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>open and above
+board, in so far at least as he could be so. It would prove awkward in
+the event of subsequent investigation, if he should be made to appear in
+the guise of a deliberate conspirator.</p>
+
+<p>So, presently, as Wade neared the end of his <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of the situation,
+Rexhill permitted an oleaginous smile to overspread his countenance. At
+the last, he even chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"It's really a bit amusing. No, no, not what you have said, my boy; but
+what I am about to say to you. You invoke my influence to stop
+these&mdash;er&mdash;depredations, as you call them, and up to a certain point,
+you shall have my aid, because I seem to see that matters have gone a
+bit beyond bounds. But when you ask me to go to extremes myself, why,
+I'm bound to tell you that I, too, have interests at stake. Why do you
+suppose I came to Crawling Water?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll admit that puzzled me."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill looked keenly at Wade, wondering if he were foolish enough to
+believe the trip a sentimental journey, purely. He concluded that the
+young ranchman had too much sense to jump at such a conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the reason is...." The Senator leaned ponderously forward,
+twiddling his glasses upon his thumb. "The reason is that I, if you
+please, am the moving spirit behind the company which Race Moran is
+representing here. You see...." He chuckled plethorically again at
+Wade's start of surprise. "It really is a bit amusing."</p>
+
+<p>"Then Moran is your agent?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a sense, yes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p><p>"Well, I'll be damned!" The cattleman's tone was rich in disgust, but
+even more keen was his intense disappointment at this failure of his
+hopes. "Would you mind telling me, Senator, just what the purpose of
+your company is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. It's no secret," Rexhill replied briskly. "Certain
+parties back East, myself included, as I've told you, have reason to
+believe that a railroad will be put through this valley in the near
+future. This is an extremely rich and productive section, with natural
+resources which will make it heard from some day, so we are anxious to
+obtain a portion of the valley for speculative purposes. If the railroad
+comes through we'll probably build a town somewhere nearby and open up
+an irrigation project we have in mind. If not, we'll use our holdings to
+raise wheat and livestock. The proposition is a sound investment either
+way you look at it."</p>
+
+<p>"A few years ago," said Wade, "I and several others leased upwards of
+twenty thousand acres of grass land here in the valley for stock grazing
+purposes. I, personally, filed a claim on the land I now call my home
+ranch. Our lease, which is direct from the Government, gives us entire
+control of the land so long as we pay for it.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides ourselves, there are a number of ranches in the valley, all of
+them cattle and horse outfits. There has always been a tacit agreement
+that sheep should not be grazed here because sheep and cattle can't live
+on the same range in large numbers. Until Moran came here, we had no
+trouble whatever&mdash;the sheep <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>ranchers kept to their own side of the
+mountains and we cattlemen kept to ours. Since Moran has arrived,
+however, the sheep have crossed the Divide in thousands, until the
+entire valley is being overrun with them.</p>
+
+<p>"Only this morning, Moran admitted to me that the sheep men are acting
+with his authority and backing. Senator Rexhill, this is wrong, and your
+agent, or manager, is making a big mistake. Since you are the prime
+mover in this matter, your arrival is even more opportune than I at
+first thought, because you have the power to immediately correct your
+hired man's mistake. So far as we cattle ranchers can learn, Moran is
+bringing sheep in here with the deliberate intention of starving us out
+of our homes. He seems to want our range and he&mdash;I'll not say
+you&mdash;thinks that such a course is the cheapest way to gain possession.
+He'll find it the dearest in the end. Unless the sheep are moved mighty
+soon, we shall be mixed up in one of the bloodiest little wars in the
+history of the range country. Mark you, I'm no firebrand,&mdash;some call me
+too conservative; but we have about reached the limit, and something is
+bound to happen before many days."</p>
+
+<p>Senator Rexhill drummed with his fingers on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Um! Does Moran know of this attitude in you and your friends, Gordon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have just finished telling him of it. But he merely laughs at
+us. We are a long way from the courts here, Senator, and we can't easily
+appeal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>to the authorities. We are obliged to settle our differences
+among ourselves. Moran knows this as well as I do; but he forgets that
+the thing can work two ways. Each day that the sheep are here in the
+valley they spoil more grass than all our cattle could eat in a week; in
+two months, if the sheep stay, the range will be as bare as a ball-room
+floor. Can you wonder that we ranchers are becoming desperate?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's strange," Rexhill commented, apparently much perturbed. "Moran is
+not the sort to take useless risks. He's dominant, but he's no fool.
+Well, my boy, I'll talk this over with him; in fact, I really came out
+here to see how things were shaping up. If things can be peacefully
+arranged, that's the way we want them. We're not looking for trouble.
+Certainly, you are quite right to object to sheep being run on your
+leased pasture. I'll look into it right away and see what can be done."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you." Wade was much relieved and he showed it. "I felt sure that
+an appeal to your sense of fair play would not be fruitless. I'm mighty
+glad you are in town."</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon!" a girl's voice exclaimed softly behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Helen!" He sprang to his feet and turned to seize her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Those who admired Helen Rexhill at Washington social functions never saw
+her look more lovely than she did at this moment of meeting with Wade,
+for the reason that all the skill of the costumer could not beautify her
+so much as the radiance of love now in her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>face. The dress she wore was
+far from inexpensive, but it was cut with the art which conceals art,
+and to Wade it appeared simple.</p>
+
+<p>Yet his first sensation was one of acute disappointment, which he strove
+rather ineffectually, to conceal. Doubtless, this was because his
+recollection of her had soared beyond the bounds of human perfection.
+But the gown, which she had chosen with so keen a wish to impress him,
+reminded him of the simple frocks which Dorothy Purnell wore, and in
+Helen Rexhill's face there was not the same sweet simplicity of
+expression which distinguished her rival. Flaming love was there, to
+transform her from the suggestion of a lily to that of a pomegranate;
+but it was the love that demands and devours, rather than the constant
+affection which, in giving all, seeks nothing but the privilege of
+loving in return. Without actually analyzing the impression which Helen
+made upon him, Wade felt something of the truth of this, and was
+disappointed in the realization of his dream of her. Materially she was
+too perfect, too exotic, for the setting of Crawling Water.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you look just the same," she happily exclaimed. "And I? Have I
+changed? Now, be careful what you say! You're not a bit of a courtier."</p>
+
+<p>"Everything changes, doesn't it?" he said, slowly feeling his way.
+"Except the heart?" His answer pleased her.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you listen to that, Father? In the cattle country, too."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p><p>"Very pretty," the Senator observed judicially. "Inspired, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"How long are you going to stay?" asked Wade.</p>
+
+<p>Helen laughed happily.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps that will depend upon how glad I think you are to have us."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him an ardent glance, which he was not proof against, nor would
+any other man have been so.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt of that." He laughed with her, his disappointment passing
+before the old love spell, which she knew so well how to cast about him.
+"You couldn't have come at a better time, either, for now there is some
+one here who can be company for you. That is," he added lamely, "when
+you're tired of having me around."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?" Helen was a bit chilled by this obvious <i>faux pas</i>. Truly,
+despite his worth as a man, Gordon Wade was no courtier. "Who is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, you haven't heard of her, but you'll like her. She's Miss
+Dorothy Purnell. Everybody does like her."</p>
+
+<p>Helen affected a gayety which she could scarcely have been expected to
+feel. Although she was not socially adept in concealing her real
+feeling, Wade saw nothing wrong. Only the Senator twisted his mouth in a
+grim smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I have heard of her; indeed, I have. Mr. Moran sent me a little
+photograph of you both on horseback. Just see how her fame has crossed
+the continent. I shall be charmed to meet her."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p><p>A great light dawned upon Wade.</p>
+
+<p>"Then that was what he wanted with the picture," he exclaimed. "We
+wondered at the time. I thought it pretty impudent of him, but, of
+course, if he wanted it just to send to you, that was all right."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Rexhill winced inwardly. In spite of herself, her face expressed a
+certain amount of pique, for the implication was manifestly that if Race
+Moran had wanted the picture for himself, the idea would have been
+intolerable to Wade.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, quite all right. You seem...." She checked herself, with the
+reproach upon her tongue, reflecting that, after all, she was most fond
+of Wade because of his naturalness. Maxwell Frayne, for instance, was
+without a peer in spinning graceful phrases; but he spun little else.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't understand why he should send it to you," Wade said, in a
+low tone, as the Senator turned to bend over an open traveling bag on a
+nearby chair. "Is he&mdash;do you&mdash;?" A slight rigor of jealousy seemed to
+seize upon him, under the witchery of her slow smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's been writing to me, and I suppose he thought I'd be
+interested. Of course, I was." She leaned toward him a trifle, a mere
+swaying of her body, like a lily in a breeze, and impulsively he placed
+his big hand over hers.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd better not&mdash;he'd better mind his own business!" he said grimly.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed softly, tantalizingly, and being human, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>Wade kissed her;
+the Senator being still busy with the contents of the bag.</p>
+
+<p>Thus engaged, none of them heard a knock at the door, which finally
+opened before Moran, who, even if he did not actually see the kiss,
+could hardly have failed to suspect it from their embarrassed manner.
+Helen felt sure from his annoyed expression that he had witnessed the
+caress, and she was rather glad of it.</p>
+
+<p>He exchanged a slightly stiff greeting with the rancher, and then while
+Wade and Helen continued their talk, the agent spoke in a carefully
+guarded undertone with his employer. The news he brought, whatever it
+was, seemed significant, for the Senator appeared worried and presently
+turned to Wade.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll not mind if I go over to the office with Moran, Gordon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, Senator. Don't let me interrupt you. But what's the use
+of us staying indoors, Helen? The sun has turned now and it's cooler
+out. I'll show you something of our little metropolis. Or, I tell you
+what we'll do! Why not let me take you over and introduce you to the
+only woman you're likely to find congenial in this neighborhood? She'll
+be glad to meet you, I know."</p>
+
+<p>In any other company, Miss Rexhill would probably have resented an
+invitation to call upon a rival, even apart from the ethics of social
+calls, but not before Race Moran. Before him, she would not humble Wade
+in the least degree, if only because to do <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>so would reflect upon her
+own preference between the men. She could only pretend to welcome the
+prospect of going to see Miss Purnell, and she played her part well.</p>
+
+<p>"We may as well stay here now," Rexhill said, when the two young people
+had left the room. "When did all this happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I just got word of it," Moran answered, a bit excitedly. "Don't you see
+how it plays right into our hands? It's the greatest thing that could
+have happened for us. It might have been made to order."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure it wasn't? Are you sure you didn't have the man shot,
+Race?" Senator Rexhill's tone was very dry and he watched his companion
+keenly as he asked the question.</p>
+
+<p>Moran assumed an attitude of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Senator...!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tush! I want to know where we stand. By God, Race, you mustn't go too
+far! We're traveling mighty close to the wind as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"But these brawls are likely to happen at any time. This one in
+particular has been brewing for weeks. Why connect me with it,
+unnecessarily?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I see your point, of course. The assassin is unknown;
+suspicion naturally falls upon Wade, who is at the head of the cattle
+faction and who, as you say, threatened Jensen only this morning. If we
+can jail him for awhile his party is likely to fall down."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly!" Moran cried eagerly. "Fortune has placed him right in our
+hands."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p><p>"Well, I'm not going to have him arrested," Rexhill announced doggedly,
+"at least, not on any trumped up charge. He's broken my bread, Helen
+likes him. We call him a friend, in fact. I always play square with my
+friends&mdash;as far as possible. Strategy is strategy, nobody can quarrel
+with that; but this thing you propose is something more."</p>
+
+<p>Moran, while listening, had restrained his impatience with difficulty.
+He not only had reason on his side, but personal hate as well. His sense
+of triumph in bringing the news to Rexhill had not been for their mutual
+cause alone; it had seemed to Moran to point toward the end of his
+rivalry with Wade for the love of Helen. To have the fruits of victory
+snatched from him, because of a sentiment of friendship, was almost more
+than the agent could stand for.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, Senator," he burst out, "don't throw this chance away! Think
+what it means to us! We are running close to the wind, and until this
+moment, it's been a toss up whether we'd get out of here with our lives;
+whether I would, at any rate. I've run a mighty big bluff on these
+cattle people, but I did it because it was the only way. I've held my
+own so far, but when they find out that it's not farm land we're after,
+but ore&mdash;why, Senator, there'll be no holding them at all! With Wade at
+their head and forty miles between us and the cars, where would we get
+off? We'd be lucky if we didn't swing from the limb of a tree. Do you
+suppose Wade would remember then that he'd broken your bread? I'll bet
+dollars to doughnuts he wouldn't.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p><p>"But"&mdash;his voice sank to a significant whisper&mdash;"if we land him in
+jail...."</p>
+
+<p>"His friends here would get him out," interposed the Senator, nervously
+wiping his glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Uncle Sam would put him in again, with a troop of cavalry to keep
+order here, and <i>that</i> would be another advantage gained for our side.
+No, sir, once we get him in jail, we've got the law with us and against
+him, don't forget that. Then the cattle party would lay mighty low. Wade
+has been their leader right along. I tell you, it's the only way, and
+you know what it means to us&mdash;to you."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't have to tell me that," rasped Rexhill. "If we fail to put
+this through, I'm a ruined man."</p>
+
+<p>Moran's eyes gleamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, it's the only way, unless&mdash;unless...."</p>
+
+<p>"Unless what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless your daughter marries him, and it all comes into the family."
+Upon that point, Moran wished to know just where he stood.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never made a dollar through my daughter yet, and I never will,"
+said the Senator grimly. "I'm not selling my own flesh and blood. I'll
+rot in the poor-house first."</p>
+
+<p>Moran gently breathed his relief. He would have fought to the fullest
+extent of his power to have aborted such a marriage, but if the Senator
+had favored it, he knew that it would have been difficult to prevent.</p>
+
+<p>"Wade has a foreman he's mighty fond of, an old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>man named Santry," the
+agent remarked, trying another tack.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a horse of another color." Rexhill appeared aroused, at last. "I
+remember the old fellow. He must be nearly ready for the bone yard by
+this time anyhow. Saddle it on him, if you can. Wade's devoted to him.
+He'd do as much for Santry as for himself, maybe more."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard about that kind of devotion," the agent sneered, "but I've
+yet to see a sample of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you may before long. Your first proposition's no good anyway. It
+would simply further antagonize Wade's friends. It's quite possible,
+though, that Santry might have been mixed up in such a brawl. Get him
+arrested, and then we'll let Wade know, gradually, that our influence is
+at his command, for a price. I've no objection to that&mdash;none at all. By
+Heaven, we've got to do something."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do it all right. I'll have a warrant sworn out."</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile, Race, go easy with those sheep. Wade was telling me about
+them, and as a matter of strategy, I had to pretend that I would help
+him. Move them across the Divide until we see what comes of this Santry
+affair. I can't go too heavy with the boy right at the start."</p>
+
+<p>"All right." Moran arose. "The sheep don't count much now anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind saying, Race," Senator Rexhill observed, a trifle
+pompously, "that you've done pretty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>well so far. If you stick to it,
+you'll not find me ungrateful when the battle is over. You'll be
+entitled to your reward."</p>
+
+<p>Moran hesitated, seeming to summon courage to say something.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you've guessed the reward I'll ask, Senator," he said slowly.
+"There are some things that mean more to a man than mere money. I'm
+thinking of Miss Helen."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill found some difficulty in placing his gaze so that it would
+appear to naturally fall elsewhere than on Moran. He was mortified by a
+sense of shame that he could not deal squarely with this aspirant for
+his daughter's hand. He had been sincere in saying that he would never
+barter her to further his own interests, but so much hung in the balance
+here that until the issue really arose he feared to pass upon it. He
+felt himself stultified by this truth.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't spoken to her, Senator, because the time has not come, and
+just now she's too much occupied elsewhere, perhaps. But all my hopes
+are fixed on her, sir, and when the time does come, I trust you'll not
+oppose them."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill coughed to hide what his face might otherwise have shown.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Race," he said, with a choking sensation that was new to him,
+"you know what I think of you. As for the rest, well, that will depend
+entirely upon Helen."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>MURDER</h3>
+
+<p>"How do you think you'd like to live in Crawling Water?"</p>
+
+<p>Wade looked whimsically at Helen, as she picked her way with the grace
+of a kitten through the dust of the main street. Carefully though she
+walked, her shoes and the bottom of her skirt were covered with dust,
+and gray with it.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't like it," she said, with a little moue. "I don't see why
+you stay here. You aren't going to always, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon it's likely."</p>
+
+<p>"Not&mdash;for always?" She had stopped and was looking up into his face with
+delicious dismay. "That would be awful."</p>
+
+<p>"Most of my friends, and all of my business interests are here. Besides,
+I have a kind of pride in growing up with this country. Back in the
+East, things have been settled for so long that a man's only a cog in a
+machine. Out here, a fellow has a sense of ownership, even in the hills.
+I think it's because he gets closer to the soil, until he comes to love
+it and to be almost a part of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the girl. "That sounds fine, but the reality isn't
+up to my anticipation of it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>Wade laughed in his hearty way.</p>
+
+<p>"That's only because you haven't been here long enough, Helen."</p>
+
+<p>"There are things that are splendid about the West," she generously
+admitted. "Its vastness and wholesomeness, and especially its men. I'm
+sure that's why I first liked you, Gordon, because you were
+<i>different</i>&mdash;not like the general run of young men in the East."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there are lots of good men East, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so very many. At least, I have seen very few who were at all worth
+while. There's one, Maxwell Frayne, who has been plaguing me for months;
+but I don't care for him&mdash;much." She was closely watching him as she
+spoke, and she smiled when he started.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better not."</p>
+
+<p>"But if I really thought you meant to stay here all the time, I'm sure
+I'd love him devotedly. Now"&mdash;she eyed him mischievously&mdash;"I think this
+would be a nice place to call home, don't you know, just for fun, and
+then spend most of the time in New York and London. See that man staring
+at me!"</p>
+
+<p>"How, staring at you?"</p>
+
+<p>Wade turned and looked in the direction she indicated, surprised at the
+suggestion that she was being annoyed in Crawling Water, where chivalry
+to women ran high.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he didn't mean anything, I daresay."</p>
+
+<p>"They're friends of mine, and curious, perhaps." He referred to a group
+of cattlemen across the street, who did seem to be staring and talking,
+with some indecision in their attitude. "I wonder if anything <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>can have
+happened? Oh, I guess not. Well, what would I do in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say anything about <i>you</i> being in London, did I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's safe to say that where you were, I'd want to be, at any
+rate. Haven't I made two trips to Chicago for no real reason except to
+see you?" he demanded, fast slipping into the thralldom of her
+fascination.</p>
+
+<p>She viewed him through half-closed eyes, knowing that the pose has
+always allured him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think you'd be kept busy looking after me?" she playfully
+asked. "Seriously, I hate an idle man, but I don't know what you'd find
+to do there. What a question. You'd have to have investments that would
+take you over every year or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you're trying to make a city man of me," he said, half in jest.
+"Besides,"&mdash;a dogged note crept into his voice&mdash;"I'd have the right to
+expect something of you, wouldn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the right, but the privilege," she answered softly.</p>
+
+<p>"This is where the Purnells live." He turned her into the pathway to the
+door. "This is what I'd like, a neat little home like this, with a
+couple of kiddies and some dogs. Then I could spend my out-door time at
+the ranch."</p>
+
+<p>Before Helen could reply to this, Mrs. Purnell appeared on the threshold
+to welcome them, but to Wade's surprise, she told them that Dorothy was
+not there.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Helen, with intense relief.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know where she went either," the mother went on. "She was out
+for a few minutes soon after you left, Gordon. Then she came back and
+called out something to me, but I didn't catch what she said. Before I
+knew what she was doing she had saddled her pony and ridden off. But
+come right in. I don't think she'll be gone long."</p>
+
+<p>They entered and Helen, graciously choosing to overlook the fact that
+this was evidently Wade's second visit there within a very short time,
+sought to impress him with her tactfulness to Mrs. Purnell. She would
+have been amazed could she have guessed that she was actually arousing
+him to resentment. He felt, somehow, that she was patronizing their
+hostess, who was a woman of refinement, even if she lacked the
+artificiality of manner that Helen affected. He was sincerely glad when
+the visit came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come again," said Mrs. Purnell, in a spirit of friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>"So glad to have met you," Helen replied. "I hope to have the pleasure
+of meeting your daughter, too, before we leave Crawling Water."</p>
+
+<p>"They're splendid women, both of them," Wade remarked, as they walked
+back toward the center of the town.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," Helen agreed, without much spirit. "Nice, comfortable home
+people, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Best kind in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon!" Helen laughed good-naturedly, facing him as she walked. "What
+in the world has been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>the matter with you to-day? We usually get on so
+well together, and to-day, if I do say it, only my unwillingness to
+quarrel has kept us from it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" He smiled, too. "Maybe that New York and London business
+rubbed me the wrong way; that's all. I have plenty of faults, but I'm
+loyal to my friends. I don't like even hints that they aren't the best
+friends a man could have."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, I haven't...."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe not. Maybe I imagined it. But Crawling Water is a lot more real
+than London, to my way of thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't been to London."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not likely to go, either," he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>Her red lips curled in a way that seemed to indicate that she thought he
+would go. Already, she was planning to get him out of Crawling Water and
+beyond the influence of Dorothy Purnell.</p>
+
+<p>As they turned into the main street again, a man leaving a group near
+the livery stable, and mounting a horse, rode toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what's up now?" Wade muttered, recognizing the horseman as one
+of the Trowbridge outfit.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wade. Just a minute." With the grace of a Centaur, the rider swung
+his mount in beside them and doffed his hat. "Two of Jensen's herders
+have been shot. I thought you ought to know about it."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" The ranch owner's jaw dropped at the news.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true, sir. Word just came in."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, Barker." Wade pulled himself together, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>as the restless pony
+raced back to the barn. "I must go, Helen," he went on, turning to the
+girl at his side. "There's been fighting&mdash;murder, perhaps&mdash;out near the
+ranch. Santry will need me." He was uneasy lest the old plainsman should
+have been concerned in the shooting.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll take me to the hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, yes! Would you mind walking a little faster?" They quickened
+their pace. "I'm sorry, Helen; but I must hurry to the ranch." Even at
+that moment he could not but reflect that there would have been no need
+to take Dorothy home. Somehow, the ways of the East seemed to fit less
+and less aptly into the life of Crawling Water.</p>
+
+<p>On his way to the livery stable after his horse, Wade did some rapid
+thinking. Santry might have been concerned in the shooting, but his
+employer thought not. The old fellow had promised to stay at home, and
+his word was as good as another man's bond. It was too bad, certainly,
+that the thing should have happened just when Senator Rexhill's promised
+aid had seemed in a fair way to settle the controversy. Now, the whole
+thing was more upset than ever, for Moran and Rexhill could hardly be
+blamed if they backed up their own men, especially if the herders had
+been blameless, as was probably the case. Yet if the Senator did this,
+Wade knew that a bloody little war would be the outcome.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Trowbridge, Barker?" he asked of the cowpuncher, whom he found
+waiting at the stable.</p>
+
+<p>"At the ranch, I think."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p><p>Wade nodded. Ten minutes later he was in the saddle and headed for the
+mountains, just as dusk began to fall. The cool night air, blowing
+against his face as he reached the higher levels, was delightfully
+refreshing after the heat of the day. He took off his hat and opened the
+neck of his shirt to the breeze, which revived his energies like wine.
+He knew that as he felt, so his horse felt, and he was glad, for the
+animal would have to make a fast, hard trip. At the crest of the first
+hills, before dipping into the valley, he turned for an instant in his
+saddle to look backward over his trail toward the twinkling lights of
+Crawling Water in the distance below.</p>
+
+<p>He had covered some five miles of his journey, to no other sound than
+the occasional note of some bird, when his quick ears caught the thud of
+a horse's feet on the trail ahead, with now and then a sharp clatter as
+the animal slipped on the stones. Wade slowed his own horse down to a
+walk, and eased his Colt in its holster. He expected to meet some
+harmless wayfarer, but, under the circumstances, it was just as well to
+be prepared for trouble. Soon, however, he smiled to himself, for
+whoever rode toward him made too much noise for any but a peaceful
+mission. The other horse, too, had been slowed down and the two riders
+approached each other with such caution that the rancher finally became
+impatient and pressed forward recklessly.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the night the stranger came on, still slowly, until a turn in the
+trail brought them face to face.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p><p>"Don't shoot!" said a woman's contralto. "I'm a friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorothy!" Wade ejaculated, at once recognizing the voice, although he
+could not see the girl distinctly in the darkness. "In Heaven's name,
+what are you doing out here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you, Gordon?" In her relief, she laughed softly as she pulled her
+pony up side of him. "I was a little scared for a second or two. I've
+awfully bad news, I'm afraid," she added, immediately serious. "I've
+been trying to find you. I went to the hotel and they told me you'd gone
+somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Rexhill and I went to call on you."</p>
+
+<p>"You did? If I'd only known. I've been clear out to the ranch."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Santry there?" In his anxiety he forgot momentarily the loneliness
+of her long ride. "They say some of Jensen's men have been shot up; and
+I'm anxious to find out what Bill knows."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I want to tell you. I heard of the shooting before I
+left town. Whoa, Gypsy!" She reined up her pony, nervously, for it would
+not stand still. Wade seized the animal's bridle and quieted it. "I
+don't know if he's there or not," the girl went on. "I couldn't see. The
+ranch house is full of men."</p>
+
+<p>"Men? What men?" Wade demanded sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Race Moran's crowd. They went out to arrest Santry. The Sheriff is with
+them. I heard part of it in town, and that's why I tried to find you."
+Wade groaned. "I peeped in at a window, and when I could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>see neither
+you nor Santry I slipped away without being seen and took the old trail
+back because it was shorter."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, what a mess!" Wade ground his teeth savagely. "Poor old Bill was
+all alone there and they must have surprised him. But I don't see why
+Barker didn't mention the posse when he told me of the shooting?"</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't know of it, probably. They left town very quietly. I happened
+to be out back of the house and I heard one of them talking as they rode
+by."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" Wade's head drooped. "I told Bill to stay at the ranch, and
+he promised me...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe he shot Jensen at all," Dorothy declared, with spirit.
+"Yes, it was Jensen himself and one of his herders. Both in the
+back&mdash;killed."</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Santry never shot any man in the back," Wade declared, in a
+relieved tone. "If you're sure of the facts, Santry will come clear all
+right."</p>
+
+<p>"It's just a devilish scheme of Moran's, that's all, to put it on you
+and Santry. I'm sure it is. He hates you both. Whoa, Gypsy!" She reined
+the little mare in again. "No, it's all right, Gordon. I can manage
+her," she remonstrated, as he reached for the bridle once more.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's their game, eh? By Heaven, I more than half believe you're
+right." His face grew ugly with rage. "Dorothy," he continued grimly,
+"thanks are useless. You're a brick, that's all. Do one thing more for
+us, will you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p><p>"Anything," she replied simply, her eyes shining with devotion to him,
+but he was too overwrought to read them in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"When you get back to town get word to some of the men for me. You may
+meet them on the way out, if not they'll be around the barn. Tell them
+to meet me at the big pine, on the old trail."</p>
+
+<p>His horse had grown restless and now he allowed it to have its head; he
+was moving past her when she clutched his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon!"</p>
+
+<p>She loved him dearly, too dearly to let him know how well until he
+should speak, if he ever did speak; but above them was the starlit sky
+and over them hovered the wondrous spirit of the Western night. Her
+pulse was beating, too, to the call of danger, and despite the control
+which she had over her nerves, she was just a bit hysterical beneath the
+surface. She knew that ahead of him was a little army of hostile men,
+and already that day two men had been killed. So, tremulously, she held
+on to his sleeve, until she stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do? You can't do anything alone against so many.
+They may kill you."</p>
+
+<p>Her sympathy was very sweet to him and he warmly squeezed the little
+hand which had held him back.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you be afraid, little girl," he said tenderly. "I shall not get
+hurt if I can help it."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait until the others come, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely," he answered readily, touched by the anxiety in her voice. "I'm
+going to look around&mdash;just <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>as you did&mdash;on the quiet. You wouldn't hold
+me back, where you went in, now would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;!" She smiled a little into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the stuff! Then I'm coming back to the big pine, and you'll send
+the boys there. They'll not put Santry in jail if we can prevent them.
+They've played their last card to-night. It's war from now on."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Gordon, I'll go." Her voice was full of courage again; the
+moment of weakness had passed. "Remember now, take good care of
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"You bet," he retorted cheerily, and as her mare moved ahead, he caught
+her arm as she had caught his. She went quite limp in her saddle and
+swayed toward him, but he merely added: "You're a wonder, Dorothy."</p>
+
+<p>He released her then, and with a wave of her hand she disappeared into
+the night. Not until she was beyond recall did he realize that he might
+have kissed her; that she had wanted him to kiss her, for the first time
+since they had known each other. He sat in abstraction for several
+moments before he shook the reins in his hand and his horse sprang
+forward.</p>
+
+<p>"I've kissed one girl to-day," he muttered aloud, "and I reckon that's
+enough."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OLD TRAIL</h3>
+
+<p>For another mile Wade followed the main road and then diverged sharply
+to the left into what was known as the old, or upper, trail. This had
+formerly been the valley road until made dangerous by a wash-out a year
+or two previous. In the following spring the wash-out had been partially
+repaired, but the going was still so rough that the new road was
+widened, and had been used by preference ever since. The old trail,
+however, was nearly four miles the shorter of the two, and was still
+traveled in cases of emergency, although to do so at speed and in the
+dark was hazardous.</p>
+
+<p>Wade's promise to Dorothy to take good care of himself had been made
+with mental reservation, for, obsessed by his anxiety over Santry, the
+young ranchman was in no mood to spare either himself or his horse. His
+going was marked by a constant shower of stones, sometimes behind him,
+as the wiry cayuse climbed like a mountain goat; but as often in front,
+as horse and rider coasted perilously down some declivity. The horse
+sweated and trembled with nervousness, as a frightened child might, but
+never refused to attempt what its master demanded of it. One might
+almost say that there existed a human understanding between man and
+beast as to the importance of their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>errand; a common impulse, which
+urged them onward.</p>
+
+<p>When Wade reflected that Dorothy, too, had come over that trail by night
+in his interest, he thought her more than ever a wonderful girl. Even to
+one born and raised in the cattle country, the trip would have been
+difficult; but then he realized that Dorothy seemed much like a
+ranch-bred girl in her courage and frank womanliness, nor was she any
+less charming on that account. After all, he thought, women paid too
+highly for little accomplishments, if to gain them they had to sacrifice
+the vital points of character. He could not help but contrast Helen's
+insistence that she should be escorted back to the hotel with Dorothy's
+brave ride alone, and while he was too loyal to Helen Rexhill to blame
+her in this respect, the thing made a deep impression upon him.</p>
+
+<p>The way was long, and he had time for many thoughts. It was natural, in
+the still night, with Dorothy only a little while gone, that he should
+think tenderly of her, for this cost Santry nothing. For Santry, Wade
+was reserving not thought but action. He was making up his mind that if
+Moran had taken the foreman into custody on a trumped up charge of
+murder, the agent should feel the power of a greater tribunal than any
+court in the locality&mdash;the law of the Strong Arm! Behind him in this,
+the ranchman knew, was the whole of the cattle faction, and since war
+had been thrust upon them he would not stop until the end came, whatever
+it might be. His conscience was clean, for he had exerted himself
+manfully in the cause of peace, even to the point where his own
+character had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>suffered, and now the hour of reprisal was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>He rode, at last, over the top of the Divide and into the little draw
+that led up to the ranch buildings, in the windows of which lights
+gleamed. With an imprecation at sight of them, he tied his horse to a
+post, and, revolver in hand, crept toward the house as quietly as a
+Sioux.</p>
+
+<p>Except for the light, there was no sign of life about the place, and
+Wade craftily advanced into the deeper shadows close to the wall of the
+house. Taking off his hat, so that the crown might not betray him, he
+peeped through a window. What he saw made him clinch his fingers and
+grit his teeth in rage.</p>
+
+<p>Inside were half a dozen men, besides three of his own ranch hands who
+lay trussed up like turkeys in one corner of the room; doubtless they
+had been surprised by the posse before they had opportunity to run or
+put up a fight. Moran was there, stretched comfortably on Wade's own
+cot, smoking a cigar. Once, he looked directly toward the window at
+which the watcher had placed himself, but the latter did not move.
+Instead, he fingered his gun and waited; he was not sure that he really
+wanted to avoid detection; if it came, Moran would pay, and the rest, at
+the moment, did not seem to matter. He had forgotten Dorothy entirely.</p>
+
+<p>But Santry was not there and this fact puzzled Wade. The Sheriff was not
+there either, and presently it occurred to the cattleman that a part of
+the posse, with Santry, might have returned to Crawling Water over the
+main trail. Probably Moran, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>the rest, was waiting for him. The
+mere thought of Santry already on his way to jail filled Wade with a
+baffling sense of rage, and creeping from the house, he examined the
+surrounding turf by the faint rays of the moon. It was badly cut up by
+the feet of many horses, and several minutes passed before Wade was
+really sure that a number of mounted men had taken the trail back to
+town. Satisfied of this at length, he untied his horse and swung into
+the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>Before riding away he considered the advisability of driving off the
+horses belonging to Moran's party, but there would still be others in
+the corral, and besides their absence, when discovered, would give
+warning of the impending attack. On second thought, however, he quietly
+made his way to the corral and caught a fresh horse of his own. When he
+had saddled it he set out over the old trail for the big pine.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the rendezvous his men were not there; but knowing that
+he must meet them if he followed the road from there on he did not stop.
+He came upon them in a few minutes, riding toward him at full speed,
+with Tim Sullivan in the van, too drunk to stand erect, but able to
+balance himself on a horse's back, drunk or sober.</p>
+
+<p>"We come acrost Santry and the Sheriff a while back," explained Big Bob
+Lawson, one of Wade's own punchers. "They must be in town by now. We was
+aimin' to light into 'em, but Santry wouldn't hear of it. Course, we
+took our orders from him same as usual. He said to tell you that you
+wanted him to keep quiet, an' that's what he aimed to do."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p><p>"He said we wasn't to tell you that he didn't shoot them Swedes," put in
+another of the men.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" Wade demanded sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"He said&mdash;hic!" broke in Tim Sullivan, with drunken gravity. "He
+said&mdash;hic!&mdash;that if you didn't know that without&mdash;hic!&mdash;bein' told, you
+wasn't no friend of his'n, an'&mdash;hic!&mdash;you could go to hell."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, you drunken fool!" Lawson snapped out.</p>
+
+<p>"Jensen and his herder were shot in the back, they say. That clears
+Santry," Wade declared, and sat for some moments in deep thought, while
+the men waited as patiently as they could. "Lawson," he said, at last.
+"You're in charge for the present. Take the boys to the big pine and
+camp there quietly until I come back. I'm going into town."</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you better take us with you, boss? We'll stick. We're for you
+an' Bill Santry an' ag'in' these&mdash;sheepherders, whenever you say the
+word."</p>
+
+<p>"That's&mdash;hic&mdash;what we are!" Sullivan hiccoughed.</p>
+
+<p>Wade shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No. You wait for me at the pine. You'll have to rustle your grub the
+best way you can. I may not get back until to-morrow&mdash;until this
+evening&mdash;it's morning now. But wait until I come. There will be plenty
+for you to do later on and there is no use of you going back to town
+with me. It might get you into worse trouble than you're headed for
+already, and what I've got to do, I can do alone."</p>
+
+<p>Wheeling his horse, he rode off toward Crawling Water.</p>
+
+<p>That he could take his men with him, storm the jail <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>and release Santry,
+Wade did not doubt, but to do so would be to bring each of the men into
+open conflict with the law, a responsibility which he was resolved to
+bear alone. Then, too, because his long ride had cooled him somewhat, he
+intended to make one more appeal to the Senator. Possibly, Moran had
+exceeded his instructions, and if this were so, it was no more than just
+that Rexhill, who had seemed to evince a willingness to be helpful,
+should have the opportunity to disown the act of his agent. Besides, if
+Santry could be peaceably released, he would be freed of the charge
+hanging over him, which would not be the case if he were taken from the
+jail by strategy or violence.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>With haggard countenance and inflamed eyes, Wade bore little resemblance
+to his normal self when he again appeared before the Senator, who
+received him in his dressing-gown, being just out of bed. Rexhill
+listened with a show of sympathy to the cattleman's story, but evidently
+he was in a different mood from the day before.</p>
+
+<p>"My boy, your friendship for your foreman is leading you astray. Your
+faith in him, which is natural and does you credit, is blinding you to
+an impartial view of the case. Why not let the law take its course? If
+Santry is innocent his trial will prove it. At any rate, what can I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Senator&mdash;" Wade spoke with intense weariness. "Only yesterday you
+offered to help us. The situation, as I explained it then, is unchanged
+now, except for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>the worse. Bill Santry is free of any complicity in
+Jensen's death. I am positive of it. He sent me word that he had not
+left the ranch, and he would not lie to save himself from hanging.
+Besides, the men were shot in the back, and that is absolute proof that
+Santry didn't do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Mere sentiment, Gordon; mere sentiment. Proof? Pooh!"</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill's slightly contemptuous tone worked upon Wade in his exhausted,
+overwrought condition, and stung him. A strange look of cunning appeared
+in his eyes, as he leaned across the table which separated them.</p>
+
+<p>"Senator, Moran made me an offer the other day for my land. If&mdash;I accept
+that offer, will you exert your influence in Santry's behalf?"</p>
+
+<p>Coming so swiftly upon his planning, the prospect of such signal success
+was so gratifying to Rexhill that only in halting speech could he
+maintain a show of decorous restraint. His countenance expressed
+exultant relief, as well it might, since he seemed to see himself
+snatched out of the jaws of ruin.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Gordon, I&mdash;Of course, my boy, if you were to show such a generous
+spirit as that, I&mdash;er&mdash;should feel bound...." The sense of his remarks
+was lost in the crash of Wade's fist upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you!" The cattleman was beyond himself with fatigue, rage, and a
+rankling sense of injustice. "They told me that was your game. I
+believed it of Moran, but I thought you were square. So you're that
+sort, too, eh? Well, may you rot in hell before you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>get my land, you
+robber! Now listen to me." He waved his hand in the direction of the
+street. "Out there's a hundred men&mdash;real men&mdash;who're waiting the word to
+run you out of this country, you and Moran, too, and by God we'll do
+it&mdash;we'll do it&mdash;and we'll begin right away!" Again his heavy fist
+crashed down on the table "Never mind Bill Santry"&mdash;the instinct of
+discretion was gaining in Wade.&mdash;"He can stay where he is for the
+present. First, we'll attend to you pirates&mdash;then we'll see."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped suddenly at sight of Helen, who attracted by the noise, had
+entered the room, and stood before him in a filmy negligee.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, Gordon?" she demanded anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon." Wade spoke awkwardly, unashamed of himself, except
+for her. "I'm worn out and I&mdash;I lost my temper."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you&mdash;er&mdash;leave this room!" The Senator was beginning to pull
+himself together. It was the first time he had ever been ragged in such
+a way, and his composure had suffered; he spoke now with more than his
+usual pomposity.</p>
+
+<p>"I will," Wade answered curtly, as he turned on his heel and departed.</p>
+
+<p>The Senator, puffing slightly, fiddled with his glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"Your young friend has seen fit to accuse me of&mdash;of&mdash;" For the life of
+him, he could not at once say of just what he had been accused, unless
+he allowed self-accusation to prompt his words. "Some sheepherders <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>have
+been murdered, I believe," he went on, "and Wade seems to think that
+Moran and I are implicated."</p>
+
+<p>"You!" his daughter exclaimed; evidently her amazement did not extend to
+Moran.</p>
+
+<p>"Preposterous nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course." Helen walked to the window and stood looking down into
+the street. "I'm afraid Gordon hasn't improved since we saw him last,"
+she added, finally. "He seems quite a different person from the man I
+used to know. What are you going to do about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Crush him!" The Senator's lips set in a thin, white line, as his hand
+descended on the table on the spot where Wade's fist had fallen. "This,
+apparently, is his gratitude to me for my interest in him. Now I intend
+to show him the other side of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, no one could blame you for punishing him. Oh, everything
+between him and me is quite over," said the girl, with a peculiar smile.
+"He's a perfect bear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you feel that way about it, Helen." Her father's set lips
+relaxed into a responsive smile. "You couldn't be my daughter and not
+have some sense."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I any?" Helen na&iuml;vely asked.</p>
+
+<p>She was gazing out of the window again, and to her mind's eye the dusty,
+squalid street became a broad highway, with jewelers' shops on either
+side, and <i>modistes</i>, and other such charming things, just as they are
+found in New York, or&mdash;Paris!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>HIGHER THAN STATUTE LAW</h3>
+
+<p>Wade descended the stairs of the hotel and went into the barroom, fuming
+with rage and chagrin because Helen had seen him in such a temper. Like
+most men of action, he took pride in his self-control, which seldom
+failed him, but the villainy of the Senator's attitude had momentarily
+mastered his patience.</p>
+
+<p>Gathered about the bar were a number of men whom he knew, but beyond a
+nod here and there he took no notice of them, and went to sit down alone
+at a small table in the corner. His friends respected his desire to be
+left alone, although several eyed him curiously and exchanged
+significant remarks at his appearance. They seemed to be of the opinion
+that, at last, his fighting blood had been aroused, and now and then
+they shot approving glances in his direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Whiskey," Wade called to the bartender, and a bottle and glass were
+placed on the table in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>With a steady hand the ranchman poured out and quickly swallowed two
+stiff drinks of the fiery liquor, although he was not ordinarily a
+drinking man. The fact that he drank now showed his mental state more
+clearly than words could have expressed it. Searching in his pockets, he
+found tobacco and papers and rolled and lighted a cigarette. Nothing
+could be done <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>for Santry until night, and meanwhile he intended to get
+something to eat and take the sleep that he needed to fit himself for
+the task ahead of him. He ordered a steak, which on top of the whiskey
+put new life into him.</p>
+
+<p>The more he thought of his outburst of temper before Helen the more it
+annoyed him, for he realized that he had "bitten off a bigger wad than
+he could chew," as Bill Santry would have expressed it. Rascal though
+the Senator was, so far as he was concerned, Wade felt that his hands
+were tied on Helen's account. For her sake, he could not move against
+her father in a country where the average man thought of consequences
+after the act rather than before it. In a sense Wade felt that he stood
+sponsor for Crawling Water in the hospitality which it offered Helen,
+and he could not bring peril down on her head.</p>
+
+<p>But as for Moran and his hirelings, that was a different matter! When
+the ranchman thought of Moran, no vengeance seemed too dire to fit his
+misdeeds. In that direction he would go to the limit, and he only hoped
+that he might get his hands on Moran in the mix-up. He still looked upon
+his final visit to Rexhill as a weakness, but it had been undertaken
+solely on Santry's account. It had failed, and no one now could expect
+tolerance of him except Helen. If the posse was still at the ranch, when
+he and Santry returned there at the head of their men, they would attack
+in force, and shoot to kill if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>He learned from Lem Trowbridge, who presently joined him at the table,
+that the posse would probably <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>still be there, for the report in town
+was that Moran had taken possession of the property and meant to stay
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"He does, eh?" Wade muttered grimly. "Well, he may, but it will be with
+his toes up. I'm done, Lem. By Heaven, it's more than flesh and blood
+can stand!"</p>
+
+<p>"It sure is! We're with you, Gordon. Your men were over at my place a
+few hours ago. We grubbed them and loaned them all the guns we could
+spare. I sent over my new Winchester and a belt of shells for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. You're more than welcome to all the help I can give
+you, not only against Moran and his gang, but against Rexhill. If you
+like, we'll run him out of town while you're putting the fear of God
+into Moran. Lord! I sure would like to go back to the ranch with you,
+but it's your own quarrel and I won't butt in."</p>
+
+<p>Wade briefly explained his attitude toward the Rexhills and added that
+their cause would not be helped by violence toward the Senator, who was
+a big man at Washington, and might stir the authorities into action on
+his behalf if he could prove personal abuse. The noise that would be
+made by such a happening might drown out the justice of the cattlemen's
+claim.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's true, too," Trowbridge admitted. "I can see the point all
+right. What we want to do is to get something 'on' the Senator. I mean
+something sure&mdash;something like this Jensen shooting."</p>
+
+<p>Wade nodded slowly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p><p>"That's the idea, but I'm afraid we can't do it, Lem. I haven't a doubt
+but that Moran is mixed up in the killing, but I hardly believe Rexhill
+is. Anyhow, they've probably covered their tracks so well that we'll
+never be able to connect them with it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. You can't always tell what time'll bring to light."
+Trowbridge lowered his voice. "What's your idea about Santry? Do you
+want help there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." Wade spoke with equal caution. "I believe I can manage all right
+alone. The Sheriff will probably be looking for us to rush the jail, but
+he won't expect me to come alone. Bat Lewis goes on duty as the relief,
+about nine o'clock. I mean to beat him to it, and if the Sheriff opens
+up for me I'll be away with Santry before Bat appears. But I must get
+some sleep, Lem."</p>
+
+<p>The two men arose.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good luck to you, Gordon." Trowbridge slapped his friend on the
+shoulder, and they separated.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank, can you let me have a bed?" Wade asked of the hotel proprietor,
+a freckled Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure; as many as you want."</p>
+
+<p>"One will do, Frank; and another thing," the ranchman said guardedly.
+"I'll need an extra horse to-night, and I don't want to be seen with him
+until I need him. Can you have him tied behind the school-house a little
+before nine o'clock?"</p>
+
+<p>"You bet I can!" The Irishman slowly dropped an eyelid, for the
+school-house was close by the jail.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p><p>Wade tumbled into the bed provided for him and slept like a log, having
+that happy faculty of the healthy man, of being able to sleep when his
+body needed it, no matter what impended against the hour of awakening.</p>
+
+<p>When he did wake up, the afternoon was well advanced, and after another
+hearty meal he walked over to the Purnells' to pass the time until it
+was late enough for him to get to work.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Gordon will tell you I'm right," Mrs. Purnell proclaimed
+triumphantly, when the young man entered the cottage. "I want Dorothy to
+go with me to call on Miss Rexhill, and she doesn't want to go. The
+idea! When Miss Rexhill was nice enough to call on us first."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Purnell set much store upon her manners, as the little Michigan
+town where she was born understood good breeding, and she had not been
+at all annoyed by Helen Rexhill's patronage, which had so displeased
+Wade. To her mind the Rexhills were very great people, and great people
+were to be expected to bear themselves in lofty fashion. Dorothy had
+inherited her democracy from her father and not from her mother, who,
+indeed, would have been disappointed if Helen Rexhill appeared any less
+than the exalted personage she imagined herself to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'd like to meet her well enough, only...." Dorothy stopped,
+unwilling to say before Wade that she did not consider the Rexhills
+sufficiently good friends of his, in the light of recent developments,
+for them to be friends of hers.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p><p>"Of course, go," he broke in heartily. "She's not responsible for what
+her father does in the way of business, and I reckon she'd think it
+funny if you didn't call."</p>
+
+<p>"There now!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I'll go." In her heart Dorothy was curious to meet the other
+woman and gauge her powers of attraction. "We'll go to-morrow, mother."</p>
+
+<p>Quite satisfied, Mrs. Purnell made some excuse to leave them together,
+as she usually did, for her mother heart had traveled farther along the
+Road to To-morrow than her daughter's fancy. She secretly hoped that the
+young cattleman would some day declare his love for Dorothy and ask for
+her hand in marriage.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to the girl's anxious questions Wade told her of what had
+happened since their meeting on the trail, as they sat together on the
+porch of the little cottage. She was wearing a plain dress of green
+gingham, which, somehow, suggested to him the freshness of lettuce. She
+laughed a little when he told her of that and called him foolish, though
+the smile that showed a dimple in her chin belied her words.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the posse is still at the ranch?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. If they are, we are going to run them off to-morrow
+morning, or perhaps to-night. I've had enough of this nonsense and I
+mean to meet Moran halfway from now on."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose you must," she admitted reluctantly. "But do be careful,
+Gordon."</p>
+
+<p>"As careful as I can be under the circumstances," he said cheerfully,
+and told her that his chief purpose in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>coming to see her was to thank
+her again for the service she had rendered him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't need to thank me for that. Do you know"&mdash;she puckered up
+her brows in a reflective way&mdash;"I've been thinking. It seems very
+strange to me that Senator Rexhill and Moran should be willing to go to
+such lengths merely to get hold of this land as a speculation. Doesn't
+it seem so to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it does, but that must be their reason."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure of that, Gordon. There must be something more behind
+all this. That's what I have been thinking about. You remember that when
+Moran first came here he had an office just across the street from his
+present one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Simon Barsdale had Moran's present office until he moved to
+Sheridan. You were his stenographer for a while, I remember." Wade
+looked at her curiously, wondering what she was driving at.</p>
+
+<p>"Moran bought Mr. Barsdale's safe." Her voice sounded strange and
+unnatural. "I know the old combination. I wonder if it has been
+changed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lem Trowbridge was saying only this morning," said Wade thoughtfully,
+for he was beginning to catch her meaning, "that if we could only get
+proof of something crooked we might...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think we can," Dorothy interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>They looked searchingly at each other in the gathering dusk, and he
+tried to read the light in her eyes, and being strangely affected
+himself by their close proximity, he misinterpreted it. He slipped his
+hand over hers and once more the desire to kiss her seized <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>him. He let
+go of her hand and was just putting his arm around her shoulders when,
+to his surprise, she appeared suddenly indignant.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't!"</p>
+
+<p>He was abashed, and for a moment neither said a word.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the combination?" he finally asked hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"I promised Mr. Barsdale never to tell any one." Her lips wreathed into
+a little smile. "I'll do it myself."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't." Wade shook his head positively. "Do you suppose I'm
+going to let you steal for me? It will be bad enough to do it myself;
+but necessity knows no law. Well, we'll let it go for the present then.
+Don't you think of doing it, Dorothy. Will you promise me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never promise," she said, smiling again, and ignoring her last words
+in womanly fashion, "but if you don't want me to...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't," he declared firmly. "Let it rest at that. We'll
+probably find some other way anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>She asked him then about Santry, but he evaded a direct answer beyond
+expressing the conviction that everything would end all right. They
+talked for a while of commonplaces, although nothing that he said seemed
+commonplace to her and nothing that she said seemed so to him. When it
+was fully dark he arose to go. Then she seemed a little sorry that she
+had not let him put his arm around her, and she leaned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>toward him as
+she had done on the trail; but he was not well versed in woman's
+subtleties, and he failed to guess her thoughts and walked away, leaving
+her, as Shakespeare put it, to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Twice desire, ere it be day,</span>
+<span class="i10">That which with scorn she put away."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Having mounted his horse at the livery stable, he first made sure that
+the extra horse was behind the school-house, where he tied his own, and
+then walked around to the jail. On the outside, this building was a
+substantial log structure; within, it was divided into the Sheriff's
+office and sleeping room, the "bull pen," and a single narrow cell, in
+which Wade guessed that Santry would be locked. After examining his
+revolver, he slipped it into the side pocket of his coat and walked
+boldly up to the jail. Then, whistling merrily, for Bat Lewis, the
+deputy, was a confirmed human song-bird, he knocked sharply on the door
+with his knuckles.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me&mdash;Bat," he called out, mimicking Lewis' voice, in answer to a
+question from within.</p>
+
+<p>"You're early to-night. What's struck you?" Sheriff Thomas opened the
+door, and turning, left it so, for the "relief" to enter. He had half
+feared that an attempt might be made to liberate Santry, but had never
+dreamed that any one would try the thing alone. He was glad to be
+relieved, for a poker game at which he wanted to sit in would soon start
+at the Gulch Saloon.</p>
+
+<p>He was the most surprised man in Wyoming, when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>he felt the cold muzzle
+of Wade's Colt boring into the nape of his neck and heard the ranchman's
+stern warning to keep quiet or take the consequences. Sheriff Thomas had
+earned his right to his "star" by more than one exhibition of nerve, but
+he was too familiar with gun ethics to argue with the business end of a
+"45."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a sound!" Outwardly cold as ice, but inwardly afire, Wade shoved
+the weapon against his victim's neck and marched him to the middle of
+the room. "I've got the upper hand, Sheriff, and I intend to keep it."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a damn fool, Wade." The Sheriff spoke without visible emotion
+and in a low tone. "You'll go up for this. Don't you realize that...."</p>
+
+<p>"Can it!" snapped Wade, deftly disarming the officer with his free hand.
+"Never mind the majesty of the law and all that rot. I thought that all
+over before I came. Now that I've got you and drawn your teeth, you'll
+take orders from me. Get my foreman out of that cell and be quick about
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to do but obey, which Thomas quietly did, although
+somewhat in fear of what Santry might do when at liberty. When the cell
+door was unlocked, the old plainsman, in a towering rage at the
+injustice of his incarceration, seemed inclined to choke his erstwhile
+jailer.</p>
+
+<p>"None of that, Bill," Wade admonished curtly. "He's only been a tool in
+this business, although he ought to know better. We'll tie him up and
+gag him; that's all. Rip up one of those blankets."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p><p>"I knew you'd come, boy!" The foreman's joy was almost like that of a
+big dog at sight of his master. "By the great horned toad, I knew it!"
+With his sinewy hands he tore the blanket into strips as easily as
+though the wool had been paper. "Now for him, drat him!"</p>
+
+<p>Wade stood guard while the helpless Sheriff was trussed up and his mouth
+stopped by Santry, and if the ranch owner felt any compunction at the
+sight, he had only to think of his own men as he had seen them the night
+before, lying on the floor of the ranch house.</p>
+
+<p>"Make a good job of it, Bill," was his only comment.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet!" Santry chuckled as he drew the last of the knots tight.
+"That'll hold him for a spell, I reckon. How you feel, Sheruff, purty
+comfortable?" The flowing end of the gag so hid the officer's features
+that he could express himself only with his eyes, which he batted
+furiously. "Course," Santry went on, in mock solicitude, "if I'd thought
+I mighta put a bit of sugar on that there gag, to remind you of your
+mammy like, but it ain't no great matter. You can put a double dose in
+your cawfee when you git loose."</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Bill!" Wade commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"So long, Sheruff," Santry chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>There was no time to waste in loitering, for at any moment Bat Lewis
+might arrive and give an alarm which would summon re&euml;nforcements from
+amongst Moran's following. Hurrying Santry ahead of him, Wade swung open
+the door and they looked out cautiously. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>No one was in sight, and a
+couple of minutes later the two men were mounted and on their way out of
+town.</p>
+
+<p>"By the great horned toad!" Santry exulted, as they left the lights of
+Crawling Water behind them. "It sure feels good to be out of that there
+boardin'-house. It wasn't our fault, Gordon, and say, about this here
+shootin'...."</p>
+
+<p>"I know all about that, Bill," Wade interposed. "The boys told me.
+They're waiting for us at the big pine. But your arrest, that's what I
+want to hear about."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was this-a-way," the old man explained. "They sneaked up on
+the house in the dark and got the drop on us. Right here I rise to
+remark that never no more will I separate myself from my six-shooter.
+More'n one good man has got hisself killed just because his gun wasn't
+where it oughter be when he needed it. Of course, we put up the best
+scrap we could, but we didn't have no chance, Gordon. The first thing I
+knew, while I was tusslin' with one feller, somebody fetched me a rap on
+the head with a pistol-butt, an' I went down for the count. Any of the
+boys shot up?"</p>
+
+<p>Wade described the appearance of the ranch house on the previous night,
+and Santry swore right manfully.</p>
+
+<p>"What's on the cards now?" he demanded. "How much longer are we goin' to
+stand for...."</p>
+
+<p>"No longer," Wade declared crisply. "That's why the boys are waiting for
+us at the pine. We're going <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>to run Moran and his gang off the ranch as
+soon as we can get there, and then we're going to run them out of the
+country."</p>
+
+<p>"Whoop-e-e-e-e-e!" The old plainsman's yell of exultation split the
+night like the yelp of a coyote, and he brought his hand down on Wade's
+back with a force which made the latter wince. "By the great horned
+toad, that's talkin! That's the finest news I've heard since my old
+mammy said to the parson, 'Call him Bill, for short.' Whoop-e-e-e-e!"</p>
+
+<p>Wade's warning to keep still was lost on the wind, for Santry stuck his
+spurs into his horse's flanks and charged along the trail like an
+old-time knight. With a grim smile his employer put on speed and
+followed him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BATTLE AT THE RANCH</h3>
+
+<p>When Wade and Santry approached the big pine, the waiting men came out
+from its shadow and rode forward, with the borrowed rifles across their
+saddle horns.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, boys?" the rancher asked, taking Trowbridge's new rifle, a
+beautiful weapon, which Lawson handed to him.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, sir," answered Tim Sullivan, adding the "sir" in extenuation
+of his befuddled condition the night before, while each man gave Santry
+a silent hand-shake to welcome him home.</p>
+
+<p>Grimly, silently, then, save for the dashing of their horses' hoofs
+against the loose stones, and an occasional muttered imprecation as a
+rider lurched in his saddle, the seven men rode rapidly toward the
+mountains. In numbers, their party was about evenly matched with the
+enemy, and Wade meant that the advantage of surprise, if possible,
+should rest with him in order to offset such advantage as Moran might
+find in the shelter of the house. But, however that might be, each man
+realized that the die had been cast and that the fight, once begun,
+would go to a finish.</p>
+
+<p>"I only hope," Santry remarked, as a steep grade forced them to lessen
+their speed, "I can get my two <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>hands on that cussed tin-horn, Moran.
+Him and me has a misunderstandin' to settle, for sure."</p>
+
+<p>"You leave him to me, Bill." Wade spoke vindictively. "He's my meat."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, since you ask it, I'll try, boy. But there's goin' to be some
+fightin' sure as taxes, and when I get to fightin', I'm liable to go
+plumb, hog wild. Say, I hope you don't get into no trouble over this
+here jail business o' mine. That 'ud make me feel bad, Gordon."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll not worry about that now, Bill."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. Don't worry till you have to, and then shoot instead.
+That's been my motto all my born days, and it ain't such durn bad
+philosophy at that. I wonder"&mdash;the old man chuckled to himself&mdash;"I
+wonder if the Sheruff et up most of that there gag before Bat let him
+loose?"</p>
+
+<p>Wade laughed out loud, and as though in response, an owl hooted
+somewhere in the timber to their right.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a durned old hoot owl," growled Santry. "I never like to hear
+them things&mdash;they most always mean bad luck."</p>
+
+<p>He rode to the head of the little column, and the rest of the way to the
+ranch was passed in ominous silence. When they finally arrived at the
+edge of the clearing and cautiously dismounted, everything seemed from
+the exterior, at least, just as it should be. The night being far gone,
+the lights were out, and there was no sign of life about the place. Wade
+wondered if the posse had gone.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no use in speculatin'," declared Santry. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>"They may be
+asleep, and they may be layin' for us there in the dark. This will take
+a rise out of 'em anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the old fellow, pistol in hand, Wade called to him to wait,
+but as he spoke Santry fired two quick shots into the air.</p>
+
+<p>There was an immediate commotion in the ranch house. A man inside was
+heard to curse loudly, while another showed his face for an instant
+where the moonlight fell across a window. He hastily ducked out of
+sight, however, when a rifle bullet splintered the glass just above his
+head. Presently a gun cracked inside the house and a splash on a rock
+behind the attackers told them where the shot had struck.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoop-e-e-e-e!" Santry yelled, discharging the four remaining shots in
+his revolver at the window. "We've got 'em guessin'. They don't know how
+many we are."</p>
+
+<p>"They were probably asleep," said Wade a bit sharply. "We might have
+sneaked in and captured the whole crowd without firing a shot. That's
+what I meant to do before you cut loose."</p>
+
+<p>Santry shook his grizzled head as he loaded his revolver.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, that would have been just a mite risky, boy. The way things
+stand we've still got the advantage, an'...." He broke off to take a
+snapshot at a man who showed himself at the window for an instant in an
+effort to get a glimpse of the attacking force. "One!" muttered the old
+plainsman to himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>By this time Wade had thrown himself down on his stomach behind a
+bowlder to Santry's left and was shooting methodically at the door of
+the house, directly in front of him. He knew that door. It was built of
+inch lumber and was so located that a bullet, after passing through it,
+would rake the interior of the cabin from end to end. The only way the
+inmates could keep out of the line of his fire was by hugging the walls
+on either side, where they would be partially exposed to the leaden hail
+which Santry and the punchers were directing at the windows.</p>
+
+<p>There was a grim, baleful look on the young man's usually pleasant face,
+and his eyes held a pitiless gleam. He was shooting straight, shooting
+to kill, and taking a fierce delight in the act. The blood lust was upon
+him, that primal, instinctive desire for combat in a righteous cause
+that lies hidden at the very bottom of every strong man's nature. And
+there came to his mind no possible question of the righteous nature of
+his cause. He was fighting to regain possession of his own home from the
+marauders who had invaded it. His enemies had crowded him to the wall,
+and now they were paying the penalty. Wade worked the lever of his
+Winchester as though he had no other business in life. A streak of
+yellow clay mingled with a bloody trickle from a bullet scratch on his
+cheek gave his set features a fairly ferocious expression.</p>
+
+<p>Santry, glancing toward him, chuckled again, but without mirth. "The
+boy's woke up at last," he muttered to himself. "They've drove him to
+it, durn 'em. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>I knew almighty well that this law an' order stunt
+couldn't last forever. Wow!"</p>
+
+<p>The latter exclamation was caused by a bullet which ricocheted from a
+rock near his head, driving a quantity of fine particles into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoop-e-e-e-e!" he howled a moment later. "We got 'em goin'. It's a
+cinch they can't stand this pace for more'n a week."</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it was a marvel that the defenders kept on fighting as long as
+they did. Already the door, beneath Wade's machine-like shooting, had
+been completely riddled; the windows were almost bare of glass; and
+great splinters of wood had been torn from the log walls by the heavy
+rifle bullets on their way through to the interior. Soon the door sagged
+and crashed inward, and into the gaping hole thus made Wade continued to
+empty his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>At last, the fire of those within slackened and temporarily ceased. Did
+this mean surrender? Wade asked himself and ordered his men to stop
+shooting and await developments. For some moments all was still, and the
+advisability of rushing the house was being discussed when all at once
+the fire of the defenders began again. This time, however, there was
+something very odd about it. There was a loud banging of exploding
+cartridges, but only a few shots whistled around the heads of the
+cattlemen. Nevertheless, Wade told his men to resume shooting, and once
+more settled down to his own task.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>"What'n hell they tryin' to do?" Santry demanded. "Sounds like a Fourth
+o' July barbecue to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Wade answered, charging the magazine of his rifle, "but
+whatever it is they'll have to stop mighty soon."</p>
+
+<p>Then gradually, but none the less certainly, the fire from within
+slackened until all was still. This seemed more like a visitation of
+death, and again Wade ordered his men to stop shooting. They obeyed
+orders and lay still, keenly watching the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you surrender?" Wade shouted; but there was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>Santry sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"By the great horned toad!" he cried. "I'm a-goin' in there! Anybody
+that wants to come along is welcome."</p>
+
+<p>Not a man in the party would be dared in that way, so, taking advantage
+of such cover as offered, they advanced upon the cabin, stealthily at
+first and then more rapidly, as they met with no resistance&mdash;no sign
+whatever of life. A final rush carried them through the doorway into the
+house, where they expected to find a shambles.</p>
+
+<p>Wade struck a light, and faced about with a start as a low groan came
+from a corner of the back room. A man lay at full length on the floor,
+tied hand and foot, and gagged. It was Ed Nelson, one of the Double
+Arrow hands who had been surprised and captured by the posse, and a
+little farther away in the shadow against the wall his two companions
+lay in a like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>condition. With his knife Wade was cutting them loose,
+and glancing about in a puzzled search for the wounded men he expected
+to find in the house, when Santry shouted something from the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Bill?" the ranch owner demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Santry tramped back into the room, laughing in a shamefaced sort of way.</p>
+
+<p>"They done us, Gordon!" he burst out. "By the great horned toad, they
+done us! They chucked a bunch of shells into the hot cook-stove, an'
+sneaked out the side door while we was shootin' into the front room. By
+cracky, that beats...."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they did," spoke up Nelson, as well as his cramped tongue
+would permit, being now freed of the gag. "They gagged us first, so's we
+couldn't sing out; then they filled up the stove an' beat it."</p>
+
+<p>What had promised to be a tragedy had proved a fiasco, and Wade smiled a
+little foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>"The joke's on us, I guess, boys," he admitted. "But we've got the ranch
+back, at any rate. How are you feeling, Ed, pretty stiff and sore?"</p>
+
+<p>"My Gawd, yes&mdash;awful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Me, too," declared Tom Parrish, the second of the victims; and the
+third man swore roundly that he would not regain the full use of his
+legs before Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you're lucky at that," was Santry's dry comment. "All that saved
+you from gettin' shot up some in the fight was layin' low down in that
+corner where you was." He let his eyes travel around the littered,
+blood-spattered room. "From the looks o' this shebang <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>we musta stung
+some of 'em pretty deep; but nobody was killed, I reckon. I hope Moran
+was the worst hurt, durn him!"</p>
+
+<p>"He'll keep," Wade said grimly. "We've not done with him yet, Bill.
+We've only just begun."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SENATOR GETS BUSY</h3>
+
+<p>It was daylight when the routed posse, with Race Moran in the lead, his
+left arm tied up in a blood-stained handkerchief, rode into Crawling
+Water. A bullet had pierced the fleshy part of the agent's wrist, a
+trifling wound, but one which gave him more pain than he might have
+suffered from a serious injury. None of the members of the posse had
+been dangerously wounded; indeed, they had suffered more in the spirit
+than in the flesh; but there had been a number of minor casualties
+amongst the men, which made a sufficiently bloody display to arouse the
+little town to active curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Under instructions from the leader, however, the fugitives kept
+grouchily silent, so that curiosity was able to feed only on
+speculations as to Wade's temper, and the fact that he had brought about
+Santry's release from jail. The story of that achievement had been
+bruited about Crawling Water since midnight, together with the
+probability that the Law would be invoked to punish the ranchman for his
+defiance of it. Popular sentiment was running high over the likelihood
+of such a step being taken, and the members of the posse were the
+targets of many hostile glances from the townspeople. At least
+two-thirds of the citizens were strongly in favor of Wade, but before
+they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>took active steps in his behalf they waited for the return of a
+horseman, who had hurried out to the ranch to learn at first hand
+exactly what had happened there.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Moran, in an ugly mood, had awakened the Senator from the
+troubled sleep which had come to him after much wakeful tossing.
+Rexhill, with tousled hair, wrapped in a bathrobe, from the bottom of
+which his bare ankles and slippered feet protruded, sat on the edge of
+his bed, impatiently chewing an unlighted cigar while he listened to
+Moran's account of the fracas.</p>
+
+<p>"You went too far, Race,&mdash;you went too far," he burst out angrily at
+last. "You had no orders to jump the ranch. I told you...."</p>
+
+<p>"We've been fooling around long enough, Senator," Moran interrupted
+sullenly, nursing his throbbing wrist. "It was high time somebody
+started something, and when I saw my chance I seized it. You seem to
+think"&mdash;his voice trailed into scorn&mdash;"that we are playing marbles with
+boys, but, I tell you, it's men we're up against. My experience has
+shown me that it's the first blow that counts in any fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, who got in the hardest lick, eh?" Rexhill snorted sarcastically.
+"The first blow's all right, provided the second isn't a knockout from
+the other side. Why, confound it, Race, here we had Wade at our mercy.
+He'd broken into jail and set free a suspected murderer&mdash;a clear case of
+criminality. Then you had to spoil it all."</p>
+
+<p>Moran smothered an imprecation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p><p>"You seem to forget, Senator, that we had him at our mercy before, and
+you wouldn't hear of it. If you'd taken my advice in the first place,
+we'd have had Wade in jail instead of Santry and things might have been
+different."</p>
+
+<p>"Your advice was worthless under the circumstances; that's why I didn't
+take it." Rexhill deliberately paused and lighted his cigar, from which
+he took several soothing puffs. To have been aroused from his bed with
+such news had flustered him somewhat; but he had never known anything
+worth while to come out of a heated discussion, and he sought now to
+calm himself. Finally, he spoke slowly. "What you proposed to me then
+was a frame-up, and all frame-ups are dangerous, particularly when they
+have little to rest upon. For that reason I refused to fall in with your
+ideas, Race. This release of Santry from jail is&mdash;or was&mdash;an entirely
+different thing, an overt criminal act, with Sheriff Thomas on our side
+as an unimpeachable witness."</p>
+
+<p>Moran was suffering too keenly from his wound and smarting under his
+defeat too much to be altogether reasonable. His manner was fast losing
+the appearance of respect which he had previously shown his employer.
+His expression was becoming heated and contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't base your refusal on logic at the time, Senator," he said.
+"It was sentiment, if I remember right. Wade had broken bread with you,
+and all that. I don't see but what that applies just as well now as it
+did then."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p><p>"It doesn't," the Senator argued smugly, still rankling from Wade's
+arraignment of him the day before, "because even hospitality has its
+limits of obligation. So long as I knew Wade to be innocent, I did not
+care to have him arrested; but I don't admit any sentiment of
+hospitality which compels me to save a <i>known</i> criminal from the hand of
+justice. Sheriff Thomas came in to see me last night and I agreed with
+him that Wade should be brought to account for his contempt of the law.
+Wade forced his way into the jail and released his foreman at the point
+of a gun. Even so, I feel sorry for Wade and I am a little apprehensive
+of the consequences that will probably develop from his foolhardiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, by God, if there's any sympathy for him floating around this
+room, it all belongs to you, Senator." Moran tenderly fingered his
+aching wrist. "I'm not one of these 'turn the other cheek' guys; you can
+gamble on that!"</p>
+
+<p>"But now where are we?" Rexhill ignored the other's remarks entirely.
+"We are but little better off than Wade is. He pulled Santry out of
+jail, and we tried to steal his ranch. The only difference is that so
+far he has succeeded, and we have failed. He has as much law on his side
+now as we have on ours."</p>
+
+<p>Moran's head drooped a little before the force of this argument,
+although he was chiefly impressed by the fact that he had failed. His
+failures had been few, because Fortune had smiled upon him in the past;
+and doubtless for this reason he was the less able to treat failure
+philosophically. His plans at the ranch house <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>had gone awry. He had
+counted on meeting Wade there in the daytime, in the open, and upon
+provoking him, before witnesses, into some hot-headed act which would
+justify a battle. The surprise attack had left the agent without this
+excuse for the hostilities which had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill arose and walked up and down the room in thought, his slippered
+feet shuffling over the floor, showing now and then a glimpse of his
+fat, hairy legs as the skirt of his bathrobe fluttered about. A cloud of
+fragrant smoke from his cigar trailed him as he walked, and from the way
+he chewed on the tobacco his <i>confr&egrave;res</i> in the Senate could have
+guessed that he was leading up to one of his Czar-like pronouncements.
+Presently he stopped moving and twisted the cigar in his mouth so that
+its fumes would be out of his eyes, as his glance focused on Moran.</p>
+
+<p>"There's just one way out of this mess, Race," he began. "Now heed what
+I say to you. I'm going to send a telegram to the Department of the
+Interior which will bring a troop of cavalry down here from Fort
+Mackenzie. You must go slow from now on, and let the authorities settle
+the whole matter."</p>
+
+<p>The agent sat up alertly, as his employer, wagging a ponderous
+forefinger impressively, proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"You were not on the ranch for the purpose of jumping it at all. Mind
+that now! You and I stand for the majesty of the law in this lawless
+community." Moran's eyes began to twinkle at this, but he said nothing.
+"When you and Sheriff Thomas went out to the ranch, you carried two
+warrants with you, one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>for Santry, as the accessory, and one for Wade,
+as the principal, in the Jensen shooting. Yes, yes, I know what you are
+going to say; but I must save my own bacon now. Since Wade has proved
+himself to be a lawbreaker, I'm not going to protect him."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you're talking!" exclaimed Moran, delighted at the prospect of
+what such a course would start going.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have the matter of the warrants fixed up with Thomas," the Senator
+continued. "Now, follow me carefully. Thomas arrested Santry at the
+ranch, and then left you, as his deputy, to serve the other warrant on
+Wade when he came home. It was because of his knowledge of what was in
+store for him that Wade, after getting Santry out of jail, attacked you
+and your men, and it was in defense of the law that you returned their
+fire. It will all work out very smoothly, I think, and any further
+hostilities will come from the other side and be to our great
+advantage."</p>
+
+<p>Moran looked at his employer in admiration, as the latter concluded and
+turned toward his writing table.</p>
+
+<p>"Senator," the agent declared, as Rexhill took up his fountain pen and
+began to write on a telegraph form, "you never should have started in
+Denver. If you'd been born in little old New York, you'd be in the White
+House now. From this minute on you and I are going to carry this whole
+valley in our vest-pockets."</p>
+
+<p>"You take this over and put it on the wire right away, Race. It's to the
+Secretary of the Interior and my signature on it should get immediate
+attention." <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>Senator Rexhill handed over the telegraph form he had
+filled out.</p>
+
+<p>"But what about State rights in this business?" Moran asked, anxiously.
+"Will they send Government troops in here on your say so?"</p>
+
+<p>The Senator waved his hand in dismissal of the objection.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have Thomas wire the Governor that the situation is beyond
+control. This town is miles from nowhere, and there's no militia within
+easy reach. The State will be glad enough to be saved the expense,
+especially with the soldiers close by at Fort Mackenzie. Besides, you
+know, although Wade's ranch is inside the State, a good deal of his land
+is Government land, or was until he filed on it."</p>
+
+<p>When Moran had left the room in a much easier frame of mind than he came
+into it, the Senator sat down heavily on the bed. He was puffing at his
+cigar and thinking intently, when he caught sight of the white, startled
+face of his daughter in the mirror of the bureau across the room.
+Whirling about, he found her standing in the doorway looking at him.
+Rexhill had never before been physically conscious of the fact that he
+had a spine, but in that moment of discovery a chill crept up and down
+his back, for her expression told him that she had heard a good deal of
+his conversation with Moran. The most precious thing to him in life was
+the respect of his child; more precious even, he knew, than the
+financial security for which he fought; and in her eyes now he saw that
+he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>face to face with a greater battle than any he had ever waged.</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<p>"What, are you awake, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>He tried hard to make his tone cheery and natural, as he stood up and
+wrapped the bathrobe more closely around him.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard what you said to Race Moran."</p>
+
+<p>Helen came into the room, with only a dressing wrapper thrown over her
+thin night-dress, and dropped into a chair. She seemed to feel that her
+statement of the fact was accusation enough in itself, and waited for
+him to answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't have listened, Helen. Moran and I were discussing private
+business matters, and I thought that you were asleep. It was not
+proper...."</p>
+
+<p>Her lips, which usually framed a smile for him, curled disdainfully and
+he winced in spite of himself. He avoided the keen appraisement of her
+gaze, which seemed now to size him up, as though to probe his most
+secret thoughts, whereas before she had always accepted him lovingly on
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, they were not matters that you would want an outsider to
+hear," she said, in a hard voice, "but I am very glad that <i>I</i> listened,
+father. Glad"&mdash;her voice broke a little&mdash;"even though I shall never be
+able to think of you again as I...."</p>
+
+<p>He went to her and put his heavy hands on her shoulders, which shrank
+under his touch.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, don't say things that you'll regret, Helen. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>You're the only girl
+I have, and I'm the only father you have, so we ought to make the best
+of each other, oughtn't we, eh? You're prone to hasty judgments. Don't
+let them run away with you now."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't touch me!" He made way for her as she got to her feet.
+"Father,"&mdash;she tremblingly faced him, leaning for support against a
+corner of the bureau,&mdash;"I <i>heard</i> all that you said to Mr. Moran. I
+don't want you to tell me what we've been to each other. Don't I know
+that? Haven't I felt it?"</p>
+
+<p>The Senator swallowed hard, touched to the quick at the sight of her
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to explain it&mdash;more fully?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you can. Can you?" Her lips twitched spasmodically. "I want you to
+tell me something that will let me continue to believe that you
+are&mdash;that you are&mdash;Oh, you know what I want to say." Rexhill blushed a
+deep purple, despite his efforts at self-control. "But what can you say,
+father; what <i>can</i> you say, after what I've heard?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean as regards young Wade? You know, I told you last night about
+his attack on the Sheriff. You know, too"&mdash;the blush faded as the
+Senator caught his stride again&mdash;"that I said I meant to crush him. You
+even agreed with me that he should be taught a lesson."</p>
+
+<p>"But you should fight fairly," Helen retorted, with a quick breath of
+aggression. "Do you believe that he killed Jensen? Of course you don't.
+The mere idea of such a thing is absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he planned it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p><p>"Father!" The scorn in her tone stung him like a whip-lash. "Did he plan
+the warrants, too? The warrant that hasn't been issued yet, although you
+are going to swear that it was issued yesterday. Did he plan that?"</p>
+
+<p>Once in his political career, the Senator had faced an apparent
+<i>impasse</i> and had wormed out of it through tolerant laughter. He had
+laughed so long and so genially that the very naturalness of his
+artifice had won the day for him. Men thought that if he had had a
+guilty conscience, he could not have seemed so carefree. He tried the
+same trick now with his daughter; but it was a frightful attempt and he
+gave it up when he saw its ill-success.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Helen," he burst out, "it is ridiculous that you should
+arraign me in this way. It is true that no warrant was out yesterday for
+Wade, but it is also true that the Sheriff intended to issue one, and it
+was only through my influence that the warrant was not issued. Since
+then Wade, besides insulting me, has proved himself a lawbreaker. I have
+nothing to do with the consequences of his actions, which rest entirely
+with him. You have overheard something that you were not intended to
+hear, and as is usually the case, have drawn wrong conclusions. The best
+thing you can do now is to try to forget what you have heard and leave
+the matter in my hands, where it belongs."</p>
+
+<p>He had spoken dominantly and expected her to yield to his will. He was
+totally unprepared, well as he knew her spirit, for what followed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p><p>She faced him with glowing eyes and her trembling lips straightened into
+a thin, firm line of determination. He was her father, and she had
+always loved him for what she had felt to be his worth; she had given
+him the chance to explain, and he had not availed himself of it; he was
+content to remain convicted in her eyes, or else, which was more likely,
+he could not clear himself. She realized now that, despite what she had
+said in pique, only the night before, she really loved Wade, and he, at
+least, had done nothing, except free a friend, who, like himself, was
+unjustly accused. She could not condemn him for that, any more than she
+could forget her father's duplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't forget it!" she cried. "If necessary, I will go to Gordon and
+tell him what you've done. I'll tell it to every one in Crawling Water,
+if you force me to. I don't want to because, just think what that would
+mean to you! But you shall not sacrifice Gordon. Yes, I mean it&mdash;I'll
+sacrifice you first!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk so loud," the Senator warned her anxiously, going a little
+white. "Don't be a fool, Helen. Why, it was only a few hours ago that
+you said Wade should be punished."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed hysterically.</p>
+
+<p>"That was only because I wanted to get him away from this awful little
+town. I thought that if he were&mdash;punished&mdash;a little, if he was made a
+laughing stock, he might be ashamed, and not want to stay here. Now, I
+see that I was wrong. I don't blame <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>him for fighting with every weapon
+he can find. I hope he wins!"</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill, who had been really frightened at her hysterical threat of
+exposure, and assailed by it in his pride as well, felt his fear begin
+to leave him and his confidence in himself return. In the next minute or
+two, he thought rapidly and to considerable purpose. In the past he had
+resolutely refused to use his child in any way to further his own ends,
+but the present occasion was an emergency, and major surgery is often
+demanded in a crisis. If she were willing, as she said, to sacrifice
+him, he felt that he might properly make use of her and her moods to
+save himself and her as well. He realized that if she were to shout
+abroad through Crawling Water the conversation that had passed between
+him and Moran, the likelihood of either of the two men getting out of
+the county alive would be extremely remote.</p>
+
+<p>"So that was it, eh? And I complimented you upon your good sense!" His
+laugh was less of an effort now. "Well, doesn't it hold good now as well
+as it did then? Come, my dear, sit down and we'll thresh this out
+quietly."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head stubbornly, but the woman in her responded to the new
+note of confidence in his voice, and she waited eagerly for what he had
+to say, hopeful that he might still clear himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You tell me that I must fight fair. Well, I usually do fight that way.
+I'm doing so now. When I spoke yesterday of crushing Wade, I meant it
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>I still mean it. But there are limits to what I want to see happen
+to him; for one thing, I don't want to see him hung for this Jensen
+murder, even if he's guilty."</p>
+
+<p>"You know he isn't guilty."</p>
+
+<p>"I think he isn't." Her eyes lighted up at this admission. "But he must
+be tried for the crime, there's no dodging that. The jury will decide
+the point; we can't. But even if he should be convicted, I shouldn't
+want to see him hung. Why, we've been good friends, all of us. I&mdash;I like
+him, even though he did jump on to me yesterday. That was why"&mdash;he
+leaned forward, impelled to the falsehood that hung upon his tongue by
+the desperate necessity of saving himself his daughter's love and
+respect&mdash;"I arranged with Moran to have the boy arrested on such a
+warrant. He is bound to be arrested"&mdash;Rexhill struck the table with his
+fist&mdash;"and if he should need a basis for an appeal after conviction, he
+could hardly have a better one than the evidence of conspiracy, which a
+crooked warrant would afford. I wanted to give him that chance because I
+realized that he had enemies here and that his trial might not be a fair
+one. When the right moment came I was going to have that warrant looked
+into."</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<p>Helen dropped on her knees before him, her eyelashes moist with tears
+and her voice vibrant with happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you explain all that before, Father? I knew that there must
+be <i>some</i> explanation. I felt <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>that I couldn't have loved you all my
+life for nothing. But do you really believe that any jury would convict
+Gordon of such a thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>Never had Senator Rexhill felt himself more hopelessly a scoundrel than
+now as he smoothed her hair from her forehead; but he told himself that
+the pain of this must be less than to be engulfed in bankruptcy, or
+exposure, which would submerge them all. Moreover, he promised himself
+that if future events bore too heavily against Wade, he should be saved
+at the eleventh hour. The thought of this made the Senator's position
+less hard.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not, Helen," he repeated. "Of course, the serving of the warrant
+at this time will help my own interests, but since a warrant must be
+served, anyway, I feel justified, under the circumstances, in availing
+myself of this advantage."</p>
+
+<p>"Y-e-s, of course," Helen agreed doubtfully. "Oh, it is all too bad. I
+wish none of us had ever heard of Crawling Water."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, maybe the Grand Jury will not indict him, feeling runs so strong
+here," her father continued, and she took fresh hope at this prospect.
+"But, anyway, he will feel the pressure before all is done with, and
+very likely he'll be only too glad to dispose of his ranch and say
+good-by to Wyoming when he is free to do as he pleases. Then you and he
+can make a fresh start, eh? All will be sunshine and roses then, maybe,
+forever and aye."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I want to do&mdash;get away from here; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>and that was all I meant
+when I said to punish Gordon."</p>
+
+<p>The Senator patted her cheek tenderly and drew a deep breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, father," Helen said casually, when she started back to her
+room, a little later, "I saw Miss Purnell on the street yesterday. You
+know, she was out when Gordon took me to see her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, is she dangerous?"</p>
+
+<p>Helen looked at him in amusement, and shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>TANGLED THREADS</h3>
+
+<p>Relieved though Helen was to some extent, by her father's assurances and
+by the explanation which he had given, she was far from being in a
+tranquil frame of mind.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that whatever might be the outcome of the graver charge against
+Gordon, he would probably have to suffer for his release of Santry, and
+she found herself wishing more than ever that her lover had never seen
+the West. What little it had contributed to his character was not worth
+what it had cost already and would cost in the future. Surely, his
+manhood was alive enough not to have needed the development of such an
+environment, and if his lot had been cast in the East, she could have
+had him always with her. A long letter, which she had recently received
+from Maxwell Frayne, recounting the gayeties of New York and Washington,
+made her homesick. Although she could scarcely think of the two men at
+the same moment, still, as she sat in the crude little hotel, she would
+have welcomed a little of young Frayne's company for the sake of
+contrast. She was yearning for the flesh-pots of her own Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>From the news of the fight at the ranch, which had been brought to town
+by the messenger, she gathered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>that Wade meant to intrench himself on
+the ranch and defy the law, which would probably embroil him in other
+criminal acts. Crawling Water, too, was rapidly filling up with armed
+cattlemen, who, she thought, would do Gordon's cause more harm than
+good. Toward afternoon, word came of a bloody skirmish on the Trowbridge
+range, between a number of his punchers and some of Moran's hired men,
+and that added to the tension among those crowding the main street.</p>
+
+<p>From the parlor windows of the hotel she watched what was going on
+outside, not without alarm, so high did feeling seem to run. The threats
+of the ranch men, handed about amongst themselves but loud enough for
+her to catch a word now and then, made her wonder if the town was really
+safe for her father, or for herself. A storm was coming up, and the
+rising wind whipped the flimsy lace curtains of the windows and kept
+them fluttering like flags. The distant muttering of the thunder and an
+occasional sharp flash of lightning wore on her tired nerves until she
+could sit still no longer.</p>
+
+<p>For the sake of something to do, she went up to her room, intending to
+write some letters there, but her bed had not been made up, so she
+returned to the parlor with her fountain pen and writing-pad. To Maxwell
+Frayne she wrote a brief note, which was not likely to cheer him much.
+She had become so in the habit of taking her moods out on Maxwell that
+to do so, even with a pen, was second nature to her. She despised him
+for his tolerance of her tyranny, never realizing that he reserved to
+himself the privilege <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>of squaring their account, if she should ever
+become his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Then to ease her mind of the strain it bore, she wrote at some length to
+her mother; not telling the whole truth but enough of it to calm her own
+nervousness. She said nothing of the conversation she had overheard, but
+went fully into the scene between her father and Gordon Wade. With a
+little smile hovering on her lips, she wrote dramatically of the
+Senator's threat to crush the ranchman. "That will please mother," she
+said to herself, as her pen raced over the paper. "Gordon felt, you see,
+that"&mdash;she turned a page&mdash;"father knew Santry had not killed Jensen,
+and...."</p>
+
+<p>The hotel-keeper poked his head in at the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Two ladies to see you, Miss," he announced. "Mrs. Purnell and
+daughter."</p>
+
+<p>He gave Helen no chance to avoid the visit, for with the obviousness of
+the plains, he had brought the visitors upstairs with him, and so,
+blotting what she had written and weighing down her letter against the
+breeze, she arose to greet them.</p>
+
+<p>"This is good of you, Mrs. Purnell, and I am so glad to meet your
+daughter. I've been lonely and blue all day and now you have taken pity
+on me."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Purnell shot an "I told you so" glance at Dorothy, which made that
+young lady smile to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sorry not to have been at home when you called, Miss Rexhill."</p>
+
+<p>The two girls looked at each other, each carefully <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>veiling hostility,
+Dorothy beneath a natural sweetness of disposition, and Helen with the
+<i>savoir faire</i> of social experience. Each felt and was stung by a
+realization of the other's points of advantage. Dorothy saw a perfection
+of well-groomed poise, such as she could hardly hope to attain, and
+Helen was impressed with her rival's grace and natural beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you sit down?"</p>
+
+<p>"But aren't we disturbing you?" Mrs. Purnell asked, with a glance toward
+the writing materials.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, you are not. I was writing some duty letters to kill time. I'm
+only too glad to stop because I'm really in no writing mood and I am
+most anxious to hear what is going on outside. Isn't it dreadful about
+Mr. Wade?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean his helping Santry?" Dorothy asked, with a little touch of
+pride which did not escape her hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"Partly that; but more because he is sure to be arrested himself. I've
+been terribly worried."</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy glanced at her keenly and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I have an idea that they may find Gordon hard to arrest," she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Mrs. Purnell put in. "He is so popular. Still, I agree with you
+that there is every cause for anxiety." The good lady did not have a
+chance every day to agree with the daughter of a United States Senator,
+and the opportunity was not to be overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>"The people feel so strongly that Santry should never have been arrested
+that they are not likely to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>let Gordon be taken just for freeing him,"
+Dorothy explained.</p>
+
+<p>Helen shook her head with every indication of tremulous worry.</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't that alone," she insisted. "He's to be arrested for the
+Jensen shooting. That was why the posse waited at his ranch after Santry
+had been caught."</p>
+
+<p>"For the Jensen shooting?" Dorothy showed her amazement very plainly.
+"Are you sure?" she demanded, and when Helen nodded, exclaimed: "Why,
+how utterly absurd! I understood that you were with him yourself when he
+received word of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was," Helen admitted. "He is supposed only to have planned the crime,
+I believe. He's supposed to have been the principal, isn't that what
+they call it?" She appealed to Mrs. Purnell.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but do you think he could do such a thing?" Mrs. Purnell asked,
+much shocked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>do</i> know!" Dorothy burst out emphatically. "I know Gordon Wade too
+well to think for one minute that he did it; and every true friend of
+his ought to speak out at once and say the same thing."</p>
+
+<p>The challenge in her voice was unmistakable, and Mrs. Purnell moved
+uneasily in her chair. She glanced anxiously at Helen and was relieved
+to see that the latter had lost none of her poise.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so as fully as you do," Helen said sweetly, "but things move so
+fast here in these mountains that I find it hard to keep up with them."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>"Of course," Mrs. Purnell soothed, with a troubled look at her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Who swore out the warrant, I wonder?" Dorothy asked, in a more tranquil
+tone, a bit ashamed of her outburst. "Was it Mr. Moran?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I don't know," Helen answered. "I supposed it was the Sheriff.
+Why should Mr. Moran have anything to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he seems to have been concerned in all the trouble we have
+had," Dorothy replied calmly. "This was a peaceful little community
+until Mr. Moran moved into it."</p>
+
+<p>Helen made no direct reply to this, and for awhile Dorothy allowed her
+mother to sustain the conversation. She had no doubt but that Moran was
+back of it all, and she was thinking of what Lem Trowbridge had said;
+that if they could only "get something on" Moran and the Senator, a
+solution of the whole problem would be at hand. She thought that she had
+detected a defensive note in Helen's voice, and she was wondering why it
+should have been there.</p>
+
+<p>"But you haven't answered my question yet about Mr. Moran," Helen
+presently challenged her. "You seemed to have something more in mind
+than what you said. Would you mind telling me?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy looked steadily but not offensively at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's nothing, Miss Rexhill. I was only thinking that he has gone
+rather far: been very zealous in your father's interests. Probably...."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Dorothy&mdash;!" her mother interposed, in a shocked tone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p><p>"Miss Rexhill asked me, mother, and you know that I always speak
+frankly."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, do go on," Helen urged, with even an added touch of sweetness in
+her manner. "I really want to know. I am so out of touch with things
+here, so ill informed."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can sit here at the windows and learn all you wish to know.
+There isn't a man in this town that would see Gordon arrested and not
+fight to free him. Feeling is running high here now. You know, it's
+something like a violin string. You can stretch it just so far and then
+it snaps. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorothy, I'm really mortified that you...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you've no occasion to be, Mrs. Purnell," Helen interrupted,
+smiling. "I asked for the plain truth, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Purnell laughed feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorothy has known Mr. Wade so long and we both like him so well that
+she can't bear to hear a word against him," she explained. Her sense of
+<i>l&egrave;se majest&eacute;</i> was running away with her judgment, and Dorothy shot an
+irritated glance at her. "Not that I think he did it at all, you
+understand; but...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, perfectly," declared Helen, with rising color and an equal feeling
+of annoyance. "Oh, dear me, do look at my poor letters!"</p>
+
+<p>A gust of wind, stronger than any that had come before, had swept the
+weight to the floor and scattered letter paper, envelopes, and blotter
+about the room. Helen was just able to catch the writing-pad as it slid
+to the floor, while Dorothy and her mother <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>laughingly salvaged the
+rest. The incident happily relieved the awkward drift of their
+conversation, and they all felt relieved.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, did you ever?" Mrs. Purnell ejaculated, looking at the
+lithographed blotter, which she held in her hand. "I declare this
+picture of a little girl reminds me of Dorothy when she was that age."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Really?" Helen broke in. "How interesting. I hadn't noticed the
+picture. Do let me see."</p>
+
+<p>To be courteous, she agreed with Mrs. Purnell that there was a strong
+likeness, which Dorothy laughingly denied.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I know what you looked like when you were five better than you
+do," Mrs. Purnell declared. "It's the image of you as you were then, and
+as Miss Rexhill says, there is a facial resemblance even yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you would like to take it with you, then," Helen suggested, to
+Mrs. Purnell's delight, who explained that the only picture she had of
+Dorothy at that age had been lost.</p>
+
+<p>"If it wouldn't deprive you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed. You must take it. I have a large blotter in my writing-pad,
+so I really don't need that one at all. So many such things are sent to
+father that we always have more than we can use up."</p>
+
+<p>When Dorothy and her mother left the hotel, urged homeward by the first
+big drops of the coming rain, Mrs. Purnell tucked the blotter in the
+bosom of her dress, happy to have the suggestion of the picture <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>to
+recall the days when her husband's presence cheered them all. Her world
+had been a small one, and little things like this helped to make it
+bright.</p>
+
+<p>Soon afterward the supper bell rang, and during the meal Helen told the
+Senator, who seemed somewhat morose and preoccupied, of the visit she
+had had.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure tiresome people. Goodness! I was glad to see them at first because
+I thought they would help me to pass the afternoon, but instead I was
+bored to death. That little minx is crazy about Gordon, though. I could
+see that."</p>
+
+<p>"Um!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the worst of it is that she just fits into the scenery here, and I
+don't. You know, father, I never could wax enthusiastic over shooing the
+cows to roost and things like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Um!"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel like a deaf person at a concert, here in this town."</p>
+
+<p>This remark brought a wry laugh from her father, and Helen smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've made you laugh, anyway," she said. "You're frightfully
+grouchy this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I'm busy, very busy, and I haven't time to think of trifles.
+I'll be at it most of the night."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shall you? Goodness, that's cheerful. I wish I had never come to
+this awful little place. I suppose I must go back to my letters for
+something to do. And, father," she added, as he lingered with her for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>a
+moment in the hallway, "the Purnells seem to think that you and Mr.
+Moran had better not go too far. The people here are very much wrought
+up."</p>
+
+<p>He patted her shoulder affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>"You leave all that to me and go write to your mother."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing else for her to do, so she returned to the parlor.
+When she had finished her letters, she idly picked up a week-old copy of
+a Denver newspaper which lay on the table and glanced through the
+headlines. She was yawningly thinking of bed, when Moran came into the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, are you and father through at last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered, smiling. "That is, we're through upstairs. I'm on my
+way over to the office to straighten up a few loose ends before I turn
+in. There's no rest for the weary, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let me keep you, then," she said dryly, as he lingered. "I'm
+going to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not keeping me. I'm keeping myself." He quite understood her
+motive, but he was not thin-skinned, and he had learned that he had to
+make his opportunities with her. "Your father told me you were getting
+anxious."</p>
+
+<p>"Not anxious, tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Things are getting a little warm here, but before there's any real
+danger we expect to have the soldiers here to take charge."</p>
+
+<p>He rather ostentatiously displayed his bandaged wrist, hoping to win her
+sympathy, but she professed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>none. Instead, she yawned and tapped her
+lips with her fingers, and her indifference piqued him.</p>
+
+<p>"I was talking with Dorothy Purnell this afternoon," Helen finally
+remarked, eyeing him lazily, "and she seems to be of the opinion that
+you'll have hard work arresting Gordon Wade. I rather hope that you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;" He teetered a little on his feet and stroked his mustache. "We
+may have, at that. Miss Purnell is popular and she can make a lot of
+trouble for us if she wants to. Being very fond of Wade, she's likely to
+do all that she can."</p>
+
+<p>"Would she really have so much influence?" Helen asked, carefully
+guarding her tongue.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed softly as though amused at the thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Influence? Evidently you don't realize what a good looking girl means
+in a frontier town like this. She's part sister, part mother, sweetheart
+and a breath from Heaven to every man in Crawling Water. On that
+account, with one exception, I've had to import every last one of my
+men. The exception is Tug Bailey, who's beyond hope where women are
+concerned. To all the rest, Dorothy Purnell is 'Wade's girl,' and they
+wouldn't fight against her, or him, for all the money in Wyoming."</p>
+
+<p>He was watching her keenly as he spoke, and was gratified to see spots
+of color spring to her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"How interesting!" Helen could make her tone indifferent to the point of
+languor, but she could not keep the gleam of jealousy out of her eyes.
+"Gordon is a fortunate man to have such an able ally, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p><p>"The finish will decide that, I should say," Moran replied sneeringly.
+"She may stir up more trouble than all her friends can take care of."</p>
+
+<p>For all of her social schooling, Helen was not proof against the sneer
+in his words, even though she fully saw through his purpose to wound
+her. She felt her temper rising, and with it came curiosity to learn how
+far the relationship between Wade and Dorothy Purnell had really gone.
+That Moran would exaggerate it, she felt sure, for he had his own ends
+to gain, but possibly from out of his exaggeration she could glean some
+truth. Yet she did not want to go so far in her anger as to gratify his
+malice, and this placed her in something of a dilemma.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe that she is 'Wade's girl,' as you call her, at all,"
+she said coldly. "They may be good friends, and if so, I'm glad; but
+they are nothing more than that. There is no 'understanding' between
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Moran carelessly waved his hand in the direction of the rain-swept
+street, illuminated now and then by the lightning.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask any one in Crawling Water."</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds well, but it's impracticable, even if I wanted to do it. I
+prefer to draw my own conclusions."</p>
+
+<p>The agent drew up a chair with his well hand, and sat down with that
+easy familiarity that came so natural to him. Helen watched him, lazily
+impertinent.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been wanting to have a talk with you, Helen," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>he began, "and this
+looks like a good chance to me. You've been foolish about Wade. Yes, I
+know that you're thinking that I've got my own ends to further, which is
+true enough. I have. I admit it. But what I am going to tell you is
+true, also. Fortune's been playing into my hand here lately. Now, if
+you'll be reasonable, you'll probably be happier. Shall I go on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wild horses couldn't stop you," she answered, amused that he seemed
+flattered. "But if we were in Washington, I fancy I'd have you shown
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"We're not in Washington, my dear girl." He wagged his finger at her, in
+the way her father had, to give emphasis to his words. "That's where
+you've made your mistake with Wade. We're all just plain men and women
+out here in the cattle country, and I'm talking its language, not the
+language of drawing-rooms." He was himself a little surprised at the
+swift dilation of her pupils, but his words had probed deeper than he
+knew, reminding her as they did of the truth which she had so fully
+realized that afternoon. "Wade liked you&mdash;loved you, maybe, in Chicago,
+but this ain't the East. He cares nothing for you here, and he'd never
+be happy away from here. You know that picture of yourself that you sent
+to him?" She nodded. "Well, we found it on the floor of his room,
+covered with dust. He hadn't even troubled to pick it up from where it
+must have fallen weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him dumbly, unable to keep her lips from twitching. He
+knew that she believed him, and he was glad; that she had to believe
+him, because <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>his story bore the impress of truth. It was not something
+that he could have made up.</p>
+
+<p>"And while your picture was lying there, Wade and this Purnell girl were
+making goo-goo eyes at each other. Why, it was she that rode out to warn
+him that we were after Santry." Helen's lips curled. "I can't swear to
+that, but I heard it and I believe it myself. They must've met on the
+trail somewhere in the dark, and you can bet he was grateful. I don't
+imagine that they stopped at a hand-shake. I imagine they kissed, don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm tired, worn out," Helen declared, forcing a smile so artificial
+that it could not deceive him. "Do go, please. I am going upstairs to
+bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait one minute." He put out his injured arm, and, thinking that he
+reached for her hand, she brushed it aside, accidentally striking his
+wound.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry if I hurt you," she said coldly, as he winced.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I've hurt you worse," he persisted, with a tenderness that was
+intolerable to her, "but, if I have, your wound'll heal just as mine
+will." He gently pushed her back into her chair as she started to get
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you making love to me, Race?" Under the ridicule of her tone his
+face darkened. "If you are, it's insufferable in you."</p>
+
+<p>"Go easy, now," he warned her. "I'll not be made a fool of."</p>
+
+<p>She did not heed his warning. Glad to have him on the rack, where she
+had been, she laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p><p>"Haven't you sense enough to know that, for that very reason, I'd refuse
+to believe anything you might say against Gordon Wade? I know how you
+hate him. Listen to me. Oh, this is absurd!" She laughed again at the
+picture he made. "You've pursued me for months with your attentions,
+although I've done everything but encourage you. Now I want you to know
+that I shall never again even listen to you. What Gordon is to Dorothy
+Purnell is for him, and her, and perhaps for me to be interested in, but
+not for you. Now I'm going to bed. Good night!"</p>
+
+<p>He caught her by the arm as she stood up, but immediately released her,
+and stepped in front of her instead.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on," he begged, with a smile that meant wonderful mastery of
+himself. "I've got feelings, you know. You needn't walk on them. I love
+you, and I want you. What I want, I usually get. I mean to get you." She
+looked up at him with heavy-lidded insolence. "I may fail, but if I do,
+it'll be one more notch in my account against Wade. I know now where to
+strike him&mdash;to hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"You be reasonable, and <i>you'll</i> be happier," she retorted. "May I go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly." He stepped out of her way. "Good night."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>DESPERATE MEASURES</h3>
+
+<p>If Moran or Helen, early in their conversation, had looked out of the
+window of the hotel, during one of those vivid lightning flashes, they
+might have seen a woman stealthily approaching the agent's office across
+the street. Taking advantage of the deeper shadows and of the darkness
+between lightning flashes, she stole to the rear of the building, where
+she found an unlatched window, through which she scrambled with the
+agility of a boy.</p>
+
+<p>Within, the place was pitch dark, but like one amid familiar
+surroundings, she crossed the hall and found the room she sought; the
+office room now of Moran, but formerly occupied by Simon Barsdale. She
+bent over the big safe, and was twirling the combination knob in her
+slim, cold fingers, when she was startled by a noise in the hallway
+outside. With a gasp of fright, she stood motionless, listening acutely,
+but there was no further sound; reassured, she produced a bit of candle,
+which she lighted and placed to one side of the safe, so that the flame
+was shaded from the windows. She was in the act of manipulating the
+combination again when, her whole body rigid with fear, she stood erect
+once more, holding her breath and striving for self-control. There was
+no doubt <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>about the noise this time. Some one had entered the adjoining
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Hastily snuffing out the candle, she crouched into the darkness of a
+corner. She never doubted that the newcomer was Race Moran, or that he
+would almost immediately discover her. She tried to summon enough
+resolution to bluff things through when the moment of discovery should
+come.</p>
+
+<p>But, as the seconds slipped by and the lights were not turned on, she
+began to regain her courage. Perhaps Moran was sitting in the dark of
+the other room, smoking and thinking, and perhaps she could complete her
+task without being caught, if she moved swiftly and silently. She bent
+again over the shining knob, at the same time watching in the direction
+of the door, which was still closed as she had left it. It was difficult
+to work the lock in the dark, and, as she became engrossed with her
+purpose, she ceased temporarily to listen acutely. She had just
+succeeded in effecting the combination, when something touched her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't move!" a voice hissed behind her. "I'll shoot if you do!"</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to cry out, "Please don't shoot!" but her tongue clove to the
+roof of her mouth, which had suddenly gone dry. She had fallen forward
+against the door of the safe, and was curiously conscious how cold it
+felt. She was on the point of fainting, when in a rush of relief it
+dawned upon her that she knew the voice; it was not Moran's.</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon!" she cried joyously, finding the use of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>her tongue as quickly
+as she had lost it, and scrambling to her feet. "It's me&mdash;Dorothy!"</p>
+
+<p>With an exclamation as joyous as her own and equally surprised, he
+seized her by the shoulders, peering through the darkness into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorothy! What the...?" A lightning flash revealed them clearly to each
+other. "I told you not to try this."</p>
+
+<p>"But what are you doing in town?" She clutched his arms, overcome by a
+fear greater than that for her own safety. "Gordon, Gordon, you must not
+stay here. There's a warrant out for you&mdash;no, no, not for that&mdash;for the
+Jensen shooting. You'll be arrested on sight."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" He stared at her, amazed, and she nodded. "So that's their game
+now, eh? They've stooped even to that. By God!" He struck a match.</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful," she warned him instantly. "The light&mdash;put it out. They'll
+see it from the street. But, oh, Gordon, why did you come?"</p>
+
+<p>He thrilled at the anxiety in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"To find out what Moran is hiding here; and you're after the same thing,
+of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Impulsively, he squeezed her fingers, until she could have cried out in
+pain but for the sweetness of it; there are some agonies which do not
+hurt. Her throat swelled with joy, her breast heaved, and her eyelids
+fluttered. She was grateful for the darkness, which hid these outward
+signs of love from him. She blushed; she could feel the warm tide
+pulsing in her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>temples; and she laughed brokenly from sheer happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't have taken such a risk, Dorothy. I told you not to."</p>
+
+<p>"You're taking that risk, Gordon, and more."</p>
+
+<p>"That's different. It's so dark a night, I thought I'd chance it."</p>
+
+<p>"There's not much risk for me," she declared. "I can reach home in five
+minutes. Isn't it odd, though, that we both should have thought of doing
+it at exactly the same time. But come, Gordon, we must hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>Now that the safe was open, to remove its contents took only a moment,
+and they tossed all the papers they found into a corner. Then, when Wade
+had swung the safe around on its casters, they had a snug shelter behind
+it, where by shaded candle-light they ran rapidly through their loot.
+Most of the documents related to land purchases and development, but at
+the bottom of the pile Wade came upon a bundle of papers and
+blue-prints, held together by a rubber band, which he stripped off.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if we should find nothing, after all," Dorothy whispered, bending
+with him over the blue-prints. "What are they, Gordon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maps of my own range, Dorothy!" His tone was tense with excitement, as
+he leaned nearer to the light. "Well, what do you know about that? By
+Heaven"&mdash;He fairly glared at the sheet before his eyes.&mdash;"It's all
+there!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's all there? What is it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p><p>"Gold!" He looked at her in the flickering light, like a man gone mad.</p>
+
+<p>"Gold? On your range? Oh, Gordon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; on my range. It's inconceivable, almost; but it seems to be true.
+See! Look here!" Their heads were almost touching, so that her soft hair
+caressed his face. "This is a map of the upper valley, and the
+description says these red crosses indicate the location of gold. One is
+near the head of Piah Creek, not half a mile from my buildings."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Gordon, I <i>am</i> so glad!" Dorothy exclaimed. "How wonderful it all
+is. You'll be rich, won't you?" She was not too excited to remember that
+his wealth would probably be shared by another woman, but she was too
+generous to be any the less glad on that account.</p>
+
+<p>"That remains to be seen," he replied. "It may not prove to amount to
+much, you know. At any rate, Moran won't get any of it. That's worth a
+whole lot."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it must be something like that, Gordon. They would never have
+done the things they have without some powerful reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you were right, Dorothy. You're usually right." He caught her hand
+and squeezed it again, and in this moment of their triumph together she
+could not help returning the pressure. "You're a jewel, a brick, a
+trump&mdash;all those things and then some. The sweet...."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p><p>"Now, we haven't time for that sort of thing, Mr. Man. We...."</p>
+
+<p>"Must get away while we can, yes," he finished for her. "But just the
+same I...."</p>
+
+<p>Her cold fingers on his lips stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!"</p>
+
+<p>She put out the candle and they crouched down beside the safe. Some one
+was coming up the stairs, not stealthily this time but boldly, as one
+who had a right there, whistling softly. Wade could feel the girl's
+shoulder tremble against his side, as he slipped his revolver out of its
+holster.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Gordon! You&mdash;you mustn't shoot, no matter what happens." Her
+teeth were chattering, for she was far more frightened now than she had
+been for herself alone. "That's Moran. He mustn't see you here. Remember
+that warrant. Hide behind the safe. Please!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" he muttered grimly. "He'd find us anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. Please!" She was almost hysterical in her excitement. "I can
+bluff him till you can get away. He won't hurt me. If he does you can
+show yourself. Do it for me, for your friends. Please! Remember, he
+mustn't know that <i>you've</i> learned his secret."</p>
+
+<p>It was Moran, for they heard him now in conversation with some passer-by
+in the hallway. Dorothy was grateful for the respite, for it gave them
+time to throw the loose papers back into the safe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>and close it. Wade
+then pushed the safe to its original position, the casters making little
+noise as they rolled. Then he crouched behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like this stunt!" he protested; but yielded to her beseeching
+"Please." She was right, too, he knew. It would be far better if Moran
+could be kept in ignorance of his visit there.</p>
+
+<p>The office now bore little sign of their invasion of it, and, drawing a
+deep breath, Dorothy schooled herself to calmness as she awaited Moran,
+who was walking down the hall toward the entrance to the room. A plan
+had flashed into her mind by means of which she might save both Wade and
+herself, if he and her heart would only be quiet. The unruly heart was
+beating so violently that it shook her thin dress, and that her voice
+must tremble, she knew.</p>
+
+<p>Moran was almost at the threshold, when Dorothy opened the door for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Mr. Moran. Did I startle you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not exactly," he said, striking a match, after an instant's
+pause. "What are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>Passing her, he lighted the large oil lamp, and swept the room with a
+quick, keen glance. Finding nothing apparently wrong, he turned again to
+his visitor with a puzzled expression in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to see you and I thought you'd be here. The door was unlocked
+so I just walked in. I've been here only a minute or two." Fortified by
+another deep breath, drawn while his back was turned, Dorothy found her
+voice steadier than she expected.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p><p>The agent looked at her keenly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's strange," he commented. "I don't know what the door was doing
+unlocked. I always lock it when I leave."</p>
+
+<p>"You must have forgotten to do so to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I surely must have, if you found it open."</p>
+
+<p>Half convinced that she was telling the truth, Moran could see but one
+reason for her evident fright: she was afraid of him. The suggestion of
+that strengthened the impulse which her beauty stirred in him. If she
+thought so, why not?</p>
+
+<p>"Say, you're a good-looking kid, all right," he leered. "What did you
+want to see me for?"</p>
+
+<p>A slight sound from behind the safe, or perhaps she imagined it, caused
+Dorothy's heart to flutter wildly. She had not anticipated this attitude
+in Moran, and she instantly realized that it brought a fresh danger into
+the situation. She knew that Wade would not remain in concealment if the
+agent insulted her. She must avoid the chance of that, if possible; must
+get him out of the office so that Gordon might escape.</p>
+
+<p>"This is no place to talk that way," she said bravely. "It isn't a good
+place for me to be anyway. If people knew I was here, there would be a
+terrible scandal. I've something important to tell you. Won't you come
+for a walk?"</p>
+
+<p>"In this rain? Not much," he chuckled. "Come here!" She shook her head
+and tried to smile. "Well, if you won't, I'll have to go to you." She
+shrank back from him, as he approached her, with an evil smile. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>"Say,
+little one," he went on, "this is a damned funny game of yours, coming
+here at night. What's the idea, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't any, really." She snatched her hands away from him. "I've
+already tried to explain that I have important news for you; but I won't
+tell you what it is here."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? We're dry and cozy here. Go ahead."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come on!" He had driven her to the wall, and now he slipped an arm
+about her waist and pulled her toward him. "Say, kiss me once, won't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hands up, you low-lived hound!"</p>
+
+<p>With an oath, Moran whirled around to find himself staring into the
+muzzle of Wade's revolver. The ranchman moved his weapon significantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Up!"</p>
+
+<p>As the agent's hands went above his head, Dorothy leaned against the
+wall for support. She had not made a sound, but she was the color of
+chalk, and her heart seemed to be trying to jump out of her mouth. She
+was no whiter than Wade, whose fury had driven every vestige of color
+from his face and fired his eyes with a murderous light.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I kill him?" he asked Dorothy, and at the frightful tone of his
+voice she found the power to shake her head, although her mouth was too
+dry for speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Take his gun," said Wade sharply and the girl stepped forward.</p>
+
+<p>She reeled toward Moran, who, to do him justice, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>showed little fear,
+and pulled his revolver from his hip pocket. She held it out to Wade,
+who broke it with his free hand by pressing the butt against the top of
+the safe, and spilled the cartridges on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you can leave us, Dorothy," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I'll stay, Gordon," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Moran," Wade continued evenly, without paying any more attention to
+her, "the only reason why I shall not kill you is because Miss Purnell
+does not want your worthless life upon her conscience. A man like you
+ought to die. You're not fit to live."</p>
+
+<p>"Can I put my hands down?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; keep 'em where they are!" Wade gestured again with the gun. "I wish
+I had a string on each of your thumbs so I could hoist them higher. I've
+just been through this safe of yours." The agent started. "I've got
+those maps of my range in my pocket."</p>
+
+<p>"Much good they'll do you."</p>
+
+<p>"They'll do me more good alive than they will you dead, and you're going
+to die. So help me God, you are! We'll come together again some day."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," Moran declared venomously, and even Dorothy was struck by
+the courage he showed.</p>
+
+<p>"And then there won't be anybody to be held responsible but me." Wade
+grinned in a slow, horrible fashion. "It'll rest light on me, I promise
+you. And another thing. I'm going to leave you trussed up here in this
+office, like I left your friend the Sheriff a few days ago, and along
+about morning somebody'll <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>find you and turn you loose. When you get
+loose, you want to forget that you saw Miss Purnell here to-night. I've
+meant to have her and her mother leave town for a bit until this mess
+blows over, but things aren't fixed right for that just now. Instead,
+I'm going to leave her in the personal care&mdash;the <i>personal</i> care, you
+understand me, of every decent man in Crawling Water. If anything
+happens to her, you'll toast over a slow fire before you die. Do you get
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a good kid," said Moran, with a grin. Nor did he flinch when the
+weapon in Wade's hand seemed actually to stiffen under the tension of
+his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it's a good thing you stayed, Dorothy," the latter remarked
+grimly. "This fellow must be tied up. I wonder what we can find to do it
+with?"</p>
+
+<p>"My cloak?" Dorothy suggested. "It's an old one."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard to tear that rain-proof stuff, and besides you'd get wet
+going home. There's no sense in that. Isn't there something else?"</p>
+
+<p>She blushed a little and turned away for a moment, during which she
+slipped off her underskirt. Then, as Moran watched her cynically, she
+tore it into strips. When she had thus made several stout bands, Wade
+spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"You take the first throw or two about him," he directed, "and when you
+have him partly tied you can take my gun and I'll finish the job. Start
+with his feet, that's right. Now draw it as tight as you can. Put your
+arms down back of you! Tie them now, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>Dorothy. That's fine! Here, you
+take the gun. You know how to use it, if he struggles."</p>
+
+<p>Wade tightened up the linen bands, and kicked forward a straight-backed
+chair, into which he forced Moran and lashed him fast there, to all of
+which the agent made no great protest, knowing that to do so would be
+useless. He grunted and swore a bit under his breath, but that was all.
+When he was well trussed up, the ranchman made a gag out of what was
+left of the linen and his own handkerchief and strapped it into his
+prisoner's mouth with his belt.</p>
+
+<p>When the job was done, and it was a good one, he grinned again in that
+slow, terrible way. A grin that bore no semblance to human mirth, but
+was a grimace of combined anger and hatred. Once before, during the
+fight at the ranch, Bill Santry had seen this expression on his
+employer's face, but not to the degree that Dorothy now saw it. It
+frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Gordon, don't, please!" She closed her eyes to shut out the sight.
+"Come, we must hurry away."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night," Wade said ironically, with a last look at Moran.</p>
+
+<p>He let Dorothy draw him away then, and by the time they reached the
+street he was his old boyish self again. Aping Moran, he slipped his arm
+around her waist, but she did not shrink from <i>his</i> embrace, unexpected
+though it was.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, kid," he laughed mockingly. "Kiss me once, won't you?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>INTO THE DEPTHS</h3>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, Race! What's happened?"</p>
+
+<p>Senator Rexhill, on the next morning, surprised that Moran did not show
+up at the hotel, had gone in search of him, and was dumbfounded when he
+entered the office.</p>
+
+<p>Moran, in his desperate efforts to free himself, had upset the chair
+into which he was tied, and being unable to right it again, had passed
+most of the night in a position of extreme discomfort. Toward morning,
+his confinement had become positive agony, and he had inwardly raved at
+Wade, the gag in his mouth making audible expression impossible, until
+he was black in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"My God, Race!" the Senator exclaimed, when, having cut the lashings and
+withdrawn the gag, he saw his agent in a state bordering on collapse,
+"what has happened to you?" He helped the man to his feet and held him
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"My throat&mdash;dry&mdash;whiskey!" Moran gasped, and groaned as he clutched at
+the desk, from which he slid into a chair, where he sat rubbing his
+legs, which ached with a thousand pains.</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill found a bottle of whiskey and a glass on a shelf in the closet.
+He poured out a generous drink <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>of the liquor and handed it to Moran,
+but the agent could not hold it in his swollen fingers. The Senator
+picked up the glass, which had not broken in its fall and, refilling it,
+held it to Moran's lips. It was a stiff drink, and by the time it was
+repeated, the agent was revived somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, tell me," urged Rexhill.</p>
+
+<p>Prepared though he was for an outburst of fury, he was amazed at the
+torrent of blasphemous oaths which Moran uttered. He caught Wade's name,
+but the rest was mere incoherence, so wildly mouthed and so foul that he
+began to wonder if torture had unbalanced the man's mind. The expression
+of Moran's eyes, which had become mere slits in his inflamed and puffy
+face, showed that for the time he was quite beyond himself. What with
+his blued skin and distended veins, his puffed lips and slurred speech,
+he seemed on the brink of an apoplectic seizure. Rexhill watched him
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, man. Brace up," he burst out, at length. "You'll kill
+yourself, if you go on that way. Be a man."</p>
+
+<p>The words seemed to have their effect, for the agent made a supreme
+effort at the self-control which was seldom lacking in him. He appeared
+to seize the reins of self-government and to force himself into a state
+of unnatural quiet, as one tames a frantic horse.</p>
+
+<p>"The safe!" he muttered hoarsely, scrambling to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>His stiffened legs still refused to function, however, and Rexhill,
+hastening to the safe, threw open the door. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>One glance at the
+disordered interior told him the whole story. Moran watched feverishly
+as he dragged the crumpled papers out on the floor and pawed through
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!"</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other, a thin tide of crimson brightening the
+congestion of Moran's visage, while Rexhill's face went ghastly white.
+With shaking fingers, the agent poured himself a third drink and tossed
+it down his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Wade who tied you up?"</p>
+
+<p>Moran nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Him and that&mdash;girl&mdash;the Purnell girl." Stirred more by the other's
+expression of contempt than by the full half pint of whiskey he had
+imbibed, he crashed his fist down on the desk. "Mind what you say now,
+because, by God, I'm in no mood to take anything from you. He got the
+drop on me, you understand. Let it go at that."</p>
+
+<p>"It's gone right enough&mdash;all gone." Rexhill groaned. "Why, he only needs
+to publish those plots to make this a personal fight between us and
+every property owner in the valley. They'll tar and feather us, if they
+don't kill us outright. It'll be gold with them&mdash;gold. Nothing else will
+count from now on."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get back at him yet!" growled Moran.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll...." The Senator threateningly raised his gorilla-like arms, but
+let them drop helplessly again. "How did they get into the safe? Did you
+leave it open?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p><p>"Do you think I'm a fool?" Moran fixed his baleful eyes upon his
+employer, as he leaned heavily, but significantly, across the flat desk.
+"Say, let's look ahead to to-morrow, not back to last night. Do you
+hear? I'll do the remembering of last night; you forget it!"</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill tried to subdue him with his own masterful gaze, but somehow the
+power was lacking. Moran was in a dangerous frame of mind, and past the
+dominance of his employer. He had but one thought, that of vengeance
+upon the man who had misused him, to which everything else had for the
+time being to play second.</p>
+
+<p>"You talk like I let them truss me up for fun," he went on. "I did it
+because I had to, because I was looking into the muzzle of a six-shooter
+in the hands of a desperate man; that was why. Do you get me? And I
+don't need to be reminded of it. No, by Heaven! My throat's as dry yet
+as a fish-bone, and every muscle in me aches like hell! I'll remember it
+all right, and <i>he'll</i> pay. Don't you have any worries about that."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill was sufficiently a captain of men to have had experience of such
+moods in the past, and he knew the futility of arguing. He carefully
+chose a cigar from his case, seated himself, and began to smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Moran, apparently soothed by this concession to his temper, and a bit
+ashamed of himself, watched him for some moments in silence. When at
+last he spoke, his tone was more conciliatory.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard from Washington?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>"I got a telegram this morning, saying that the matter is under
+advisement."</p>
+
+<p>"Under advisement!" Moran snorted, in disgust. "That means that they'll
+get the cavalry here in time to fire a volley over our graves&mdash;ashes to
+ashes and dust to dust. What are you going to do about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill blew a huge mouthful of fragrant smoke into the air.</p>
+
+<p>"Frankly, Race, I don't think you're in a proper mood to talk."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right." Something in Moran's voice suggested the explosion of a
+fire-arm, and the Senator looked at him curiously. "I'm through talking.
+We've both of us talked too damn much, and that's a fact."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be obliged to you," the Senator remarked, "if you'll remember that
+you draw a salary from me and that you owe me a certain amount of
+respect."</p>
+
+<p>Moran laughed raucously.</p>
+
+<p>"Respect! I don't owe you a damn thing, Senator; and what you owe me you
+won't be able to pay if you sit here much longer waiting for something
+to turn up. You'll be ruined, that's what you'll be&mdash;ruined!" He brought
+his big hand down on the table with a thump.</p>
+
+<p>"By your own carelessness. Now, look here, Race, I've made allowances
+for you, because...."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't need to soft soap me, Senator; save that for your office
+seekers." The agent was fast working himself into another passion. "I've
+not ruined you, and you know it. A safe's a safe, isn't it? Instead of
+ruining you, I'm trying to save you. If you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>go broke, you'll do it
+yourself with your pap and sentiment. But if I am to pull your chestnuts
+out of the fire for you, you've got to give me a free hand. I've got to
+fight fire with fire."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill wiped his glasses nervously, for despite his assumption of calm,
+his whole future swung upon the outcome of his Crawling Water venture.
+If he appeared calm, it was not because he felt so, but because the
+schooling of a lifetime had taught him that the man who keeps cool
+usually wins.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing to do but go on as we are headed now," he declared.
+"Wade's discovery of our purpose is most unfortunate"&mdash;his voice shook a
+trifle&mdash;"but it can't be helped. In the legal sense, he has added to the
+list of his crimes, and we have more against him than we ever had. He
+now has three charges to face&mdash;murder, assault, and robbery. It rests
+with us whether he shall be punished by the courts for any of the
+three."</p>
+
+<p>The Senator spoke emphatically in the effort to convince himself that
+his statements were practically true, but he avoided Moran's eyes as he
+did so. His show of optimism had little substance behind it, because now
+that his motives were likely to be bared to the public, he was too good
+a lawyer not to realize how little standing he would have before a jury,
+in that section at least; of course, Wade must realize this equally well
+and feel fortified in his own position. Rexhill's chief hope had been
+that the support of the cavalry from Fort Mackenzie would enable him to
+control the situation; but here, too, he was threatened <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>by the
+unexpected hesitation of the authorities at Washington.</p>
+
+<p>Moran, however, was frankly contemptuous of the prospect of help from
+that source. He had never believed greatly in it, although at the time
+it was first mentioned his enthusiasm for any plan of action had
+inspired him with some measure of the Senator's confidence. Now that his
+lust of revenge made him intolerant of all opposition, he was thoroughly
+exasperated by the telegram received from Washington, and had no faith
+in aid from such a quarter.</p>
+
+<p>"What if your cavalry doesn't come?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we must rely upon the Sheriff here to maintain the law that he is
+sworn to support."</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! He's weakening now. He's not forgetting that he's to spend the
+rest of his days in this town, after we've gone back East, or perhaps to
+hell. Who's to look after him, then, if he's got himself in bad with the
+folks here? Senator"&mdash;Moran clumped painfully over to the safe and
+leaned upon it as he faced his employer&mdash;"it isn't cavalry that'll save
+you, or that old turkey buzzard of a sheriff either. I'm the man to do
+it, if anybody is, and the only way out is to lay for this man Wade and
+kidnap him." Rexhill started violently. "Kidnap him, and take him into
+the mountains, and keep him there with a gun at his head, until he signs
+a quit-claim. I've located the very spot to hide him in&mdash;Coyote Springs.
+It's practically inaccessible, a natural hiding-place."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill turned a shade or two paler as he nervously brushed some cigar
+ashes from his vest and sleeve. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>He had already gone farther along the
+road of crime than he felt to be safe, but the way back seemed even more
+dangerous than the road ahead. The question was no longer one of ethics,
+but purely of expediency.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't time to wait on cavalry and courts," Moran went on. "I'm
+willing to take the risk, if you are. If we don't take it, you know what
+the result will be. We may make our get-away to the East, or we <i>may</i>
+stop here for good&mdash;under ground. You have little choice either way. If
+you get out of this country, you'll be down and out. Your name'll be a
+byword and you'll be flat broke, a joke and an object of contempt the
+nation over. And it's not only yourself you've got to think of; you've
+got to consider your wife and daughter, and how they'll stand poverty
+and disgrace. Against all that you've got a chance, a fighting chance.
+Are you game enough to take it?"</p>
+
+<p>All that Moran said was true enough, for Rexhill knew that if he failed
+to secure control of Crawling Water Valley, his back would be broken,
+both politically and financially. He would not only be stripped of his
+wealth, but of his credit and the power which stood him in lieu of
+private honor. He would be disgraced beyond redemption in the eyes of
+his associates, and in the bosom of his family he would find no solace
+for public sneers. Failure meant the loss forever of his daughter's
+respect, which might yet be saved to him through the glamour of success
+and the reflection of that tolerance which the world is always ready to
+extend toward the successful.</p>
+
+<p>"You are right," he admitted, "in saying that I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>have my wife and
+daughter to consider, and that reminds me. I haven't told you that Helen
+overheard our conversation about Wade, in my room, the other day." He
+rapidly explained her indignation and threat of exposure. "I don't mean
+to say that your suggestion hasn't something to recommend it," he summed
+up, "but if Wade were to disappear, and she felt that he had been
+injured, I probably could not restrain her."</p>
+
+<p>The agent leaned across the desk, leeringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her the truth, that I found Wade here in this room with Dorothy
+Purnell, at night; that they came here for an assignation, because it
+was the one place in Crawling Water...."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill got to his feet with an exclamation of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, say, then, that they came here to rifle the place, but that when
+I caught them they were spooning. Say anything you like, but make her
+believe that it was a lovers' meeting. See if she'll care then to save
+him."</p>
+
+<p>The Senator dropped heavily back into his chair without voicing the
+protest that had been upon his tongue's end. He was quick to see that,
+contemptible though the suggestion was, it yet offered him a means
+whereby to save himself his daughter's respect and affection. The whole
+danger in that regard lay in her devotion to Wade, which was responsible
+for her interest in him. If she could be brought to feel that Wade was
+unworthy, that he had indeed wronged her, her own pride could be trusted
+to do the rest.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p><p>"If I thought that Wade were the man to make her happy," Rexhill puffed
+heavily, in restraint of his excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Happy? Him?" Moran's eyes gleamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Or if there was a shred of truth&mdash;but to make up such a story out of
+whole cloth...."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you, Senator? Why, I thought you were a master
+of men, a general on the field of battle!" The agent leaned forward
+again until his hot, whiskey-laden breath fanned the other man's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a father, Race, before I'm anything else in God's world."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's true, Senator. True as I'm speaking. Ask any one in Crawling
+Water. Everybody knows that Wade and this Purnell girl are mad in love
+with each other."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that true, Race?"</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill looked searchingly into the inflamed slits which marked the
+location of the agent's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"As God is my witness. It's the truth now, whatever he may have thought
+of Helen before. He's been making a fool of her, Senator. I've tried to
+make her see it, but she won't. You'll not only be protecting yourself,
+but you'll do her a service." He paused as Rexhill consulted his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Helen will be over here in a few minutes. I promised to take a walk
+with her this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you game?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do it, Race." Rexhill spoke solemnly. "We might as well fry for
+one thing as another." Grimacing, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>he shook the hand which the other
+offered him. "When will you start?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now," Moran answered promptly. "I'll take three or four men with me,
+and we'll hang around Wade's ranch until we get him. He'll probably be
+nosing around the range trying to locate the gold, and we shouldn't have
+much trouble. When we've got him safe...." His teeth ground audibly upon
+each other as he paused abruptly, and the sound seemed to cause the
+Senator uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, since I've turned near-assassin, you might as well tell me
+who shot Jensen." Rexhill spoke with a curious effort. "If Wade gets
+you, instead of you getting Wade, it may be necessary for me to know all
+the facts."</p>
+
+<p>Moran answered from the window, whither he had stepped to get his hat,
+which lay on the broad sill.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Tug Bailey, Senator. Here comes Helen now. You needn't tell her
+that I was tied up all night." He laid Wade's quirt on the desk. "He
+left that behind him."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill grunted.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will tell her," he declared sulkily, "and about the Jensen
+affair, if I've got to be a rascal, you'll be the goat. Give Bailey some
+money and get him out of town before he tanks up and tells all he
+knows."</p>
+
+<p>Helen came in, looking very sweet and fresh in a linen suit, and was at
+first inclined to be sympathetic when she heard of Moran's plight,
+without knowing the source of it. Before she did know, the odor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>of
+liquor on his breath repelled her. He finally departed, not at the
+bidding of her cool nod, but urged by his lust of revenge, which, even
+more than the whiskey, had fired his blood.</p>
+
+<p>"Intoxicated, isn't he? How utterly disgusting!"</p>
+
+<p>Her father looked at her admiringly, keenly regretting that he must
+dispel her love dream. But he took some comfort from the fact that Wade
+was apparently in love with another woman. The thought of this had been
+enough to make him seize upon the chance of keeping all her affection
+for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"He's had a drink or two," he admitted, "but he needed them. He had a
+hard night. Poor fellow, he was nearly dead when I arrived. Wade handled
+him very roughly."</p>
+
+<p>Helen looked up in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Did <i>Gordon</i> do it? What was he doing here?" The Senator hesitated, and
+while she waited for his answer she was struck by a sense of humor in
+what had happened. She laughed softly. "Good for him!"</p>
+
+<p>"We think that he came here to&mdash;to see what he could find, partly,"
+Rexhill explained. "That probably was not his only reason. He wasn't
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Her tone expressed disappointment that his triumph had not been a
+single-handed one. "Did they tie him with these?" she asked, picking up
+one of the crumpled strips of linen, which lay on the floor. Suddenly
+her face showed surprise. "Why&mdash;this is part of a woman's skirt?"</p>
+
+<p>Her father glanced at the strip of linen over his glasses.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p><p>"Yes," he nodded. "I believe it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody was here with Race?" Her voice was a blend of attempted
+confidence and distressing doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I have painful news for you...."</p>
+
+<p>"With Gordon?" The question was almost a sob. "Who, father? Dorothy
+Purnell?"</p>
+
+<p>Helen dropped into a chair, and going to her, the Senator placed his
+hands on her shoulders. She looked shrunken, years older, with the bloom
+of youth blighted as frost strikes a flower, but even in the first and
+worst moments of her grief there was dignity in it. In a measure Race
+Moran had prepared her for the blow; he, and what she herself had seen
+of the partisanship between Dorothy and Gordon.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be brave, my dear," her father soothed, "because it is
+necessary that you should know. Race came upon them here last night, in
+each other's embrace, I believe, and with the girl's help, Wade got the
+upper hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure it was Gordon?" Her cold fingers held to his warm ones as
+in her childhood days, when she had run to him for protection.</p>
+
+<p>"His quirt is there on the desk."</p>
+
+<p>"But why should they have come here, father&mdash;here of all places? Doesn't
+that seem very improbable to you? That is what I can't understand. Why
+didn't he go to her house?"</p>
+
+<p>"For fear of arrest, I suppose. Their reason for coming here, you have
+half expressed, Helen, because it offered them the safest refuge, at
+that time of night, in Crawling Water. The office has not been used at
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>night since we rented it, and besides Moran has been doubly busy with
+me at the hotel. But I don't say that was their sole reason for coming
+here. The safe had been opened, and doubtless their chief motive was
+robbery."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet and stood facing him with flaming cheeks, grieved
+still but aroused to passionate indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, do you stand there and tell me that Gordon Wade has not only
+been untrue to me, but that he came here at night to steal from <i>you</i>;
+broke in here like a common thief?" Her breast heaved violently, and in
+her eyes shone a veritable fury of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>The Senator met her outburst gravely as became a man in his position. He
+spoke with judicial gravity, which could leave no doubt of his own
+convictions, while conveying a sense of dignified restraint, tempered
+with regret.</p>
+
+<p>"He not only did so, my dear, but he succeeded in escaping with
+documents of the greatest value to us, which, if prematurely published,
+may work us incalculable harm and subject our motives to the most
+grievous misconception."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head with so fine a gesture of pride that the Senator was
+thrilled by his own paternity. Before him, in his child, he seemed to
+see the best of himself, purified and exalted.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, if that is true, you may do with him what you will. I am
+through."</p>
+
+<p>He knew her too well to doubt that her renunciation of Wade had been
+torn from the very roots of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>her nature, but for all that, when she had
+spoken, she was not above her moment of deep grief.</p>
+
+<p>"My little girl, I know&mdash;I know!" Putting his arms around her, he held
+her while she wept on his shoulder. "But isn't it better to find out
+these things now, in time, before they have had a chance to really wreck
+your happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course." She dried her eyes and managed to smile a little.
+"I&mdash;I'll write to Maxwell to-day and tell him that I'll marry him. That
+will please mother."</p>
+
+<p>It pleased the Senator, too, for it meant that no matter what happened
+to him, the women of his family would be provided for. He knew that
+young Frayne was too much in love to be turned from his purpose by any
+misfortune that might occur to Helen's father.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>A DASTARD'S BLOW</h3>
+
+<p>At about the time when Rexhill was freeing Moran from his bonds, Wade
+and Santry, with rifles slung across their backs were tramping the banks
+of Piah Creek. In the rocky canyon, which they finally reached, the
+placid little stream narrowed into a roaring torrent, which rushed
+between the steep banks and the huge, water-worn bowlders, with fury
+uncontrolled.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of the cattlemen greatly feared the coming of a second posse, at
+least immediately, but for the sake of prudence, they went armed and
+kept a careful watch. Wade mounted guard while Santry, who in his
+younger days had prospected in California, squatted over a sandy,
+rock-rimmed pool and deftly "washed out" a pan of gravel. One glance at
+the fine, yellow residue in the bottom of the pan decided him. With a
+triumphant yell that echoed and reechoed through the gorge, he sprang to
+his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoop-e-e-e! I've struck it!" he shouted excitedly, as Wade ran up to
+him. "Look there!" The old man held out a small handful of the yellow
+dust.</p>
+
+<p>Wade drew a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Gold! It's true, then!"</p>
+
+<p>"You betcher, and it's the richest pay-dirt I ever met up with. No
+wonder Moran has been willin' to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>do murder to get a-holt of this land.
+You're a rich man, boy; a millionaire, I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that <i>we</i> are rich, Bill." The younger man spoke slowly and
+emphatically. "Whatever comes out of here"&mdash;he waved his hand toward the
+creek&mdash;"is one-half yours. I decided on that long ago. Never mind asking
+me why." He clapped Santry on the back. "It's because we're partners in
+fact, if not in name. Because you've stuck with me through all the lean
+years. That's reason enough."</p>
+
+<p>The old plainsman carefully emptied the dust back into the pan before he
+said anything.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you gone clean crazy?" he finally demanded. "Givin' away a fortune
+like it was the makin's of a cigareet? If you have, I ain't. This
+stuff's yourn. I'm not sayin' that I won't take a ounce or two, maybe,
+of this here dust, for old times' sake, if you offer it to me, but
+that's all." His wrinkled face twisted into a grin. "You'll be needin'
+it all one o' these days to pay for your honeymoonin', if I read the
+signs right. Ain't that so, son?" He laughed softly as Wade flushed.
+"Shake, boy! Put 'er there! I wish you all the luck that's comin' to any
+white man, by the great horned toad, I do!"</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of the morning they examined the creek bed and they
+found signs of the yellow metal almost everywhere. At one point, Wade
+broke a knob of rock from the face of the cliff, the under surface of
+which was seamed and streaked with golden veins. Santry could scarcely
+restrain himself; usually taciturn, he was for once as light-hearted and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>joyous as a boy. But on the way back to the ranch-house he became
+serious.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, ain't the bulk of that lode on that forty-acre tract that you took
+up as a timber claim?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Wade answered. "That is, I think so. We can run over the lines
+this afternoon and make sure."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon we'd better make sure, and if it is, you'll have to lay low
+until you get your deed. Your homestead rights might be hard to claim
+now that there's mineral in the ground. Moran'll most likely keep his
+mouth shut for reasons of his own, and he may not know about your not
+havin' proved up yet, but some other jasper might get wise."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think any one around here would contest my right to the land,
+Bill," Wade replied thoughtfully. "Still, as you say, we'd better be
+careful. The gold will keep. We haven't heard the last of Moran and his
+crowd yet, not by a jugful." He chuckled grimly. "I wonder if anybody's
+cut him loose yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon they have, boy. He'll keep monkeyin' around this territory
+until he meets up with some feller like me, with a bad temper and a
+quick gun hand, who'll make him good the same way we useter make good
+Injuns. Hullo, steady!"</p>
+
+<p>Although they were now in sight of the house and the men hanging about
+it for the noon-day meal, Santry had not relaxed his caution and his
+eyes had picked out two moving dots in the distance, which presently
+developed into galloping horses. He smiled instantly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p><p>"Can't be nobody lookin' for trouble," he observed, and presently his
+eyes twinkled. "Take a good look, boy. I reckon you know <i>one</i> of 'em,
+anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>The horses came on rapidly, until upon the foremost of them Wade could
+see the fluttering skirt of a woman, while the other he recognized as
+belonging to Lem Trowbridge even before he could clearly make out the
+rider.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the cook we'll have company to dinner," Wade called to Santry as
+he untied a horse from the hitching rack near the barn and rode off to
+meet the newcomers.</p>
+
+<p>With fine prescience, Trowbridge, when he saw him ride toward them, drew
+his horse down to a walk, and so was discreetly in the rear when Dorothy
+and Wade met.</p>
+
+<p>"Mighty glad to see you," he greeted her, "but that goes without
+saying."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," she responded, hoping that he would attribute the heightened
+color of her cheeks to the exertion of the ride. "We thought we'd ride
+out to see how you were getting along."</p>
+
+<p>Despite her blush, that had come at the recollection of his kiss the
+night before, she still looked him straight in the eyes, but with a
+sweet humility, an attitude of surrender, which he understood and which
+touched him. There was nothing bold about her look, but an engaging
+womanliness, which would have appealed to any decent man, even while it
+stirred his pulse. She wore a wide felt hat, from beneath the brim of
+which her hair floated, shaken out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>its moorings by the jolting of
+her gallop. A flannel blouse, which was most becoming, and a divided
+skirt completed a sensible costume, which seemed to Wade more attractive
+than any he had ever seen in the East. She rode with the straight
+stirrups of the cattle country, and sat her mount with the grace of a
+born horsewoman.</p>
+
+<p>"What's happened to Moran?" he asked, waving his hat to Trowbridge, as
+the latter rode toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"He's out and around again. I saw him this morning. He was an awful
+sight. You must keep your eyes open, Gordon, really you must. He'll be
+more dangerous than ever now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I guess we've clipped his claws for a while," he said lightly,
+unwilling that she should be anxious for his safety, sweet though he
+found her sympathy to be. "Hello, Lem!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, yourself!" They shook hands, the firm handclasp of strong men,
+and then all three rode on together to the house.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, the plainness of which meant nothing to such appetites as
+their out-door living had aroused, they sat on the porch, the men over
+their cigarettes and Dorothy quite content in the contemplation of the
+sweetness which her heart had found.</p>
+
+<p>"How are things going on your place, Lem?" asked Wade.</p>
+
+<p>"Badly, Gordon. That's one reason I rode over to see you. Have you heard
+about the fight on my range? You haven't?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p><p>"I didn't have time last night to tell him," Dorothy interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"A number of my boys got into a shooting affray with some herders,"
+Trowbridge explained. "Two of the boys were hurt and one of the herders,
+I understand, was badly shot."</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad," Wade commented. "Confound it, Lem, what are these fellows
+thinking of? They must know that our patience won't last always, and
+when it breaks we're ten to their one."</p>
+
+<p>"Well,"&mdash;Trowbridge deftly flecked his cigarette stub over the porch
+railing,&mdash;"I'm through now, Gordon. I've given my men orders to stand
+for no more nonsense. I've told them to shoot at the drop of the hat,
+and I'll stand behind 'em, law or no law. The next time there's trouble,
+and it's likely to come any hour, I'm going to lead my outfit into a
+fight that'll be some fight, believe me. And I'm not going to quit until
+every sheep man in the county is headed East on the run."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be with you," Wade said heartily. "Tip us the word and we'll be
+right after you."</p>
+
+<p>Trowbridge nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you up on that, Gordon. Not that we need help, you
+understand, but because it'll be best for us to present a united front
+in this business. United, we stand; divided, we fall; that's the word,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy leaned forward, with an anxious look.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I hope neither one of you will get shot."</p>
+
+<p>Trowbridge made her a bow from his chair.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p><p>"We'll try not to," he said mockingly, and she was obliged to join in
+the general laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"If you feel that you ought to do it, of course you will&mdash;fight, I
+mean," she said, helplessly. "But I think it's dreadful, all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"What has Thomas done about me?" Wade asked. "I understand that he's
+holding quite a bunch of warrants up his sleeve?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he's done anything, and I don't believe he's anxious to,"
+Trowbridge answered. "He's shown some courage, that fellow, in the past,
+but I always thought he had a yellow streak in him somewhere. I don't
+think you need fear him much."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad to know that, not that I've been very uneasy, but we've
+had to keep a pretty close look-out here, and it's doubled us up
+uncomfortably. I want to go out to my timber claim this afternoon, and
+but for what you've said, I know Bill would insist on going along. Now I
+can leave him here to attend to his work."</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy was opposed to the idea and she said so, but her opinion was
+overridden by the two men. Trowbridge declared that there was absolutely
+nothing to fear from Sheriff Thomas, at least immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm positive of that," he summed up. "If there was any new move on
+foot, I'd have heard of it."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be," Dorothy argued, "but you know Senator Rexhill is behind
+him to urge him on."</p>
+
+<p>"That's another man we ought to run out of this neighborhood,"
+Trowbridge declared. "The only <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>trouble is that the old fox has laid so
+low that we haven't anything definite on him. We can suspect all we
+like; but when it comes right down to facts, he has us guessing. We
+can't prove a thing against him, and he's too big game to flush without
+powder. Well, we'd better be off."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay a while," Wade urged. "It's early yet. I didn't mean to hurry you
+when I spoke of going out to the claim. I've got plenty of time."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't told him about the gold," Dorothy whispered, as he helped her
+into her saddle. "I thought you might want to keep it quiet for the
+present."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, we'll tell him," he said, pressing her hand. "We're all on the
+same side in this business."</p>
+
+<p>He explained his good fortune to Trowbridge, who was delighted and
+enthusiastic over the prospect of the vein impinging upon his own range.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that <i>is</i> some luck, eh?" Trowbridge skillfully managed his
+horse, which was high-spirited enough to still be sportive in spite of
+the long ride of the morning. "Every cloud's got a silver lining, as the
+poet says. And another thing, it shows Rexhill's real motive, don't
+forget that. Oh, we'll get 'em by and by. Sure thing, we will. Well, so
+long."</p>
+
+<p>"So long, Lem! Call on us when you want us."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by!" Dorothy waved to him as the horses sped away in the direction
+of Crawling Water.</p>
+
+<p>Wade watched them out of sight, and then entered the house to tell
+Santry that he would not be needed on the afternoon trip to the timber
+claim. The old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>man growled a little at the idea of Wade going alone,
+but he finally gave in.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take my gun and keep my eye peeled," his employer promised. "If I
+can't stand off trouble until I get home, or you can get to me, I'll
+lose my bet. You've got your work to do, Bill. If you're going to nurse
+me all the time, I'll have to get another foreman to run the crew."</p>
+
+<p>He rode away, then, toward the foothills, confident of his ability to
+look after himself in case of trouble. There was nothing in the peaceful
+aspect of the range to suggest an enemy, but he kept his rifle ready and
+his ears and eyes open. Once he paused abruptly when a rabbit jumped out
+of a clump of quaking-aspens, a hundred yards ahead, only to chuckle at
+his own overcaution.</p>
+
+<p>The sun, which was still high, was shining as only a Wyoming sun can
+shine, from out of a blue-vaulted canopy, flecked with fleecy clouds.
+Swinging from the tops of the sagebrush, or an occasional cottonwood,
+yellow-breasted meadowlarks were singing sweetly. At intervals a flock
+of curlews circled above the rider, uttering their sharp, plaintive
+cries; then they would drop to the ground and run rapidly to and fro on
+their frail, stilt-like legs, their long ungainly bills darting from
+side to side in search of food.</p>
+
+<p>Over the plains, from which Wade now turned, hundreds of red and white
+cattle, their hides as sleek as velvet, were grazing, singly and in
+scattered groups, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>as far as the eye could see. Toward its mouth, the
+valley was spotted with many fenced alfalfa fields, and traversed by
+irrigation ditches; while to the right, in the direction in which Wade
+now rode, rose the timber belt. A fresh, soft breeze, fragrant with the
+odor of clean, damp earth, rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods, some
+of which were of enormous size, as the horseman pushed his way farther
+into the shadow of the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>After a careful scrutiny, which satisfied him that the vicinity harbored
+no enemies, he dismounted, but still actuated by caution, kept the
+bridle reins looped over his wrist, as he searched for further evidence
+of gold. Unlike Santry, the ranchman was not trained in the ways of
+prospecting, and he began to regret that he had not allowed the foreman
+to accompany him. He followed what he thought were promising signs
+deeper into the silence of the tall timber, and finally dropped on his
+knees to make sure of some outcroppings of quartz near the base of a
+huge bowlder. He was so crouched when a sudden movement of his horse
+warned him of danger; but he had not time to arise before a crushing
+blow on the head, delivered from behind, shook him to the very marrow of
+his spine. With a low groan, he toppled over onto his face, senseless.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got him?" Moran peered around the side of the bowlder, and
+smiled exultantly when he saw Wade's still figure. "Throw him across
+your saddle," he commanded, "and follow me."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIRST CLEW</h3>
+
+<p>"Let's see!" Trowbridge reined in his horse and meditated, when he and
+Dorothy had covered several miles of their ride back to Crawling Water.
+"Jensen was shot around here somewhere, wasn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it was over there." She pointed with her quirt in the direction
+of a distant clump of jack-pines. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we ride over and take a look at the spot." He smiled at her
+little shudder of repugnance. "We haven't any Sherlock Holmes in this
+country, and maybe we need one. I'll have a try at it. Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>In response to the pressure of his knees, the trained cow-pony whirled
+toward the jack-pines, and Dorothy followed, laughing at the idea that
+so ingenuous a man as Lem Trowbridge might possess the analytical gift
+of the trained detective.</p>
+
+<p>"You!" she said mockingly, when she had caught up with him. "You're as
+transparent as glass; not that it isn't nice to be that way, but still
+you are. Besides, the rain we've had must have washed all tracks away."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt, but we'll have a look anyhow. It won't do any harm.
+Seriously, though, the ways of criminals have always interested me. I'd
+rather read a good detective story than any other sort of yarn."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p><p>"I shouldn't think that you had any gift that way."</p>
+
+<p>"That's got nothing to do with it," he laughed. "It's always like that.
+Haven't you noticed how nearly every man thinks he's missed his calling;
+that if he'd only gone in for something else he'd have been a rattling
+genius at it? Just to show you! I've got a hand over at the ranch, a
+fellow named Barry, who can tie down a steer in pretty close to the
+record. He's a born cowman, if I ever saw one, but do you suppose he
+thinks that's his line?"</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't he?" she asked politely. One of the secrets of her popularity
+lay in her willingness to feed a story along with deft little
+interjections of interest.</p>
+
+<p>"He does not. Poetry! Shakespeare! That's his 'forty'! At night he gets
+out a book and reads Hamlet to the rest of the boys. Thinks that if he'd
+ever hit Broadway with a show, he'd set the town on fire."</p>
+
+<p>When Dorothy laughed heartily, as she now did, the sound of it was worth
+going miles to hear. There are all shades of temperament and character
+in laughter, which is the one thing of which we are least
+self-conscious; hers revealed not only a sense of humor, rare in her
+sex, but a blithe, happy nature, which made allies at once of those upon
+whose ears her merriment fell. Trowbridge's eyes sparkled with his
+appreciation of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, maybe he would," she said, finally.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I'll make good along with Sherlock Holmes." He winked at her as
+he slipped from his horse's back, on the edge of a rocky knoll, fronting
+the jack-pines. "This is the place, I reckon." His <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>quick eyes had
+caught a dark stain on a flat rock, which the rain had failed to cleanse
+entirely of the dead herders' blood.</p>
+
+<p>When Dorothy saw it, too, her mirth subsided. To her mind, the thought
+of death was most horrible, and especially so in the case of a murderous
+death, such as had befallen the sheep men. Not only was the thing
+horrible in itself, but still more so in its suggestion of the dangers
+which threatened her friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Do hurry!" she begged. "There can't be anything here."</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute or two." Struck by the note of appeal in her voice, so
+unlike its lilt of the moment before, he added: "Ride on if you want
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she shuddered. "I'll wait, but please be quick."</p>
+
+<p>It was well for her companion that she did wait, or at least that she
+was with him for, when he had inspected the immediate vicinity of the
+shooting, he stepped backward from the top of the knoll into a little,
+brush-filled hollow, in which lay a rattlesnake. Deeply interested in
+his search, he did not hear the warning rattle, and Dorothy might not
+have noticed it either had not her pony raised its head, with a start
+and a snort. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the snake and called
+out sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, behind you, Lem!"</p>
+
+<p>There are men, calling themselves conjurors, who perform prodigies of
+agility with coins, playing-cards, and other articles of legerdemain,
+but they are not so quick as was Trowbridge in springing sidewise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>from
+the menacing snake. In still quicker movement, the heavy Colt at his
+side leaped from its holster. The next second the rattle had ceased
+forever, for the snake's head had been neatly cut from its body.</p>
+
+<p>"Close call! Thanks!" Trowbridge slid his weapon back into its resting
+place and smiled up at her.</p>
+
+<p>So close, indeed, had the call been that, coming upon the dreadful
+associations of the spot, Dorothy was unnerved. Her skin turned a sickly
+white and her lips were trembling, but not more so than were the flanks
+of the horses, which seemed to be in an agony of fear. When the girl saw
+Trowbridge pick up a withered stick and coolly explore the recesses of a
+small hole near which the snake had been coiled, she rebelled.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to stay here another minute," she declared hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a second. There may be another one.... Oh, all right, go on,
+then," he called out, as she whirled her pony and started off. "I'll
+catch you. Ride slow!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked after her with a smile of amusement, before renewing his
+efforts with the stick, holding his bridle reins with one hand so that
+his horse could not follow hers. To his disappointment there seemed to
+be nothing in the hole, but his prodding suddenly developed an amazing
+fact. He was on the point of dropping the stick and mounting his horse,
+when he noticed a small piece of metal in the leaves and grass at the
+mouth of the hole. It was an empty cartridge shell.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p><p>"By Glory!" he exclaimed, as he examined it. "A clew, or I'm a sinner!"</p>
+
+<p>Swinging into his saddle, he raced after Dorothy, shouting to her as he
+rode. In her pique, she would not answer his hail, or turn in her
+saddle; but he was too exultant to care. He was concerned only with
+overtaking her that he might tell her what he had found.</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of Mike!" he said, when by a liberal use of his spurs he
+caught up with her. "What do you think this is, a circus?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can keep up, can't you?" she retorted banteringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I can keep up, all right." He reached out and caught her bridle
+rein, pulling her pony down to a walk in spite of her protests. "I want
+to show you something. You can't see it riding like a jockey. Look
+here!" He handed her the shell. "You see, if I had come when you wanted
+me to, I wouldn't have found it. That's what's called the detective
+instinct, I reckon," he added, with a grin. "Guess I'm some little
+Sherlock, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose is it?" She turned the shell over in her palm a trifle gingerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" He took it from her and pointed out where it had been dented by
+the firing-pin. "I reckon you wouldn't know, not being up in fire-arms.
+The hammer that struck this shell didn't hit true; not so far off as to
+miss fire, you understand, but it ain't in line exactly. That tells me a
+lot."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p><p>"What does it tell you?" She looked up at him quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he spoke slowly, "there ain't but one gun in Crawling Water that
+has that peculiarity, that I know of, and that one belongs, or did
+belong, to Tug Bailey."</p>
+
+<p>She caught at his arm impulsively so that both horses were brought to a
+standstill.</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>he</i> shot Jensen, Lem?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was tremulous with eagerness, for although she had never
+doubted Wade or Santry; had never thought for a moment that either man
+could have committed the crime, or have planned it, she wanted them
+cleared of the doubt in the eyes of the world. Her disappointment was
+acute when she saw that Trowbridge did not deem the shell to be
+convincing proof of Bailey's guilt.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go too fast now, Dorothy," he cautioned. "This shell proves that
+Bailey's gun was fired, but it doesn't prove that Bailey's finger pulled
+the trigger, or that the gun was aimed at Jensen. Bailey might have
+loaned the rifle to somebody, or he might have fired at a snake, like I
+did a few minutes ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he might have done anything, of course. But the shell is some
+evidence, isn't it? It casts the doubt on Tug Bailey, doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it does that, all right. It casts it further than him." The
+cattleman spoke positively. "It's a clew, that's what it is. We've got a
+clew and we've got a motive, and we didn't have either of them
+yesterday."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p><p>"How do you suppose that shell got where you found it?" she asked, her
+voice full of hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Bailey must have levered it out of his rifle, after the shooting, and
+it fell into that hole. You see,"&mdash;he could not resist making the
+triumphant point once more,&mdash;"if I hadn't stopped to look for another
+rattler, I never would have found it. Just that chance&mdash;just a little
+chance like that&mdash;throws the biggest criminals. Funny, ain't it?" But
+she was too preoccupied with the importance of the discovery to dwell on
+his gifts as a sleuth.</p>
+
+<p>"What can we do about it, Lem?" She gave her pony her head and they
+began to move slowly. "What ought we to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll find this fellow, Bailey, and wring the truth out of him," he
+answered grimly; and her eyes sparkled. "If I'm not greatly mistaken,
+though, he was only the tool."</p>
+
+<p>"Meaning that Moran...."</p>
+
+<p>"And Rexhill," Trowbridge snapped. "They are the men higher up, and the
+game we're really gunning for. They hired Bailey to shoot Jensen so that
+the crime might be fastened on to Gordon. I believe that as fully as I'm
+alive this minute; the point is to prove it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we've no time to waste," she said, touching her pony with the
+quirt. "We mustn't loiter here. Suppose Bailey has been sent away?"</p>
+
+<p>The thought of this caused them to urge their tired horses along at
+speed. Many times during the ride which followed Trowbridge looked
+admiringly at his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>companion as she rode on, untiringly, side by side
+with him. A single man himself, he had come to feel very tenderly toward
+her, but he had no hope of winning her. She had never been more than
+good friends with him, and he realized her feeling for Wade, but this
+knowledge did not make him less keen in his admiration of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck to you, Lem," she said, giving him her hand, as they paused
+at the head of Crawling Water's main street. "Let me know what you do as
+soon as you can. I'll be anxious."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I know about where to find him, if he's in town. Oh, we're slowly
+getting it on them, Dorothy. We'll be ready to 'call' them pretty soon.
+Good-by!"</p>
+
+<p>Tug Bailey, however, was not in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte
+Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the
+stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale
+tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had
+gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a
+woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from the floor
+above.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute."</p>
+
+<p>Trowbridge waited and the woman came down to him. He knew her by
+ill-repute, as did every man in the town, for she was Pansy Madder, one
+of the dance-hall habitu&eacute;s, good-looking enough by night to the inflamed
+fancy, but repulsive by day, with her sodden skin and hard eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>"You want to know where Tug is?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's headed for Sheridan, I reckon. If he ain't headed there, he'll
+strike the railroad at some other point; him and that&mdash;Nellie Lewis,
+that he's skipped with." Her lusterless eyes were fired by the only
+thing that could fire them: her bitter jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure?" Trowbridge persisted, a little doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure? Of course, I'm sure. Say,"&mdash;she clutched at his arm as he turned
+away,&mdash;"if he's wanted for anything, bring him back here, will you?
+Promise me that! Let me"&mdash;her pale lips were twisted by an ugly
+smile&mdash;"get my hands on him!"</p>
+
+<p>From the dance-hall, Trowbridge hastened to the jail to swear out a
+warrant for Bailey's arrest and to demand that Sheriff Thomas telegraph
+to Sheridan and to the two points above and below, Ranchester and
+Clearmont, to head off the fugitive there. Not knowing how far the
+Sheriff might be under the dominance of the Rexhill faction, the
+cattleman was not sure that he could count upon assistance from the
+official. He meant, if he saw signs of indecision, to do the
+telegraphing himself and to sign at the bottom of the message the name
+of every ranch owner in the district. That should be enough to awaken
+the law along the railroad without help from Thomas, and Trowbridge knew
+that such action would be backed up by his associates.</p>
+
+<p>He had no trouble on this score, however, for Sheriff Thomas was away on
+the trail of a horse-thief, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>the deputy in charge of the jail was of
+sturdier character than his chief.</p>
+
+<p>"Will I help you, Lem?" he exclaimed. "Say, will a cat drink milk? You
+bet I'll help you. Between you and me, I've been so damned ashamed of
+what's been doing in this here office lately that I'm aching for a
+chance to square myself. I'll send them wires off immediate."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you're due to be the next Sheriff in this county, Steve,"
+Trowbridge responded gratefully. "There's going to be a change here
+before long."</p>
+
+<p>"That so? Well, I ain't sayin' that I'd refuse, but I ain't doin' this
+as no favor, either, you understand. I'm doin' it because it's the law,
+the good old-fashioned, honest to Gawd, s'help me die, law!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the kind we want here&mdash;that, or no kind. So long, Steve!"</p>
+
+<p>With a nod of relief, Trowbridge left the jail, well-satisfied that he
+had done a good turn for Wade, and pleased with himself for having lived
+so well up to the standards set by the detectives of popular fiction.
+Since Bailey had not had time to reach the railroad, his arrest was now
+almost a certainty, and once he was back in Crawling Water, a bucket of
+hot tar and a bundle of feathers, with a promise of immunity for
+himself, would doubtless be sufficient to extract a confession from him
+which would implicate Rexhill and Moran.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling that he had earned the refreshment of a drink, the cattleman was
+about to enter the hotel when, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>to his consternation, he saw tearing
+madly down the street toward him Bill Santry, on a horse that had
+evidently been ridden to the very last spurt of endurance. He ran
+forward at once, for the appearance of the old man in Crawling Water,
+with a warrant for murder hanging over his head, could only mean that
+some tragedy had happened at the ranch.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Lem!" Santry greeted him. "You're just the man I'm lookin' for."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the trouble?" Trowbridge demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The boy!" The old plainsman slid from his horse, which could hardly
+keep its feet, but was scarcely more spent in body than its rider was in
+nerve. His face was twitching in a way that might have been ludicrous
+but for its significance. "They've ambushed him, I reckon. I come
+straight in after you, knowin' that you'd have a cooler head for this
+here thing than&mdash;than I have."</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" The exclamation shot from Trowbridge like the crack of a gun.
+"How did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>Santry explained the details, in so far as he knew them, in a few
+breathless sentences. The old man was clearly almost beside himself with
+grief and rage, and past the capacity to act intelligently upon his own
+initiative. He had not been satisfied, he said, to remain behind at the
+ranch and let Wade go to the timber tract alone, and so after a period
+of indecision he had followed him. Near the edge of the timber he had
+come upon Wade's riderless horse, trailing broken bridle reins. He had
+followed the animal's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>tracks back to the point of the assault, but
+there was no sign of Wade, which fact indicated that he had been carried
+away by those who had overcome him.</p>
+
+<p>"I could see by the tracks that there was a number of 'em; as many as
+five or six," the old man summed up. "I followed their sign as far as I
+could, but I lost it at the creek. Then I went back to the house and
+sent some of the boys out to scout around before I come down here after
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you suppose they could have taken him?" Trowbridge asked.
+"They'd never dare bring him to town."</p>
+
+<p>"Gawd knows, Lem! There's more pockets and drifts up in them hills than
+there is jack-rabbits. 'Tain't likely the boys'll find any new sign,
+leastways not in time; not before that &mdash;&mdash; of a Moran&mdash;it was him did
+it, damn him! I know it was. Lem, for Gawd's sake, what are we goin' to
+do?"</p>
+
+<p>"The first thing to do, Bill, is to get you out of this town, before
+Thomas shows up and jumps you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't keer for myself. I'll shoot the...."</p>
+
+<p>"Luckily, he's away just now," Trowbridge went on, ignoring the
+interruption. "Come with me!" He led the way into the hotel. "Frank," he
+said to the red-headed proprietor, "is Moran in town to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope." The Irishman regarded Santry with interest. "He went out this
+morning with four or five men."</p>
+
+<p>"Rexhill's here, ain't he?" Trowbridge asked then. "Tell him there's two
+gentlemen here to see him. Needn't mention any names. He doesn't know
+me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p><p>When Santry, with the instinct of his breed, hitched his revolver to a
+more convenient position on his hip, Trowbridge reached out and took it
+away from him. He dared not trust the old man in his present mood. He
+intended to question the Senator, to probe him, perhaps to threaten him;
+but the time had not come to shoot him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll keep this for you, Bill," he said soothingly, and dropped the
+weapon into his coat pocket. "I'm going to take you up with me, for the
+sake of the effect of that face of yours, looking the way it does right
+now. But I'll do the talking, mind! It won't take long. We're going to
+act some, too."</p>
+
+<p>Their visit had no visible effect upon Rexhill, however, who was too
+much master of himself to be caught off his guard in a game which had
+reached the point of constant surprise. His manner was not conciliatory,
+for the meeting was frankly hostile, but he did not appear to be
+perturbed by it. He had not supposed that the extremes he had sanctioned
+could be carried through without difficulty, and he was prepared to meet
+any attack that might be offered by the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"Senator Rexhill," Trowbridge introduced himself, "you've never met me.
+I'm from the Piah Creek country. My name is Trowbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the Senator nodded. "I've heard of you. I know your friend there
+by sight." He lingered slightly over the word "friend" as he glanced
+toward Santry, "There's a warrant out for him, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. There's a warrant out for one of your&mdash;friends, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>too, Tug Bailey,"
+Trowbridge retorted dryly, hoping that something would eventuate from
+his <i>repartee</i>; but nothing did. If the news surprised Rexhill, as it
+must have, he did not show it. "I've just sworn it out," the rancher
+continued, "but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to tell you that
+Gordon Wade, whom you know, has been kidnaped."</p>
+
+<p>Santry stifled an exclamation of rage in answer to a quick look from his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Kidnaped from his own range in broad daylight," the latter went on. "I
+represent his friends, who mean to find him right away, and it has
+occurred to me that you may be able to assist us in our search."</p>
+
+<p>"Just why has that idea occurred to you?" Rexhill asked calmly, as
+though out of mere curiosity. "I'd like to know."</p>
+
+<p>A bit baffled by this attitude of composure, Trowbridge hesitated, for
+it was not at all what he had expected to combat. If the Senator had
+flown into a passion, the cattleman would have responded with equal
+heat; now he was less sure of himself and his ground. It was barely
+possible, after all, that Tug Bailey had shot Jensen out of personal
+spite; or, at the worst, had been the tool of Moran alone. One could
+hardly associate the thought of murder with the very prosperous looking
+gentleman, who so calmly faced them and twirled his eyeglasses between
+his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should that idea have occurred to you?" the Senator asked again.
+"So far as I am informed, Wade is also liable to arrest for complicity
+in the Jensen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>murder; in addition to which he has effected a jail
+delivery and burglarized my office. It seems to me, if he has been
+kidnaped as you say, that I am the last person to have any interest in
+his welfare, or his whereabouts. Why do you come to me?"</p>
+
+<p>This was too much for Santry's self-restraint.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use of talkin' to him?" he demanded. "If he ain't done it
+himself, don't we know that Moran done it for him? To hell with
+talkin'!" He shook a gnarled fist at Rexhill, who paid no attention
+whatever to him, but deliberately looked in another direction.</p>
+
+<p>"That is why we are here," said Trowbridge, when he had quieted Santry
+once more. "Because we have good reason to believe that, if these acts
+do not proceed from you, they do proceed from your agent, and you're
+responsible for what he does, if I know anything about law. This man
+Moran has carried things with a high hand in this community, but now
+he's come to the end of his rope, and he's going to be punished. That
+means that you'll get yours, too, if he's acted under your orders." The
+cattleman was getting into his stride now that the first moments of his
+embarrassment were passed. His voice rang with authority, which the
+Senator was quick to recognize, although he gave no evidence that he was
+impressed. "Has Moran been acting for you, that's what we want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow,"&mdash;Rexhill laughed rumblingly,&mdash;"if you'll only stop for
+an instant to think, you'll see how absurd this is."</p>
+
+<p>"A frank answer to a frank question," Trowbridge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>persisted. "Has he
+been acting for you? Do you, at this moment, know what has become of
+Wade, or where he is?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the stuff!" growled Santry, whose temples were throbbing under
+the effort he put forth to hold himself within bounds.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not!" the Senator said, bluntly. "And I'll say freely that I would
+not tell you if I did."</p>
+
+<p>Santry's hands opened and shut convulsively. He was in the act of
+springing upon Rexhill when Trowbridge seized him.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a liar!" he roared, struggling in his friend's grasp. "Let me at
+him. By the great horned toad, I'll make him tell!"</p>
+
+<p>"Put that man out of this room!" Rexhill had arisen in all of his
+ponderous majesty, roused to wrath at last. His pudgy finger shook as he
+pointed to the door, and his fat face was congested. "I'm not here to be
+insulted by a jail-bird. Put him out!"</p>
+
+<p>Trowbridge's eyes gleamed exultantly, although he still kept a tight
+hold on Santry, for this was the sort of thing he had expected to meet.
+He had not thought that Rexhill would confess complicity in the
+kidnaping this early in the game; but he had looked for an outburst of
+anger which would give him the chance he wanted to free his own mind of
+the hate that was in it. He had wanted the chance to make Rexhill feel
+that his hour of atonement was close at hand, and getting nearer every
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>"Easy, now!" he admonished. "We're going, both of us, but we won't be
+put out. You've said just what <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>I looked for you to say. You've denied
+knowledge of this thing. I think with Santry here that you're a liar, a
+God-forsaken liar." He drew closer to the Senator, who seemed about to
+burst with passion, and held him with a gaze his fury could not daunt.
+"May Heaven help you, Senator, when we're ready to prove all this
+against you. If you're in Crawling Water then, we'll ride you to hell on
+a rail."</p>
+
+<p>"Now," Trowbridge said to Santry, when they were downstairs again, "you
+get out of town hot-foot. Ride to my place. Take this!" He scribbled a
+few lines on the back of an envelope. "Give it to my foreman. Tell him
+to meet me with the boys where the trail divides. We'll find Wade, if we
+have to trade our beds for lanterns and kill every horse in the valley."</p>
+
+<p>The two men shook hands, and Santry's eyes were fired with a new hope.
+The old man was grateful for one thing, at least: the time for action
+had arrived. He had spent his youth on the plains in the days when every
+man was a law unto himself, and the years had not lessened his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be right after you, Bill," Trowbridge concluded. "I'm going first
+to break the news to Miss Purnell. She'd hear it anyway and be anxious.
+She'd better get it straight from me."</p>
+
+<p>Lem Trowbridge had seen only one woman faint, but the recollection was
+indelibly impressed upon his mind. It had happened in his boyhood, at
+the ranch where he still lived, when a messenger had arrived with word
+of the death of the elder Trowbridge, whose horse had stepped into a
+prairie-dog hole and fallen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>with his rider. The picture of his mother's
+collapse he could never forget, or his own horrible thought that she,
+too, had passed away, leaving him parentless. For months afterwards he
+had awakened at night, crying out that she was dead.</p>
+
+<p>The whole scene recurred to him when he told Dorothy of Wade's
+disappearance, and saw her face flush and then pale, as his mother's had
+done. The girl did not actually faint, for she was young and wonderfully
+strong, but she came so near to it that he was obliged to support her
+with his arm to keep her on her feet. That was cruel, too, for he loved
+her. But presently she recovered, and swept from his mind all thought of
+himself by her piteous appeal to him to go instantly in search of Wade.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll find him, Dorothy, don't you worry," he declared, with an
+appearance of confidence he was far from feeling. "I came around to tell
+you myself because I wanted you to know that we are right on the job."</p>
+
+<p>"But how can you find him in all those mountains, Lem? You don't even
+know which side of the range they've hidden him on."</p>
+
+<p>He reminded her that he had been born in Crawling Water Valley, and that
+he knew every draw and canyon in the mountains; but in his heart he
+realized that to search all these places would take half a lifetime. He
+could only hope that chance, or good fortune, might lead them promptly
+to the spot they sought.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that Senator Rexhill knows where Gordon is?" she asked.
+"Is he in this, too?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p><p>"I don't know for sure," he answered. "I believe Moran is acting under
+Rexhill's orders, but I don't know how much Rexhill knows of the
+details. If I knew that, it would be fairly easy. I'd...." His strong
+hands gripped the back of a chair until his knuckles showed white under
+their tan. "I'd choke it out of him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if there was only something I could do!" Dorothy wailed helplessly.
+"A woman never can do anything in a crisis but <i>wait</i>!" Her distress was
+so pitiable to witness that Trowbridge averted his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do all that can be done, Dorothy," he assured her. "Trust me for
+that. Besides&mdash;" A thought had just flashed into his head which might
+relieve her sense of helplessness. "Besides, we're going to need you
+here in town to keep us informed of what goes on."</p>
+
+<p>"If I learn anything, how can I get word to you?" she asked, her face
+brightening somewhat. "You'll be up in the hills."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try to keep a man at the big pine all the time. If you find out
+anything send word to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I will, I will. That'll be something anyhow." Her eyes
+sparkling with tears, she gave him both her hands. "Good-by, Lem!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, Dorothy," he said solemnly, wringing her hands. "I know just
+how it is. We'll find him for you!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>TRAPPED</h3>
+
+<p>When Wade first opened his eyes, after he had been stricken senseless,
+he was first conscious of his throbbing head, and on seeking the reason
+of the pain, was amazed to find his fingers stained with the blood which
+matted his hair. With an exclamation he struggled to his feet, still too
+dazed to think clearly, but sufficiently aroused to be startled by the
+predicament in which he found himself.</p>
+
+<p>He was at the bottom of a rock-walled fissure, about six feet wide by
+twenty feet in length. There was no way to climb out of this natural
+prison, for its granite sides, fifteen feet in height, were without
+crack, projection, or other foothold; indeed, in the light of the
+afternoon sun, one <i>fa&ccedil;ade</i> shone smooth as glass. If he should be left
+there without sustenance, he told himself, he might as well be entombed;
+then, to his delight, he caught the sound of splashing water. At least,
+he would not perish of thirst, for at one end of the rocky chamber a
+tiny stream fell down the face of the cliff, to disappear afterward
+through a narrow cleft. A draught of the cool water refreshed him
+somewhat, and when he had bathed his head as well as he could, he sat
+down on the warm sand to think over the situation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>Now that his brain was clearing he felt sure that his capture was the
+work of Moran, doubtless planned as a revenge for the events of their
+last meeting, although what shape this revenge was to take the cattleman
+could not guess. He feared that he would either be shot or left to
+starve in this <i>cul-de-sac</i> in the hills. The thought of all that he and
+his friends had suffered through Moran lashed the ranchman temporarily
+to fury; but that he soon controlled as well as he could, for he found
+its only result was to increase the pain in his head, without aiding to
+solve the problem of escape. The prospect of getting out of his prison
+seemed remote, for one glance at its precipitate walls had shown him
+that not even a mountain goat could scale them. Help, if it came at all,
+must come through Santry, who could be counted on to arouse the
+countryside. The thought of the state the old man must be in worried
+Wade; and he was too familiar with the vast number of small canyons and
+hidden pockets in the mountains to believe that his friends would soon
+find him. Before help could reach him, undoubtedly Moran would show his
+hand, in which for the present were all the trumps.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of the cattleman that, with the full realization
+of his danger, should come a great calm. He had too lively an
+imagination to be called a man of iron nerve, for that quality of
+courage is not so often a virtue as a lack of sensitiveness. He who is
+courageous because he knows no fear is not so brave by half as he who
+gauges the extent of his peril and rises superior to it. Wade's courage
+was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>of the latter sort, an ascendancy of the mind over the flesh.
+Whenever danger threatened him, his nerves responded to his need with
+the precision of the taut strings of a perfectly tuned fiddle under a
+master hand. He had been more nervous, many a time, over the thought of
+some one of his men riding a dangerous horse or turning a stampede, than
+he was now that his own life seemed threatened.</p>
+
+<p>Shrugging his broad shoulders, he rolled and smoked a cigarette. The
+slight exhilaration of the smoke, acting on his weakened condition,
+together with the slight dizziness still remaining from the blow on his
+head, was far from conducing to clear thinking, but he forced himself to
+careful thought. He was less concerned about himself than he was about
+Santry and Dorothy; particularly Dorothy, for he had now come to
+appreciate how closely she had come into his life. Her sympathy had been
+very sweet to him, but he told himself that he would be sorry to have
+her worry about him now, when there was so little chance of their seeing
+each other again. He had no great hope of rescue. He expected to die,
+either by violence or by the slower process of starvation, but in either
+case he meant to meet his fate like a man.</p>
+
+<p>Of Helen Rexhill, he thought now with a sense of distaste. It was
+altogether unlikely that she had been privy to her father's
+depredations, but certainly she countenanced them by her presence in
+Crawling Water, and she had shown up so poorly in contrast with Dorothy
+Purnell that Wade could not recall his former tenderness for his early
+sweetheart. Even if great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>good fortune should enable him to escape from
+his prison, the interests of the Rexhill family were too far removed
+from his own to be ever again bridged by the tie of love, or even of
+good-feeling. He could not blame the daughter for the misdeeds of her
+parent, but the old sentiment could never be revived. It was not for
+Helen that the instinct of self-preservation stirred within him, nor was
+it in her eyes that he would look for the light of joy over his rescue,
+if rescue should come.</p>
+
+<p>He smoked several cigarettes, until the waning of his supply of tobacco
+warned him to economize against future cravings. Realizing that even if
+his friends were within a stone's throw of him they would not be likely
+to find him unless he gave some sign of his presence, he got to his feet
+and, making a trumpet out of his hands, shouted loudly. He repeated this
+a dozen times, or more, and was about to sink back upon the sand when he
+heard footsteps approaching on the ground overhead. He had little idea
+that a friend was responding to his call, but being unarmed he could do
+no more than crouch against the wall of the cliff while he scanned the
+opening above him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there appeared in the opening the head of a Texan, Goat Neale,
+whom Wade recognized as a member of Moran's crew and a man of some note
+as a gunfighter.</p>
+
+<p>"How," drawled the Texan, by way of greeting. "Feelin' pretty good?"
+When the ranchman did not reply, his inquisitor seemed amused. "A funny
+thing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>like this here always makes me laff," he remarked. "It sure does
+me a heap of good to see you all corraled like a fly in a bottle. Mebbe
+you'd take satisfaction in knowin' that it was me brung you down out
+yonder in the timber. I was sure mighty glad to take a wallop at you,
+after the way you all done us up that night at the ranch."</p>
+
+<p>"So I'm indebted to you for this, eh?" Wade spoke casually, as though
+the matter were a trifling thing. He was wondering if he could bribe
+Neale to set him free. Unfortunately he had no cash about him, and he
+concluded that the Texan would not think promises worth while under the
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. I reckon you'd like to see the boss? Well, he's comin' right on
+over. Just now he's eatin' a mess o' bacon and beans and cawfee, over to
+the camp. My Gawd, that's good cawfee, too. Like to have some, eh?" But
+Wade refused to play Tantalus to the lure of this temptation and kept
+silent. "Here he comes now."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he all right?" Wade heard Moran ask, as Neale backed away from the
+rim of the hole.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep," the Texan answered.</p>
+
+<p>The ranchman instinctively braced himself to meet whatever might befall.
+It was quite possible, he knew, that Moran had spared him in the
+timber-belt to torture him here; he did not know whether to expect a
+bullet or a tongue lashing, but he was resolved to meet his fate
+courageously and, as far as was humanly possible, stoically. To his
+surprise, the agent's tone did not reveal a great amount of venom.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p><p>"Hello, Wade!" he greeted, as he looked down on his prisoner. "Find your
+quarters pretty comfortable, eh? It's been a bit of a shock to you, no
+doubt, but then shocks seem to be in order in Crawling Water Valley just
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Moran, I've lived in this country a good many years." Wade spoke with a
+suavity which would have indicated deadly peril to the other had the two
+been on anything like equal terms. "I've seen a good many blackguards
+come and go in that time, but the worst of them was redeemed by more of
+the spark of manhood than there seems to be in you."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" Moran's face darkened in swift anger, but he restrained
+himself. "Well, we'll pass up the pleasantries until after our business
+is done. You and I've got a few old scores to settle and you won't find
+me backward when the times comes, my boy. It isn't time yet, although
+maybe the time isn't so very far away. Now, see here." He leaned over
+the edge of the cliff to display a folded paper and a fountain-pen. "I
+have here a quit-claim deed to your ranch, fully made out and legally
+witnessed, needing only your signature to make it valid. Will you sign
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>Wade started in spite of himself. This idea was so preposterous that it
+had never occurred to him as the real motive for his capture. He could
+scarcely believe that so good a lawyer as Senator Rexhill could be blind
+to the fact that such a paper, secured under duress, would have no
+validity under the law. He looked up at the agent in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you're thinking, of course," Moran <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>went on, with an evil
+smile. "We're no fools. I've got here, besides the deed, a check made
+out to you for ten thousand dollars." He held it up. "You'll remember
+that we made you that offer once before. You turned it down then, but
+maybe you'll change your mind now. After you indorse the check I'll
+deposit it to your credit in the local bank."</p>
+
+<p>The cattleman's face fell as he caught the drift of this complication.
+That ten thousand dollars represented only a small part of the value of
+his property was true, but many another man had sold property for less
+than it was worth. If a perfectly good check for ten thousand dollars,
+bearing his indorsement, were deposited to the credit of his banking
+account, the fact would go far to offset any charge of duress that he
+might later bring. To suppose that he had undervalued his holdings would
+be no more unreasonable than to suppose that a man of Senator Rexhill's
+prominence would stoop to physical coercion of an adversary. The
+question would merely be one of personal probity, with the presumption
+on the Senator's side.</p>
+
+<p>"Once we get a title to the land, a handle to fight with, we sha'n't
+care what you try to do," Moran explained further. "We can afford to
+laugh at you." That seemed to Wade to be true. "If you accept my offer
+now, I will set you free as soon as this check is in the bank, and the
+settlement of our personal scores can go over to another time. I assure
+you that I am just as anxious to get at you as you are to get at me, but
+I've always made it a rule never to mix pleasure <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>and business. You'll
+have a fair start to get away. On the other hand, if you refuse, you'll
+be left here without food. Once each day I'll visit you; at other times
+you'll be left alone, except when Goat may care to entertain himself by
+baiting you. You'll be perfectly safe here, guard or no guard, believe
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Moran chuckled ominously, his thoughts divided between professional
+pride, excited by the thought of successfully completing the work he had
+come to Crawling Water to do, and exultation at the prospect that his
+sufferings while gagged the previous night might be atoned for a
+thousand times if Wade should refuse to sign the quit-claim.</p>
+
+<p>"In plain speech," said Wade, pale but calm, "you propose to starve me
+to death."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," was the cheerful assurance. "If I were you, I'd think a bit
+before answering."</p>
+
+<p>Because the cattleman was in the fullest flush of physical vigor, the
+lust of life was strong in him. Never doubting that Moran meant what he
+said, Wade was on the point of compliance, thinking to assume the burden
+later on, of a struggle with Rexhill to regain his ranch. His manhood
+rebelled at the idea of coercion, but, dead, he could certainly not
+defend himself; it seemed to him better that he should live to carry on
+the fight. He would most likely have yielded but for the taunt of
+cowardice which had already been noised about Crawling Water. True, the
+charge had sprung from those who liked him least, but it had stung him.
+He was no coward, and he would not feed such a report now by yielding to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>Moran. Whatever the outcome of a later fight might be, the fact that he
+had knuckled under to the agent could never be lived down. Such success
+as he had won had been achieved by playing a man's part in man's world.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what I'll do, Moran," he said, finally. "Give me a hand
+out of this hole, or come down here yourself. Throw aside your gun, but
+keep your knife. I'll allow you that advantage. Meet me face to face!
+Damn you, be a man! Anything that you can gain by my signature, you can
+gain by my death. Get the best of me, if you can, in a man's fight.
+Pah!" He spat contemptuously. "You're a coward, Moran, a white-livered
+coward! You don't dare fight with me on anything like equal terms. I'll
+get out of here somehow, and when I do&mdash;by Heaven, I'll corner you, and
+I'll make you fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Get out? How?" Moran laughed the idea to scorn. "Your friends can look
+for you from now till snowfall. They'll never find even your bones. Rot
+there, if you choose. Why should I take a chance on you when I've got
+you where I want you? You ought to die. You know too much."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Wade retorted grimly. "I know too much. I know enough to hang
+you, you murderer. Who killed Oscar Jensen? Answer that! You did it, or
+you had it done, and then you tried to put it on Santry and me, and I'm
+not the only one who knows it. This country's too small to hold you,
+Moran. Your fate is settled already, whatever may happen to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, I seem to be holding four aces now," Moran <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>grinned back at him.
+"And the cards are stacked."</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Wade rolled himself a cigarette from his scant hoard of
+tobacco. Already he was hungry, for deep shadows in his prison marked
+the approach of night, and he had the appetite of a healthy man. The
+knowledge that he was to be denied food made him feel the hungrier,
+until he resolutely put the thought of eating out of his mind. The
+water, trickling down the face of the rock, was a God-send, though, and
+he drank frequently from the little stream.</p>
+
+<p>By habit a heavy smoker, he viewed with dismay the inroads which he had
+already made on his store of tobacco for that deprivation he felt would
+be the most real of any that he could suffer. He tried to take shorter
+puffs upon his cigarette, and between them shielded the fire with his
+hand, so that the air-draughts in the fissure might not cheat him of any
+of the smoke. He figured that he had scarcely enough tobacco left for a
+dozen cigarettes, which was less than his usual daily allowance.</p>
+
+<p>On searching his pockets, in the hope of finding a second sack of
+Durham, he chanced upon his clasp-knife, and viewed the find with joy.
+The thought of using it as a weapon did not impress him, for his captors
+would keep out of reach of such a toy, but he concluded that he might
+possibly use it to carve some sort of foothold in the rock. The idea of
+cutting the granite was out of the question, but there might be strata
+of softer stone which he could dig into. It was a forlorn hope, in a
+forlorn cause, and it proved <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>futile. At his first effort the knife's
+single blade snapped off short, and he threw the useless handle away.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness fell some time before the cool night air penetrated the
+fissure; when it did so the cold seemed likely to be added to his other
+physical discomforts. In the higher altitudes the nights were distinctly
+chilly even in mid-summer, and he had on only a light outing shirt,
+above his waist. As the hour grew late, the cold increased in severity
+until Wade was forced to walk up and down his narrow prison in the
+effort to keep warm. He had just turned to retrace his steps, on one
+such occasion, when his ears caught the soft pat-pat of a footfall on
+the ground above. He instantly became motionless and tensely alert,
+wondering which of his enemies was so stealthily returning, and for what
+reason.</p>
+
+<p>He thought it not unlikely that Moran had altered his purpose and come
+back to shoot him while he slept. Brave though he was, the idea of being
+shot down in such a manner made his flesh crawl. Stooping, he picked up
+a fragment of rock; although he realized the futility of the weapon, it
+was all he had. Certainly, whoever approached was moving with the utmost
+stealth, which argued an attack of some kind. Drawing back the hand that
+held the stone, the cattleman shrank into a corner of the fissure and
+waited. Against the starlit sky, he had an excellent view of the opening
+above him, and possibly by a lucky throw the stone would serve against
+one assailant, at least.</p>
+
+<p>The pat-pat-pat drew nearer and stopped, at last, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>on the extreme edge
+of the hole. A low, long-drawn sniff showed that this was no human
+enemy. If the sound had been louder, Wade would have guessed that it was
+made by a bear; but as it was he guessed the prowler to be a
+mountain-lion. He had little fear of such a beast; most of them were
+notorious cowards unless cornered, and when presently a pair of glowing
+eyes peered down into the fissure, he hurled the stone at them with all
+his might. His aim was evidently true, for with a snarl of pain the
+animal drew back.</p>
+
+<p>But just as amongst the most pacific human races there are some brave
+spirits, so amongst the American lions there are a few which possess all
+the courage of their jungle brothers. Actuated by overweening curiosity,
+or else by a thirst for blood, the big cat returned again and again to
+the edge of the hole. After his first throw Wade was unable to hit the
+beast with a stone, although his efforts had the temporary effect of
+frightening it. Gradually, however, it grew bolder, and was restrained
+from springing upon him only, as it seemed, by some sixth sense which
+warned it of the impossibility of getting out of the fissure after once
+getting in. Baffled and furious, the lion sniffed and prowled about the
+rim of the hole until the ranchman began to think it would surely leap
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up his broken pocket-knife and waited for this to happen. The
+shattered blade would be of little use, but it might prove better than
+his bare hands if he had to defend himself against the brute's teeth and
+claws.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>A WAR OF WITS</h3>
+
+<p>"Kidnaped? Gordon Wade?"</p>
+
+<p>At Dorothy's announcement, Mrs. Purnell sank, with a gasp, into her
+rocking-chair, astonished beyond expression. She listened, with anxiety
+scarce less than her daughter's, to the girl's account of the event as
+she had it from Trowbridge. Her mouth opened and shut aimlessly as she
+picked at her gingham apron. If Wade had been her own son, she could
+hardly have loved him more. He had been as tender to her as a son, and
+the news of his disappearance and probable injury was a frightful shock.</p>
+
+<p>Weakly she attempted to relieve her own anxiety by disputing the fact of
+his danger.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I guess nothing's happened to him&mdash;nothing like that, anyway. He
+may have had a fall from his horse. Or maybe it broke away from him and
+ran off."</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Santry found their trail," Dorothy said, with a gesture so tragic
+that it wrung her mother's heart strings. "He followed it as far as he
+could, then lost it." In any other case she would have tried to keep the
+bad news from her mother, because of her nerves, but just now the girl
+was too distraught to think of any one but the man she loved. "Oh, if I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>could only do something myself," she burst out. "It's staying here,
+helpless, that is killing me. I wish I'd gone with Lem up into the
+mountains. I would have if he hadn't said I might better stay in town.
+But how can I help? There's nothing to do here."</p>
+
+<p>"The idea!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed. "They'll be out all night. How could
+you have gone with them? I don't believe Gordon has been kidnaped at
+all. It's a false alarm, I tell you. Who could have done such a thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" The question broke Dorothy's patience. "Who's done everything
+that's abominable and contemptible lately here in Crawling Water? That
+Moran did it, of course, with Senator Rexhill behind him. Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" said her mother, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Lem Trowbridge thinks so. Nearly everybody does."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he hasn't as good sense as I thought he had." Mrs. Purnell arose
+and moved toward the kitchen. "You come on and help me make some waffles
+for supper. Perhaps that will take such foolishness out of your head.
+The idea of a Senator of the United States going about kidnaping
+people."</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy obeyed her mother's wish, but not very ably. Her face was
+flushed and her eyes hot; ordinarily she was a splendid housekeeper and
+a dutiful daughter, but there are limits to human endurance. She mixed
+the batter so clumsily and with such prodigal waste that her mother had
+to stop her, and she was about to put salt into the sugar bowl when
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>Mrs. Purnell snatched it out of her hands. "Go into the dining-room and
+sit down, Dorothy," she exclaimed. "You're beside yourself." It is
+frequently the way with people, who are getting on in years and are
+sick, to charge their own shortcomings on any one who may be near. Mrs.
+Purnell was greatly worried.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now?" she demanded, when Dorothy left her supper
+untasted on her plate.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, can't you tell a body what you're thinking about? What are you
+sitting there that way for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was wondering," said Dorothy in despair, "if Helen Rexhill knows
+where Gordon is."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Purnell snorted in disdain.</p>
+
+<p>"Land's sakes, child, what put that into your head? Drink your tea.
+It'll do you good."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't she know, if her father does?" The girl pushed her
+tea-cup farther away from her. "She wouldn't have come all the way out
+here with him&mdash;he wouldn't have brought her with him&mdash;if they weren't
+working together. She must know. But I don't see why...."</p>
+
+<p>"Dorothy Purnell, I declare to goodness, I believe you're going crazy."
+Mrs. Purnell dropped her fork. "All this about Gordon is bad enough
+without my being worried so...."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd even give him up to her, if she'd tell me that." Dorothy's voice
+was unsteady, and she seemed to be talking to herself rather than to her
+mother. "I know she thinks I've come between her and Gordon, but I
+haven't meant to. He's just seemed to like me better; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>that's all. But
+I'd do anything to save him from Moran."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say that you might better wait until he asks you, before you
+talk of giving him up to somebody." Mrs. Purnell spoke with the primness
+that was to be expected, but her daughter made no reply. She had never
+mentioned the night in Moran's office, and her mother knew nothing of
+Wade's kiss. But to the girl it had meant more than any declaration in
+words. She had kept her lips inviolate until that moment, and when his
+kiss had fallen upon them it had fallen upon virgin soil, from out of
+which had bloomed a white flower of passion. Before then she had looked
+upon Wade as a warm friend, but since that night he had appeared to her
+in another guise; that of a lover, who has come into his own. She had
+met him then, a girl, and had left him a woman, and she felt that what
+he had established as a fact in the one rare moment of his kiss,
+belonged to him and her. It seemed so wholly theirs that she had not
+been able to bring herself to discuss it with her mother. She had won it
+fairly, and she treasured it. The thought of giving him up to Helen
+Rexhill, of promising her never to see Wade again, was overwhelming, and
+was to be considered only as a last resource, but there was no suffering
+that she would not undertake for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Purnell was as keenly alive as ever to the hope that the young
+ranch owner might some day incline toward her little girl, but she was
+sensitive also to the impression which the Rexhills had made <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>upon her.
+Her life with Mr. Purnell had not brought her many luxuries, and perhaps
+she over-valued their importance. She thought Miss Rexhill a most
+imposing young woman and she believed in the impeccability of the
+well-to-do. Her heart was still warmed by the memory of the courtesy
+with which she had been treated by the Senator's daughter, and was not
+without the gratification of feeling that it had been a tribute to her
+own worth. She had scolded Dorothy afterward for her frank speech to
+Miss Rexhill at the hotel, and she felt that further slurs on her were
+uncalled for.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure that Miss Rexhill treated us as a lady should," she said
+tartly. "She acted more like one than you did, if I do have to say it.
+She was as kind and sweet as could be. She's got a tender heart. I could
+see that when she up and gave me that blotter, just because I remarked
+that it reminded me of your childhood."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that old blotter!" Dorothy exclaimed petulantly. "What did it
+amount to? You talk as though it were something worth having." She was
+so seldom in a pet that her mother now strove to make allowance for her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not saying that it's of any value, Dorothy, except to me; but it
+was kind of her to seem to understand why I wanted it."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't kind of her. She just did it to get rid of us, because we
+bored her. Oh, mother, you're daffy about the Rexhills, why not admit it
+and be done with it? You think they're perfect, but I tell <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>you they're
+not&mdash;they're not! They've been behind all our troubles here.
+They've...." Her voice broke under the stress of her emotion and she
+rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorothy, if you have no self-respect, at least have some...."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have that blotter in the house." The strain was proving more
+than the girl's nerves could stand. "I won't hear about it any longer.
+I'm going to&mdash;to tear it up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dorothy!"</p>
+
+<p>For all the good that Mrs. Purnell's tone of authority did, it might as
+well have fallen upon the wind. She hastily followed her daughter, who
+had rushed from the room, and overtook her just in time to prevent her
+from destroying the little picture. Her own strength could not have
+sufficed to deter the girl in her purpose, if the latter had not
+realized in her heart the shameful way in which she was treating her
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, child? Look in that glass at your face!
+No wonder you don't think you look like the sweet child in the picture.
+You don't look like her now, nor act like her. That was why I wanted the
+blotter, to remind me of the way you used to look."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, mother."</p>
+
+<p>Blushing deeply as she recovered her self-control, Dorothy stole a
+glance at her reflection in the looking-glass of the bureau, before
+which she stood, and shyly contrasted her angry expression of
+countenance with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>the sweet one of the child on the blotter. Suddenly
+she started, and leaned toward the mirror, staring at something she saw
+there. The blood seemed driven from the surface of her skin; her lips
+were parted; her eyes dilated. She drew a swift breath of amazed
+exultation, and turned to her mother, who had viewed the sudden
+transformation with surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be back soon, mother. I can't tell you what it is." Dorothy's
+voice rang with the suggestion of victory. "But I've discovered
+something, wonderful!"</p>
+
+<p>Before Mrs. Purnell could adjust herself to this new mood, the girl was
+down the stairs and running toward the little barn. Slipping the bridle
+on her pony, she swung to its back without thought of a saddle, and
+turned the willing creature into the street. As she passed the house,
+she waved her hand to her mother, at the window, and vanished like a
+specter into the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hurry, Gypsy, hurry!" she breathed into the pony's twitching ear.</p>
+
+<p>Her way was not far, for she was going first to the hotel, but that
+other way, into the mountains after Gordon, would be a long journey, and
+no time could be wasted now. She was going to see Helen Rexhill, not as
+a suppliant bearing the olive branch, but as a champion to wage battle
+in behalf of the missing ranchman. She no longer thought of giving him
+up, and the knowledge that she might now keep the love which she had won
+for her very own made her reel on the pony's back from pure joy. She was
+his as he was hers, but the Rexhills were his enemies: she knew that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>positively now, and she meant to defeat them at their own game. If they
+would tell her where Gordon was, they might go free for all she cared;
+if they would not, she would give them over to the vengeance of Crawling
+Water, and she would not worry about what might happen to them.
+Meanwhile she thanked her lucky stars that Trowbridge had promised to
+keep a man at the big pine.</p>
+
+<p>She tied her pony at the hitching-rack in front of the hotel and entered
+the office. Like most of the men in the town, the proprietor was her
+ardent admirer, but he had never seen her before in such radiant mood.
+He took his cigar from between his lips, and doffed his Stetson hat,
+which he wore indoors and out, with elaborate grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss, Miss Rexhill's in, up in the parlor, I think. Would you like
+me to step up and let her know you're here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you, I'll go right up myself," said Dorothy; her smile doubly
+charming because of its suggestion of triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Rexhill, entirely unaware of what was brewing for her, was
+embroidering by the flickering light of one of the big oil lamps, with
+her back to the doorway, and so did not immediately note Dorothy's
+presence in the room. Her face flushed with annoyance and she arose,
+when she recognized her visitor.</p>
+
+<p>"You will please pardon me, but I do not care to receive you," she said
+primly.</p>
+
+<p>This beginning, natural enough from Helen's standpoint, after what her
+father had told her in Moran's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>office, convinced Dorothy that she had
+read the writing on the blotter correctly. She held her ground,
+aggressively, between Miss Rexhill and the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You must hear what I have to say to you," she declared quietly. "I have
+not come here to make a social call."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I do not wish to talk to you?"
+Helen lifted her brows and shrugged her shoulders. "Surely, it should be
+enough. Will you please stand aside so that I may go to my room?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't! You can't go until you've heard what I've got to say."
+Stung by the other woman's contemptuous tone, and realizing that the
+situation put her at a social disadvantage, Dorothy forced an aggressive
+tone into her voice, ugly to the ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well!" Miss Rexhill shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and
+resumed her seat. "We must not engage in a vulgar row. Since I must
+listen to you, I must, but at least I need not talk to you, and I
+won't."</p>
+
+<p>"You know that Gordon Wade has disappeared?" Helen made no response to
+this, and Dorothy bit her lip in anger. "I know that you know it," she
+continued. "I know that you know where he is. Perhaps, however, you
+don't know that his life is in danger. If you will tell me where he is,
+I can save him. Will you tell me?" The low throaty note of suffering in
+her voice brought a stiletto-like flash into the eyes of the other
+woman, but no response.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Rexhill," Dorothy went on, after a short <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>pause. "You and Mr. Wade
+were friends once, if you are not now. Perhaps you don't realize just
+how serious the situation is here in this town, where nearly everybody
+likes him, and what would happen to you and your father, if I told what
+I know about you. I don't believe he would want it to happen, even after
+the way you've treated him. If you will only tell me...."</p>
+
+<p>Helen turned abruptly in her chair, her face white with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"I said that I would not talk to you," she burst out, "but your
+impertinence is so&mdash;so insufferable&mdash;so absolutely insufferable, that I
+must speak. You say you will tell people what you know about me. What <i>do</i>
+you know about me?" She arose to face Dorothy, with blazing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure that you know where Gordon is."</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure of nothing of the kind. I do not know where Mr. Wade is,
+and why should I tell you if I did? Suppose I were to tell what I know
+about you? I don't believe the whole of it is known in Crawling Water
+yet. You&mdash;you must be insane."</p>
+
+<p>"About me?" Dorothy's surprise was genuine. "There is nothing you could
+tell any one about me."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Rexhill laughed scornfully, a low, withering laugh that brought a
+flush to the girl's cheeks, even though her conscience told her that she
+had nothing to be ashamed of. Dorothy stared at the other woman with
+wide-open, puzzled eyes, diverted for the moment from her own purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"At least, you need not expect me to help you," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>Helen said acidulously.
+"I have my own feelings. I respected Mr. Wade at one time and valued his
+friendship. You have taken from me my respect for him, and you have
+taken from him his self-respect. Quite likely you had no respect for
+yourself, and so you had nothing to lose. But if you'll stop to
+consider, you may see how impertinent you are to appeal to me so
+brazenly."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you talking about?" Dorothy's eyes, too, were blazing now, but
+more in championship of Wade than of herself. She still did not fully
+understand the drift of what Miss Rexhill had said.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, you are almost amusing." Helen looked at her through
+half-closed lids. "You are quite freakish. I suppose you must be a moral
+degenerate, or something of the sort." She waited for the insult to sink
+in, but Dorothy was fairly dazed and bewildered. "Do you want me to call
+things by their true names?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Dorothy, "I do. Tell me what you are talking about."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind, I'm sure. Plain speaking has never bothered me. It's the
+deed that's horrible, not the name. You were found in Mr. Moran's office
+with Mr. Wade, late at night, misbehaving yourself. Do you dare to come
+now to me and...."</p>
+
+<p>"That is not true!" The denial came from Dorothy with an intensity that
+would have carried conviction to any person less infuriated than the
+woman who faced her. "Oh!" Dorothy raised her hands to her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>throat as
+though struggling for breath. "I never dreamed you meant that. It's a
+deliberate lie!"</p>
+
+<p>In the grip of their emotions, neither of the girls had noticed the
+entrance of Senator Rexhill. Helen saw him first and dramatically
+pointed to him.</p>
+
+<p>"There is my father. Ask him!"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not need to ask him what I've done." Dorothy felt as though she
+would suffocate. "No one would believe that story of Gordon, whatever
+they might think of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask me? Ask me what?" the Senator nervously demanded. He had in his
+pocket a telegram just received from Washington, stating that the
+cavalry would be sent from Fort Mackenzie only at the request of the
+Governor of Wyoming. The Governor was not at all likely to make such a
+request, and Rexhill was more worried than he had been before, in years.
+He could only hope that Tug Bailey would escape capture. "Who is this?"
+He put on his glasses, and deliberately looked Dorothy over. "Oh, it's
+the young woman whom Race found in his office."</p>
+
+<p>"She has come here to plead for Gordon Wade&mdash;to demand that I tell her
+where he is now. I don't know, of course; none of us know; but I
+wouldn't tell her if I did." Helen spoke triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better leave us," Rexhill said brusquely to Dorothy. "You are
+not wanted here. Go home!"</p>
+
+<p>While they were talking, Dorothy had looked from one to the other with
+the contempt which a good woman naturally feels when she is impugned.
+Now she crossed the room and confronted the Senator.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>"Did you tell your daughter that I was caught in your office with Gordon
+Wade?" she demanded; and before her steady gaze Rexhill winced.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't deny it, do you?" he blustered.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't deny being there with him, and I won't deny anything else to
+such a man as you. I'm too proud to. For your own sake, however, you
+would have done better not to have tried to blacken me." She turned
+swiftly to his daughter. "Perhaps you don't know all that I supposed you
+did. We were in Moran's office&mdash;Mr. Wade and myself&mdash;because we felt
+sure that your father had some criminal purpose here in Crawling Water.
+We were right. We found papers showing the location of gold on Mr.
+Wade's ranch, which showed your father's reasons for trying to seize the
+land."</p>
+
+<p>Helen laughed scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you expect me to believe that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not," her father growled. "Come on up to our rooms. Let
+her preach here until she is put out." He was on his way to the door
+when the vibrant command in Dorothy's voice halted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait. You'd better listen to me, for it's the last chance you'll have.
+I have you absolutely at my mercy. I've caught you! You are trapped!"
+There was no doubting that the girl believed what she said, and the
+Senator's affairs were in a sufficiently precarious state to bid him
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" He made his own tone as unconcerned as he could, but there
+was a look of haunting dread in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p><p>"Senator Rexhill,"&mdash;Dorothy's voice was low, but there was a quality in
+it which thrilled her hearers,&mdash;"when my mother and I visited your
+daughter a few days ago, she gave my mother a blotter. There was a
+picture on it that reminded my mother of me as a child; that was why she
+wanted it. It has been on my mother's bureau ever since. I never noticed
+anything curious about it until this evening." She looked, with a quiet
+smile at Helen. "Probably you forgot that you had just blotted a letter
+with it."</p>
+
+<p>Helen started and went pale, but not so pale as her father, who went so
+chalk-white that the wrinkles in his skin looked like make-up, against
+its pallor.</p>
+
+<p>"I was holding that blotter before the looking-glass this evening,"
+Dorothy continued, in the same low tone, "and I saw that the ink had
+transferred to the blotter a part of what you had written. I read it. It
+was this: 'Father knew Santry had not killed Jensen....'"</p>
+
+<p>The Senator moistened his lips with his tongue and strove to chuckle,
+but the effort was a failure. Helen, however, appeared much relieved.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember now," she said, "and I am well repaid for my moment of
+sentiment. I was writing to my mother and was telling her of a scene
+that had just taken place between Mr. Wade and my father. I did not
+write what you read; rather, it was not all that I wrote. I
+said&mdash;'Gordon thought that father knew Santry had not killed Jensen.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you posted that letter?" her father asked, repressing as well as
+he could his show of eagerness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>"No. I thought better about sending it. I have it upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"If you hadn't it, of course you could write it again, in any shape you
+chose," Dorothy observed crisply, though she recognized, plainly enough,
+that the explanation was at least plausible.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing in that," Rexhill declared, when he had taken a deep
+breath of relief. "Your championship of Wade is running away with you.
+What other&mdash;er!&mdash;grave charges have you to bring against me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have one that is much more grave," she retorted, so promptly that he
+could not conceal a fresh start of uneasiness. "This morning, Mr.
+Trowbridge and I were out for a ride. We rode over to the place where
+Jensen was shot, and Mr. Trowbridge found there a cartridge shell which
+fits only one gun in Crawling Water. That gun belongs to a man named Tug
+Bailey."</p>
+
+<p>By now Rexhill was thoroughly aroused, for although he was too good a
+jurist not to see the flaws in so incomplete a fabric of evidence
+against him, he was impressed with the influence such a story would
+exert on public opinion. If possible, this girl's tongue must be
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh!" He made a fine show of indifference. "Why bring such tales to
+me? You'd make a very poor lawyer, young woman, if you think that such
+rumors will serve to impeach a man of my standing."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a warrant out for Bailey," Dorothy went on quietly. "If he is
+caught, and I choose to make <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>public what I know and can guess, I am
+sure that you will never reach a court. You underestimate the people
+here. I would not have to prove what I have told you. I need only to
+proclaim it, and&mdash;I don't know what they'd do to you. It makes me a bit
+sick to think about it."</p>
+
+<p>The thought made the Senator sick, too, for of late he had seen that
+things were going very badly for him. He was prepared to temporize, but
+there was no need for him to contemplate surrender, or flight, so long
+as Bailey remained at large. If the man were captured, and there was
+likelihood of a confession being wrung from him, then most decidedly
+discretion would be the better part of valor.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course," he confessed, "I am willing to admit that in such a
+community as this you might make trouble, unjustly, for me and my
+daughter. I am anxious to avoid that, because my interests are valuable
+here and I have my daughter's safety to consider."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of me," Helen interposed quickly. Above all fear for
+herself would be the shame of being beaten by Dorothy and of having her
+triumph go to the making of Wade's happiness. The thought of that
+appeared far worse to her mind than any physical suffering. "Do what you
+think is right. We are not cowards."</p>
+
+<p>"But I must think of you, my dear. I am responsible to your mother." He
+turned to Dorothy again. "How much do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"How much? Oh!" She flushed hotly beneath the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>insult, but she chose to
+ignore it. "There is only one price that will purchase my silence. Tell
+me where Mr. Wade is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bless my soul, I don't know." The Senator affected a display of injured
+innocence, which sat oddly upon his harried countenance. "I am willing
+to do what I can to save trouble, but I can't do the impossible."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, in a wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her
+conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking
+the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also
+the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told
+herself that she must keep her countenance, and she did so.</p>
+
+<p>"There is not a man in Crawling Water who does not believe that Race
+Moran is responsible for Mr. Wade's disappearance," she declared. "That
+is another thing that you should consider, for it is one more link in
+the chain of evidence&mdash;impressions, you may call them, but they will be
+accepted as evidence by Wade's friends."</p>
+
+<p>Rexhill was considering it, and swiftly, in the light of the visit he
+had had from Trowbridge. The cattleman had left him with a distinct
+feeling that every word spoken had been meant. "If we can prove it
+against you, we'll ride you to hell on a rail." The language was
+melodramatic, but it seemed very suggestive as the Senator called it to
+mind. He regretted that he had supported Moran in his lust for revenge.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>The lawless spirit of the West seemed to have poisoned his own blood,
+but somehow the feeling of indifference as to suffering personal
+violence had been left out, and he realized that the West was no place
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Even so," he said pompously, "even if what you say of Moran should
+prove true, it does not follow that I know it, or am a party to it. Race
+Moran is his own master."</p>
+
+<p>"He is your employee&mdash;your agent&mdash;and you are responsible for what he
+does in your behalf," Dorothy retorted desperately. "Why do you bandy
+words with me like this? You may be able to do it with me, but don't
+think that you can do it with Mr. Trowbridge, and the others, if I tell
+them what I know. I tell you, you can't. You feel safe before me alone,
+but you are in much greater danger than you think. You don't seem to
+realize that I am holding your lives in my hand."</p>
+
+<p>Helen's cheeks blanched at this.</p>
+
+<p>"I do realize it." There was a slight quaver in the Senator's voice,
+although he tried to speak with easy grace. "I assure you, I do and I
+shall be very grateful to you"&mdash;his anxiety was crowding out his
+discretion&mdash;"if you will help me to save my daughter...."</p>
+
+<p>"I say just what I said before," Helen interposed, courageous to the
+last. There is, many times, in the woman a finer fiber of courage than
+runs in the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p><p>Dorothy regarded the Senator scornfully, her feminine intuition assuring
+her that he was weakening. She no longer doubted that he knew; she was
+certain of it and happy to feel that she had only to press him harder to
+wring the truth from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Grateful? For helping you? I am not trying to help you. You deserve any
+punishment that could be inflicted upon you, I would say that, even if
+you had not insulted me and lied about me. You are an evil man. I am
+offering you your safety, so far as I can grant, only for the sake of
+Mr. Wade. If it were not for him, I should not have come here at all."</p>
+
+<p>Her sense of approaching triumph had carried her a little too far. It
+aroused Helen to bitter resentment, and when she began to speak Dorothy
+was sorry that she had not kept silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, don't do it!" Miss Rexhill burst out. "It is insufferable that
+this woman should threaten us so. I would rather run any risk, I don't
+care what, than give in to her. I won't tolerate such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"You may be urging him to his death," Dorothy warned her. "I will not
+stop at anything now. If I tell the cattlemen what I know they will go
+wild. I mean what I say, believe me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know you will not stop at anything. I have seen that," Helen
+admitted. "A woman who can do what you've already done...."</p>
+
+<p>"Helen!" The Senator was carrying with him a sense of gratitude toward
+Dorothy, and in the light <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>of her spirit he was a little ashamed of the
+part he had played against her. "Let's try to forget what has past. At
+least, this young woman is offering us a chance."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" Dorothy cried out suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, in the street, a galloping horseman was shouting to some one as
+he rode. The girl ran to the window and raised the shade to look out.
+The lusty voice of the horseman bore well into the room. "They've caught
+Bailey at Sheridan. He'll be here to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Senator Rexhill," said Dorothy, turning away from the window, "you'd
+better take the chance I've offered you, while you can. Do it for the
+sake of the old friendship between you and Gordon Wade, if for no other
+reason. No matter how bitter he may feel toward you, he would not want
+you in Crawling Water when Tug Bailey confesses. It would be too awful."
+She shuddered at the thought. "Tell me where he is and get out of town
+at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Bailey hasn't confessed yet," Helen cut in gamely.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but he will," Dorothy declared positively. "They'll put a rope
+around his neck, and he'll confess. Such men always do. Try to remember
+the position you are in. You'd be sorry if your father were lynched. Go
+with him, while you can. I know these people better than you do."</p>
+
+<p>The Senator swallowed hard and mopped his damp forehead with his
+handkerchief. There was nothing to do but follow the girl's advice, and
+that quickly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>he knew. After all, in the face of death, financial ruin
+seemed a mere bagatelle.</p>
+
+<p>"So far as I have been informed, Wade is confined at Coyote Springs,
+somewhere in the mountains," he said bluntly. "That's all I know of the
+matter. I hope you will find him all right there. He ought to be very
+proud of you."</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy caught her hands to her breast in a little gesture of
+exultation, and the expression on her face was a wonderful thing to see.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll go?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the morning," Senator Rexhill answered.</p>
+
+<p>Eager as Dorothy was to reach the big pine with her message, she could
+not leave without giving Helen such a glance of triumph as made her
+wince.</p>
+
+<p>Then, hurrying to her pony, she rode rapidly out of town into the black
+night which cloaked the trail leading to the pine. She knew that her
+mother would miss her and be anxious, but the minutes were too precious
+now to be wasted even on her mother. She did not know what peril Gordon
+might be in, and her first duty was to him. She was almost wild with
+anxiety lest the courier should not be at his post, but he was there
+when she dashed up to the pine.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me to Mr. Trowbridge. Quick!" she panted.</p>
+
+<p>"He's somewhere between Bald Knob and Hatchet Hill," the man explained,
+knocking the ashes from his pipe. "It's some dark, too, miss, for ridin'
+in this country. Can't you wait until morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't wait one second. I have found out where <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>Mr. Wade is, and I
+mean to be with you all when you find him."</p>
+
+<p>"You have, eh?" The man, who was one of Trowbridge's punchers, swung
+into his saddle. "That bein' so, we'd get there if this here night was
+liquid coal."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>A RESCUE AND A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE</h3>
+
+<p>At the end of an hour, or so, the lion withdrew and Wade thought he had
+seen the last of it. He began to pace up and down the fissure once more,
+for now that his thin shirt was damp with perspiration, set flowing by
+the nervous strain he had been under, he began to get chilly again. He
+had just begun to warm up, when he heard the animal returning. He
+crouched back against the cavern wall, but the lion had evidently lost
+the zest for such impossible prey. It walked about and sniffed at the
+edges of the fissure for some minutes; then it sneaked off into the
+timber with a cat-like whimper.</p>
+
+<p>The exhausted ranchman kept his feet as long as he could, but when the
+first rays of the morning sun cast purple shadows into the depths of the
+hole, he could no longer keep awake. With his hands, he drifted the
+loose sand about him, as travelers do when exposed to a snow-blizzard,
+and slept until Goat Neale aroused him, in broad daylight. The Texan
+performed this service by deftly dropping a small stone upon the
+sleeping man's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I just stepped over to inquire what you-all'd like for breakfast this
+mornin'," he said with a grin. "Not that it matters much, 'cause the
+dumb-waiter down to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>where you be ain't waitin' to-day, but it's
+manners, kinder, to ask."</p>
+
+<p>Wade looked up at him grimly, but said nothing. Just awake as he was,
+his healthy stomach clamored for food, but since none would be given
+him, he knew that he might as well try to be patient.</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe you'd like to step over to our hotel an' take your meals, eh?"
+The Texan went on, after a short pause. "I've got a pot of coffee bilin'
+an' a mess o' bacon fryin'. No?" He grinned sardonically. "How'd you
+like me to give you some o' this here cabareet stuff, while you're
+waitin'? I ain't no great shucks as a entertainer, but I'll do what I
+can. Mebbe, you'd like to know how I happened to catch you that clump on
+the head yesterday. Huh?</p>
+
+<p>"I was up in the low branches of a thick pine, where you was moseyin'
+along. You was that busy watchin' the ground, you never thought to raise
+them eyes o' yourn. I just reached down and lammed you good with a piece
+of stick, an' here you be, safe an' sound as a beetle in a log. Here
+you'll stay, too, likely, on-less you get some sense, and I don't know
+when that there dumbwaiter'll get to runnin'. It's a shame, too, if you
+ask me, 'cause a man needs his three or four squares a day in this here
+climate."</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you want to give me a hand out of here, Neale?" the
+cattleman demanded abruptly, tired of listening to the fellow's
+monotonous drawl; and after all the chance was worth taking.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the Texan glittered.</p>
+
+<p>"Got the money on you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p><p>"You'd get the money all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, son, I know that&mdash;if you had it! I'd just hold my gun on you, an'
+you'd toss the roll up here, without puttin' me to the trouble o' givin'
+you no hand." He chuckled in appreciation of his own humor. "But I know
+you ain't got it on you&mdash;we frisked you down yonder in the timber&mdash;an' I
+don't deal in no promises. This here is a cash game. If I thought
+tha...."</p>
+
+<p>He whirled about suddenly, looking behind him and seemed to listen for
+an instant; then his hand dropped to the gun at his hip. He never drew
+the weapon, however, for with a horrible facial grimace, as his body
+contorted under the impact of a bullet, he threw his arms into the air
+and reeled over the edge of the hole. A second afterward the report of a
+rifle came to Wade's ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" the rancher shouted, springing from under the Texan's falling
+body. The instant it struck the sand, Wade snatched Neale's revolver
+from its holster and waited for him to try to rise; but he did not move.
+A bloody froth stained his lips, while a heavier stain on his shirt,
+just under the heart, told where the bullet had struck. The man was
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello! Hello!" Wade shouted repeatedly, and discharged the revolver
+into the sand. He realized that, although a friend must have fired the
+rifle, there was nothing to show where he was. "Hello!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" The hail was answered by the newcomer, who, thus guided,
+approached the spot until his voice was near at hand. "Hello!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p><p>"Hello! Come on!" The prisoner threw his hat up out of the hole. "Here I
+am!"</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Bill Santry, with tears streaming down his
+weather-beaten cheeks, was bending over the edge of the fissure with
+down-stretched hands. Beneath his self-control the old man was
+soft-hearted as a woman, and in his delight he now made no attempt to
+restrain himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank Gawd for this minute!" he exclaimed. "Give me your hands, boy. I
+can just reach 'em if I stretch a little an' you jump." Wade did so and
+was drawn up out of the hole. "Thank Gawd! Thank Gawd!" the old fellow
+kept exclaiming, patting his employer on the back. "Didn't hurt you
+much, did they?"</p>
+
+<p>Before Wade could answer, a patter of hoofs caused him to turn, as
+Dorothy slipped from Gypsy's bare back and ran toward him. She stumbled
+when she had almost reached him, and he caught her in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all right? Oh, your head! It's hurt&mdash;see, the blood?" She clung
+to him and searched his face with her eyes, while he tried to soothe
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing, just a bad bruise, but how&mdash;?" He checked the question
+upon his lips. "We mustn't stay here. Moran may have...."</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't nobody here. I wish to Gawd he was here. I'd...." Santry's
+face was twisted with rage. "'Course," he added, "I knew it was him,
+so'd Lem Trowbridge. But we come right smack through their camp, and
+there was nobody there. This here skunk <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>that I plugged, he must be the
+only one. I got him, I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Wade answered simply, as he watched three men from the Trowbridge
+ranch ride up to them. "Where's Lem?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy explained that she had set out to find him in company with the
+man she had met at the big pine; but on the way they had met Santry and
+the three cowboys. One of the men had then ridden on to Bald Knob after
+Trowbridge, while the rest had come straight to Coyote Springs. She
+tried to speak quietly, but she could not keep the song of happiness out
+of her voice, or the love out of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you did this, too?" Wade wrung her hands and looked at her
+proudly. "But how&mdash;I don't understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you, when we're in the saddle," she said shyly. "There's so
+much to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Santry!" The ranch owner threw his arm fondly across the shoulders of
+his foreman. "You, too, and Lem. I've got all my friends to thank. Say,
+dig a grave for this fellow, Neale. There was a lion around here last
+night, and I'd hate to have him get Neale, bad as he was. Then&mdash;" His
+voice became crisp with determination. "Hunt up Trowbridge and ask him
+to pass the word for everybody to meet at the ranch, as soon as
+possible. There's going to be open war here in the valley from now on."
+He turned again to Dorothy. "Dorothy, I'm going to take you right on
+home with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but...." The gleam in his eyes made her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>pause. She was too glad to
+have found him safe, besides, to wish to cross him in whatever might be
+his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"No buts about it. I'll send for your mother, too, of course. Town won't
+be any place for either of you until this business is settled. George!"
+he called to one of the three cowmen, who rode over to him. "I suppose
+it'll be all right for you to take orders from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon so."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to ride into Crawling Water. Get a buckboard there and bring
+Mrs. Purnell out to my place. Tell her that her daughter is there, and
+she'll come. Come now, little girl." He caught Dorothy in his arms and
+lifted her on to Gypsy's back. "All right, boys, and much obliged." He
+waved the little cavalcade on its way, and swung into the saddle on the
+extra horse, which Santry had provided.</p>
+
+<p>On the way down through the timber, Dorothy modestly told him of the
+part she had played, with the help of Lem Trowbridge. He listened with
+amazement to the story of her generalship, and was relieved to hear that
+the Rexhills were probably already out of Crawling Water, for that left
+him a free hand to act against Moran. This time the agent must suffer
+the penalty of his misdeeds, but greater even than his pleasure at that
+thought, was Wade's gratitude to Dorothy for all she had done for him.
+He was filled with a wonderful tenderness for her, which made him see in
+the play of her facial expression; the shy lowering of her lashes; the
+color which ebbed and flowed in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>her cheeks; the free use which she made
+of her red lips, a greater fascination than she had ever before exerted
+over him. There, in the fissure, he had expected never to be at her side
+again, and now that he was so, and knew what she had come to mean to
+him, the old friendship between them seemed no longer possible;
+certainly not from his side. He felt, in its place, all the confusion of
+a lover, anxious to speak and yet struck dumb with clumsiness and the
+fear, never absent no matter what the degree of encouragement, that his
+suit might not find favor with the lady when put into words.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a wonderful girl," he burst out, at last, with a heartiness
+that, in bringing a flush to her cheeks, made the old phrase seem new to
+her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not at all," she denied shyly. "I just had to do it, that was all.
+People always do what they have to do."</p>
+
+<p>"They do not. Lots of them can't, but you&mdash;you're always capable; that's
+what makes you so wonderful, Dorothy!" He pulled his horse closer to
+hers, meaning to put his arm around her, but he dared not attempt it,
+when her dress brushed his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" She was trembling now far more than when she had faced the
+Rexhills. "What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>His arm dropped to his side, and he suddenly became acutely conscious of
+his appearance, what with his blood-matted hair; his blood-stained and
+soiled face; his generally woe-begone and desperate state. At least,
+before he risked his future on such a question, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>he ought to make
+himself as presentable as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;" She looked at him curiously. "You were going to say something,
+weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but I'm not going to do it until I can get to a hair-brush, and a
+wash-basin, and a clean shirt," he answered lugubriously. "What I've got
+on my mind is a church-going sentiment and I want to be in church-going
+clothes." The expression of his countenance contributed more than his
+words to the humor he strove for, and she laughed at him, merrily with
+her mouth, very tenderly with her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the house." She pointed ahead. "Even though I'm riding
+bareback, I can beat you to it. Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>Once Wade was within reach of food, his hunger became insistent, and he
+could not wait for the cook to prepare a meal of fried chicken. He
+foraged in the larder beforehand, and then did full justice to the meal
+put before him. By the time this was over, Mrs. Purnell arrived, and he
+had no chance to get into his "church-going clothes," as he called them.
+He had to tell the old lady all that had befallen him.</p>
+
+<p>"I never would have thought it of that Miss Rexhill," Mrs. Purnell
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't Miss Rexhill, it was her father and Race Moran," Dorothy
+interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Or the Senator either, speaking merely from the looks of him," her
+mother retorted. "And think of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>the position he holds, a Senator of the
+United States!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's no hall-mark of virtue these days," Wade laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it should be. If we're to have people like him running the
+Nation, there's no telling where we'll end."</p>
+
+<p>"It just goes to show how an honest man, for I think Rexhill was an
+honest man when I first knew him, can go wrong by associating with the
+wrong people," said Wade. He could not forget his earlier friendship for
+the Rexhills, and to him the word friendship meant much. "He not only
+got in with a bad crowd, but he got going at a pace that wrung money out
+of him every time he moved. Then, in the last election, he was hit hard,
+and I suppose he felt that he had to recoup, even if he had to sacrifice
+his friends to do it. We mustn't judge a man like that too hard. We live
+differently out here, and maybe we don't understand those temptations.
+I'm mighty glad they've gone away. I can get right down to work now,
+without any qualms of conscience."</p>
+
+<p>"But think of you, Dorothy, out all night in those mountains!" Mrs.
+Purnell exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother&mdash;" Dorothy smiled tenderly. "You always think backward to
+yesterday, instead of forward to to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>By then, the first of the neighboring ranchers were drifting in, in
+response to Wade's summons. When all were present, and Trowbridge had
+wrung Wade's hand in a hearty pressure of congratulation, they were
+asked into the living-room, where Santry stood in a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>corner, munching
+slowly on a mouthful of tobacco and smiling grimly to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," began Wade, facing the little group of stern-faced men,
+"you all know why we are here. To a greater or lesser extent, we've all
+suffered from Race Moran's depredations, although until lately none of
+us knew his motive. Now, however, we know that there is gold here in the
+valley&mdash;on our land&mdash;which Moran is trying to get possession of. He has
+proved that he is willing to resort to any villainy to get what he
+wants, and while he and his men are at large our lives and most of our
+ranches are in danger.</p>
+
+<p>"We have tried the law, but it has not helped us. Such little law as we
+have here is entirely in the hands of the enemy. We must now assume the
+direction of our own affairs. Many of you have already served in a
+vigilance committee, and you all know the purpose of such an
+organization. My idea is to form one now to take possession of Crawling
+Water and run Moran and his hired bullies out of the county. Between us,
+we can muster about a hundred men; more than enough to turn the trick,
+and the quicker we get to work the sooner we'll be able to go about our
+business affairs without fear of being shot in the back. My plan is
+this: Let us assemble our force quietly, ride into Crawling Water,
+capture Moran and his followers, and escort them out of the county.
+There must be no lynching or unnecessary bloodshed; but if they resist,
+as some of them will, we must use such force as is needed to overcome
+them."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped speaking, and for some minutes silence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>prevailed. Then Bill
+Santry shifted the quid in his cheek, spat unerringly through the open
+window, and began to talk. His loose-jointed figure had suddenly become
+tense and forceful; his lean face was determined and very grim.</p>
+
+<p>"Being as I've suffered some from this skunk, and have lived here some
+while, so to say, mebbe I can horn in?" he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead!" said Wade heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon here has stated the gist o' this business a whole lot better'n I
+could, but I'd like to make a few additional remarks. We've all been
+neighbors for some years, and in the natural course of things we've been
+pretty good friends. Until this feller, Moran, got to monkeyin' around
+here, there wasn't no trouble to talk about, and we was all able to
+carry on our work calm and peaceful like. But since this skunk camped
+among us, we ain't hardly knowed what a decent sleep is like; he's
+grabbed our range, butchered our stock, shot up our men, lied, and
+carried on high, in general. We've given the law a chance to do the
+square thing by us. All we asked was a fair shake, and we turned the
+other cheek, as the Bible says, hopin' that we could win through without
+too much fightin', but we've been handed the muddy end of the stick
+every time. It's come to a showdown, gents. We either got to let Moran
+do as he damn pleases 'round here, or show him that he's tackled a
+buzz-saw. Most of us was weaned some earlier than the day before
+yisterday. We gradooated from the tenderfoot class some time back, and
+it's up to us to prove it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p><p>He paused and looked around him earnestly for a moment; then, as his
+audience remained silent, he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm older'n you men, an' I've lived a heap in my time. For nearly forty
+years I've been knockin' 'round this Western country without no nurse or
+guardeen to look after me. I've mixed with all kinds, and I've been in
+some scrapes; there's notches on my gun handles to prove that I ain't
+been no quitter. I've rode with the vigilantes more'n once, and the
+vigilantes has rode after me&mdash;more'n once; in my young days I wa'n't
+exactly what you'd call a nickel-plated saint. But I never killed a man,
+'cept in a fair fight, an' I don't believe in violence unless it's
+necessary. It's necessary right now, fellers! Moran's gone too far!
+Things have drawed to a point where we've got to fight or quit. In my
+experience, I ain't never seen but one judge that couldn't be bought;
+money an' influence don't count a whoop with him. It's Judge Colt,
+gents! You all know him; an' with him on our side we can round up Moran
+an' his crew of gun-fighters, an' ship 'em out of the country for keeps.
+Now's the time! The quicker we get busy, the quicker the air in these
+hills will be fit for a white man to breathe."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a go with me," Lem Trowbridge declared grimly. "That's what I'm
+here for. How about the rest of you?"</p>
+
+<p>When the other stock men assented, Wade smiled, for he knew their type.
+Honest, hard-working, peace-loving men though they were, when aroused
+they possessed the courage and tenacity of bull-dogs. They <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>were aroused
+now, and they would carry on to the end, with a step as firm and
+relentless as the march of Time. Woe to whoever attempted to thwart them
+in their purpose!</p>
+
+<p>Wade's neighbor to the north, Dave Kelly, spoke up in his slow, nasal
+drawl. "You say there's to be no lynchin'," he remarked. "How about Tug
+Bailey, when he gets here from Sheridan? According to what Lem says,
+Bailey shot Jensen."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, he did," Trowbridge put in. "We'll just slip a noose over his
+head and make him confess. That'll publicly clear Gordon and Bill. Then
+we'll give him a good coat of tar and feathers and run him out of town."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," said Santry. "Jensen was only a Swede and a sheepherder.
+This here committee's to protect men."</p>
+
+<p>Kelly chuckled. "Have it your own way," he said. "I'm not particular. As
+it is, there'll be plenty doing."</p>
+
+<p>For an hour or more the cattlemen went over the plan of their campaign,
+which worked out into simplicity itself. Early the next evening they
+would marshal their force outside of Crawling Water, each man armed and
+mounted. After dark they would ride up the main street, where they would
+halt at each crossing, while a squad detailed for the purpose searched
+each saloon and other gathering place for members of Moran's gang. After
+the prisoners were rounded up they would be assembled in a compact body
+and marched to the railroad where they would be set free, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>under threat
+of instant death if they ever returned to Crawling Water.</p>
+
+<p>Although counting on superior numbers and the morale of his men, Wade,
+who had been chosen to command the little army, knew that there would be
+considerable hard fighting. Moran's people would probably be scattered
+and otherwise unprepared for the attack, but many of them would resist
+to the death. If Moran should attempt an organized resistance, the
+cattlemen meant to storm the town. Once the first shot was fired, the
+fight would be to a finish, for any other outcome than victory would
+spell ruin for the cattle interests in that section.</p>
+
+<p>The prospect was more than serious. Moran had established himself in
+Crawling Water and practically ruled it, surrounded as he was by some
+sixty adherents, the off-scouring of a dozen lawless communities. The
+decent citizens held aloof from him, but on the other hand the lower
+element viewed his reign with favor. The gamblers, particularly Monte
+Joe, who proclaimed himself Moran's lieutenant, had welcomed him, as had
+the saloonkeepers, to all of whom the presence of his men meant gainful
+trade. The better class, in the town itself, was in the minority and
+unable to restrain the unbridled license which flourished everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how stiff Moran's resistance proved, however, Wade felt very
+sure of the final result. He knew the men in his party and he knew that
+they meant business. He was relieved to believe that Dorothy and her
+mother would be safe at the ranch until <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>after the trouble was over, and
+that Helen and Senator Rexhill had left Crawling Water. The two factions
+were now arrayed against each other almost like opposing armies, and the
+cattleman shuddered to think what his state of mind would have been had
+Dorothy and Mrs. Purnell remained in Crawling Water.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be entirely safe here," he told them, when he was ready to leave
+for Crawling Water on the following evening. "I shall leave Barker to
+look after your wants, but you won't really need him. There isn't a
+sheepherder, or any of the Moran gang, between here and Crawling Water.
+The fighting will all be in town, thank goodness."</p>
+
+<p>At the word "fighting" Dorothy caught her breath sharply, too proud to
+urge him against his duty and yet afraid for him. He had not been able
+to muster courage enough to speak to her of what was in his heart,
+foolish though that was in him, and he sat there in the saddle for a
+moment, looking tenderly down on her as she stood smoothing out his
+horse's forelock.</p>
+
+<p>"Do be careful of yourself, Gordon," Mrs. Purnell called to him from the
+porch, but he did not hear her.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't had a chance yet to get into my church-going clothes, have
+I?" he said whimsically to Dorothy, who flushed prettily and looked
+away.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what clothes have to do with talking to me," she said half
+coyly and half mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I," he agreed. She had stepped aside and his horse's head
+was free. "I guess they haven't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>a thing to do with it, but I haven't
+been seeing things exactly straight lately. I reckon I've been half
+locoed."</p>
+
+<p>Touching his horse with the spurs, he loped away to join
+Santry, who was waiting for him on ahead.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>BAFFLED, BUT STILL DANGEROUS</h3>
+
+<p>When Trowbridge left Dorothy Purnell, promising to find his friend for
+her sake, he had assumed a confidence that he was far from feeling. No
+man knew the country thereabout any better than he did, and he realized
+that there was, at best, only a meager chance of trailing the miscreant
+who had succeeded in trapping his victim somewhere in the mountains. A
+weaker man would have paused in dismay at the hopelessness of the task
+he had undertaken, but Lem Trowbridge was neither weak nor capable of
+feeling dismay, or of acknowledging hopelessness. Time enough for all
+that after he should have failed. In the meantime it was up to him to
+follow Moran. He had learned from Santry of the place where Wade was
+stricken down, but how far from there, or in what direction he had been
+taken, was a matter of conjecture only, and the only way to learn was to
+trail the party that had undoubtedly carried the helpless man away
+perhaps to his death, but possibly, and more probably, to hold him
+captive.</p>
+
+<p>Desperate as he knew Moran to be, he did not believe that the immediate
+murder of Gordon Wade was planned. That would be poor strategy and Moran
+was too shrewd to strike in that fashion.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>It seemed clear enough that parley of some sort was intended but knowing
+both Wade and Moran as he did, Trowbridge realized that in order to be
+of any assistance, he must be on the spot without delay. He had planned
+rapidly and he now acted rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>One of his men was stationed at the big pine, as he had told Dorothy,
+but all the others in his employ rode with him as swiftly as the best
+horses on his ranch could carry them, to the spot Santry had told him
+of. There they found unmistakable traces of half a dozen or more horses,
+besides the footprints of Wade's mount, and a brief examination was
+enough to show which way the party had gone. Undoubtedly they had taken
+Wade with them, so the pursuing party followed.</p>
+
+<p>It was one thing to follow, however, and another thing to overtake.
+Moran was better versed in the intricacies of big cities than in those
+of the wilderness, but he was shrewd enough to realize that Wade's
+friends would start an instant search, as soon as they should miss the
+ranchman, and it was no part of his plans to be taken by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, as soon as he had had his victim thrown into the prison from
+which escape seemed impossible, Moran selected a camp site nearby, from
+which he had a view of the surrounding country for miles around in every
+direction, and scanning the horizon carefully after his vain attempt to
+intimidate Wade, he saw Trowbridge's party approaching, while they were
+still half a dozen miles away.</p>
+
+<p>His first thought was to stay where he was and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>give battle. In this he
+would have had a good chance of victory, for, by opening fire on
+Trowbridge and his followers as they came up, he could undoubtedly have
+picked off three or four of them before they reached him, and so secured
+odds in his own favor, if it should come to an immediate encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Second thought, however, showed him the folly of such a course. There
+was too much remaining for him to do, and the temporary advantage he
+might gain would not compensate him for the havoc it would make in his
+ultimate designs. He therefore called Goat Neale aside and said:
+"There's a party of Wade's friends coming up from the East, looking for
+him, and I've got to lead them away. You stay here, but keep in hiding
+and take care that nobody learns where Wade is. He'll live for a few
+days without grub and I'll come back and tend to his case after I've got
+this party going round in circles.</p>
+
+<p>"You stay, and the rest of us will all ride off to the north, and
+they'll think we have Wade with us, so they'll follow us, but we'll lose
+them somewhere on the way. Sabe?"</p>
+
+<p>Neale demurred at first to the plan, but consented willingly enough when
+Moran promised him extra pay; so he stayed, and we already know the
+result. Moran, however, followed out his plans successfully enough, and
+before night he reached Crawling Water in safety, while Trowbridge,
+getting word through one of his scouts of Wade's rescue, abandoned the
+pursuit. He had been prepared to shoot Moran down at sight, but he was
+ready enough to leave that work to the man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>who had a better claim to
+the privilege than he had.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly Moran had ridden into town, exhausted by the exertions of
+his trip, and had slept for twelve hours before thinking of anything
+else. When he learned on awakening of all that had happened during his
+absence, he was furious with rage. Tug Bailey had been arrested and was
+on his way to Crawling Water in custody. Senator Rexhill and Helen had
+taken an Eastward-bound train without leaving any word for him, and to
+crown it all, he presently learned that Neale had been shot and Wade had
+been found, and that the whole countryside was aflame with indignation.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of the man that even in this emergency he had no
+thought of following his cowardly accomplice in flight. It might be
+hopeless to stay and fight, but he was a fighting man, and he really
+exulted in the thought of the inevitable struggle that was coming.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting alone in his office studying the situation, he felt the need of
+liquor even more strongly than usual, though the habit had grown on him
+of late, and accordingly he drank again and again, increasing his rage
+thereby, but getting little help towards a solution of his difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>He was enraged most of all at Wade's escape from Coyote Springs and was
+still puzzled to think how this had happened, for Senator Rexhill in
+leaving had kept his own counsel on that point, and Moran did not dream
+of his having betrayed the secret.</p>
+
+<p>Not only had the ranchman been able to turn another <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>trick in the game
+by escaping, but he had also evaded Moran's intended vengeance, for the
+latter had had no thought of letting his prisoner go alive. He had meant
+first to secure Wade's signature, and then to make away with him so
+cleverly as to escape conviction for the act.</p>
+
+<p>He realized now, when it was too late, that he had acted too
+deliberately in that matter, and he was sorry for it. He considered the
+departure of the Rexhills a cowardly defection. He was furious to think
+that Helen had refused to listen to him while she stayed, or to say
+good-by to him before leaving. The sting of these various reflections
+led him to take further pull at a silver flask which he kept in his
+pocket, and which bore the inscription, "To Race Moran from his friends
+of the Murray Hill Club."</p>
+
+<p>"So," he muttered, chewing his mustache, "that's what I get for sticking
+to Rexhill." Leaning back in his swivel chair, he put his feet up on the
+desk and hooked his fingers in the arm-holes of his vest. "Well, I ain't
+ready to run yet, not by a jugful."</p>
+
+<p>In his decision to remain, however, he was actuated by a desire to close
+with Wade, and not by any enthusiasm for the cause of the hired rascals
+who were so loudly singing his praise. They were not cowards, nor was
+he, but he had had too much experience with such people to be deluded
+into believing that, when the showdown came, they would think of
+anything but their own precious skins. He had heard rumors of the
+activity of the cattlemen but he discounted such rumors because of many
+false alarms in the past. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>would not be frightened off; he determined
+to remain until there was an actual clash of arms, in the hope that
+events would so work out as to allow him a chance to get back, and
+severely, at Wade.</p>
+
+<p>He got to his feet and rolled about the room, like a boozy sailor,
+puffing out volumes of smoke and muttering beneath his breath. When he
+had worked off some of his agitation, the big fellow seated himself
+again, shrugged his massive shoulders, and lapsed into an alcoholic
+reverie. He was applying his inflamed brain to the problem of vengeance,
+when hurried footsteps on the stairs aroused him. Going to the door, he
+flung it open and peered out into the dimly lighted hallway.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Jed!" he exclaimed, upon finding that the newcomer was one of
+his "heelers." "What d'you want? Hic!" He straightened up with a
+ludicrous assumption of gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"The night riders! They've...." The man was breathless and visibly
+panic-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>"Riders? Hic! What riders?" Moran growled. "Out with it, you
+jelly-fish!"</p>
+
+<p>"The ranchers&mdash;the cattlemen&mdash;they've entered the town: they're on the
+warpath. Already a lot of our fellows have been shot up."</p>
+
+<p>"The hell they have! How long ago? Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Other end of town. Must be two hundred or more. I hustled down here to
+put you wise to the play."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks!" said Moran laconically. "You're headed in the right direction,
+keep going!"</p>
+
+<p>But the man lingered, while Moran, as lightly as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>cat, despite his
+great bulk and the liquor he carried, sprang to the nearest window. Far
+up the street, he could distinguish a huddled mass, pierced by flashes
+of fire, which he took to be horsemen; as he watched, he heard scattered
+shots and a faint sound of yelling. The one hasty glance told him all
+that he needed to know; he had not thought this move would come so soon,
+but luck seemed to be against him all around. Something of a fatalist,
+in the final analysis, he no longer wasted time in anger or regrets. He
+was not particularly alarmed, and would not have been so could he have
+known the truth, that the yelling he had heard marked the passing of Tug
+Bailey, who had confessed but had made his confession too late to please
+the crowd, which had him in its power. Nevertheless, Moran realized that
+there was no time now to form his men into anything like organized
+resistance. The enemy had caught him napping, and the jig was up. He had
+seen the vigilantes work before, and he knew that if he intended to save
+his own skin he must act quickly. When he turned from the window, short
+though the interval had been, he had formed a plan of escape.</p>
+
+<p>"They've brought every man they could rake up," Jed added. "I reckon
+they've combed every ranch in the county to start this thing."</p>
+
+<p>Moran looked up quickly, struck by the significance of the remark. If it
+were true, and it probably was, then Wade's ranch also would be
+deserted. He half opened his mouth, as though to confide in his
+companion, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>when he evidently concluded to keep his own counsel.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said simply. "I guess there's still plenty of time. I've
+got a good horse at the lower end of the street. Take care of yourself.
+So long!"</p>
+
+<p>The man clattered down the stairs, and Moran turned to his desk, from
+which he took some papers and a roll of money, which he stuffed into his
+pockets. In the hallway he paused for a moment to examine a wicked
+looking revolver, which he took from his hip pocket; for, contrary to
+the custom of the country, he did not wear his gun openly in a holster.
+Convinced that the weapon was in good working order, he walked calmly
+down to the street, sobered completely by this sudden call on his
+reserve powers.</p>
+
+<p>His horse, a large, rawboned gray, was where he had left it, and shaking
+his fist in the direction of the vigilantes, he mounted and rode off. He
+meant to make a wide detour and then work back again to the Double Arrow
+range. If the ranch were really deserted, he meant to fire the
+buildings, before attempting his escape. Such a revenge would be a
+trifle compared to that which he had planned, but it would be better
+than nothing, while one more offense would not lengthen his term in jail
+any, if he were caught afterward. He felt in his pocket for the whiskey
+flask, and swore when he found it missing. He wanted the liquor, but he
+wanted the flask more, for its associations; he drew rein and thought of
+returning to search for it, but realizing the folly of this, he pressed
+on again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p><p>The round-about way he took was necessarily a long one and the ride
+entirely sobered him, except for a crawling sensation in his brain, as
+though ants were swarming there, which always harassed him after a
+debauch. At such times he was more dangerous than when under the first
+influence of whiskey. It was close upon noon, and the silvery sagebrush
+was shimmering beneath the direct rays of the sun, when he rode his
+lathered horse out of a cottonwood grove to gaze, from the edge of a
+deep draw, at Wade's ranch buildings. That very morning a gaunt, gray
+timber-wolf had peered forth at almost the same point; and despite
+Moran's bulk, there was a hint of a weird likeness between man and beast
+in the furtive suspicious survey they made of the premises. The wolf had
+finally turned back toward the mountains, but Moran advanced. Although
+he was reasonably certain that the place was deserted, a degree of
+caution, acquired overnight, led him first to assure himself of the
+fact. He tied his horse to a fence post and stealthily approached the
+house to enter by the back door.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy was alone in the building, for her mother had gone with the
+overly confident Barker to pick blackberries, and the Chinese cook was
+temporarily absent. The girl was making a bed, when the door swung open,
+and she turned with a bright greeting, thinking that her mother had
+returned. When she saw Moran leering at her, the color fled from her
+cheeks, in a panic of fright which left her unable to speak or move. She
+was looking very pretty and dainty in a cool, fresh gown, which fitted
+her neatly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>and her sleeves were rolled up over her shapely forearms,
+for the task of housekeeping which she had assumed. In her innocent way,
+she would have stirred the sentiment in any man, and to the inflamed
+brute before her she seemed all the more delectable because helpless.
+Here was a revenge beyond Moran's wildest dreams. To her he appeared the
+incarnation of evil, disheveled, mud-splashed and sweaty, as his puffed
+and blood-shot eyes feasted on her attractiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning!" He came into the room and closed the door. "I didn't
+expect to find you, but since you're here, I'll stop long enough to
+return your visit of the other night. That's courteous, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy gulped down the lump in her throat, but made no reply. Realizing
+the importance of a show of bravery, she was fighting to conquer her
+panic.</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure a good-looking kid," he went on, trying to approach her;
+but she put the width of the bed between him and herself. "Each time I
+see you, you're better looking than you were the last time. Say, that
+last time, we were talking some about a kiss, weren't we, when we were
+interrupted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wade may come in at any moment," Dorothy lied desperately, having
+found her tongue at last. "You'd better not let him find you here."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't mind," Moran said nonchalantly. "Fact is, on my way out of
+the country, I thought I'd pay a farewell call on my good friend, Wade.
+I'm real sorry he ain't here&mdash;and then again I'm not. I'll&mdash;I'll leave
+my visiting card for him, anyhow." He chuckled, a nasty, throaty,
+mirthless chuckle that sent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>chills up and down the girl's spine. "Say,
+what's the matter with giving me that kiss now? There's nobody around to
+interrupt us this time."</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy shuddered, for already she had divined what was in his mind. The
+avid gleam in his eyes had warned her that he would not restrain himself
+for long, and summoning all her strength and courage, she prepared to
+meet the fearful crisis she must face.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please go?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" Moran chuckled again, and stepped toward her. "Will you come to me
+now, or shall I go after you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You brute! You coward!" she cried, when she found herself, after a
+desperate struggle, held firmly in his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>She screamed, then, at the top of her lung power until his hand fell
+firmly across her mouth, and she could only struggle with the mad
+strength of desperation. Her muscles could offer him no effective
+resistance, although for a moment the sudden fury of her attack drove
+him back, big though he was; but it was only for a moment. It gave her a
+chance to scream once more; then, closing in upon her, he seized her
+again in his ape-like embrace. She fought like a cornered wild-cat, but
+slowly and surely he was bending her to his will. Her nails were leaving
+raw marks upon him, until the blood ran down his face, and presently
+catching between her teeth one of the fingers of the hand which gagged
+her, she bit it so fiercely that he cried out in pain.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p><p>"Curse you, you little she-devil," he grunted savagely. "I'll make you
+pay twice for that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon! Oh, come to me! Quick! Quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Quivering all over, she sank on her knees before the brute who
+confronted her, a figure of distress that must have appealed to the
+heart of any man above the level of a beast. But in the heat of passion
+and rage, Moran had lost kinship with even the beasts themselves. Lust
+burned in his eyes and twisted his features horribly as he seized her
+again, exhausted by the brave struggle she had made, and all but
+helpless in his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon! Mother! Barker! Save me! Oh, my God!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STORM BURSTS</h3>
+
+<p>The vigilantes had entered Crawling Water at about ten o'clock, when the
+saloons and gambling joints were in full swing. Ribald songs and oaths
+from the players, drinkers, and hangers-on floated into the street, with
+now and then the bark of a six-shooter telling of drunken sport or
+bravado. Few people were abroad; good citizens had retired to their
+homes, and the other half was amusing itself.</p>
+
+<p>So it was, at first, that few noticed the troop of horsemen which swung
+in at one end of the town, to ride slowly and silently down the main
+street. Each of the hundred men in the troop carried a rifle balanced
+across his saddle pommel; each was dressed in the garb of the
+range-rider; and the face of each, glimpsed by the light from some
+window or doorway, was grimly stern. The sight was one calculated to
+make Fear clutch like an ice-cold hand at the hearts of those with
+guilty consciences; a spectacle which induced such respectable men as
+saw it to arm themselves and fall in behind the advancing line. These
+knew without being told what this noiseless band of stern-eyed riders
+portended, and ever since the coming of Moran into Crawling Water
+Valley, they had been waiting for just this climax.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p><p>Before the first of the dives, the troop halted as Wade raised his right
+arm high in the air. Twenty of the men dismounted to enter the
+glittering doorway, while the remainder of the vigilantes waited on
+their horses. A few seconds after the twenty had disappeared, the music
+of the piano within abruptly ceased. The shrill scream of a frightened
+woman preceded a couple of pistol shots and the sounds of a scuffle;
+then, profound silence. Presently the twenty reappeared guarding a
+handful of prisoners, who were disarmed and hustled across the street to
+an empty barn, where they were placed under a guard of citizen
+volunteers.</p>
+
+<p>So they proceeded, stopping now and then to gather in more prisoners,
+who were in turn escorted to the temporary jail, while the column
+continued its relentless march. The system in their attack seemed to
+paralyze the activities of the Moran faction and its sycophants; there
+was something almost awe-inspiring in the simple majesty of the thing.
+By now the whole town was aware of what was taking place; men were
+scurrying hither and thither, like rats on a sinking ship. Occasionally
+one, when cornered and in desperation, put up a fight; but for the most
+part, the "bad men" were being captured without bloodshed. Few bad men
+are so "bad" that they would not rather live, even in captivity, than
+come to their full reward in the kingdom of Satan. Frightened and
+disorganized, the enemy seemed incapable of any concentrated resistance.
+As Santry succinctly put it: "They've sure lost their goat."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p><p>Not until the troop reached Monte Joe's place, which was the most
+imposing of them all, was real opposition encountered. Here a number of
+the choicer spirits from the Moran crowd had assembled and barricaded
+the building, spurred on by the knowledge that a rope with a running
+noose on one end of it would probably be their reward if captured alive.
+Monte Joe, a vicious, brutal ruffian, was himself in command and spoke
+through the slats of a blind, when the vigilantes stopped before the
+darkened building.</p>
+
+<p>"What d'you want?" he hoarsely demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"You, and those with you," Wade curtly answered.</p>
+
+<p>The gambler peered down into the street, his little blood-shot eyes
+blinking like a pig's. "What for?" he growled.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll show you soon enough," came in a rising answer from the crowd.
+"Open up!"</p>
+
+<p>Monte Joe withdrew from the window, feeling that he was doomed to death,
+but resolved to sell his life dearly. "Go to hell!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>Wade gave a few tersely worded orders. Half a dozen of his men ran to a
+nearby blacksmith shop for sledge hammers, with which to beat in the
+door of the gambling house, while the rest poured a hail of bullets into
+the windows of the structure. Under the onslaught of the heavy hammers,
+swung by powerful arms, the door soon crashed inward, and the besiegers
+poured through the opening. The fight which ensued was short and fierce.
+Outnumbered though the defenders were, they put up a desperate battle,
+but they were quickly beaten down and disarmed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p><p>Shoved, dragged, carried, some of them cruelly wounded and a few dead
+but all who lived swearing horribly, the prisoners were hustled to the
+street. Last of all came Monte Joe, securely held by two brawny
+cow-punchers. At sight of his mottled, blood-besmeared visage, the crowd
+went wild.</p>
+
+<p>"Hang him! Lynch the dirty brute! Get a rope!" The cry was taken up by
+fifty voices.</p>
+
+<p>Hastily running the gambler beneath a convenient tree, they proceeded to
+adjust a noose about his neck. In another instant Monte Joe's soul would
+have departed to the Great Beyond but for a series of interruptions.
+Wade created the first of these by forcing his big, black horse through
+the throng.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, men!" he roared. "You must stop this! This man&mdash;all of
+them&mdash;must have a fair trial."</p>
+
+<p>"Trial be damned!" shouted a bearded rancher. "We've had enough law in
+this valley. Now we're after justice."</p>
+
+<p>Cheering him the crowd roared approbation of the sentiment, for even the
+law-abiding seemed suddenly to have gone mad with blood-lust. Wade, his
+face flushed with anger, was about to reply to them when Santry forced
+his way to the front. Ever since Wade had released the old man from
+jail, he had been impressed with the thought that, no matter what his
+own views, gratitude demanded that he should instantly back up his
+employer.</p>
+
+<p>"Justice!" snapped the old man, pushing his way into the circle that had
+formed around the prisoner, a pistol in each hand. "Who's talkin' o'
+justice? Ain't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>me an' Wade been handed more dirt by this bunch o'
+crooks than all the rest o' you combined? Joe's a pizenous varmint, but
+he's goin' to get something he never gave&mdash;a square deal. You hear me?
+Any man that thinks different can settle the p'int with me!"</p>
+
+<p>He glared at the mob, his sparse, grizzled mustache seeming actually to
+bristle. By the dim light of a lantern held near him his aspect was
+terrifying. A gash on his forehead had streaked one side of his face
+with blood, while his eyes, beneath their shaggy thatch of brows,
+appeared to blaze like live coals. Involuntarily, those nearest him
+shrank back a pace but only for a moment for such a mob was not to be
+daunted by threats. A low murmur of disapproval was rapidly swelling
+into a growl of anger, when Sheriff Thomas appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen!" he shouted, springing upon a convenient box. "The law must
+be respected, and as its representative in this community...."</p>
+
+<p>"Beat it, you old turkey buzzard!" cried an irate puncher, wildly
+brandishing a brace of Colts before the officer. "To hell with the law
+and you, too. You ain't rep'sentative of nothin' in this community!"</p>
+
+<p>"Men!" Wade began again.</p>
+
+<p>"String the Sheriff up, too," somebody yelled.</p>
+
+<p>"By right of this star...." Thomas tapped the badge on his vest. "I
+am...."</p>
+
+<p>"Pull on the rope!" cried the bearded rancher, and his order would have
+been executed but for Wade's detaining hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Sheriff here." Thomas was still trying to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>make himself heard,
+never noticing three men, who were rolling in behind him a barrel, which
+they had taken from a nearby store. "I demand that the law be respected,
+and that I be permitted to&mdash;to...." He stopped to sneeze and sputter,
+for having knocked in the top of the barrel, which contained flour, the
+three men had emptied its contents over the officer's head.</p>
+
+<p>His appearance as he tried to shake himself free of the sticky stuff,
+which coated him from head to foot, was so ludicrous that a roar of
+laughter went up from the mob. It was the salvation of Monte Joe, for
+Wade, laughing himself, took advantage of the general merriment to urge
+his plea again in the gambler's behalf. This time the mob listened to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Wade," a man cried. "Do as you like with the cuss. This is
+mostly your funeral, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, let the &mdash;&mdash; go," called out a dozen voices.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the close formation of the vigilantes was broken. From time
+to time, men had left the ranks in pursuit of skulkers, and finding the
+way back blocked by the crowd, had taken their own initiative
+thereafter. Wade and Santry could not be everywhere at once, and so it
+happened that Lem Trowbridge was the only one of the leaders to be
+present when Tug Bailey was taken out of the jail. Trowbridge had not
+Wade's quiet air of authority, and besides, he had allowed his own blood
+to be fired by the "clean up." He might have attempted to save the
+murderer had time offered, but when the confession was wrung from him,
+the mob, cheated of one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>lynching, opened fire upon him as by a common
+impulse. In the batting of an eyelash, Bailey fell in a crumpled heap,
+his body riddled by bullets.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Wade and Santry were searching for the chief cause of all
+their trouble, Race Moran. They were not surprised to find his office
+vacant, but as the night wore on and the saffron hues of dawn appeared
+in the sky, and still he was not found, they became anxious. Half of the
+gratification of their efforts would be gone, unless the agent was made
+to pay the penalty of his crimes. Wade inquired of the men he met, and
+they too had seen nothing of the wily agent. The search carried them to
+the further end of the town without result, when Wade turned to Santry.</p>
+
+<p>"Hunt up Lem and see if he knows anything," he said. "I'll meet you in
+front of the hotel. I'm going to ride out and see if I can dig up any
+news on the edge of town. Moran may have made a get-away."</p>
+
+<p>With a nod, Santry whirled his horse and dashed away, and Wade rode
+forward toward an approaching resident, evidently of faint heart, who
+meant, so it seemed, to be in for the "cakes" even though he had missed
+the "roast." A little contemptuously, the ranchman put his question.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I seen him; leastwise, I think so," the man answered. "He went
+past my house when the shootin' first started. How are the boys makin'
+out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Which way did he go?" the cattleman demanded, ignoring the other's
+question. The resident pointed in the direction taken by Moran. "Are you
+sure?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p><p>"If it was him, I am, and I think it was."</p>
+
+<p>Wade rode slowly forward in the indicated direction, puzzled somewhat,
+for it led away from Sheridan, which should have been the agent's
+logical objective point. But a few moments' consideration of the
+situation made him think that the route was probably chosen for
+strategic reasons. Very likely Moran had found his escape at the other
+end of the town blocked, and he meant to work to some distant point
+along the railroad. Wade drew rein, with the idea of bringing his
+friends also to the pursuit, but from what his informant had told him
+Moran already had a long start and there was no time to waste in
+summoning assistance. Besides, if it were still possible to overtake the
+quarry, the ranchman preferred to settle his difference with him, face
+to face, and alone.</p>
+
+<p>He urged his horse into a lope, and a little beyond
+the town dismounted to pick up the trail of the fugitive, if it could be
+found. Thanks to a recent shower, the ground was still soft, and the
+cattleman soon picked up the trail of a shod horse, leading away from
+the road and out upon the turf. By the growing light, he was able to
+follow this at a fairly rapid pace, and as he pressed on the reflection
+came to him that if the agent continued as he was now headed, he could
+hope to come out eventually upon the Burlington Railroad, a full seventy
+miles from Sheridan. The pursuit was likely to be a long one, in this
+event, and Wade was regretting that he had not left some word to explain
+his absence, when he suddenly became aware of the fact that he had lost
+the trail.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>With an exclamation of annoyance, he rode back a hundred yards or so,
+until he picked up the tracks again, when he found that they turned
+sharply to the right, altogether away from the railroad. Puzzled again,
+he followed it for half a mile, until convinced that Moran had
+deliberately circled Crawling Water. But why? What reason could the man
+have which, in a moment of desperate danger to himself, would lead him
+to delay his escape? What further deviltry could he have on foot? There
+was nothing to lead him in the direction he was now traveling,
+unless...! Wade's heart suddenly skipped a beat and beads of cold sweat
+bedewed his forehead, for Dorothy Purnell and her mother had come into
+his mind. There was nothing ahead of Moran but the Double Arrow ranch!
+If that were the agent's objective point, there would be nothing between
+him and the women save Barker, and the "drop" of a gun might settle
+that!</p>
+
+<p>Never had the big black horse been spurred as cruelly as he was then,
+when Wade plunged his heels into his flanks. With a snort the horse
+bolted and then settled into his stride until the gentle breeze in the
+rider's face became a rushing gale. But the pain which the animal had
+felt was nothing to the fear which tugged at the ranchman's
+heartstrings, as he reproached himself bitterly for having left only one
+man at the ranch, although at the time the thought of peril to the women
+had never occurred to him. With the start that Moran had, Wade reasoned
+that he stood small chance of arriving in time to do any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>good. He could
+only count upon the watchfulness and skill of Barker to protect them.</p>
+
+<p>Failing that, there was but one hope, that the rider who had gone on
+ahead might not be Moran after all. But presently all doubt of the man's
+identity was removed from the ranchman's mind, for on the soggy turf
+ahead his quick eyes caught the glitter of something bright. Sweeping
+down from his saddle, he picked it up without stopping, and found that
+it was a half emptied whiskey flask. Turning it over in his hand, he
+read the inscription: "To Race Moran from his friends of the Murray Hill
+Club."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>WITH BARE HANDS AT LAST</h3>
+
+<p>In after years, when Wade tried to recall that mad ride, he found it
+only a vague blur upon his memory. He was conscious only of the fact
+that he had traveled at a speed which, in saner moments, he would have
+considered suicidal. Urging the big black over the rougher ground of the
+higher levels, he rode like a maniac, without regard for his own life
+and without mercy for the magnificent horse beneath him. Time and again
+the gelding stumbled on the rocky footing and almost fell, only to be
+urged to further efforts by his rider.</p>
+
+<p>Five miles out of Crawling Water, the cattleman thought of a short-cut,
+through a little used timber-trail, which would save him several miles;
+but it was crossed by a ravine cut by a winter avalanche like the slash
+of a gigantic knife. To descend into this ravine and ascend on the
+farther side would be a tortuous process, which would take more time
+than to continue by the longer route. But if the gelding could jump the
+narrow cleft in the trail, the distance saved might decide the issue
+with Moran. On the other hand, if the leap of the horse was short,
+practically certain death must befall both animal and rider.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p><p>Wade decided, in his reckless mood, that the chance was worth taking and
+he rode the black to the edge of the cleft, where trembling with
+nervousness, the animal refused the leap. Cursing furiously, Wade drove
+him at it again, and again the gelding balked. But at the third try he
+rose to the prick of the spurs and took the jump. The horse's forelegs
+caught in perilous footing and the struggling, slipping animal snorted
+in terror, but the ranchman had allowed the impulse of the leap to carry
+him clear of his saddle. Quickly twisting the bridle reins around one
+wrist, he seized the horse's mane with his free hand, and helped by the
+violent efforts the animal made, succeeded in pulling him up to a firmer
+footing. For some minutes afterward he had to soothe the splendid brute,
+patting him and rubbing his trembling legs; then, with a grim expression
+of triumph on his face, he resumed his journey. The chance had won!</p>
+
+<p>There was less likelihood now that he would be too late, although the
+thought that he might be so still made him urge the horse to the limit
+of his speed. He kept his eyes fastened on a notch in the hills, which
+marked the location of the ranch. He rode out on the clearing which held
+the house just in time to hear Dorothy's second scream, and plunged out
+of his saddle, pulling his rifle from the scabbard beneath his right leg
+as he did so. From the kitchen chimney a faint wisp of smoke curled
+upward through the still air; a rooster crowed loudly behind the barn
+and a colt nickered in the corral. Everywhere was the atmosphere of
+peace, save for that scream followed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>now by another choking cry, and a
+barking collie, which danced about before the closed door of the house
+in the stiff-legged manner of his breed, when excited.</p>
+
+<p>Wade burst into the house like a madman and on into the back room, where
+Moran, his face horribly distorted by passion, was forcing the girl
+slowly to the floor. But for the protection which her supple body
+afforded him, the ranchman would have shot him in his tracks.</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon!" The overwhelming relief in her face, burned into Wade's soul
+like a branding-iron. "Don't shoot! Oh, thank God!" She fell back
+against the wall, as Moran released her, and began to cry softly and
+brokenly.</p>
+
+<p>Snarling with baffled rage and desire, Moran whirled to meet the
+cattleman. His hand darted, with the swift drop of the practised gun
+man, toward his hip pocket; but too late, for he was already covered by
+the short-barreled rifle in Wade's hands. More menacing even than the
+yawning muzzle was the expression of terrible fury in the ranchman's
+face. For a space of almost a minute, broken only by the tense breathing
+of the two men and a strangled sob from Dorothy, Moran's fate hung on
+the movement of an eyelash. Then Wade slowly relaxed the tension of his
+trigger finger. Shooting would be too quick to satisfy him!</p>
+
+<p>Moran breathed more freely at this sign, for he knew that he had been
+nearer death than ever before in all his adventurous life, and the sway
+of his passion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>had weakened his nervous control. Courage came back to
+him rapidly, for with all his faults he was, physically at least, no
+coward. He took hope from his belief that Wade would not now shoot him
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why don't you pull that trigger?" His tone was almost as cool as
+though he had asked a commonplace question.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard," said Wade slowly, "that you call yourself a good
+rough-and-tumble fighter; that you've never met your match. I want to
+get my&mdash;hands&mdash;on you!"</p>
+
+<p>Moran's features relaxed into a grin; it seemed strange to him that any
+man could be such a fool. It was true that he had never met his match in
+rough fighting, and he did not expect to meet it now.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a bigger man than I am," the cattleman went on. "I'll take a
+chance on you being a better one. I believe that I can break you with
+my&mdash;hands&mdash;like the rotten thing you are." He paid no heed to Dorothy's
+tearful protests. "Will you meet me in a fair fight?" Wade's face
+suddenly contorted with fury. "If you won't...." His grip on the rifle
+tightened significantly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Gordon, no! Oh, please, not that!" the girl pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I'll fight," Moran answered, a gleam of joy in his eyes. He
+gloried in the tremendous strength of a body which had brought him
+victory in half a hundred barroom combats. He felt that no one lived,
+outside the prize-ring, who could beat him on an even footing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p><p>"Take his gun away from him," Wade told Dorothy. "It's the second time
+you've disarmed him, but it'll be the last. He'll never carry a gun
+again. Take it!" he repeated, commandingly, and when she obeyed, added:
+"Toss it on the bed." He stood his rifle in a corner near the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a fool, Wade," Moran taunted as they came together. "I'm going
+to kill you first and then I'll take my will of her." But nothing he
+could say could add to Wade's fury, already at its coldest, most deadly
+point.</p>
+
+<p>He answered by a jab at the big man's mouth, which Moran cleverly
+ducked; for so heavy a man, he was wonderfully quick on his feet. He
+ducked and parried three other such vicious leads, when, by a clever
+feint, Wade drew an opening and succeeded in landing his right fist,
+hard as a bag of stones, full in the pit of his adversary's stomach. It
+was an awful blow, one that would have killed a smaller man; but Moran
+merely grunted and broke ground for an instant. Then he landed a
+swinging left on the side of Wade's head which opened a cut over his ear
+and nearly floored him.</p>
+
+<p>Back and forth across the little room they fought, with little advantage
+either way, while Dorothy watched them breathlessly. Like gladiators
+they circled each other, coming together at intervals with the shock of
+two enraged bulls. Both were soon bleeding from small cuts on the head
+and face, but neither was aware of the fact. Occasionally they collided
+with articles of furniture, which were overturned and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>swept aside
+almost unnoticed; while Dorothy was forced to step quickly from one
+point to another to keep clear of them. Several times Wade told her to
+leave the room, but she would not go.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the ranchman's superior condition began to tell in his favor. At
+the end of ten minutes' fighting, the agent's breathing became labored
+and his movements slower. Wade, still darting about quickly and lightly,
+had no longer much difficulty in punishing the brutal, leering face
+before him. Time after time he drove his fists mercilessly into Moran's
+features until they lost the appearance of anything human and began to
+resemble raw meat.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly, in attempting to sidestep one of his opponent's bull-like
+rushes, the cattleman slipped in a puddle of blood and half fell, and
+before he could regain his footing Moran had seized him. Then Wade
+learned how the big man's reputation for tremendous strength had been
+won. Cruelly, implacably, those great, ape-like arms entwined about the
+ranchman's body until the very breath was crushed out of it. Resorting
+to every trick he knew, he strove desperately to free himself, but all
+the strength in his own muscular body was powerless to break the other's
+hold. With a crash that shook the house to its foundation, they fell to
+the floor, and by a lucky twist Wade managed to fall on top.</p>
+
+<p>The force of the fall had shaken Moran somewhat, and the cattleman, by
+calling on the whole of his strength, succeeded in tearing his arms
+free. Plunging his fingers into the thick, mottled throat, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>squeezed
+steadily until Moran's struggles grew weaker and weaker. Finally they
+ceased entirely and the huge, heavy body lay still.</p>
+
+<p>Wade stumbled to his feet and staggered across the room.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right," he said thickly, and added at sight of Dorothy's wide,
+terror-stricken eyes: "Frightened you, didn't we? Guess I should have
+shot him and made a clean job of it; but I couldn't, somehow."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's hurt you terribly!" the girl cried, bursting into fresh tears.</p>
+
+<p>Wade laughed and tenderly put his arms around her, for weak though he
+was and with nerves twitching like those of a recently sobered drunkard,
+he was not too weak or sick to enjoy the privilege of soothing her. The
+feel of her in his arms was wonderful happiness to him and her tears for
+him seemed far more precious than all the gold on his land. He had just
+lifted her up on the sill of the open window, thinking that the fresh
+air might steady her, when she looked over his shoulder and saw Moran,
+who had regained consciousness, in the act of reaching for his revolver,
+which lay on the bed where she had tossed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, see what he's doing! Look out!"</p>
+
+<p>Her cry of warning came just too late. There was a flash and roar, and a
+hot flame seemed to pass through Wade's body. Half turning about, he
+clutched at the air, and then pitched forward to the floor, where he lay
+still. Flourishing the gun, Moran got unsteadily to his feet and turned
+a ghastly, dappled visage to the girl, who, stunned and helpless, was
+gazing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>at him in wide-eyed horror. But she had nothing more to fear
+from him, for now that he believed Wade dead, the agent was too
+overshadowed by his crime to think of perpetrating another and worse
+one. He had already wasted too much valuable time. He must get away.</p>
+
+<p>"I got him," he croaked, in a terrible voice. "I got him like I said I
+would, damn him!" With a blood-curdling attempt at a laugh, he staggered
+out of the house into the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Dorothy stared woodenly through the empty doorway; then,
+with a choking sob, she bent over the man at her feet. She shook him
+gently and begged him to speak to her, but she could get no response and
+under her exploring fingers his heart apparently had ceased to beat. For
+a few seconds she stared at the widening patch of red on his torn shirt;
+then her gaze shifted and focused on the rifle in the corner by the
+door. As she looked at the weapon her wide, fear-struck eyes narrowed
+and hardened with a sudden resolve. Seizing the gun, she cocked it and
+stepped into the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Moran was walking unsteadily toward the place where he had tied his
+horse. He was tacking from side to side like a drunken man, waving his
+arms about and talking to himself. Bringing the rifle to her shoulder,
+Dorothy steadied herself against the door-frame and took long, careful
+aim. As she sighted the weapon her usually pretty face, now scratched
+and streaked with blood from her struggles with the agent, wore the
+expression of one who has seen all that is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>dear in life slip away from
+her. At the sharp crack of the rifle Moran stopped short and a
+convulsive shudder racked his big body from head to foot. After a single
+step forward he crumpled up on the ground. For several moments his arms
+and legs twitched spasmodically; then he lay still.</p>
+
+<p>Horrified by what she had done, now that it was accomplished Dorothy
+stepped backward into the house and stood the rifle in its former
+position near the door, when a low moan from behind made her turn
+hurriedly. Wade was not dead then! She hastily tore his shirt from over
+the wound, her lips twisted in a low cry of pity as she did so. To her
+tender gaze, the hurt seemed a frightful one. Dreading lest he should
+regain consciousness and find himself alone, she decided to remain with
+him, instead of going for the help she craved; most likely she would be
+unable to find her mother and Barker, anyway. She stopped the flow of
+blood as best she could and put a pillow under the ranchman's head,
+kissing him afterward. Then for an interval she sat still. She never
+knew for how long.</p>
+
+<p>Santry reached the house just as Mrs. Purnell and Barker returned with
+their berries, and the three found the girl bathing the wounded man's
+face, and crying over him.</p>
+
+<p>"Boy, boy!" Santry sobbed, dropping on his knees before the unconscious
+figure. "Who done this to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy weepingly explained, and when she told of her own part in
+shooting Moran the old fellow patted her approvingly on the back. "Good
+girl," he said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>hoarsely. "But I wish that job had been left for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Merciful Heavens!" cried Mrs. Purnell. "I shall never get over this."
+With trembling hands she took the basin and towel from her daughter and
+set them one side, then she gently urged the girl to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"You!" said Santry, so ferociously to Barker that the man winced in
+spite of himself. "Help me to lay him on the bed, so's to do it
+gentle-like."</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy, who felt certain that Wade was mortally hurt, struggled
+desperately against the feeling of faintness which was creeping over
+her. She caught at a chair for support, and her mother caught her in her
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor dear, you're worn out. Go lie down. Oh, when I think...!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk to me, mother!" Dorothy waved her back, for the presence
+close to her of another person could only mean her collapse. "I'm all
+right. I'm of no consequence now. He needs a doctor," she added, turning
+to Santry, who stood near the bed bowed with grief. He, too, thought
+that Wade would never be himself again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go," said Barker, eager to do something to atone for his absence
+at the critical moment, but Santry rounded upon him in a rage.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you skunk!" he snarled, and gestured fiercely toward the bed. "He
+left you here to look after things and you&mdash;you went <i>berry pickin'</i>!"
+Barker seemed so crushed by the scorn in the old man's words that
+Dorothy's sympathy was stirred.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p><p>"It wasn't Barker's fault," she said quickly. "There seemed to be no
+danger. Gordon said so himself. But one of you go, immediately, for the
+doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go," Santry responded and hurried from the room, followed by
+Barker, thoroughly wretched.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy went to the bedside and looked down into Wade's white face; then
+she knelt there on the floor and said a little prayer to the God of all
+men to be merciful to hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe if I made you a cup of tea?" Mrs. Purnell anxiously suggested,
+but the girl shook her head listlessly. Tea was the elder woman's
+panacea for all ills.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother me, mother, please. I&mdash;I've just been through a good deal.
+I can't talk&mdash;really, I can't."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Purnell, subsiding at last, thereafter held her peace, and Dorothy
+sat down by the bed to be instantly ready to do anything that could be
+done. She had sat thus, almost without stirring, for nearly an hour,
+when Wade moved slightly and opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" She bent over him instantly, forgetting everything except
+that he was awake and that he seemed to know her.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you, Dorothy?" He groped weakly for her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," she answered, gulping back the sob in her throat. "Is there
+anything you want? What can I do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled feebly and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, if it's you," he said faintly, after a moment. "You're
+all right&mdash;always!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>CHURCH-GOING CLOTHES</h3>
+
+<p>After his few words to Dorothy the wounded man lapsed again into coma,
+in which condition he was found by the physician, who returned with
+Santry from Crawling Water. During the long intervening time the girl
+had not moved from the bedside, though the strain of her own terrible
+experience with Moran was making itself felt in exhaustive fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and rest yourself," Santry urged. "It's my turn now."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not tired," she declared, trying to smile into the keen eyes of the
+doctor, who had heard the facts from the old plainsman as they rode out
+from town.</p>
+
+<p>Wade lay with his eyes closed, apparently in profound stupor, but gave
+signs of consciousness when Dr. Catlin gently shook him. Dorothy felt
+that he should not be disturbed, although she kept her own counsel, but
+Catlin wanted to see if he could arouse his patient at all, for the
+extent of the injury caused by the bullet, which had entered the back in
+the vicinity of the spinal cord, could be gauged largely by the amount
+of sensibility remaining. The wounded man was finally induced to answer
+monosyllabically the questions put to him, but he did so with surly
+impatience. The physician next made a thorough examination, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>for which
+he was better fitted than many a fashionable city practitioner, by
+reason of his familiarity with wounds of all kinds.</p>
+
+<p>When he arose Santry, who had watched him as a cat watches a mouse,
+forced himself to speak, for his throat and mouth were dry as a bone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Doc, how about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he won't die this time; but he may lie there for some weeks. So far
+as I can tell the bullet just grazed the spinal cord, and it's the shock
+of that which makes him so quiet now. A fraction of an inch closer and
+he would have died or been paralyzed, a cripple, probably for life. At
+is it, however, barring the possibility of infection, he should pull
+through. The bullet passed straight through the body without injury to
+any vital organ, and there is no indication of severe internal
+hemorrhage."</p>
+
+<p>Santry moistened his lips with his tongue and shook his head heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"What gets me," he burst out, "is that Gawd A'mighty could 'a' let a
+skunk like Moran do a thing like that! And then"&mdash;his voice swelled as
+though the words he was about to utter exceeded the first&mdash;"and then let
+the varmint get away from me!"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Catlin nodded sympathy with the statement and turned to Dorothy. She
+had been anxiously searching his face to discover if he were encouraging
+them unduly, and when she felt that he was not stretching the facts a
+tremendous weight was lifted from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to stay here?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p><p>"Yes; oh, yes!" she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"That's good." He opened his medicine case and mixed a simple
+antipyretic. "I'll explain what you're to do then. After that you better
+lay down and try to sleep. Wade won't need much for some days, except
+good nursing."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not tired," she insisted, at which he smiled shrewdly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not asking you if you're tired. I'm telling you that you are. Those
+nerves of yours are jumping now. You've got our patient to consider
+first, and you can't look after him unless you keep well yourself. I'm
+going to mix something up for you in a few minutes and then you're going
+to rest. A nurse must obey orders."</p>
+
+<p>He explained to her what she was to do for the patient and then gave her
+something to offset the effects of her own nervous shock. Then
+counseling them not to worry too much, for there would be no fatal
+result if his directions were followed, the physician mounted his horse
+and rode back to town. Such journeys were all in the day's work to him,
+and poor pay they often brought him, except as love of his fellow-men
+rewarded his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>During the long days and nights that followed Dorothy scarcely left
+Wade's bedside, for to her mother now fell the burdens of the ranch
+household. From feeling that she never would be equal to the task of
+caring for so many people, Mrs. Purnell came to find her health greatly
+improved by her duties, which left her no opportunity for morbid
+introspection.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p><p>Santry, too, was in almost constant attendance upon the sick man, and
+was as tender and solicitous in his ministrations as Dorothy herself. He
+ate little and slept less, relieving his feelings by oaths whispered
+into his mustache. He made the ranch hands move about their various
+duties as quietly as mice. Dorothy grew to be genuinely fond of him,
+because of their common bond of sympathy with Wade. Frequently they sat
+together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from
+town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth
+awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without
+permitting a single crackle, she softly laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't be so careful. I don't think it would disturb him."</p>
+
+<p>The old fellow sagely shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same, I ain't takin' no chances," he said.</p>
+
+<p>A moment afterward he tiptoed over to her, grinning from ear to ear, and
+with a clumsy finger pointed out the item he had been reading. An
+expression of pleased surprise flooded her face when she read it; they
+laughed softly together; and, finding that he was through with the
+paper, she put it away in a bureau drawer, meaning to show that item
+some day to Gordon.</p>
+
+<p>Under the care of Dr. Catlin who rode out from Crawling Water each day,
+and even more because of Dorothy's careful nursing, the wounded man was
+at last brought beyond the danger point and started on the road to
+health. He was very weak and very pale, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>but the one danger that Catlin
+had feared and kept mostly to himself, the danger of blood-poisoning,
+was now definitely past, and the patient's physical condition slowly
+brought about a thorough and complete recovery.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of it you owe to yourself, Wade, as the reward of decent living,
+and some of it you owe to the Lord," Catlin told him smilingly. "But
+most of it you owe to this little girl here." He patted Dorothy on the
+shoulder and would not permit her to shirk his praise. "She's been your
+nurse, and I can tell you it isn't a pleasant job for a woman, tending a
+wound like yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" said Dorothy, mischievously. "That's as much as you know
+about it. It's been one of the most delightful jobs I ever had."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a wonderful girl," said Wade, with a tender look at her, after
+they had laughed at her outburst.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you just think that because I'm the only girl around here," she
+blushingly declared, and the physician kept right on laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>was</i> another girl here once," said Wade. "Or at least she acted
+somewhat differently from anything you've done lately."</p>
+
+<p>He was well enough now to receive his friends on brief visits, and
+Trowbridge was the first to drop in. Dorothy did not mind having Lem,
+but she was not sure she enjoyed having the others, for she had found
+the close association with Gordon so very sweet; but she told herself
+that she must not be foolish, and she welcomed all who came. Naturally
+so pretty a girl <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>doing the honors of the house so well, and so closely
+linked with the fortunes of the host, gave rise to the usual deductions.
+Many were the quiet jokes which the cattlemen passed amongst themselves
+over the approaching wedding, and the festival they would make of the
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good-by, Miss Purnell," said Trowbridge one day, smiling and yet
+with a curiously pathetic droop to his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Miss</i> Purnell?" Dorothy exclaimed, in the act of shaking hands.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I said." He nodded wisely. "Good-by, Miss Purnell."
+Refusing to be envious of his friend's good fortune, he laughed cheerily
+and was gone before she saw through his little joke.</p>
+
+<p>The next afternoon she was reading to Gordon when the far-away look in
+his eyes told her that he was not listening. She stopped, wondering what
+he could be dreaming about, and missing the sound of her voice, he
+looked toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't even listening," she chided, smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking that I've never had a chance to get into those
+church-going clothes," he said, with a return of the old whimsical mood.
+"But I look pretty clean, don't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered, suddenly shy.</p>
+
+<p>"Hair brushed? Tie right? Boots clean?"</p>
+
+<p>To each question she had nodded assent. Her heart was beating very fast
+and the rosy color was mounting to the roots of her hair, but she
+refused to lower <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>her eyes in panic. She looked him straight in the face
+with a sweet, tender, cool gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, give me your hand." He hitched his rocker forward so as to
+get closer to her, and took both her hands in this. "Dorothy, I've got
+something to tell you. I guess you know what it is." Her eyes suddenly
+became a little moist as she playfully shook her head. "Oh, yes, you do,
+dear, but I've got to say it, haven't I? I love you, Dorothy. It sort of
+chokes me to say it because my heart's so full."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine is, too," she whispered, a queer catch in her voice. "But are you
+sure you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure? Why, that other was only...."</p>
+
+<p>Withdrawing her hands from his, she laid her fingers for an instant on
+his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to show you something," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She went to the bureau, and taking out the paper which she had hidden
+there, brought it to him. It was a moment before she could find the item
+again, then she pointed it out. They read it together, as she and Santry
+had done the first time she had seen it. The item was an announcement
+from the Rexhills of the engagement of their daughter Helen to Mr.
+Maxwell Frayne.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy watched Wade's face eagerly as he read, and she was entirely
+content when she saw there no trace of his former sentiment for Helen
+Rexhill. He expressed genuine pleasure that Helen was not to be carried
+down with her father's ruin, but the girl knew <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>that otherwise the news
+had left him untouched. She had always thought that this would be so,
+but she was comforted to be assured of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that was only an infatuation," he explained. "Now I'm really in
+love. Thank Heaven, I...." When she looked at him there was a light in
+her glorious violet-shaded eyes that fairly took his breath away.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, dear," she said softly. "You've said enough. I understand, and
+I'm so...."</p>
+
+<p>The rest was lost to the world as his arms went around her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</p>
+
+<p>Minor changes have been made to make spelling and punctuation
+consistent through the text; otherwise, every effort has been made to be
+true to the original book.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hidden Gold, by Wilder Anthony
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN GOLD ***
+
+***** This file should be named 25043-h.htm or 25043-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/0/4/25043/
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/25043-h/images/i003.jpg b/25043-h/images/i003.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa68d13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-h/images/i003.jpg
diff --git a/25043-page-images/f0001.png b/25043-page-images/f0001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ccc005
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/f0001.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/f0002.png b/25043-page-images/f0002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6cba49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/f0002.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/f0003-image1.jpg b/25043-page-images/f0003-image1.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42bdfd0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/f0003-image1.jpg
diff --git a/25043-page-images/f0005.png b/25043-page-images/f0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0e6e2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/f0005.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/f0007.png b/25043-page-images/f0007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bafba4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/f0007.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0011.png b/25043-page-images/p0011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37c3343
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0011.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0012.png b/25043-page-images/p0012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd51b27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0012.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0013.png b/25043-page-images/p0013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2000c61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0013.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0014.png b/25043-page-images/p0014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e746c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0014.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0015.png b/25043-page-images/p0015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cda97da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0015.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0016.png b/25043-page-images/p0016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97ad217
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0016.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0017.png b/25043-page-images/p0017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe8bd14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0017.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0018.png b/25043-page-images/p0018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8333e15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0018.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0019.png b/25043-page-images/p0019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8dbddbf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0019.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0020.png b/25043-page-images/p0020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1675cf7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0020.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0021.png b/25043-page-images/p0021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e29095e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0021.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0022.png b/25043-page-images/p0022.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..297c233
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0022.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0023.png b/25043-page-images/p0023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d1c619
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0023.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0024.png b/25043-page-images/p0024.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d9f41d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0024.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0025.png b/25043-page-images/p0025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b5d52f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0025.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0026.png b/25043-page-images/p0026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b256f61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0026.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0027.png b/25043-page-images/p0027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0f4975
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0027.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0028.png b/25043-page-images/p0028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..300474d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0028.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0029.png b/25043-page-images/p0029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58772eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0029.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0030.png b/25043-page-images/p0030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d57dd2b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0030.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0031.png b/25043-page-images/p0031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb91cfa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0031.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0032.png b/25043-page-images/p0032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf12d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0032.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0033.png b/25043-page-images/p0033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc1e295
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0033.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0034.png b/25043-page-images/p0034.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a8b2fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0034.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0035.png b/25043-page-images/p0035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15ee60a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0035.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0036.png b/25043-page-images/p0036.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0056a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0036.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0037.png b/25043-page-images/p0037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..691872b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0037.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0038.png b/25043-page-images/p0038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06f5b0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0038.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0039.png b/25043-page-images/p0039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23fdbdc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0039.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0040.png b/25043-page-images/p0040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ae66bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0040.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0041.png b/25043-page-images/p0041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f527aba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0041.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0042.png b/25043-page-images/p0042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62a671a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0042.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0043.png b/25043-page-images/p0043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2300f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0043.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0044.png b/25043-page-images/p0044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbcc527
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0044.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0045.png b/25043-page-images/p0045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e36d1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0045.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0046.png b/25043-page-images/p0046.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8131a87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0046.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0047.png b/25043-page-images/p0047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..754b1d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0047.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0048.png b/25043-page-images/p0048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7eaf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0048.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0049.png b/25043-page-images/p0049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a881e78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0049.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0050.png b/25043-page-images/p0050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..732470f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0050.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0051.png b/25043-page-images/p0051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..430f630
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0051.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0052.png b/25043-page-images/p0052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55dc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0052.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0053.png b/25043-page-images/p0053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16e71ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0053.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0054.png b/25043-page-images/p0054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c21de52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0054.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0055.png b/25043-page-images/p0055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3c6155
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0055.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0056.png b/25043-page-images/p0056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca175a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0056.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0057.png b/25043-page-images/p0057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ec8581
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0057.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0058.png b/25043-page-images/p0058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d704948
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0058.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0059.png b/25043-page-images/p0059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d299c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0059.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0060.png b/25043-page-images/p0060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af891c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0060.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0061.png b/25043-page-images/p0061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5259209
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0061.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0062.png b/25043-page-images/p0062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b7d48d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0062.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0063.png b/25043-page-images/p0063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5217b5b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0063.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0064.png b/25043-page-images/p0064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..698d5a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0064.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0065.png b/25043-page-images/p0065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..628862a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0065.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0066.png b/25043-page-images/p0066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f24a03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0066.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0067.png b/25043-page-images/p0067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6367500
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0067.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0068.png b/25043-page-images/p0068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..550af1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0068.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0069.png b/25043-page-images/p0069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c12e99f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0069.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0070.png b/25043-page-images/p0070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da5fbb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0070.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0071.png b/25043-page-images/p0071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..960bd58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0071.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0072.png b/25043-page-images/p0072.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11efea9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0072.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0073.png b/25043-page-images/p0073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb871a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0073.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0074.png b/25043-page-images/p0074.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dcd6b94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0074.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0075.png b/25043-page-images/p0075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f65dda
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0075.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0076.png b/25043-page-images/p0076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46d5610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0076.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0077.png b/25043-page-images/p0077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ef58c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0077.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0078.png b/25043-page-images/p0078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..101c49f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0078.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0079.png b/25043-page-images/p0079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd9e4e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0079.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0080.png b/25043-page-images/p0080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..211b4c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0080.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0081.png b/25043-page-images/p0081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9680003
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0081.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0082.png b/25043-page-images/p0082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7fd82c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0082.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0083.png b/25043-page-images/p0083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..82cba73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0083.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0084.png b/25043-page-images/p0084.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb4446c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0084.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0085.png b/25043-page-images/p0085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42509c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0085.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0086.png b/25043-page-images/p0086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77a82ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0086.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0087.png b/25043-page-images/p0087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27443f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0087.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0088.png b/25043-page-images/p0088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5119977
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0088.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0089.png b/25043-page-images/p0089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23c28fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0089.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0090.png b/25043-page-images/p0090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d30622c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0090.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0091.png b/25043-page-images/p0091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ce4f67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0091.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0092.png b/25043-page-images/p0092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5322748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0092.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0093.png b/25043-page-images/p0093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c485b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0093.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0094.png b/25043-page-images/p0094.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f896ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0094.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0095.png b/25043-page-images/p0095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be33083
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0095.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0096.png b/25043-page-images/p0096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3f6242
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0096.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0097.png b/25043-page-images/p0097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b056e18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0097.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0098.png b/25043-page-images/p0098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5709972
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0098.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0099.png b/25043-page-images/p0099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f251e9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0099.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0100.png b/25043-page-images/p0100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af8fabc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0100.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0101.png b/25043-page-images/p0101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f92208d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0101.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0102.png b/25043-page-images/p0102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a04255
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0102.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0103.png b/25043-page-images/p0103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5a4d5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0103.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0104.png b/25043-page-images/p0104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..976d83e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0104.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0105.png b/25043-page-images/p0105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a426bee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0105.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0106.png b/25043-page-images/p0106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f82eb8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0106.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0107.png b/25043-page-images/p0107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c4a3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0107.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0108.png b/25043-page-images/p0108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..79f1480
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0108.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0109.png b/25043-page-images/p0109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a05da0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0109.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0110.png b/25043-page-images/p0110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1a1363
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0110.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0111.png b/25043-page-images/p0111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16c5262
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0111.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0112.png b/25043-page-images/p0112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d9374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0112.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0113.png b/25043-page-images/p0113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7676145
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0113.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0114.png b/25043-page-images/p0114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d5ab7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0114.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0115.png b/25043-page-images/p0115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d9300
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0115.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0116.png b/25043-page-images/p0116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07b64ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0116.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0117.png b/25043-page-images/p0117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4204e43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0117.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0118.png b/25043-page-images/p0118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7107c23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0118.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0119.png b/25043-page-images/p0119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5b0ec3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0119.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0120.png b/25043-page-images/p0120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..180c056
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0120.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0121.png b/25043-page-images/p0121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cd1c1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0121.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0122.png b/25043-page-images/p0122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46fbb23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0122.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0123.png b/25043-page-images/p0123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c49f5cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0123.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0124.png b/25043-page-images/p0124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c388ae0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0124.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0125.png b/25043-page-images/p0125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..852a677
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0125.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0126.png b/25043-page-images/p0126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22151c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0126.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0127.png b/25043-page-images/p0127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..986ea33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0127.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0128.png b/25043-page-images/p0128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7fdb0db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0128.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0129.png b/25043-page-images/p0129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b76403c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0129.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0130.png b/25043-page-images/p0130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68210ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0130.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0131.png b/25043-page-images/p0131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e8ecdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0131.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0132.png b/25043-page-images/p0132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..417304d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0132.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0133.png b/25043-page-images/p0133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..352e335
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0133.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0134.png b/25043-page-images/p0134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2efc054
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0134.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0135.png b/25043-page-images/p0135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfd4440
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0135.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0136.png b/25043-page-images/p0136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..294bbcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0136.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0137.png b/25043-page-images/p0137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ac0f1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0137.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0138.png b/25043-page-images/p0138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec81002
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0138.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0139.png b/25043-page-images/p0139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f63a60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0139.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0140.png b/25043-page-images/p0140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9b94ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0140.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0141.png b/25043-page-images/p0141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d5733
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0141.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0142.png b/25043-page-images/p0142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13b75f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0142.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0143.png b/25043-page-images/p0143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cff36cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0143.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0144.png b/25043-page-images/p0144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0af069
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0144.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0145.png b/25043-page-images/p0145.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67fa11e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0145.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0146.png b/25043-page-images/p0146.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d713c01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0146.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0147.png b/25043-page-images/p0147.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07f79c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0147.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0148.png b/25043-page-images/p0148.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d390fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0148.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0149.png b/25043-page-images/p0149.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5bd066
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0149.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0150.png b/25043-page-images/p0150.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97ea4c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0150.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0151.png b/25043-page-images/p0151.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c096e6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0151.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0152.png b/25043-page-images/p0152.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12ac9d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0152.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0153.png b/25043-page-images/p0153.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d2c951
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0153.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0154.png b/25043-page-images/p0154.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a43df0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0154.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0155.png b/25043-page-images/p0155.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616aae3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0155.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0156.png b/25043-page-images/p0156.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d172e7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0156.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0157.png b/25043-page-images/p0157.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d45ea1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0157.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0158.png b/25043-page-images/p0158.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89e0221
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0158.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0159.png b/25043-page-images/p0159.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af0501c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0159.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0160.png b/25043-page-images/p0160.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86743bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0160.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0161.png b/25043-page-images/p0161.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c268c80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0161.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0162.png b/25043-page-images/p0162.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40095e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0162.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0163.png b/25043-page-images/p0163.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c65267
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0163.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0164.png b/25043-page-images/p0164.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e3c937
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0164.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0165.png b/25043-page-images/p0165.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee8e41b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0165.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0166.png b/25043-page-images/p0166.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46e1ef3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0166.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0167.png b/25043-page-images/p0167.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7914774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0167.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0168.png b/25043-page-images/p0168.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32dea84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0168.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0169.png b/25043-page-images/p0169.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0e4d33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0169.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0170.png b/25043-page-images/p0170.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7fbaf4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0170.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0171.png b/25043-page-images/p0171.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7730cb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0171.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0172.png b/25043-page-images/p0172.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ded015
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0172.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0173.png b/25043-page-images/p0173.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ed8166
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0173.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0174.png b/25043-page-images/p0174.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e38b3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0174.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0175.png b/25043-page-images/p0175.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea0cb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0175.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0176.png b/25043-page-images/p0176.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..149952a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0176.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0177.png b/25043-page-images/p0177.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0a7fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0177.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0178.png b/25043-page-images/p0178.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98cf403
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0178.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0179.png b/25043-page-images/p0179.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c67beb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0179.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0180.png b/25043-page-images/p0180.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bd7ce0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0180.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0181.png b/25043-page-images/p0181.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d2f2a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0181.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0182.png b/25043-page-images/p0182.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0a2fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0182.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0183.png b/25043-page-images/p0183.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..064248d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0183.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0184.png b/25043-page-images/p0184.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57ca8fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0184.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0185.png b/25043-page-images/p0185.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc7832b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0185.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0186.png b/25043-page-images/p0186.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de5869
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0186.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0187.png b/25043-page-images/p0187.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41aaa87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0187.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0188.png b/25043-page-images/p0188.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e9c211
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0188.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0189.png b/25043-page-images/p0189.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a49815
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0189.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0190.png b/25043-page-images/p0190.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e7a94c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0190.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0191.png b/25043-page-images/p0191.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a887eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0191.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0192.png b/25043-page-images/p0192.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e0d7f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0192.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0193.png b/25043-page-images/p0193.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07ca0ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0193.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0194.png b/25043-page-images/p0194.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cf5b32
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0194.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0195.png b/25043-page-images/p0195.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b26e2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0195.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0196.png b/25043-page-images/p0196.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bc9b95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0196.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0197.png b/25043-page-images/p0197.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c18b08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0197.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0198.png b/25043-page-images/p0198.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7ea916
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0198.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0199.png b/25043-page-images/p0199.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5704721
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0199.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0200.png b/25043-page-images/p0200.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c9c8a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0200.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0201.png b/25043-page-images/p0201.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6befe0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0201.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0202.png b/25043-page-images/p0202.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cdb6b12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0202.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0203.png b/25043-page-images/p0203.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6f3614
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0203.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0204.png b/25043-page-images/p0204.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6007e61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0204.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0205.png b/25043-page-images/p0205.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e397aba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0205.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0206.png b/25043-page-images/p0206.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a49cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0206.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0207.png b/25043-page-images/p0207.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..766cd58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0207.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0208.png b/25043-page-images/p0208.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c05c9cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0208.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0209.png b/25043-page-images/p0209.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c7b39e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0209.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0210.png b/25043-page-images/p0210.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b6f9d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0210.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0211.png b/25043-page-images/p0211.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ecab605
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0211.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0212.png b/25043-page-images/p0212.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42588bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0212.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0213.png b/25043-page-images/p0213.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..49dfa08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0213.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0214.png b/25043-page-images/p0214.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85967b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0214.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0215.png b/25043-page-images/p0215.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7a760e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0215.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0216.png b/25043-page-images/p0216.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c708156
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0216.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0217.png b/25043-page-images/p0217.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..163011f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0217.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0218.png b/25043-page-images/p0218.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..82ea35f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0218.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0219.png b/25043-page-images/p0219.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..470c6b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0219.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0220.png b/25043-page-images/p0220.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b70c0b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0220.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0221.png b/25043-page-images/p0221.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a0cd48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0221.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0222.png b/25043-page-images/p0222.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4beefc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0222.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0223.png b/25043-page-images/p0223.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfef057
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0223.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0224.png b/25043-page-images/p0224.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55eb9e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0224.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0225.png b/25043-page-images/p0225.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e2d7e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0225.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0226.png b/25043-page-images/p0226.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..82b050a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0226.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0227.png b/25043-page-images/p0227.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68ac72e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0227.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0228.png b/25043-page-images/p0228.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4195e74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0228.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0229.png b/25043-page-images/p0229.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e1fa4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0229.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0230.png b/25043-page-images/p0230.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a589852
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0230.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0231.png b/25043-page-images/p0231.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7567f2e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0231.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0232.png b/25043-page-images/p0232.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b3faca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0232.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0233.png b/25043-page-images/p0233.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9064bae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0233.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0234.png b/25043-page-images/p0234.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3332e82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0234.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0235.png b/25043-page-images/p0235.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b45bc05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0235.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0236.png b/25043-page-images/p0236.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea8faac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0236.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0237.png b/25043-page-images/p0237.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c879454
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0237.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0238.png b/25043-page-images/p0238.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..045c2c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0238.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0239.png b/25043-page-images/p0239.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8635586
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0239.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0240.png b/25043-page-images/p0240.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..336427e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0240.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0241.png b/25043-page-images/p0241.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58f580b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0241.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0242.png b/25043-page-images/p0242.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27db487
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0242.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0243.png b/25043-page-images/p0243.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ed35cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0243.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0244.png b/25043-page-images/p0244.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff8e520
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0244.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0245.png b/25043-page-images/p0245.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e05811
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0245.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0246.png b/25043-page-images/p0246.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2789837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0246.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0247.png b/25043-page-images/p0247.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..474e999
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0247.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0248.png b/25043-page-images/p0248.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b30058d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0248.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0249.png b/25043-page-images/p0249.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15b188e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0249.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0250.png b/25043-page-images/p0250.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8046f6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0250.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0251.png b/25043-page-images/p0251.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae98cbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0251.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0252.png b/25043-page-images/p0252.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34ed0bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0252.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0253.png b/25043-page-images/p0253.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..362aebe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0253.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0254.png b/25043-page-images/p0254.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7bd897
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0254.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0255.png b/25043-page-images/p0255.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d990954
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0255.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0256.png b/25043-page-images/p0256.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22af728
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0256.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0257.png b/25043-page-images/p0257.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06f60d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0257.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0258.png b/25043-page-images/p0258.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8223768
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0258.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0259.png b/25043-page-images/p0259.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7a6f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0259.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0260.png b/25043-page-images/p0260.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3fd960
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0260.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0261.png b/25043-page-images/p0261.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..397eaee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0261.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0262.png b/25043-page-images/p0262.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18975d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0262.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0263.png b/25043-page-images/p0263.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6374b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0263.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0264.png b/25043-page-images/p0264.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..375a002
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0264.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0265.png b/25043-page-images/p0265.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b611a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0265.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0266.png b/25043-page-images/p0266.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..449f21c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0266.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0267.png b/25043-page-images/p0267.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c26c3e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0267.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0268.png b/25043-page-images/p0268.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a7541a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0268.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0269.png b/25043-page-images/p0269.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..119bef1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0269.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0270.png b/25043-page-images/p0270.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bd8c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0270.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0271.png b/25043-page-images/p0271.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6dd0e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0271.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0272.png b/25043-page-images/p0272.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fc8394
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0272.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0273.png b/25043-page-images/p0273.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..789b5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0273.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0274.png b/25043-page-images/p0274.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7c1289
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0274.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0275.png b/25043-page-images/p0275.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dea130a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0275.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0276.png b/25043-page-images/p0276.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8675e27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0276.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0277.png b/25043-page-images/p0277.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276333d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0277.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0278.png b/25043-page-images/p0278.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea18d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0278.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0279.png b/25043-page-images/p0279.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..606ad6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0279.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0280.png b/25043-page-images/p0280.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a672146
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0280.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0281.png b/25043-page-images/p0281.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d09b453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0281.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0282.png b/25043-page-images/p0282.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..140f001
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0282.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0283.png b/25043-page-images/p0283.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb20f7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0283.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0284.png b/25043-page-images/p0284.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f325b25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0284.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0285.png b/25043-page-images/p0285.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43debbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0285.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0286.png b/25043-page-images/p0286.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0fbcc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0286.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0287.png b/25043-page-images/p0287.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9900151
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0287.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0288.png b/25043-page-images/p0288.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4d234d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0288.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0289.png b/25043-page-images/p0289.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2ad9db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0289.png
diff --git a/25043-page-images/p0290.png b/25043-page-images/p0290.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8d60e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043-page-images/p0290.png
diff --git a/25043.txt b/25043.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e54a63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8493 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hidden Gold, by Wilder Anthony
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hidden Gold
+
+Author: Wilder Anthony
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2008 [EBook #25043]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN GOLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ HIDDEN GOLD
+
+ BY
+
+ WILDER ANTHONY
+
+ FRONTISPIECE BY
+
+ G. W. GAGE
+
+ NEW YORK
+ THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1922,
+ BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+ [Illustration: At the sharp crack of the rifle, Moran stopped short.]
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+     I THE COMING OF THE SHEEP                               11
+
+    II A MEETING AND A PARTING                               23
+
+   III JEALOUSY                                              35
+
+    IV THE GATHERING STORM                                   44
+
+     V TREACHERY                                             57
+
+    VI MURDER                                                73
+
+   VII THE OLD TRAIL                                         84
+
+  VIII HIGHER THAN STATUTE LAW                               93
+
+    IX THE BATTLE AT THE RANCH                              106
+
+     X THE SENATOR GETS BUSY                                114
+
+    XI TANGLED THREADS                                      129
+
+   XII DESPERATE MEASURES                                   144
+
+  XIII INTO THE DEPTHS                                      156
+
+   XIV A DASTARD'S BLOW                                     171
+
+    XV THE FIRST CLEW                                       181
+
+   XVI TRAPPED                                              200
+
+  XVII A WAR OF WITS                                        212
+
+ XVIII A RESCUE, AND A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE                  234
+
+   XIX BAFFLED, BUT STILL DANGEROUS                         250
+
+    XX THE STORM BURSTS                                     262
+
+   XXI WITH BARE HANDS AT LAST                              272
+
+  XXII CHURCH-GOING CLOTHES                                 283
+
+
+
+
+HIDDEN GOLD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE COMING OF THE SHEEP
+
+
+From his seat on the top of a high ridge, Gordon Wade looked into the
+bowl-shaped valley beneath him, with an expression of amazement on his
+sun-burned face. Pouring through a narrow opening in the environing
+hills, and immediately spreading fan-like over the grass of the valley,
+were sheep; hundreds, thousands of them. Even where he sat, a good
+quarter mile above them, the air was rank with the peculiar smell of the
+animals he detested, and their ceaseless "Ba-a-a, ba-a-a, ba-a-a,"
+sounded like the roar of surf on a distant coast. Driven frantic by the
+appetizing smell of the sweet bunch-grass, the like of which they had
+not seen in months, the sheep poured through the gap like a torrent of
+dirty, yellow water; urged on from the rear and sides by barking dogs
+and shouting herders.
+
+Straightening his six feet of bone and muscle, the cattleman stood up
+and stepped to the extreme edge of the rim-rock, with hardened
+countenance and gleaming eyes. A herder saw him standing there, in open
+silhouette against the sky line, and with many wild gesticulations
+pointed him out to his companions. With a quick motion, Wade half
+raised his rifle from the crook of his arm toward his shoulder, and then
+snorted grimly as the herders scrambled for shelter. "Coyotes!" he
+muttered, reflecting that constant association with the beasts that such
+men tended, seemed to make cowards of them all.
+
+With an ominous shake of his head, he went back on the ridge to his
+waiting horse, eager to bear word of the invasion to Santry, his ranch
+foreman and closest friend. Thrusting the short-barreled rifle into its
+scabbard beneath the stirrup leather, he mounted and rode rapidly away.
+
+Dusk was gathering as he pushed his way through the willows which
+fringed Piah Creek and came out into the clearing which held his ranch
+buildings. Nestling against the foot of a high bluff with the clear
+waters of the creek sparkling a scant fifty yards from the door, the log
+ranch house remained hidden until one was almost upon it. To the left,
+at the foot of a long slope, the corrals and out-buildings were
+situated, while beyond them a range of snow-capped mountains rose in
+majestic grandeur. Back of the house, at the top of the bluff, a broad
+tableland extended for miles; this, with Crawling Water Valley,
+comprising the fine range land, on which fattened three thousand head of
+cattle, carrying the Wade brand, the Double Arrow. Barely an hour
+before, the owner had surveyed the scene with more than satisfaction,
+exulting in the promise of prosperity it seemed to convey. Now all his
+business future was threatened by the coming of the sheep.
+
+After putting his horse in the corral, the ranch owner turned toward the
+house. As he walked slowly up the hill, he made a fine figure of a man;
+tall, straight, and bronzed like an Indian. His countenance in repose
+was frank and cheerful, and he walked with the free, swinging stride of
+an out-door man in full enjoyment of bodily health and vigor. Entering
+the cabin by the open door, he passed through to the rear where a
+rattling of pots and pans and an appetizing smell of frying bacon told
+that supper was in progress.
+
+Bill Santry was standing by the stove, turning the bacon in its sizzling
+grease, with a knack which told of much experience in camp cookery. The
+face which the lean and grizzled plainsman turned toward his friend was
+seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles in the leathery skin, the result of
+years of exposure to all kinds of weather.
+
+"Hello, Gordon!" he exclaimed. His pale blue eyes showed like pin points
+under the shaggy, gray brows. "You're back early, just in time for me to
+remark that if we don't get a pot-wrastler for this here outfit pretty
+durn quick, the boys'll be cookin' their own chuck. I'm blamed if I'll
+herd this stove much longer."
+
+Wade smiled as he passed into the adjoining room to remove his spurs and
+chaps. "There's a Chinese coming up from town to-morrow," he said.
+
+Santry peered across the stove to watch him as he moved about his room.
+The week before, a large picture of an extremely beautiful girl, which
+she had sent to Wade and which at first he had seemed to consider his
+most precious ornament, had fallen face downward on the table. Santry
+was curious to see how long it would be before Wade would set it up
+again, and he chuckled to himself when he saw that no move was made to
+do so. Wade had presented Santry to the girl some months before, when
+the two men were on a cattle-selling trip to Chicago, and the old
+plainsman had not cared for her, although he had recognized her beauty
+and knew that she was wealthy in her own right, and moreover was the
+only child of a famous United States Senator.
+
+"There's thunder to pay over in the valley, Bill." Wade had produced
+"makings," and rolled himself a cigarette as he watched the foreman
+cooking. "Sheep--thousands of them--are coming in."
+
+"What?" Santry straightened up with a jerk which nearly capsized the
+frying pan. "Sheep? On our range? You ain't kiddin' me?"
+
+"Nope. Wish I was, but it's a fact. The sheep are feeding on the grass
+that we hoped to save against the winter. It's the Jensen outfit, I
+could make that out from where I stood."
+
+"Hell!" Stamping angrily across the floor, Santry gazed out into the
+twilight. "That dirty, low-lived Swede? But we'll fix him, boy. I know
+his breed, the skunk! I'll...." The veins in the old plainsman's throat
+stood out and the pupils of his eyes contracted. "I'll run his blamed
+outfit out of the valley before noon termorrer. I'll make Jensen
+wish...."
+
+"Steady, Bill!" Wade interposed, before the other could voice the
+threat. "Violence may come later on perhaps; but right now we must try
+to avoid a fight."
+
+"But by the great horned toad...!"
+
+Santry stretched out his powerful hands and slowly clenched his fingers.
+He was thinking of the pleasure it would give him to fasten them on
+Jensen.
+
+"The thing puzzles me," Wade went on, flecking his cigarette through the
+window. "Jensen would never dare to come in here on his own initiative.
+He knows that we cowmen have controlled this valley for years, and he's
+no fighter. There's lots of good grass on the other side of the
+mountains, and he knows that as well as we do. Why does he take chances,
+then, on losing his stock, and maybe some of his herders by butting in
+here?"
+
+"That's what I want to know," Santry immediately agreed, as though the
+thought were his own. "Answer me that! By the great horned toad! If I
+had my way...."
+
+"This country isn't what it was ten years ago, Bill. We're supposed to
+have courts here now, you know." Santry sighed heavily. "To-morrow,"
+Wade continued, "I'll ride over and have a talk with whoever's in charge
+of the outfit. Maybe I can learn something. You stay here and keep Kelly
+and the rest quiet if they get wind of what's going on and seem inclined
+to show fight. I've been, in a way, looking for trouble ever since we
+refused to let that fellow, Moran, get a foothold in the valley. If he's
+back of this, we've got a clever man to fight."
+
+"There's another _hombre_ I'd like awful well to get my hands on to,"
+declared Santry belligerently. "Damned oily, greedy land shark! All
+right, all right! Needn't say nothin', Don. You're the brains of this
+here outfit, an' 'thout you say the word, I'll behave. But when the time
+comes and you want a fightin' man, just let me at him! When you want to
+run some of these here crooks outer the country, you whisper quiet like
+to old Bill Santry. Until then, I'll wait. That is--" He waved a warning
+finger at Wade.--"That is, up to a certain point! We don't want war,
+that is to say, to want it, you understand me! But by the great horned
+toad, I ain't a-goin' to let no lousy, empty headed, stinkin',
+sheepherdin' Swede wipe his feet on me. No, siree, not by no means!"
+
+Wade made no reply to this, and with a further admonitory shake of his
+grizzled head, the old man resumed his cooking.
+
+"You're sure that Chink'll be over in the mornin'?" he asked anxiously,
+after a little; and Wade nodded abstractedly. "Cookin' ain't no job for
+a white man in this weather. Breakin' rock in Hell would be plumb cool
+alongside of it." He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of
+his hand. "Say, do you remember them biscuits you made over in the
+Painted Rock country? The batch I et ain't digisted yet.
+
+"Every time I cook a meal," he went on, chuckling, "I think about the
+time Flour Sack Jim hired out to wrastle grub for that Englishman. Flour
+Sack was one of your real old timers, rough and ready, with a heart as
+big as a bucket, but he wouldn't bend his knee to no man livin'. The
+English jasper was all kinds of a swell, with money enough to burn a wet
+dog. For family reasons, he'd bought him a ranch and started to raise
+hosses. He wore one of these here two-peaked hats, with a bow on top,
+and he always had an eyeglass screwed into one eye.
+
+"The first night after Flour Sack come on his job, he got up a mess of
+jack-rabbit stew, and stickin' his head out the door, yelled in real
+round-up style--'Come and git it!' Then he piled up his own plate and
+started in ter eat. In about ten minutes, in walks the English dude, and
+when he seen the cook eatin' away, he rares back and says,
+haughty-like--'Bless me soul, I cawn't eat with me servants, doncher
+know.' Flour Sack never bats an eye, but says, with his mouth full 'Take
+a cheer,' he says, 'an' wait until I git through.'"
+
+Although Wade had heard the story before, he laughed pleasantly as
+Santry began to dish up the food; then the latter summoned the hired
+men.
+
+"Mind, now, Bill," Wade admonished. "Not a word about the sheep."
+
+The next morning, after a restless night, the young rancher set out
+alone for the sheep camp. He was more than ever concerned over the
+outlook, because sleep had brought to his pillow visions of cattle
+starving on a denuded range, and of Santry and Race Moran engaged in a
+death struggle. Particularly because of the danger of this, he had
+insisted upon Santry staying at home. The old plainsman, scarred
+veteran of many a frontier brawl, was too quick tempered and too
+proficient with his six-shooter to take back-talk from the despised
+sheep herders or to bandy words with a man he feared and hated. Wade was
+becoming convinced that Moran was responsible for the invasion of the
+range, although still at a loss for his reasons. The whole affair was
+marked with Moran's handiwork and the silent swiftness of his methods.
+
+This Race Moran was a stranger who had come to Crawling Water some
+months before, and for reasons best known to himself, had been trying to
+ingratiate himself in the neighborhood, but, although he seemed to have
+plenty of funds, the ranch and stock men did not take kindly to his
+advances. He posed as the agent of some Eastern capitalists, and he had
+opened an office which for sumptuous appointments had never been equaled
+in that part of the country; but he had not been able to buy or lease
+land at the prices he offered and his business apparently had not
+prospered. Then sheep had begun to appear in great flocks in various
+parts of the surrounding country and some of these flocks to overflow
+into Crawling Water Valley. Moran denied, at first, that they had come
+at his instance, but later on, he tacitly admitted to the protesting
+cattlemen that he had a certain amount of interest in sheep raising.
+
+More far-sighted than some of his neighbors, Wade had leased a large
+strip of land in the valley for use as winter range. Moran had seemed to
+want this land badly, and had offered a really fair price for it, but
+Wade had not cared to sell. Relying upon his privilege as lessee, Wade
+had not feared the approach of the sheep, and he had no reason to wish
+to dispose of his holdings. Now, it began to look as if the purpose was
+to "sheep" him out of his own territory, so that the agent might buy up
+the lease and homestead rights on practically his own terms. The thing
+had been done before in various parts of the cattle country.
+
+Cattle and sheep cannot live on the same range, and when sheep take
+possession of a country, cattle must move out of it, or starve. No
+wonder, then, that the cattlemen of Crawling Water Valley were aroused.
+Their livelihood was slipping away from them, day by day, for unless
+prompt steps were taken the grass would be ruined by the woolly plague.
+
+Thus far, Gordon Wade, a leader in the cattle faction, had been firm for
+peaceful measures though some of the ranchers had threatened an open war
+on the herders. "Avoid bloodshed at almost any cost," had been his
+advice, and he had done his best to restrain the more hot-headed members
+of his party, who were for shooting the sheep and driving out the
+herders at the rifle point. But there was a limit, even to Wade's
+patience, and his jaws squared grimly as he considered the probable
+result, should Moran and his followers, the sheep owners, persist in
+their present course of action.
+
+It was still very early in the morning when Wade arrived at the herder's
+camp. Oscar Jensen, a short, thick-set man, with an unwholesome, heavy
+face, stepped out of the little tent as the rancher rode up.
+
+"Mornin'."
+
+"Good-morning!" The cattleman affected a cheerfulness which he did not
+feel. "Are these your sheep, Mr. Jensen?" He waved in the direction of
+the grazing band, a dirty white patch on the green of the valley.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps you don't know that you are on Double Arrow land? I've ridden
+over to ask you to move your sheep. They're spoiling our grass."
+
+Jensen grinned sardonically, for he had been expecting Wade's visit and
+was prepared for it.
+
+"I got a right here," he said. "There's plenty good grass here and I
+take my sheep where they get fat. This is government land."
+
+"It is government land," Wade quietly acknowledged, "but you have no
+right on it. I control this range, I've paid for it, and unless you move
+within the next twelve hours you'll be arrested for trespass."
+
+The sheepman's sullen face darkened with anger.
+
+"Who'll do it? The sheriff won't, and I'm not afeerd of you cattlemen.
+My sheep must eat as well as your cattle, and I got a good right here. I
+won't move."
+
+"Then remember that I warned you if you get into trouble, Jensen.
+There's plenty of open range and good water on the other side of the
+hills. I advise you to trail your sheep there before it is too late.
+Don't think that Race Moran can save you from the law. Moran is not
+running this valley, and don't you forget it."
+
+"How do you know Moran's backin' me?" The Swede could not conceal his
+surprise. "You can't bluff me, Wade. I know my rights, and I'm goin' to
+stick to 'em."
+
+"The devil you say!" Now that he was sure of Moran's complicity in the
+matter, Wade felt himself becoming angry, in spite of his resolve to
+keep cool. "You'd best listen to reason and pull out while you're able
+to travel. There are men in this valley who won't waste time in talk
+when they know you're here."
+
+"Bah!" Jensen snorted contemptuously. "I can take care of myself. I know
+what I'm doin', I tell you."
+
+"You may, but you don't act like it," was Wade's parting remark, as he
+turned his horse and rode off.
+
+"Go to hell!" the Swede shouted after him.
+
+Heading toward Crawling Water, the ranch owner rode rapidly over the
+sun-baked ground, too full of rage to take notice of anything except his
+own helplessness. The sting of Jensen's impudence lay in Wade's
+realization that to enlist the aid of the sheriff against the sheep man
+would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible. There was very
+little law in that region, and what little there was seemed, somehow, to
+have been taken under the direction of Race Moran.
+
+It was now broad day and the prairie warmed to the blazing sun. Long,
+rolling stretches of grass, topped with rocks and alkaline sand, gave
+back a blinding glare like the reflection of a summer sea, from which
+arose a haze of gray dust like ocean mists over distant reaches. Far to
+the South, a lone butte lifted its corrugated front in forbidding
+majesty.
+
+Beyond the summit of the butte was a greenish-brown plateau of sagebrush
+and bunch-grass. Behind this mesa, a range of snow-topped mountains cut
+the horizon with their white peaks, and in their deep and gloomy canyons
+lurked great shadows of cool, rich green. As far as the eye could see,
+there was no sign of life save Wade and his mount.
+
+The horse's feet kicked up a cloud of yellow dust that hung in the air
+like smoke from a battery of cannon. It enveloped the ranchman, who rode
+with the loose seat and straight back of his kind; it came to lie deeply
+on his shoulders and on his broad-brimmed Stetson hat, and in the
+wrinkles of the leather chaps that encased his legs. He looked steadily
+ahead, from under reddened eyelids, over the trackless plain that
+encompassed him. At a pace which would speedily cover the twenty odd
+miles to Crawling Water, he rode on his way to see Race Moran.
+
+Two hours later Oscar Jensen was shot from behind as he was walking
+alone, a little distance from his camp. He fell dead and his assassin
+disappeared without being seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A MEETING AND A PARTING
+
+
+Had some one of Gordon Wade's multitude of admirers in the East seen him
+as he stood looking out over his Wyoming ranch, he might have recognized
+the true cowboy composure with which the ranchman faced the coming
+storm, but he would not have recognized the stripling who had won
+scholastic and athletic honors at Princeton a few short years before,
+and who had spent a year after graduating in aimless travel and reckless
+adventure.
+
+After flitting rapidly and at random almost all over the habitable
+globe, he had returned to his home in New York with some thought of
+settling down there, but the old family mansion was empty excepting for
+the servants, and his sense of loneliness and sorrow for the loved ones
+who were no longer there to greet him, drove him on speedily and he
+turned toward the West to explore his own country last of all, as so
+many other travelers do.
+
+Attracted by the surpassing beauty of the country, he had lingered in
+Wyoming long enough to feel fascination of the ranch life that was then
+to be found in all its perfection in the wilder part of that State, and
+realizing that he had found the precise location and vocation that
+suited him, he had converted his modest fortune into cash, and invested
+all in the Double Arrow Ranch.
+
+But on his way thither, he had stopped in Chicago, and there he had come
+face to face with Romance.
+
+Before he had gone a dozen steps after getting off the train, some one
+dealt him a mighty blow between the shoulders, that well nigh sent him
+spinning. Before he could recover himself, he was caught from behind and
+hurled headlong into a taxicab.
+
+"I've heard of Western hospitality before," he said, calmly, before he
+could see who his assailant was, "but you seem to be hard up for
+guests."
+
+"No," said his college chum, George Stout, grinning happily as he
+clambered into the taxi, "but I wasn't taking chances; somebody else
+might have seen you first."
+
+Followed three feverish days and nights; then as they sat in pajamas in
+Stout's apartment, Wade said: "I don't imagine there is anything more to
+see or do in this hectic city of yours, and I am free to say I don't
+like it; I think I'll move on."
+
+"Not yet," said Stout, with the grin that endeared him to everybody that
+ever met him. "You've only seen the outside edges so far. To-night you
+are going to break into society."
+
+"Do they have society here?" asked Wade.
+
+"Well, they call it that," still grinning, "anyhow you'll be interested,
+not to say amused. The game is new as yet, but they go through the
+motions, and Oh, boy, how lavish they are! You'll see everything money
+can buy this evening, and probably meet people you wouldn't be likely
+to run across anywhere else.
+
+"You're bidden to appear, sir, at the ornate mansion of a Senator of the
+United States--the Senator, perhaps, I should say, I've secured the
+invitation, and Mrs. Rexhill will never recognize me again if you don't
+go."
+
+"Would that be serious?"
+
+"Very serious. I am counsel for one of the Senator's companies."
+
+"And does that imply social obligation?"
+
+"It does with Mrs. Rexhill."
+
+"Oh, very well, I'll go anywhere once, but who is Mrs. Rexhill? I
+suppose, of course, she is the Senator's wife, but who is she in
+society? I never heard of her."
+
+"You wouldn't; it isn't what she is, it is what she wants to be. You
+must not laugh at her; she is doing the best she can. You'll admit one
+thing readily enough when you see her. She is probably the handsomest
+woman of her age in Chicago, and she isn't more than forty. Where the
+Senator found her, I can't say, but she was his wife when he made his
+first strike in Denver, and I will say to his credit that he has always
+been a devoted husband."
+
+"I'm glad to hear something to his credit," said Wade dryly. "The
+general impression I've gathered from reading the newspapers lately,
+hasn't been of the most exalted sort."
+
+"Oh, well," replied Stout, and his habitual grin faded away as he spoke.
+"A man in public life always makes enemies, and the Senator has plenty
+of them. It almost seems sometimes that he has more enemies than
+friends, and yet he has certainly been a very successful man, not only
+in politics, but in business. He has more irons in the fire than any one
+else I know, and somehow or other he seems to put everything through. I
+doubt if he could do so well if he was not at the same time a political
+power."
+
+"Yes," said Wade, still more dryly. "I have heard the two facts
+mentioned together."
+
+"Come, come," said Stout, more earnestly than he was in the habit of
+speaking, "you mustn't put too much faith in what the newspapers say. I
+know how they talk about him in the other party, but I happen to know
+him pretty well personally, and there is a good side to him as I suppose
+there is to everybody. Anyhow, he pays me well for my professional
+services, and I have seen nothing thus far that leads me to be disloyal
+to him."
+
+It seemed to Wade's sensitive ear that his friend was speaking with a
+large mental reservation, but wisely reflecting that the matter did not
+concern him, he said no more, and when evening came, he went, willingly
+enough, to make the acquaintance of the man who was then counted as one
+of the greatest political powers in the country. Nor had he any
+premonition that in the near future he and his host of the evening would
+be engaged in a life and death struggle.
+
+Of all that, however, there was no present indication whatever. On the
+contrary, the great man welcomed him with all the suavity of manner for
+which he was equally as famous as he was for the over-bearing rudeness
+he often displayed when his will was disputed. This latter trait had won
+for him the nickname of the Czar of American Politics; but he was an
+adroit politician, not lacking in courtesy to guests in his own house.
+Moreover, he was keen in his appraisal of men and quick to see that a
+man of Wade's type would be more valuable to him as an ally than as a
+foe.
+
+Accordingly, he presented the young aristocrat to Mrs. Rexhill, who
+openly showed her delight in meeting one of such distinguished
+appearance, and with a great display of cordiality, she introduced him
+to her daughter Helen.
+
+"It is her coming-out party, Mr. Wade," she said, gushingly, "and you
+must do all you can to make it a happy occasion."
+
+One glance at the beautiful girl who stood before him was enough to
+determine Wade that her evening should be as happy as he could make it.
+The glaring ostentation of the house and its equipment had offended his
+fastidious taste when he entered, and the sight of the really handsome,
+but vulgarly overdressed and richly be-jeweled mother, had made him
+shudder inwardly, but when he looked into Helen's eyes, he forgot all
+his first impressions and imagined himself in Fairyland for the
+remainder of the evening.
+
+An older head than his might easily have been turned and a wiser man
+bewildered by the tender glances of the charming girl who frankly met
+his advances half way, being as much impressed by his appearance as he
+with hers, and showing carelessness equal to his in regard to the
+comment they excited among the other guests. One thing that Helen
+Rexhill had never learned at school, or from the parents who had done
+all that could be done to spoil her, was to conceal her feelings. Just
+now she felt no inclination to do it, and she gave Wade dance after
+dance, with reckless disregard of her engagements and of the
+ill-concealed anger of some of the men she threw over with utter
+carelessness of social obligation.
+
+Wade saw it clearly enough, but the preference she showed for him was so
+flattering as to make him indifferent, even had he considered himself
+responsible. He was therefore amused rather than exultant when man after
+man came up to claim a dance, only to be told "I just promised this one
+to Mr. Wade."
+
+One such there was, who took his rebuff exceeding ill. Instead of
+retiring as the others had done, he stepped up closer to the girl and
+said rudely, "That's all very well, Helen, but you promised me first,
+and I hold you to it."
+
+And he looked contemptuously at Wade who had started in surprise at his
+words, and had stiffened himself instinctively, as if to interfere, but
+who controlled himself instantly and kept silent despite his
+inclination.
+
+A moment later he was glad he had done so. Helen's eyes flashed and she
+straightened her form proudly as she spoke.
+
+"Did I really promise you, Race Moran? If I did, I have forgotten it,
+and anyhow, I am going to sit this dance out with Mr. Wade in the
+conservatory."
+
+Race Moran, as she called him, was a handsome enough man, though rather
+flashy in appearance. But the evil look that came quickly on his face,
+no less than his huge and burly build, indicated that he would have been
+more at home in a barroom or a street fight, than where he was. For just
+a moment he seemed about to say more, but apparently thought better of
+it, and turning away with what sounded like a muttered oath, he walked
+toward the Senator, who stood at the other side of the room.
+
+"I've made an enemy for you, Mr. Wade," said Helen, half laughingly and
+half seriously, as she led the way to the conservatory, closely followed
+by her eager escort.
+
+"Well," said Wade lightly, "they say a man is poor, indeed, who hasn't a
+few enemies. I don't know that one more or less is of great importance,
+but it is well to know something about them. Who is the gentleman?"
+
+"I hardly think you would call him a gentleman," said Helen, "though he
+thinks he's one; I wouldn't tolerate him a moment, only on my father's
+account. Dad calls him a political heeler, and says he is very useful."
+
+"He ought to be that," said Wade, smiling; "I'd hardly call him
+ornamental."
+
+"Indeed he isn't," said Helen, pouting prettily, "and he presumes too
+much on Dad's favor. He actually persecutes me with his attentions, but
+you know a politician's daughter has to put up with a good deal,
+sometimes."
+
+"I don't think you need to suffer much," said Wade, gallantly. "You will
+always find admirers enough to stand between you and any trouble you may
+have. I rather think there is one of them coming this way at the moment.
+I shall certainly take pleasure in recognizing Mr. Moran as an enemy,
+but is this likely to be another one?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Helen, laughingly, as an effeminate looking young man
+came up, evidently in search of her.
+
+"I beg pardon, Miss Helen," he said, with a bow that seemed to include
+Wade, politely enough, in the apology, "But your mother asked me to find
+you. She wants you to meet some new guests who have just arrived."
+
+"Oh, bother," said Helen carelessly. "She can look after them for a
+while. Tell her I'll be with her by-and-by," and she turned back to
+Wade, paying no further attention to the luckless messenger, who
+departed, hiding his chagrin as best he could, though not very
+successfully.
+
+After he had gone, she said, "No, I don't think Maxwell Frayne is likely
+to be an enemy; at least, not one that you need fear. He is a gentleman,
+though he is too insipid to interest me."
+
+"And you think Moran is a man to fear," asked Wade, trying to speak
+gravely, but showing amusement in spite of himself.
+
+"I don't believe you fear the devil," said Helen, with open admiration,
+"but Race Moran can be very dangerous, and I feel sure he will try to
+injure you, if he ever finds a chance."
+
+"Well in that case he will at least be interesting," said Wade, lightly.
+He would have been amazed if he had realized at the time how prophetic
+the girl's words were.
+
+For the moment, however, he had little thought of peril and adventures
+to come. The time, the girl and the place, were all at hand, and he
+plunged headlong into a complication that kept him for weeks in Chicago,
+strongly inclined to stay permanently, yet reluctant to settle in a city
+so little to his liking, when the great out-doors was calling to him so
+urgently.
+
+While the petals of the passion flower were unfolding so rapidly in the
+conservatory, Race Moran had taken the Senator to the latter's private
+room where they had had many secret conferences before. He had done the
+great man favors in New York where he was a valuable cog in the
+political machine, while the Senator was still a newcomer in the field,
+and with accurate judgment he had foreseen that Rexhill would be a
+winner.
+
+Quick to see opportunities, he had cultivated the latter's acquaintance
+and courted his favor until he had become the Senator's most trusted
+adherent, and was admitted to the closest intimacy, so that he had
+become a constant visitor in the Rexhill home, and had definitely
+determined in his own mind, to become one of the family. He knew well
+enough that Helen disliked him, but his ideas of women had been gained
+from association with a class that is easily dominated, and he was
+confident of his own powers, which, in fact, were very considerable.
+
+The Senator was not blind to the other's purpose, but though he was far
+from approving it, having other ideas concerning the daughter he
+idolized, he had not sought to discourage Moran, nor did he intend to.
+He would let him go on until a crisis should come, and in the meantime,
+Moran had not declared himself.
+
+Helen's insolence at the door of the conservatory, however, had stung
+Moran, and as soon as he had the Senator in seclusion, he broke out.
+
+"Who is that puppy Helen has on a string to-night?" he demanded roughly.
+
+But the Senator could overlook rudeness when it suited his purpose to do
+so.
+
+"I wouldn't call him a puppy exactly," he said, pleasantly enough; "he
+is a good deal younger than you and I, but he comes of pretty good stock
+in your town, Moran, and Stout tells me he has distinguished himself
+already in two or three ways. I reckon he'd be a pretty good friend to
+have, if he ever takes an interest in politics."
+
+"Oh, I know the Wade family all right," said Moran impatiently; "they
+belong to the silk stockings, but we have our own way of dealing with
+that kind in New York, and I'm able to do the same thing anywhere else,
+if I have to. Maybe I will have to if he comes between me and Helen.
+Senator, I want to marry that girl myself. I ain't asking your consent,
+exactly, for me and her will be likely to do what we want to, anyhow,
+but I'd a heap rather have you favor the match."
+
+That was almost too much, but the Senator knew his man and also knew
+how valuable he was. There was no sense in breaking with him until it
+was unavoidable, so he still spoke pleasantly, though he had flushed
+with anger for a moment.
+
+"Yes, I reckon you and Helen will do as you like about it, especially as
+Helen likes. It was sort of decent of you to speak to me first, but
+there doesn't seem to be anything particular for me to say till you find
+out what Helen really thinks."
+
+"Oh, I'll find that out, all right," said Moran, boastfully. "But this
+Wade person better look out; I might have him run into the river some
+night, if he pokes his nose in too far."
+
+"I'd go easy on that, if I were you," said the Senator laughing
+heartily, "a dead Wade might interfere with your plans worse than a live
+one."
+
+"Oh, of course," replied Moran, refusing to laugh. "I talk foolish with
+my mouth sometimes, when I'm mad, but all the same, he'd better look
+out."
+
+"Now I wonder," said the Senator thoughtfully, after the other had left
+him, "how long it will be before he does find out, and how serious it
+will be. He's hit pretty hard, but I will have to keep him along some
+way or other; I can't afford to lose him."
+
+And he sat musing over his cigar till one by one his guests had gone,
+but not until the great drawing room was well-nigh empty, did Helen
+leave the conservatory.
+
+For a few weeks thereafter Chicago seemed, to Gordon Wade's fancy, to be
+the very center of the Universe. Gradually, however, the sturdy nature
+of the man asserted itself, and realizing that for him there were many
+more desirable places, he determined to look farther before choosing a
+permanent home. He told Helen frankly of his purpose, and to his great
+satisfaction she approved. There was no definite word of marriage
+between them, though they both looked forward to it and both, at the
+time of parting, deemed the understanding complete between them.
+
+Helen would have had him turn to the East, for her heart was set on city
+life in one of the world's great capitals, but he declared he must see
+the West before deciding, and though she was dissatisfied, she was too
+wise to seek the domination she intended, at that stage of the game.
+
+He departed, therefore, to find in Wyoming later on, his ideal of a
+home. His thought of Chicago thereafter, was that of the place where the
+girl he thought he loved was waiting for him, to claim her, so soon as
+his home was made suitable. There was much to do by way of preparation,
+however, and almost imperceptibly his ardor cooled as he found himself
+becoming prominent among the bold and independent citizens who were
+rapidly putting Wyoming on the map.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JEALOUSY
+
+
+Meantime, many things of great interest to Gordon Wade happened without
+his knowledge.
+
+A national election at which the previously dominant party was defeated,
+was a sad blow to Senator Rexhill, who not only suffered in prestige but
+in pocket. There was no question, even in the minds of his friends, that
+he frequently used his political influence to back up the many business
+enterprises in which he held an interest, and in which the greater part
+of his quickly-made fortune was invested. With the loss of his political
+pull, disaster came to one after another of those enterprises, and his
+successive losses were soon heavy enough to drive him almost to
+desperation.
+
+His previous successes, however, had all been due to the audacity of his
+plans, for his boldness and courage were unquestionable. For a time he
+felt confident of winning again, and accordingly, maintained his lavish
+expenditures and luxurious style of living, with no word of caution to
+his wife and daughter, and he continued to seek for the long chances in
+business that offered the largest risks and the greatest gains.
+
+All the redeeming qualities of his nature (and he had more than his
+enemies gave him credit for), were shown in his family life, and it was
+not surprising that Helen and her mother were both undisturbed by the
+gathering storm, but continued to live as he encouraged them to, having
+perfect confidence in his ability to overcome any and all the
+difficulties he might encounter.
+
+Mrs. Rexhill continued to dream of social distinction. Failing to see
+that she had lost much of her own prestige by the Senator's political
+reverses, she continued to entertain so extravagantly in her palatial
+home, that she was still tolerated and she took infinite satisfaction in
+the position she thought she occupied.
+
+She considered Chicago the greatest city in the world, and she dreamed
+of Helen as its queen. To her mind, the easiest way to accomplish that
+ambition was to persuade Helen to marry Maxwell Frayne. He had
+persistently courted the girl ever since he first met her, and he was
+heir to the great Frayne fortune.
+
+The idea was not entirely revolting to Helen, though she had a small
+opinion of the elegant young trifler who pursued her so persistently,
+for she, too, had social aspirations, though being more clear-sighted
+than her mother, she dreamed of wider circles than those of Chicago. Her
+husband, whoever he was to be, should take her to Paris, or at least to
+New York.
+
+Her infatuation for Gordon Wade, however, was as strong as ever. Perhaps
+she was right in thinking of it as true love, but she was greatly
+annoyed by Wade's choice of a ranchman's life, and by his settling down
+out of the world, as she considered he had done. Her letters to him,
+tender as they were, told him plainly enough of her dissatisfaction, and
+thereby undoubtedly contributed to the slow growth of his indifference.
+
+For a time she failed to perceive this, and enjoying the excitement of
+the life she was leading, she was content to wait till Wade should tire
+of the wilderness, as she fully expected him to do, and should return to
+her. So she drifted, until after a time her suspicions were aroused by
+the tone of his letters, and she became anxious.
+
+As time went on, Senator Rexhill's affairs became more and more
+involved. He realized that he stood little chance of reelection, when
+his term of office should expire, and meantime, his fortune dwindled
+rapidly, though he was still careful not to betray that fact at home.
+
+Moran knew the situation perfectly well, but he remained outwardly loyal
+to his employer, partly because of the latter's liberality, but more,
+perhaps, because of the hope he still had of winning Helen eventually,
+despite the dislike she took no pains to hide.
+
+Knowing how bold the Senator was in his speculations, he came to him one
+day with an exciting story.
+
+"There's a guy in town," he said, "who may be just a plain nut, but he
+has the name of being a scientific sharp who knows his business from A
+to Izzard, and he's either got something almighty big, or he's got the
+willies.
+
+"What he says is, that he's found gold in a new spot and oodles of it.
+According to what he tells, it beats California in '49. It's so big, he
+says, that he's scared stiff, thinking he can't grab enough of it, and
+he don't know, no more'n a baby, what to do with it. So he's looking for
+somebody to take hold of it in a big way and give him a whack."
+
+"Where is this gold?" asked the Senator incredulously.
+
+"That's the funny part of it," says Moran; "it's in Wyoming, and as near
+as I can make out, it must be close to where that young squirt is that
+Helen thinks she's stuck on. I'm not sure but what it's on his place,
+but even if it is, there is no reason why he should have any of it. The
+expense will be pretty heavy to do the thing up right, but if you're
+game, I reckon we can hog the whole business. We can stall this
+scientific nut off with promises, and probably buy off Wade for the
+price of pasture land, and then file claim on the whole dog-gone tract."
+
+This vision of enormous wealth was captivating to the Senator, who had
+made his first start in mining and knew something of its possibilities.
+Bold as he was, however, he was also cautious, but after several
+conferences with Moran, he fell in with the scheme, first securing the
+services of a skilled metallurgist and an equally capable engineer, who
+were liberally paid and solemnly sworn to secrecy. He sent them out to
+verify the discoverer's story, and sent Moran to Crawling Water, to
+establish himself, and to do such preparatory work as should be
+necessary. In due time, Moran reported by letter that the gold was
+located, and was beyond question abundant. He was having trouble,
+however, in getting the property, as Wade refused to sell.
+
+"Of course," he wrote, "we can file mining claims on the ground we know
+of, and get possession that way, but we want to make more surveys
+before doing that, so as to be sure of getting all there is, and we
+can't do that without giving the whole snap away, and filling the
+mountains full of prospectors. If that damn Wade won't sell, I'll find
+some means to drive him away."
+
+It was just after the receipt of this letter, which filled the Senator
+with hope on the one hand, and anxiety on the other that he came on
+Helen one evening, as she was entering her own sitting room, and
+followed her in for a chat.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" he asked, presently, when she failed to
+notice some trivial question he had asked, and seemed to be in a
+reverie.
+
+She looked at him with laughing eyes.
+
+"Crawling Water."
+
+"Gordon Wade, eh? Well, I wouldn't think of him too much. Better let
+that pass. You've outgrown it."
+
+"Oh, no I haven't."
+
+The Senator sighed.
+
+"Mother said to me a little while ago, that he was probably going with
+other girls and forgetting me, and it made me angry."
+
+"Well, I reckon your mother is about right. Gordon is a likely looking
+chap, you know. I've got nothing against him, except that he isn't good
+enough for you; no man is. You don't really care so much for him, do
+you?"
+
+"Oh, don't I?" She viewed her father through half closed lids, in a
+quizzical way. "I care so very much for him that if I really thought
+there was another girl, I would go to Crawling Water to-morrow. You'd
+have to drop everything and take me."
+
+Her father gently pinched her cheek.
+
+"I would, eh? Well, maybe I'll have to go out there anyway. But do you
+realize what Crawling Water is like,--a rough, frontier town?"
+
+"I wouldn't mind that for a while."
+
+"No, I suppose not. You've got too much of your old dad in you to balk
+at a few difficulties. There's somebody else out there who'd be mighty
+glad to see your pretty face. Race Moran."
+
+"Mr. Moran!"
+
+The sudden change in the girl's tone from tenderness to scorn caused the
+Senator a twinge of uneasiness. His plans were so closely linked with
+Moran's for the present, that the man might prove dangerous if his love
+for Helen were too openly scorned. That she could scarcely tolerate him,
+despite his ability and force of character, her father knew from the
+past; but even in the moment of his need he did not seek to influence
+her in Moran's favor. His love for her was genuine and very deep.
+
+"He's been out there for some time, as my agent."
+
+"Yes, I know that. He--he has written to me, although I've never
+answered his letters. I've been curious to hear from him again, because
+he promised to send me some kodaks of Crawling Water."
+
+"Maybe he hasn't done so because you've ignored his letters."
+
+Helen's lip curled in disdain.
+
+"He'd never let a little thing like that stop him. But perhaps I will
+answer the next one, if only to find out what is going on out there.
+It's all so very mysterious. Do you know, father,"--She playfully shook
+her finger at him--"this is the first time in a long while that you
+haven't taken me into your confidence, and I think it a very ominous
+sign. I'm sure you'll be punished for it."
+
+The Senator winced at the word punished, and Helen laughed at what she
+thought was the effect of her raillery.
+
+"Why don't you tell me? You see, I'm so worried about Gordon. Honestly,
+father, I'm serious about that. I--I love him, and I don't want him
+hurt."
+
+"Hurt? Why, who is thinking of hurting him?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Moran hates him, and has referred to him once or
+twice in a way that I do not understand. Do tell me all about it."
+
+"Oh, well, my dear, there's really nothing to tell. It's all concerned
+with some homestead lands out there that I want to get hold of for an
+investment. Wade will not be hurt, no; that is, he won't be if he beats
+me out. If I win, he'll lose."
+
+"He will?"
+
+"We both can't win, of course. It's to be a fight, yes,--an amicable
+business struggle, I hope. There's no reason for it to be otherwise."
+The Senator appeared strangely nervous, despite his effort at
+self-control. "Wade as a man and a Westerner doesn't expect to be fed on
+pap, you know, any more than I do. May the best man win, that's the way
+of it."
+
+Helen thought this over for a moment.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go out there with you, after all," she remarked,
+half in jest.
+
+Then the Senator thought that over for a moment and left the room.
+
+Next day Helen received a package by mail which proved to contain a
+dozen clear photographs of Crawling Water and its neighborhood.
+
+First of all, as though Moran thought it most important, was a snapshot
+of himself, which had been taken, so he wrote on the back of the print,
+by an obliging cowboy. The girl's face was a study in amused scorn as
+she looked at the photograph, for which Moran has posed with a cigar in
+his mouth, his hands in his pockets.
+
+Then there were a number of views of the town itself; of its main
+street, its hotel, its dance-hall, and of "some of the boys" in various
+poses of photographic self-consciousness. There were also pictures of
+the marvelously beautiful countryside, but as she neared the end of
+them, Helen was disappointed to find none of Wade. "Of course, he
+wouldn't send me one of _him_," she said petulantly to herself, and she
+was rapidly running through the remaining prints only to pause suddenly
+at the very last, while a rosy tide flooded her face and neck.
+
+The little photograph showed a tall, handsome, vigorous looking man, in
+the garb of a cattleman, half turned in his saddle, with one hand
+resting on his pony's flank. The man was Wade. With his other hand, he
+was pointing ahead, apparently for the benefit of a girl--a very good
+looking girl whose fine head was thrown back, as the wind blew her hair
+into pretty disorder.
+
+Helen Rexhill had not hitherto experienced real jealousy, but this
+little photograph excited it. In the highly actinic light of Crawling
+Water at noon the camera had done its work well, and the figures of the
+two stood out from the distant background with stereoscopic clearness.
+Wade was smiling at the girl, who seemed to be laughing back at him,
+although her face in the picture was partially turned away, so that
+Helen got only an impression of charm. But the impression was enough to
+rouse her jealousy.
+
+On the back of the print, Moran had written:
+
+"A surprise picture of Gordon Wade and our new fellow-townswoman, Miss
+Dorothy Purnell, whose beauty and general attractiveness have made her
+the idol of Crawling Water."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GATHERING STORM
+
+
+On the north bank of the river, from which it derived its name, the town
+of Crawling Water lay sprawled out in the shape of an irregular horn.
+Its original settlers had been men of large ideas, and having had plenty
+of space at their disposal, they had used it lavishly. The streets,
+bordered by dusty, weather-beaten, frame buildings, were as wide as
+those of a large city; indeed, in area, the town could compete with many
+a metropolis; but there the resemblance ended. Crawling Water was not
+fated to become a big city. The fact that the nearest railroad point was
+at Sheridan, forty miles away, did away with any ambitions that Crawling
+Water might have had to be more than a neighborhood center.
+
+The mixed population was composed of cattlemen, sheep men, cow punchers
+and herders, with a sprinkling of gamblers and other riff-raff. Rough,
+uncouth, full-blooded men, they were, for the most part; hard working;
+decisive in their likes and dislikes; fearing neither God nor man, they
+met Life as they found it and faced Death with a laugh. They were the
+last of a fast disappearing type, picturesque, but lacking in many of
+the attributes which differentiate mankind from the beasts.
+
+Hardly more than a village, Crawling Water was yet a town, and the seat
+of such machinery of government as had been established, and
+accordingly, Gordon Wade had ridden directly thither after his far from
+satisfactory interview with Oscar Jensen. After he had stabled his horse
+and seen it fed, he started up the street in the direction of Moran's
+office. He was resolved to find out where the agent stood on the sheep
+question without any unnecessary delay. Save for a few dogs, sleeping in
+the blaze of the noon-day sun, which hung overhead like a ball of fire,
+the town seemed deserted.
+
+When Wade entered the office, Moran was seated at his desk, chewing on a
+cigar, above which his closely cropped reddish mustache bristled. Like
+Senator Rexhill, he was a man of girth and bulk, but his ape-like body
+was endowed with a strength which not even his gross life had been able
+to wreck, and he was always muscularly fit. Except for the miner's hip
+boots, which he wore, he was rather handsomely dressed, and would have
+been called tastefully so in the betting ring of a metropolitan
+race-track, where his diamond scarf-pin and ring would have been
+admired.
+
+"Hello!" he boomed as Wade entered. "Have a cigar." He pushed a box of
+an excellent brand toward his visitor and waved him to a chair. His
+greeting was noisy rather than cordial.
+
+Wade declined both the chair and the cigar.
+
+"I dropped in to find out why you told Jensen to run his sheep in on my
+range," he began bluntly.
+
+"Let me see--" The agent very deliberately lifted a large, white hand
+and took the cigar out of his mouth. "Just what range is that?"
+
+"The upper valley range which I have under lease."
+
+"Which you have under lease?" Moran affected sarcastic surprise. "I
+wasn't aware that you had any legal right to that part of the valley.
+It's government land, ain't it?"
+
+"You seem to have forgotten that you once tried to buy the lease from
+me." The rancher bared his teeth in a grim smile. "We'll not quibble
+over that, however. We've got our legal rights, all of us; but we're a
+long distance from the courts here. What I want to know in plain English
+is, will you order Jensen to trail those sheep? Now, wait a moment!"
+
+Moran subsided with a show of tolerance he did not feel.
+
+"Think well before you answer," Wade went on. "I'm not here to threaten
+you, but there are desperate men in this valley who will take matters
+into their own hands, if this business is not stopped. There's plenty of
+grass on the other side of the mountains and your sheep are welcome to
+it. Why don't you make use of it?"
+
+"Why should I? The sheep have a right to be where they are and there
+they'll stay until I get ready to move 'em. You cattlemen think you own
+this country, but when it comes to the show down, you're a bunch of
+bluffers. Now, Wade, I made you an offer once,--I'll admit it, and I'll
+make it again for the last time. Sell me your homestead and lease rights
+at the price I offered you--ten thousand dollars, and get out smiling.
+There isn't room for the two of us in the valley."
+
+"Ten thousand for the homestead and the lease combined!" Wade laughed
+mirthlessly. "You're crazy, man. Why, you offered me that much for the
+lease alone a few weeks ago."
+
+"Did I? I'd forgotten it. Anyway, it's a fair offer. The land is still
+owned by Uncle Sam, you know. You haven't proved up on your claims, and
+you never will if I can help it. We are spending lots of money here, and
+the government will see that our interests are protected. You cattlemen
+can't hog the whole of Crawling Water Valley. Times have changed. Well,
+what do you say?"
+
+The ranchman dismissed the proposition with a gesture, but did not
+immediately speak. Silently, the two big men faced each other, their
+glances crossing like rapiers: the cattleman like a statue in bronze in
+the fixed rigidity of his attitude, but with an expression that showed
+him one dangerous to trifle with; the agent affecting that half tolerant
+amusement which one may feel toward an enemy unworthy of one's prowess.
+Wade presently broke the silence.
+
+"Moran, you may be a big man in the East, but you're not big enough for
+the job you've tackled here. I've held my friends back as long as I
+can--longer than I thought I could--and when they break loose, this
+valley will be a little hell, perhaps a shambles. Men are going to be
+killed, and I have a feeling that you are going to be one of them.
+Against that time, once more, I warn you. Tell Jensen to trail his
+sheep!"
+
+Swinging on his heel, the ranchman left the office, paying no attention
+to the ironical "Good night," which Moran called after him.
+
+In the street, Wade chanced upon a neighboring cattle owner, Lem
+Trowbridge of the Circle Heart outfit, who fell into step with him.
+
+"Gordon, how long are we going to stand for this thing, eh? Say, do you
+know what some are saying about you? Now, I'm your friend, and I'm
+telling you straight that you've gone far enough with this pacifist
+stuff."
+
+"They say I'm afraid, I suppose?" Wade stopped and faced Trowbridge.
+"Have they said that to you?"
+
+"To me? Say, what the ---- kind of a friend do you take me for?"
+Trowbridge flamed up like a match. "No, they haven't said just that,
+Gordon; but they're hinting, and I don't like it."
+
+"Well, if you hear it direct, send the man on to me with it," said Wade,
+his lips compressing ominously. "I'm about through, Lem, not quite, but
+pretty nearly. I've told Moran to have Jensen trail those sheep, and if
+he doesn't...."
+
+Trowbridge nodded and smiled, as they paused at a street corner--one of
+the few that Crawling Water possessed.
+
+"That's the idea, Gordon. We'll all be the readier for the waiting.
+Well, I'll not go any farther with you." He winked with elaborate
+precision and looked in the direction of a snug little cottage, with
+flower boxes in the windows, a biscuit toss away. "She's home. I saw her
+leave the store yonder a little while ago."
+
+Wade blushed like a boy and looked foolish.
+
+"I don't get into town so very often," he began lamely, when Trowbridge
+slapped him heartily on the back.
+
+"You don't need to make any excuses to me, old man," he said, moving
+off. "That little woman has put Crawling Water on edge with admiration.
+You're not the only one--or, maybe, you are."
+
+Secretly eager though Wade was to reach the cottage, the nearer he
+approached it, the slower he walked, fuming at himself for his sudden
+spinelessness. Although no ladies' man, he had never been woman wary
+until lately, and this of itself was a sign, the significance of which
+he was far from realizing. When he was with Dorothy Purnell, he almost
+forgot her sex in the easy companionability of their relationship; when
+away from her, he thought no more of her than he might of some man
+friend; but the approach had become a matter of embarrassing difficulty
+with him. There had even been occasions when he had walked past the
+cottage and ridden home without seeing her, trying speciously to
+convince himself that such had all along been his intention.
+
+Something of the sort might have happened now had she not hailed him
+from the open doorway.
+
+"Whither bound, stranger?" she smilingly demanded, in her low, rich
+contralto. "Better come in where it's cool. Mother'll be glad to see
+you, and I--shan't mind."
+
+She had come to Crawling Water for the restorative effect of the bracing
+mountain air upon the health of her mother, who was threatened with
+nervous invalidism, following the death of Mr. Purnell, two years
+before. The town called them Easterners because their home was as far
+East as Michigan, but they had never been city dwellers, as Dorothy's
+fresh complexion and lithe, alert figure bore witness.
+
+Her chestnut hair, piled in a silken crown on her shapely head, shaded a
+face that made those who saw it for the first time, catch their breath
+in instant admiration. Her radiance was of a glorious, compelling, and
+wholly distinct type, as refreshing as some view of green mountains from
+out a gloomy canyon. She had eyes, blue in repose, but shading to violet
+tints when aglow with vivacity; her nose was not perfect, because a
+trifle tip-tilted, but her face gained character through the defect; her
+very red lips held most delicious allurement in their slightly full
+curves. Her hands and feet were small enough to pay tribute to her birth
+and breeding, but not so small as to be doll-like. She wore a simple,
+white dress, freshly laundered, which made her look cool and inviting.
+
+"You won't mind? Now that's good of you, and no mistake." Wade shook
+hands with her, slowly relinquishing her cool palm. "How is Mrs.
+Purnell? Better?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I think so. You're better, aren't you, mother?" she asked, as
+they entered the cozy little living-room, where the temperature was in
+pleasant contrast to the outer heat. "The air up here does you good,
+doesn't it?"
+
+Mrs. Purnell, a dispirited little person, admitted that she felt very
+well indeed, and seemed cheered at the sight of Wade, who greeted her
+deferentially but with easy geniality. She liked him for his
+wholesomeness, and she frequently declared that he was worth all the
+doctors in the country because of the impression of health and optimism
+which he bore with him. But she was aware that Dorothy liked him, too,
+and so presently made an excuse to leave the two young people together.
+
+"Now, you may tell me all about what's worrying you," the girl said,
+seating herself across from Wade. "Something is. You can't keep the
+signs from me."
+
+"Good girl!" His voice held a suggestion of tenderness, as he rolled and
+lighted a cigarette, in the home-like privilege which they allowed him
+there. "That's your way, always. No matter who's in trouble, you are
+ready to hasten to the rescue."
+
+"Oh--," she deprecatingly began, with a trace of violet showing in her
+eyes, which meant a great deal more than words.
+
+"No wonder every man in the valley considers himself your own, especial
+knight."
+
+"I thought perhaps I could help you," she said briskly, to cover her
+sentimental moment. "But that was foolish of me, too, wasn't it? The
+idea of any one helping _you_."
+
+"I'm likely to need all my friends soon, Dorothy," Wade answered
+soberly. "I came in to-day to see Race Moran. There's a big band of
+sheep on our upper range, and Jensen, who has charge of them, admitted
+to me this morning that Moran is behind him."
+
+"Goodness, more sheep! Wherever do they come from?"
+
+"I don't know where they come from, but they can't stay where they are
+unless I go out of business, that's certain." In a few words, he
+explained to her the significance of the movement, and told her of his
+talk with Moran. "I've no use for the man," he concluded, "and if it
+comes to a showdown between us, he need expect no sympathy. I've held
+back as long as I can. I understand better than he does what the crack
+of the first rifle will lead to."
+
+"You have not liked him since you found that he took that snapshot of
+me," she said whimsically. "I didn't mind, but I can't imagine what he
+wanted it for."
+
+Wade's face darkened.
+
+"It was a confounded impertinence, whatever he wanted with it. But my
+dislike of him goes farther back than that."
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked, resting her chin in her hand, and
+looking him straight in the eyes, as she always did to those with whom
+she talked.
+
+"It largely depends on him. Santry--you know how hot-headed he is--would
+run the herders away by force and kill off the sheep. As a last resort,
+of course, we may have to do something like that, but I want to win this
+fight without open violence if we can. A faction war, in the end, would
+be likely to ruin us all."
+
+"You must be careful," the girl declared earnestly. "Moran is not going
+to be an easy man to handle. He seems to have plenty of money, and they
+say here in town that he stands in with the government; that he has some
+sort of 'pull.' He's clever, I think. He'll trick you if he can."
+
+"I'm sure of that, Dorothy, but we're not going to let him. If only...!
+Say, do you know something else that is being said in this town?
+Something that they're saying about me?"
+
+"Something nice?" her tone was archly inquiring.
+
+He leaned forward and lightly rested his hand on her knee, just as he
+might have done with a man friend, and she took as little notice of it.
+His fingers were trembling a little under the stress of the emotion he
+felt.
+
+"They're saying, those who don't like me, I guess, that I'm afraid of
+Moran and his crowd; afraid of a lot of sheep herders. No, of course, my
+friends don't believe it," he hastened to add when she started to
+interrupt. "But it's not doing me any good, especially now that public
+feeling is running so high."
+
+"But you mustn't mind what they say, Gordon. That's part of the courage
+your friends know that you have; to do what you feel to be right, no
+matter what is said."
+
+Her cheeks were glowing with indignation, and he appreciatively patted
+her hand before sitting erect in his chair again. It was no wonder, he
+reflected, in that almost womanless land, that many a cowpuncher rode
+the range by night, seeing her image in every star. The thought that
+each single man, and many a married one, in Crawling Water, would ride
+into the Pit itself to win one of her smiles, had been Wade's comfort,
+even when he was thinking of the possibility of bloodshed between the
+two hostile factions. But now, in the moment of her sympathy for him, he
+felt that he could not be content without some further assurance of her
+safety.
+
+"What you say sounds well, Dorothy, but my pride's working on me, too,
+now. I can't help it. If my friends, who have been good enough to accept
+my leadership so far, should lose their heads and go to it without me, I
+might talk afterward until Kingdom come. I'd never convince anybody that
+I hadn't funked the thing. You spoke a few minutes ago of helping me.
+You can help me a great deal."
+
+Her lovely face instantly blazed with eagerness.
+
+"Can I? How?"
+
+"By promising me that, if it comes to a fight, you and your mother will
+come out to my ranch. You'd be safer there. That is, of course, unless
+you'd prefer to leave Crawling Water altogether."
+
+"Indeed, I shouldn't prefer to leave Crawling Water at this stage of the
+game, and"--she smiled reassuringly--"I'm sure we should be safe enough
+right here whatever happened. But, if you'd feel better about it, we
+would go to the ranch."
+
+"Thanks. I feel better about it already, more free to show my hand. You
+are safe enough here now, of course, and might be clear through to the
+finish; but cheap whiskey has led many a fairly good man astray."
+
+"If only there were some peaceable way out of it all." Her eyes became
+anxious as she thought of what he might have to face. "Can't you
+telegraph to Washington, or something?"
+
+"Washington doesn't know whether Crawling Water is in the United States
+or in Timbuctoo," Wade laughed. "If we had some one in authority right
+here on the ground we might make him understand, but Mahomet will never
+come to these mountains, and they can't go to Mahomet. Why, what's the
+matter?"
+
+His question was prompted by the sudden elation with which she had
+clapped her hands and sprung to her feet.
+
+"How stupid of me, Gordon, to have forgotten." She stood over him with
+shining eyes and eager countenance, as lovely as a Lorelei. "There is an
+official of the United States Government here at this very moment."
+
+"Here? In Crawling Water?" he exclaimed in amazement. "Who is he?"
+
+"Senator Rexhill, Gordon." Wade stared almost vacuously at her as she
+ran on with her news. "He came in with his daughter last night on the
+Sheridan stage. Isn't that glorious? You must go up to see him at once."
+
+"I will, of course," Wade said slowly, trying to catch his mental
+balance. "And with pleasure, too. It's been a long time since I last saw
+either of them."
+
+"You know them--him?" Dorothy hesitated a little over which pronoun to
+use, with the somewhat disturbing reflection that Helen Rexhill was a
+most beautiful and distinguished looking girl. "That will make it all
+the easier," she added generously.
+
+"Of course, Senator Rexhill has no authority of his own in such a
+matter, you know; but if we can get him interested, he may wake up
+Washington in our behalf. Only, I don't see what can have brought him to
+Crawling Water."
+
+"Do you--do you know the daughter well?" Dorothy asked, with feminine
+cogency. "I suppose you met her back East?"
+
+"We've known each other for a number of years." He arose, his face
+expressive of the delight he felt at the Rexhills' presence in town. "We
+used to be good friends. You'll like her. But it's strange they didn't
+tell me of their coming. You'll pardon me if I hurry over to the hotel,
+won't you, Dorothy?"
+
+She gently urged him out of the house.
+
+"Of course! Don't waste a moment, and let me know just as soon as you
+can what the outcome is. I do hope the Senator can settle all this
+trouble."
+
+"I want you to meet them right away," he called, over his shoulder, and
+when he looked back for his answer, she nodded brightly.
+
+But as she turned back into the cottage after watching him swing up the
+street she was not at all sure that she would like Helen Rexhill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+TREACHERY
+
+
+Overjoyed at the prospect of a peaceful solution of the problem which
+confronted him, Wade walked rapidly toward the hotel, happy, too, in the
+thought of meeting Helen Rexhill.
+
+Whether he loved her with the single-hearted devotion which a man should
+feel toward his future wife, he was not sure; but he was confident that
+he did not love any one else. The idea of love in connection with
+Dorothy had never occurred to him; she was his good friend, nothing
+more. To Helen, belonged the romance of his life, fostered in other
+years by the distinct preference she had shown for him. At one time,
+they had been reported engaged, and although the word had never actually
+passed between them, many things more significant than speech had
+contributed to the warm regard which they felt for each other. Beneath
+Helen's reputed coldness of heart lay intense feeling, and on numerous
+occasions she had verged on unwomanliness in baring her moods to Wade,
+in a way that many other men would have been quicker to fathom, and
+perhaps to take advantage of, than he had been.
+
+Now, the knowledge that she was close at hand, and that he might see her
+at any moment, caused his heart to beat rapidly. If to others she had
+been cool, to him she had been ardent, and this warmth had been the one
+thing needful to make her physically captivating. Only when some vital
+cause impends is a young man likely to distinguish between the impulses
+of his body and the cravings of his soul, and no such vital exigency had
+as yet appeared in Wade's life. He wondered if she was as beautiful as
+ever, and began to reproach himself for lack of ardor in his recent
+letters to her, lest he should now be repaid in kind. He wanted to be
+received upon the old, delicious footing, with her in his arms, and her
+lips trembling beneath his.
+
+There were dozens of men in Washington and New York who would almost
+have bartered their souls for such privilege, and Gordon Wade need not
+be decried for his moment of passionate yearning. He was enough of a man
+to put the thought aside, pending his interview with the Senator, which
+was his first purpose. He felt sure that if Senator Rexhill could be
+moved to interest in Crawling Water affairs, his influence would be
+potent enough to secure redress for the cattlemen, and Wade meant to
+pull every string that could bear upon so happy a result. He was glad
+that Mrs. Rexhill had not made the journey, for he was conscious of her
+hostility to him, and he felt that his chances of moving her husband
+were better without her.
+
+When he inquired at the hotel, he was told that the Rexhills were in,
+and he presently found himself shaking hands with the Senator, who
+greeted him with effusive warmth.
+
+"Helen is changing her gown and will be in shortly," the big man
+explained. "I'm mighty glad to see you, Gordon. Only this morning we
+were talking of looking you up. How are you? Sit down, my boy, sit
+down!"
+
+"Senator," Wade began, after they had exchanged commonplaces for a few
+moments. "Glad as I am to see you, on my own account, I am more than
+glad in behalf of my friends, who have not yet had the pleasure of
+meeting you. Your arrival in Crawling Water could not possibly have been
+more opportune. You have come just in time to save us, most likely, from
+an internecine strife which might have ruined us all. I was more glad
+than I can tell you to learn that you were here."
+
+"Indeed, Gordon? I--I am much interested. Perhaps, you will...."
+
+While Wade succinctly sketched the situation, the Senator nervously
+toyed with his eyeglasses, now and then lifting his double chin from the
+confinement of his collar, only to let the mass of flesh settle again
+into inertness. He thought rapidly. Evidently, Moran had not divulged
+the fact that he, the Senator, was concerned in the Crawling Water
+enterprise. Certainly, Moran had done very well in that, and Rexhill
+almost wished now that he had been less precipitate in coming to
+Crawling Water. If he had stayed in the East, his complicity in the
+affair might possibly have been concealed to the very end. He hastily
+considered the advisability of remaining under cover; but now that he
+was on the ground he decided that he had better be open and above
+board, in so far at least as he could be so. It would prove awkward in
+the event of subsequent investigation, if he should be made to appear in
+the guise of a deliberate conspirator.
+
+So, presently, as Wade neared the end of his _resume_ of the situation,
+Rexhill permitted an oleaginous smile to overspread his countenance. At
+the last, he even chuckled.
+
+"It's really a bit amusing. No, no, not what you have said, my boy; but
+what I am about to say to you. You invoke my influence to stop
+these--er--depredations, as you call them, and up to a certain point,
+you shall have my aid, because I seem to see that matters have gone a
+bit beyond bounds. But when you ask me to go to extremes myself, why,
+I'm bound to tell you that I, too, have interests at stake. Why do you
+suppose I came to Crawling Water?"
+
+"I'll admit that puzzled me."
+
+Rexhill looked keenly at Wade, wondering if he were foolish enough to
+believe the trip a sentimental journey, purely. He concluded that the
+young ranchman had too much sense to jump at such a conclusion.
+
+"Well, the reason is...." The Senator leaned ponderously forward,
+twiddling his glasses upon his thumb. "The reason is that I, if you
+please, am the moving spirit behind the company which Race Moran is
+representing here. You see...." He chuckled plethorically again at
+Wade's start of surprise. "It really is a bit amusing."
+
+"Then Moran is your agent?"
+
+"In a sense, yes."
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" The cattleman's tone was rich in disgust, but
+even more keen was his intense disappointment at this failure of his
+hopes. "Would you mind telling me, Senator, just what the purpose of
+your company is?"
+
+"Certainly not. It's no secret," Rexhill replied briskly. "Certain
+parties back East, myself included, as I've told you, have reason to
+believe that a railroad will be put through this valley in the near
+future. This is an extremely rich and productive section, with natural
+resources which will make it heard from some day, so we are anxious to
+obtain a portion of the valley for speculative purposes. If the railroad
+comes through we'll probably build a town somewhere nearby and open up
+an irrigation project we have in mind. If not, we'll use our holdings to
+raise wheat and livestock. The proposition is a sound investment either
+way you look at it."
+
+"A few years ago," said Wade, "I and several others leased upwards of
+twenty thousand acres of grass land here in the valley for stock grazing
+purposes. I, personally, filed a claim on the land I now call my home
+ranch. Our lease, which is direct from the Government, gives us entire
+control of the land so long as we pay for it.
+
+"Besides ourselves, there are a number of ranches in the valley, all of
+them cattle and horse outfits. There has always been a tacit agreement
+that sheep should not be grazed here because sheep and cattle can't live
+on the same range in large numbers. Until Moran came here, we had no
+trouble whatever--the sheep ranchers kept to their own side of the
+mountains and we cattlemen kept to ours. Since Moran has arrived,
+however, the sheep have crossed the Divide in thousands, until the
+entire valley is being overrun with them.
+
+"Only this morning, Moran admitted to me that the sheep men are acting
+with his authority and backing. Senator Rexhill, this is wrong, and your
+agent, or manager, is making a big mistake. Since you are the prime
+mover in this matter, your arrival is even more opportune than I at
+first thought, because you have the power to immediately correct your
+hired man's mistake. So far as we cattle ranchers can learn, Moran is
+bringing sheep in here with the deliberate intention of starving us out
+of our homes. He seems to want our range and he--I'll not say
+you--thinks that such a course is the cheapest way to gain possession.
+He'll find it the dearest in the end. Unless the sheep are moved mighty
+soon, we shall be mixed up in one of the bloodiest little wars in the
+history of the range country. Mark you, I'm no firebrand,--some call me
+too conservative; but we have about reached the limit, and something is
+bound to happen before many days."
+
+Senator Rexhill drummed with his fingers on the table.
+
+"Um! Does Moran know of this attitude in you and your friends, Gordon?"
+
+"Yes. I have just finished telling him of it. But he merely laughs at
+us. We are a long way from the courts here, Senator, and we can't easily
+appeal to the authorities. We are obliged to settle our differences
+among ourselves. Moran knows this as well as I do; but he forgets that
+the thing can work two ways. Each day that the sheep are here in the
+valley they spoil more grass than all our cattle could eat in a week; in
+two months, if the sheep stay, the range will be as bare as a ball-room
+floor. Can you wonder that we ranchers are becoming desperate?"
+
+"It's strange," Rexhill commented, apparently much perturbed. "Moran is
+not the sort to take useless risks. He's dominant, but he's no fool.
+Well, my boy, I'll talk this over with him; in fact, I really came out
+here to see how things were shaping up. If things can be peacefully
+arranged, that's the way we want them. We're not looking for trouble.
+Certainly, you are quite right to object to sheep being run on your
+leased pasture. I'll look into it right away and see what can be done."
+
+"Thank you." Wade was much relieved and he showed it. "I felt sure that
+an appeal to your sense of fair play would not be fruitless. I'm mighty
+glad you are in town."
+
+"Gordon!" a girl's voice exclaimed softly behind him.
+
+"Helen!" He sprang to his feet and turned to seize her hands.
+
+Those who admired Helen Rexhill at Washington social functions never saw
+her look more lovely than she did at this moment of meeting with Wade,
+for the reason that all the skill of the costumer could not beautify her
+so much as the radiance of love now in her face. The dress she wore was
+far from inexpensive, but it was cut with the art which conceals art,
+and to Wade it appeared simple.
+
+Yet his first sensation was one of acute disappointment, which he strove
+rather ineffectually, to conceal. Doubtless, this was because his
+recollection of her had soared beyond the bounds of human perfection.
+But the gown, which she had chosen with so keen a wish to impress him,
+reminded him of the simple frocks which Dorothy Purnell wore, and in
+Helen Rexhill's face there was not the same sweet simplicity of
+expression which distinguished her rival. Flaming love was there, to
+transform her from the suggestion of a lily to that of a pomegranate;
+but it was the love that demands and devours, rather than the constant
+affection which, in giving all, seeks nothing but the privilege of
+loving in return. Without actually analyzing the impression which Helen
+made upon him, Wade felt something of the truth of this, and was
+disappointed in the realization of his dream of her. Materially she was
+too perfect, too exotic, for the setting of Crawling Water.
+
+"Why, you look just the same," she happily exclaimed. "And I? Have I
+changed? Now, be careful what you say! You're not a bit of a courtier."
+
+"Everything changes, doesn't it?" he said, slowly feeling his way.
+"Except the heart?" His answer pleased her.
+
+"Will you listen to that, Father? In the cattle country, too."
+
+"Very pretty," the Senator observed judicially. "Inspired, perhaps."
+
+"How long are you going to stay?" asked Wade.
+
+Helen laughed happily.
+
+"Perhaps that will depend upon how glad I think you are to have us."
+
+She gave him an ardent glance, which he was not proof against, nor would
+any other man have been so.
+
+"No doubt of that." He laughed with her, his disappointment passing
+before the old love spell, which she knew so well how to cast about him.
+"You couldn't have come at a better time, either, for now there is some
+one here who can be company for you. That is," he added lamely, "when
+you're tired of having me around."
+
+"Really?" Helen was a bit chilled by this obvious _faux pas_. Truly,
+despite his worth as a man, Gordon Wade was no courtier. "Who is it?"
+
+"Of course, you haven't heard of her, but you'll like her. She's Miss
+Dorothy Purnell. Everybody does like her."
+
+Helen affected a gayety which she could scarcely have been expected to
+feel. Although she was not socially adept in concealing her real
+feeling, Wade saw nothing wrong. Only the Senator twisted his mouth in a
+grim smile.
+
+"Oh, but I have heard of her; indeed, I have. Mr. Moran sent me a little
+photograph of you both on horseback. Just see how her fame has crossed
+the continent. I shall be charmed to meet her."
+
+A great light dawned upon Wade.
+
+"Then that was what he wanted with the picture," he exclaimed. "We
+wondered at the time. I thought it pretty impudent of him, but, of
+course, if he wanted it just to send to you, that was all right."
+
+Miss Rexhill winced inwardly. In spite of herself, her face expressed a
+certain amount of pique, for the implication was manifestly that if Race
+Moran had wanted the picture for himself, the idea would have been
+intolerable to Wade.
+
+"Oh, yes, quite all right. You seem...." She checked herself, with the
+reproach upon her tongue, reflecting that, after all, she was most fond
+of Wade because of his naturalness. Maxwell Frayne, for instance, was
+without a peer in spinning graceful phrases; but he spun little else.
+
+"But I don't understand why he should send it to you," Wade said, in a
+low tone, as the Senator turned to bend over an open traveling bag on a
+nearby chair. "Is he--do you--?" A slight rigor of jealousy seemed to
+seize upon him, under the witchery of her slow smile.
+
+"Oh, he's been writing to me, and I suppose he thought I'd be
+interested. Of course, I was." She leaned toward him a trifle, a mere
+swaying of her body, like a lily in a breeze, and impulsively he placed
+his big hand over hers.
+
+"He'd better not--he'd better mind his own business!" he said grimly.
+
+She laughed softly, tantalizingly, and being human, Wade kissed her;
+the Senator being still busy with the contents of the bag.
+
+Thus engaged, none of them heard a knock at the door, which finally
+opened before Moran, who, even if he did not actually see the kiss,
+could hardly have failed to suspect it from their embarrassed manner.
+Helen felt sure from his annoyed expression that he had witnessed the
+caress, and she was rather glad of it.
+
+He exchanged a slightly stiff greeting with the rancher, and then while
+Wade and Helen continued their talk, the agent spoke in a carefully
+guarded undertone with his employer. The news he brought, whatever it
+was, seemed significant, for the Senator appeared worried and presently
+turned to Wade.
+
+"You'll not mind if I go over to the office with Moran, Gordon?"
+
+"Certainly not, Senator. Don't let me interrupt you. But what's the use
+of us staying indoors, Helen? The sun has turned now and it's cooler
+out. I'll show you something of our little metropolis. Or, I tell you
+what we'll do! Why not let me take you over and introduce you to the
+only woman you're likely to find congenial in this neighborhood? She'll
+be glad to meet you, I know."
+
+In any other company, Miss Rexhill would probably have resented an
+invitation to call upon a rival, even apart from the ethics of social
+calls, but not before Race Moran. Before him, she would not humble Wade
+in the least degree, if only because to do so would reflect upon her
+own preference between the men. She could only pretend to welcome the
+prospect of going to see Miss Purnell, and she played her part well.
+
+"We may as well stay here now," Rexhill said, when the two young people
+had left the room. "When did all this happen?"
+
+"I just got word of it," Moran answered, a bit excitedly. "Don't you see
+how it plays right into our hands? It's the greatest thing that could
+have happened for us. It might have been made to order."
+
+"Are you sure it wasn't? Are you sure you didn't have the man shot,
+Race?" Senator Rexhill's tone was very dry and he watched his companion
+keenly as he asked the question.
+
+Moran assumed an attitude of indignation.
+
+"Why, Senator...!"
+
+"Tush! I want to know where we stand. By God, Race, you mustn't go too
+far! We're traveling mighty close to the wind as it is."
+
+"But these brawls are likely to happen at any time. This one in
+particular has been brewing for weeks. Why connect me with it,
+unnecessarily?"
+
+"All right. I see your point, of course. The assassin is unknown;
+suspicion naturally falls upon Wade, who is at the head of the cattle
+faction and who, as you say, threatened Jensen only this morning. If we
+can jail him for awhile his party is likely to fall down."
+
+"Exactly!" Moran cried eagerly. "Fortune has placed him right in our
+hands."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to have him arrested," Rexhill announced doggedly,
+"at least, not on any trumped up charge. He's broken my bread, Helen
+likes him. We call him a friend, in fact. I always play square with my
+friends--as far as possible. Strategy is strategy, nobody can quarrel
+with that; but this thing you propose is something more."
+
+Moran, while listening, had restrained his impatience with difficulty.
+He not only had reason on his side, but personal hate as well. His sense
+of triumph in bringing the news to Rexhill had not been for their mutual
+cause alone; it had seemed to Moran to point toward the end of his
+rivalry with Wade for the love of Helen. To have the fruits of victory
+snatched from him, because of a sentiment of friendship, was almost more
+than the agent could stand for.
+
+"Good God, Senator," he burst out, "don't throw this chance away! Think
+what it means to us! We are running close to the wind, and until this
+moment, it's been a toss up whether we'd get out of here with our lives;
+whether I would, at any rate. I've run a mighty big bluff on these
+cattle people, but I did it because it was the only way. I've held my
+own so far, but when they find out that it's not farm land we're after,
+but ore--why, Senator, there'll be no holding them at all! With Wade at
+their head and forty miles between us and the cars, where would we get
+off? We'd be lucky if we didn't swing from the limb of a tree. Do you
+suppose Wade would remember then that he'd broken your bread? I'll bet
+dollars to doughnuts he wouldn't.
+
+"But"--his voice sank to a significant whisper--"if we land him in
+jail...."
+
+"His friends here would get him out," interposed the Senator, nervously
+wiping his glasses.
+
+"Then Uncle Sam would put him in again, with a troop of cavalry to keep
+order here, and _that_ would be another advantage gained for our side.
+No, sir, once we get him in jail, we've got the law with us and against
+him, don't forget that. Then the cattle party would lay mighty low. Wade
+has been their leader right along. I tell you, it's the only way, and
+you know what it means to us--to you."
+
+"You don't have to tell me that," rasped Rexhill. "If we fail to put
+this through, I'm a ruined man."
+
+Moran's eyes gleamed.
+
+"Well, then, it's the only way, unless--unless...."
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"Unless your daughter marries him, and it all comes into the family."
+Upon that point, Moran wished to know just where he stood.
+
+"I've never made a dollar through my daughter yet, and I never will,"
+said the Senator grimly. "I'm not selling my own flesh and blood. I'll
+rot in the poor-house first."
+
+Moran gently breathed his relief. He would have fought to the fullest
+extent of his power to have aborted such a marriage, but if the Senator
+had favored it, he knew that it would have been difficult to prevent.
+
+"Wade has a foreman he's mighty fond of, an old man named Santry," the
+agent remarked, trying another tack.
+
+"That's a horse of another color." Rexhill appeared aroused, at last. "I
+remember the old fellow. He must be nearly ready for the bone yard by
+this time anyhow. Saddle it on him, if you can. Wade's devoted to him.
+He'd do as much for Santry as for himself, maybe more."
+
+"I've heard about that kind of devotion," the agent sneered, "but I've
+yet to see a sample of it."
+
+"Well, you may before long. Your first proposition's no good anyway. It
+would simply further antagonize Wade's friends. It's quite possible,
+though, that Santry might have been mixed up in such a brawl. Get him
+arrested, and then we'll let Wade know, gradually, that our influence is
+at his command, for a price. I've no objection to that--none at all. By
+Heaven, we've got to do something."
+
+"We'll do it all right. I'll have a warrant sworn out."
+
+"Meanwhile, Race, go easy with those sheep. Wade was telling me about
+them, and as a matter of strategy, I had to pretend that I would help
+him. Move them across the Divide until we see what comes of this Santry
+affair. I can't go too heavy with the boy right at the start."
+
+"All right." Moran arose. "The sheep don't count much now anyway."
+
+"I don't mind saying, Race," Senator Rexhill observed, a trifle
+pompously, "that you've done pretty well so far. If you stick to it,
+you'll not find me ungrateful when the battle is over. You'll be
+entitled to your reward."
+
+Moran hesitated, seeming to summon courage to say something.
+
+"Maybe you've guessed the reward I'll ask, Senator," he said slowly.
+"There are some things that mean more to a man than mere money. I'm
+thinking of Miss Helen."
+
+Rexhill found some difficulty in placing his gaze so that it would
+appear to naturally fall elsewhere than on Moran. He was mortified by a
+sense of shame that he could not deal squarely with this aspirant for
+his daughter's hand. He had been sincere in saying that he would never
+barter her to further his own interests, but so much hung in the balance
+here that until the issue really arose he feared to pass upon it. He
+felt himself stultified by this truth.
+
+"I haven't spoken to her, Senator, because the time has not come, and
+just now she's too much occupied elsewhere, perhaps. But all my hopes
+are fixed on her, sir, and when the time does come, I trust you'll not
+oppose them."
+
+Rexhill coughed to hide what his face might otherwise have shown.
+
+"Well, Race," he said, with a choking sensation that was new to him,
+"you know what I think of you. As for the rest, well, that will depend
+entirely upon Helen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MURDER
+
+
+"How do you think you'd like to live in Crawling Water?"
+
+Wade looked whimsically at Helen, as she picked her way with the grace
+of a kitten through the dust of the main street. Carefully though she
+walked, her shoes and the bottom of her skirt were covered with dust,
+and gray with it.
+
+"I shouldn't like it," she said, with a little moue. "I don't see why
+you stay here. You aren't going to always, are you?"
+
+"I reckon it's likely."
+
+"Not--for always?" She had stopped and was looking up into his face with
+delicious dismay. "That would be awful."
+
+"Most of my friends, and all of my business interests are here. Besides,
+I have a kind of pride in growing up with this country. Back in the
+East, things have been settled for so long that a man's only a cog in a
+machine. Out here, a fellow has a sense of ownership, even in the hills.
+I think it's because he gets closer to the soil, until he comes to love
+it and to be almost a part of it."
+
+"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the girl. "That sounds fine, but the reality isn't
+up to my anticipation of it."
+
+Wade laughed in his hearty way.
+
+"That's only because you haven't been here long enough, Helen."
+
+"There are things that are splendid about the West," she generously
+admitted. "Its vastness and wholesomeness, and especially its men. I'm
+sure that's why I first liked you, Gordon, because you were
+_different_--not like the general run of young men in the East."
+
+"Oh, there are lots of good men East, too."
+
+"Not so very many. At least, I have seen very few who were at all worth
+while. There's one, Maxwell Frayne, who has been plaguing me for months;
+but I don't care for him--much." She was closely watching him as she
+spoke, and she smiled when he started.
+
+"You'd better not."
+
+"But if I really thought you meant to stay here all the time, I'm sure
+I'd love him devotedly. Now"--she eyed him mischievously--"I think this
+would be a nice place to call home, don't you know, just for fun, and
+then spend most of the time in New York and London. See that man staring
+at me!"
+
+"How, staring at you?"
+
+Wade turned and looked in the direction she indicated, surprised at the
+suggestion that she was being annoyed in Crawling Water, where chivalry
+to women ran high.
+
+"Oh, he didn't mean anything, I daresay."
+
+"They're friends of mine, and curious, perhaps." He referred to a group
+of cattlemen across the street, who did seem to be staring and talking,
+with some indecision in their attitude. "I wonder if anything can have
+happened? Oh, I guess not. Well, what would I do in London?"
+
+"I didn't say anything about _you_ being in London, did I?"
+
+"Well, it's safe to say that where you were, I'd want to be, at any
+rate. Haven't I made two trips to Chicago for no real reason except to
+see you?" he demanded, fast slipping into the thralldom of her
+fascination.
+
+She viewed him through half-closed eyes, knowing that the pose has
+always allured him.
+
+"Don't you think you'd be kept busy looking after me?" she playfully
+asked. "Seriously, I hate an idle man, but I don't know what you'd find
+to do there. What a question. You'd have to have investments that would
+take you over every year or two."
+
+"Now you're trying to make a city man of me," he said, half in jest.
+"Besides,"--a dogged note crept into his voice--"I'd have the right to
+expect something of you, wouldn't I?"
+
+"Not the right, but the privilege," she answered softly.
+
+"This is where the Purnells live." He turned her into the pathway to the
+door. "This is what I'd like, a neat little home like this, with a
+couple of kiddies and some dogs. Then I could spend my out-door time at
+the ranch."
+
+Before Helen could reply to this, Mrs. Purnell appeared on the threshold
+to welcome them, but to Wade's surprise, she told them that Dorothy was
+not there.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Helen, with intense relief.
+
+"I don't know where she went either," the mother went on. "She was out
+for a few minutes soon after you left, Gordon. Then she came back and
+called out something to me, but I didn't catch what she said. Before I
+knew what she was doing she had saddled her pony and ridden off. But
+come right in. I don't think she'll be gone long."
+
+They entered and Helen, graciously choosing to overlook the fact that
+this was evidently Wade's second visit there within a very short time,
+sought to impress him with her tactfulness to Mrs. Purnell. She would
+have been amazed could she have guessed that she was actually arousing
+him to resentment. He felt, somehow, that she was patronizing their
+hostess, who was a woman of refinement, even if she lacked the
+artificiality of manner that Helen affected. He was sincerely glad when
+the visit came to an end.
+
+"You must come again," said Mrs. Purnell, in a spirit of friendliness.
+
+"So glad to have met you," Helen replied. "I hope to have the pleasure
+of meeting your daughter, too, before we leave Crawling Water."
+
+"They're splendid women, both of them," Wade remarked, as they walked
+back toward the center of the town.
+
+"Oh, yes," Helen agreed, without much spirit. "Nice, comfortable home
+people, I suppose."
+
+"Best kind in the world."
+
+"Gordon!" Helen laughed good-naturedly, facing him as she walked. "What
+in the world has been the matter with you to-day? We usually get on so
+well together, and to-day, if I do say it, only my unwillingness to
+quarrel has kept us from it."
+
+"Oh, no!" He smiled, too. "Maybe that New York and London business
+rubbed me the wrong way; that's all. I have plenty of faults, but I'm
+loyal to my friends. I don't like even hints that they aren't the best
+friends a man could have."
+
+"Surely, I haven't...."
+
+"Maybe not. Maybe I imagined it. But Crawling Water is a lot more real
+than London, to my way of thinking."
+
+"You haven't been to London."
+
+"I'm not likely to go, either," he retorted.
+
+Her red lips curled in a way that seemed to indicate that she thought he
+would go. Already, she was planning to get him out of Crawling Water and
+beyond the influence of Dorothy Purnell.
+
+As they turned into the main street again, a man leaving a group near
+the livery stable, and mounting a horse, rode toward them.
+
+"I wonder what's up now?" Wade muttered, recognizing the horseman as one
+of the Trowbridge outfit.
+
+"Mr. Wade. Just a minute." With the grace of a Centaur, the rider swung
+his mount in beside them and doffed his hat. "Two of Jensen's herders
+have been shot. I thought you ought to know about it."
+
+"What?" The ranch owner's jaw dropped at the news.
+
+"It's true, sir. Word just came in."
+
+"Thanks, Barker." Wade pulled himself together, as the restless pony
+raced back to the barn. "I must go, Helen," he went on, turning to the
+girl at his side. "There's been fighting--murder, perhaps--out near the
+ranch. Santry will need me." He was uneasy lest the old plainsman should
+have been concerned in the shooting.
+
+"You'll take me to the hotel?"
+
+"Of course, yes! Would you mind walking a little faster?" They quickened
+their pace. "I'm sorry, Helen; but I must hurry to the ranch." Even at
+that moment he could not but reflect that there would have been no need
+to take Dorothy home. Somehow, the ways of the East seemed to fit less
+and less aptly into the life of Crawling Water.
+
+On his way to the livery stable after his horse, Wade did some rapid
+thinking. Santry might have been concerned in the shooting, but his
+employer thought not. The old fellow had promised to stay at home, and
+his word was as good as another man's bond. It was too bad, certainly,
+that the thing should have happened just when Senator Rexhill's promised
+aid had seemed in a fair way to settle the controversy. Now, the whole
+thing was more upset than ever, for Moran and Rexhill could hardly be
+blamed if they backed up their own men, especially if the herders had
+been blameless, as was probably the case. Yet if the Senator did this,
+Wade knew that a bloody little war would be the outcome.
+
+"Where's Trowbridge, Barker?" he asked of the cowpuncher, whom he found
+waiting at the stable.
+
+"At the ranch, I think."
+
+Wade nodded. Ten minutes later he was in the saddle and headed for the
+mountains, just as dusk began to fall. The cool night air, blowing
+against his face as he reached the higher levels, was delightfully
+refreshing after the heat of the day. He took off his hat and opened the
+neck of his shirt to the breeze, which revived his energies like wine.
+He knew that as he felt, so his horse felt, and he was glad, for the
+animal would have to make a fast, hard trip. At the crest of the first
+hills, before dipping into the valley, he turned for an instant in his
+saddle to look backward over his trail toward the twinkling lights of
+Crawling Water in the distance below.
+
+He had covered some five miles of his journey, to no other sound than
+the occasional note of some bird, when his quick ears caught the thud of
+a horse's feet on the trail ahead, with now and then a sharp clatter as
+the animal slipped on the stones. Wade slowed his own horse down to a
+walk, and eased his Colt in its holster. He expected to meet some
+harmless wayfarer, but, under the circumstances, it was just as well to
+be prepared for trouble. Soon, however, he smiled to himself, for
+whoever rode toward him made too much noise for any but a peaceful
+mission. The other horse, too, had been slowed down and the two riders
+approached each other with such caution that the rancher finally became
+impatient and pressed forward recklessly.
+
+Out of the night the stranger came on, still slowly, until a turn in the
+trail brought them face to face.
+
+"Don't shoot!" said a woman's contralto. "I'm a friend."
+
+"Dorothy!" Wade ejaculated, at once recognizing the voice, although he
+could not see the girl distinctly in the darkness. "In Heaven's name,
+what are you doing out here?"
+
+"Is it you, Gordon?" In her relief, she laughed softly as she pulled her
+pony up side of him. "I was a little scared for a second or two. I've
+awfully bad news, I'm afraid," she added, immediately serious. "I've
+been trying to find you. I went to the hotel and they told me you'd gone
+somewhere."
+
+"Miss Rexhill and I went to call on you."
+
+"You did? If I'd only known. I've been clear out to the ranch."
+
+"Is Santry there?" In his anxiety he forgot momentarily the loneliness
+of her long ride. "They say some of Jensen's men have been shot up; and
+I'm anxious to find out what Bill knows."
+
+"That's just what I want to tell you. I heard of the shooting before I
+left town. Whoa, Gypsy!" She reined up her pony, nervously, for it would
+not stand still. Wade seized the animal's bridle and quieted it. "I
+don't know if he's there or not," the girl went on. "I couldn't see. The
+ranch house is full of men."
+
+"Men? What men?" Wade demanded sharply.
+
+"Race Moran's crowd. They went out to arrest Santry. The Sheriff is with
+them. I heard part of it in town, and that's why I tried to find you."
+Wade groaned. "I peeped in at a window, and when I could see neither
+you nor Santry I slipped away without being seen and took the old trail
+back because it was shorter."
+
+"Lord, what a mess!" Wade ground his teeth savagely. "Poor old Bill was
+all alone there and they must have surprised him. But I don't see why
+Barker didn't mention the posse when he told me of the shooting?"
+
+"He didn't know of it, probably. They left town very quietly. I happened
+to be out back of the house and I heard one of them talking as they rode
+by."
+
+"Good Lord!" Wade's head drooped. "I told Bill to stay at the ranch, and
+he promised me...."
+
+"I don't believe he shot Jensen at all," Dorothy declared, with spirit.
+"Yes, it was Jensen himself and one of his herders. Both in the
+back--killed."
+
+"Bill Santry never shot any man in the back," Wade declared, in a
+relieved tone. "If you're sure of the facts, Santry will come clear all
+right."
+
+"It's just a devilish scheme of Moran's, that's all, to put it on you
+and Santry. I'm sure it is. He hates you both. Whoa, Gypsy!" She reined
+the little mare in again. "No, it's all right, Gordon. I can manage
+her," she remonstrated, as he reached for the bridle once more.
+
+"So that's their game, eh? By Heaven, I more than half believe you're
+right." His face grew ugly with rage. "Dorothy," he continued grimly,
+"thanks are useless. You're a brick, that's all. Do one thing more for
+us, will you?"
+
+"Anything," she replied simply, her eyes shining with devotion to him,
+but he was too overwrought to read them in the darkness.
+
+"When you get back to town get word to some of the men for me. You may
+meet them on the way out, if not they'll be around the barn. Tell them
+to meet me at the big pine, on the old trail."
+
+His horse had grown restless and now he allowed it to have its head; he
+was moving past her when she clutched his arm.
+
+"Gordon!"
+
+She loved him dearly, too dearly to let him know how well until he
+should speak, if he ever did speak; but above them was the starlit sky
+and over them hovered the wondrous spirit of the Western night. Her
+pulse was beating, too, to the call of danger, and despite the control
+which she had over her nerves, she was just a bit hysterical beneath the
+surface. She knew that ahead of him was a little army of hostile men,
+and already that day two men had been killed. So, tremulously, she held
+on to his sleeve, until she stopped him.
+
+"What are you going to do? You can't do anything alone against so many.
+They may kill you."
+
+Her sympathy was very sweet to him and he warmly squeezed the little
+hand which had held him back.
+
+"Don't you be afraid, little girl," he said tenderly. "I shall not get
+hurt if I can help it."
+
+"Wait until the others come, won't you?"
+
+"Surely," he answered readily, touched by the anxiety in her voice. "I'm
+going to look around--just as you did--on the quiet. You wouldn't hold
+me back, where you went in, now would you?"
+
+"No--!" She smiled a little into his face.
+
+"That's the stuff! Then I'm coming back to the big pine, and you'll send
+the boys there. They'll not put Santry in jail if we can prevent them.
+They've played their last card to-night. It's war from now on."
+
+"All right, Gordon, I'll go." Her voice was full of courage again; the
+moment of weakness had passed. "Remember now, take good care of
+yourself."
+
+"You bet," he retorted cheerily, and as her mare moved ahead, he caught
+her arm as she had caught his. She went quite limp in her saddle and
+swayed toward him, but he merely added: "You're a wonder, Dorothy."
+
+He released her then, and with a wave of her hand she disappeared into
+the night. Not until she was beyond recall did he realize that he might
+have kissed her; that she had wanted him to kiss her, for the first time
+since they had known each other. He sat in abstraction for several
+moments before he shook the reins in his hand and his horse sprang
+forward.
+
+"I've kissed one girl to-day," he muttered aloud, "and I reckon that's
+enough."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE OLD TRAIL
+
+
+For another mile Wade followed the main road and then diverged sharply
+to the left into what was known as the old, or upper, trail. This had
+formerly been the valley road until made dangerous by a wash-out a year
+or two previous. In the following spring the wash-out had been partially
+repaired, but the going was still so rough that the new road was
+widened, and had been used by preference ever since. The old trail,
+however, was nearly four miles the shorter of the two, and was still
+traveled in cases of emergency, although to do so at speed and in the
+dark was hazardous.
+
+Wade's promise to Dorothy to take good care of himself had been made
+with mental reservation, for, obsessed by his anxiety over Santry, the
+young ranchman was in no mood to spare either himself or his horse. His
+going was marked by a constant shower of stones, sometimes behind him,
+as the wiry cayuse climbed like a mountain goat; but as often in front,
+as horse and rider coasted perilously down some declivity. The horse
+sweated and trembled with nervousness, as a frightened child might, but
+never refused to attempt what its master demanded of it. One might
+almost say that there existed a human understanding between man and
+beast as to the importance of their errand; a common impulse, which
+urged them onward.
+
+When Wade reflected that Dorothy, too, had come over that trail by night
+in his interest, he thought her more than ever a wonderful girl. Even to
+one born and raised in the cattle country, the trip would have been
+difficult; but then he realized that Dorothy seemed much like a
+ranch-bred girl in her courage and frank womanliness, nor was she any
+less charming on that account. After all, he thought, women paid too
+highly for little accomplishments, if to gain them they had to sacrifice
+the vital points of character. He could not help but contrast Helen's
+insistence that she should be escorted back to the hotel with Dorothy's
+brave ride alone, and while he was too loyal to Helen Rexhill to blame
+her in this respect, the thing made a deep impression upon him.
+
+The way was long, and he had time for many thoughts. It was natural, in
+the still night, with Dorothy only a little while gone, that he should
+think tenderly of her, for this cost Santry nothing. For Santry, Wade
+was reserving not thought but action. He was making up his mind that if
+Moran had taken the foreman into custody on a trumped up charge of
+murder, the agent should feel the power of a greater tribunal than any
+court in the locality--the law of the Strong Arm! Behind him in this,
+the ranchman knew, was the whole of the cattle faction, and since war
+had been thrust upon them he would not stop until the end came, whatever
+it might be. His conscience was clean, for he had exerted himself
+manfully in the cause of peace, even to the point where his own
+character had suffered, and now the hour of reprisal was at hand.
+
+He rode, at last, over the top of the Divide and into the little draw
+that led up to the ranch buildings, in the windows of which lights
+gleamed. With an imprecation at sight of them, he tied his horse to a
+post, and, revolver in hand, crept toward the house as quietly as a
+Sioux.
+
+Except for the light, there was no sign of life about the place, and
+Wade craftily advanced into the deeper shadows close to the wall of the
+house. Taking off his hat, so that the crown might not betray him, he
+peeped through a window. What he saw made him clinch his fingers and
+grit his teeth in rage.
+
+Inside were half a dozen men, besides three of his own ranch hands who
+lay trussed up like turkeys in one corner of the room; doubtless they
+had been surprised by the posse before they had opportunity to run or
+put up a fight. Moran was there, stretched comfortably on Wade's own
+cot, smoking a cigar. Once, he looked directly toward the window at
+which the watcher had placed himself, but the latter did not move.
+Instead, he fingered his gun and waited; he was not sure that he really
+wanted to avoid detection; if it came, Moran would pay, and the rest, at
+the moment, did not seem to matter. He had forgotten Dorothy entirely.
+
+But Santry was not there and this fact puzzled Wade. The Sheriff was not
+there either, and presently it occurred to the cattleman that a part of
+the posse, with Santry, might have returned to Crawling Water over the
+main trail. Probably Moran, with the rest, was waiting for him. The
+mere thought of Santry already on his way to jail filled Wade with a
+baffling sense of rage, and creeping from the house, he examined the
+surrounding turf by the faint rays of the moon. It was badly cut up by
+the feet of many horses, and several minutes passed before Wade was
+really sure that a number of mounted men had taken the trail back to
+town. Satisfied of this at length, he untied his horse and swung into
+the saddle.
+
+Before riding away he considered the advisability of driving off the
+horses belonging to Moran's party, but there would still be others in
+the corral, and besides their absence, when discovered, would give
+warning of the impending attack. On second thought, however, he quietly
+made his way to the corral and caught a fresh horse of his own. When he
+had saddled it he set out over the old trail for the big pine.
+
+When he reached the rendezvous his men were not there; but knowing that
+he must meet them if he followed the road from there on he did not stop.
+He came upon them in a few minutes, riding toward him at full speed,
+with Tim Sullivan in the van, too drunk to stand erect, but able to
+balance himself on a horse's back, drunk or sober.
+
+"We come acrost Santry and the Sheriff a while back," explained Big Bob
+Lawson, one of Wade's own punchers. "They must be in town by now. We was
+aimin' to light into 'em, but Santry wouldn't hear of it. Course, we
+took our orders from him same as usual. He said to tell you that you
+wanted him to keep quiet, an' that's what he aimed to do."
+
+"He said we wasn't to tell you that he didn't shoot them Swedes," put in
+another of the men.
+
+"What?" Wade demanded sharply.
+
+"He said--hic!" broke in Tim Sullivan, with drunken gravity. "He
+said--hic!--that if you didn't know that without--hic!--bein' told, you
+wasn't no friend of his'n, an'--hic!--you could go to hell."
+
+"Shut up, you drunken fool!" Lawson snapped out.
+
+"Jensen and his herder were shot in the back, they say. That clears
+Santry," Wade declared, and sat for some moments in deep thought, while
+the men waited as patiently as they could. "Lawson," he said, at last.
+"You're in charge for the present. Take the boys to the big pine and
+camp there quietly until I come back. I'm going into town."
+
+"Hadn't you better take us with you, boss? We'll stick. We're for you
+an' Bill Santry an' ag'in' these--sheepherders, whenever you say the
+word."
+
+"That's--hic--what we are!" Sullivan hiccoughed.
+
+Wade shook his head.
+
+"No. You wait for me at the pine. You'll have to rustle your grub the
+best way you can. I may not get back until to-morrow--until this
+evening--it's morning now. But wait until I come. There will be plenty
+for you to do later on and there is no use of you going back to town
+with me. It might get you into worse trouble than you're headed for
+already, and what I've got to do, I can do alone."
+
+Wheeling his horse, he rode off toward Crawling Water.
+
+That he could take his men with him, storm the jail and release Santry,
+Wade did not doubt, but to do so would be to bring each of the men into
+open conflict with the law, a responsibility which he was resolved to
+bear alone. Then, too, because his long ride had cooled him somewhat, he
+intended to make one more appeal to the Senator. Possibly, Moran had
+exceeded his instructions, and if this were so, it was no more than just
+that Rexhill, who had seemed to evince a willingness to be helpful,
+should have the opportunity to disown the act of his agent. Besides, if
+Santry could be peaceably released, he would be freed of the charge
+hanging over him, which would not be the case if he were taken from the
+jail by strategy or violence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With haggard countenance and inflamed eyes, Wade bore little resemblance
+to his normal self when he again appeared before the Senator, who
+received him in his dressing-gown, being just out of bed. Rexhill
+listened with a show of sympathy to the cattleman's story, but evidently
+he was in a different mood from the day before.
+
+"My boy, your friendship for your foreman is leading you astray. Your
+faith in him, which is natural and does you credit, is blinding you to
+an impartial view of the case. Why not let the law take its course? If
+Santry is innocent his trial will prove it. At any rate, what can I do?"
+
+"Senator--" Wade spoke with intense weariness. "Only yesterday you
+offered to help us. The situation, as I explained it then, is unchanged
+now, except for the worse. Bill Santry is free of any complicity in
+Jensen's death. I am positive of it. He sent me word that he had not
+left the ranch, and he would not lie to save himself from hanging.
+Besides, the men were shot in the back, and that is absolute proof that
+Santry didn't do it."
+
+"Mere sentiment, Gordon; mere sentiment. Proof? Pooh!"
+
+Rexhill's slightly contemptuous tone worked upon Wade in his exhausted,
+overwrought condition, and stung him. A strange look of cunning appeared
+in his eyes, as he leaned across the table which separated them.
+
+"Senator, Moran made me an offer the other day for my land. If--I accept
+that offer, will you exert your influence in Santry's behalf?"
+
+Coming so swiftly upon his planning, the prospect of such signal success
+was so gratifying to Rexhill that only in halting speech could he
+maintain a show of decorous restraint. His countenance expressed
+exultant relief, as well it might, since he seemed to see himself
+snatched out of the jaws of ruin.
+
+"Why, Gordon, I--Of course, my boy, if you were to show such a generous
+spirit as that, I--er--should feel bound...." The sense of his remarks
+was lost in the crash of Wade's fist upon the table.
+
+"Damn you!" The cattleman was beyond himself with fatigue, rage, and a
+rankling sense of injustice. "They told me that was your game. I
+believed it of Moran, but I thought you were square. So you're that
+sort, too, eh? Well, may you rot in hell before you get my land, you
+robber! Now listen to me." He waved his hand in the direction of the
+street. "Out there's a hundred men--real men--who're waiting the word to
+run you out of this country, you and Moran, too, and by God we'll do
+it--we'll do it--and we'll begin right away!" Again his heavy fist
+crashed down on the table "Never mind Bill Santry"--the instinct of
+discretion was gaining in Wade.--"He can stay where he is for the
+present. First, we'll attend to you pirates--then we'll see."
+
+He stopped suddenly at sight of Helen, who attracted by the noise, had
+entered the room, and stood before him in a filmy negligee.
+
+"What is the matter, Gordon?" she demanded anxiously.
+
+"I beg your pardon." Wade spoke awkwardly, unashamed of himself, except
+for her. "I'm worn out and I--I lost my temper."
+
+"Will you--er--leave this room!" The Senator was beginning to pull
+himself together. It was the first time he had ever been ragged in such
+a way, and his composure had suffered; he spoke now with more than his
+usual pomposity.
+
+"I will," Wade answered curtly, as he turned on his heel and departed.
+
+The Senator, puffing slightly, fiddled with his glasses.
+
+"Your young friend has seen fit to accuse me of--of--" For the life of
+him, he could not at once say of just what he had been accused, unless
+he allowed self-accusation to prompt his words. "Some sheepherders have
+been murdered, I believe," he went on, "and Wade seems to think that
+Moran and I are implicated."
+
+"You!" his daughter exclaimed; evidently her amazement did not extend to
+Moran.
+
+"Preposterous nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, of course." Helen walked to the window and stood looking down into
+the street. "I'm afraid Gordon hasn't improved since we saw him last,"
+she added, finally. "He seems quite a different person from the man I
+used to know. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Crush him!" The Senator's lips set in a thin, white line, as his hand
+descended on the table on the spot where Wade's fist had fallen. "This,
+apparently, is his gratitude to me for my interest in him. Now I intend
+to show him the other side of me."
+
+"Certainly, no one could blame you for punishing him. Oh, everything
+between him and me is quite over," said the girl, with a peculiar smile.
+"He's a perfect bear."
+
+"I'm glad you feel that way about it, Helen." Her father's set lips
+relaxed into a responsive smile. "You couldn't be my daughter and not
+have some sense."
+
+"Have I any?" Helen naively asked.
+
+She was gazing out of the window again, and to her mind's eye the dusty,
+squalid street became a broad highway, with jewelers' shops on either
+side, and _modistes_, and other such charming things, just as they are
+found in New York, or--Paris!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HIGHER THAN STATUTE LAW
+
+
+Wade descended the stairs of the hotel and went into the barroom, fuming
+with rage and chagrin because Helen had seen him in such a temper. Like
+most men of action, he took pride in his self-control, which seldom
+failed him, but the villainy of the Senator's attitude had momentarily
+mastered his patience.
+
+Gathered about the bar were a number of men whom he knew, but beyond a
+nod here and there he took no notice of them, and went to sit down alone
+at a small table in the corner. His friends respected his desire to be
+left alone, although several eyed him curiously and exchanged
+significant remarks at his appearance. They seemed to be of the opinion
+that, at last, his fighting blood had been aroused, and now and then
+they shot approving glances in his direction.
+
+"Whiskey," Wade called to the bartender, and a bottle and glass were
+placed on the table in front of him.
+
+With a steady hand the ranchman poured out and quickly swallowed two
+stiff drinks of the fiery liquor, although he was not ordinarily a
+drinking man. The fact that he drank now showed his mental state more
+clearly than words could have expressed it. Searching in his pockets, he
+found tobacco and papers and rolled and lighted a cigarette. Nothing
+could be done for Santry until night, and meanwhile he intended to get
+something to eat and take the sleep that he needed to fit himself for
+the task ahead of him. He ordered a steak, which on top of the whiskey
+put new life into him.
+
+The more he thought of his outburst of temper before Helen the more it
+annoyed him, for he realized that he had "bitten off a bigger wad than
+he could chew," as Bill Santry would have expressed it. Rascal though
+the Senator was, so far as he was concerned, Wade felt that his hands
+were tied on Helen's account. For her sake, he could not move against
+her father in a country where the average man thought of consequences
+after the act rather than before it. In a sense Wade felt that he stood
+sponsor for Crawling Water in the hospitality which it offered Helen,
+and he could not bring peril down on her head.
+
+But as for Moran and his hirelings, that was a different matter! When
+the ranchman thought of Moran, no vengeance seemed too dire to fit his
+misdeeds. In that direction he would go to the limit, and he only hoped
+that he might get his hands on Moran in the mix-up. He still looked upon
+his final visit to Rexhill as a weakness, but it had been undertaken
+solely on Santry's account. It had failed, and no one now could expect
+tolerance of him except Helen. If the posse was still at the ranch, when
+he and Santry returned there at the head of their men, they would attack
+in force, and shoot to kill if necessary.
+
+He learned from Lem Trowbridge, who presently joined him at the table,
+that the posse would probably still be there, for the report in town
+was that Moran had taken possession of the property and meant to stay
+there.
+
+"He does, eh?" Wade muttered grimly. "Well, he may, but it will be with
+his toes up. I'm done, Lem. By Heaven, it's more than flesh and blood
+can stand!"
+
+"It sure is! We're with you, Gordon. Your men were over at my place a
+few hours ago. We grubbed them and loaned them all the guns we could
+spare. I sent over my new Winchester and a belt of shells for you."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+"That's all right. You're more than welcome to all the help I can give
+you, not only against Moran and his gang, but against Rexhill. If you
+like, we'll run him out of town while you're putting the fear of God
+into Moran. Lord! I sure would like to go back to the ranch with you,
+but it's your own quarrel and I won't butt in."
+
+Wade briefly explained his attitude toward the Rexhills and added that
+their cause would not be helped by violence toward the Senator, who was
+a big man at Washington, and might stir the authorities into action on
+his behalf if he could prove personal abuse. The noise that would be
+made by such a happening might drown out the justice of the cattlemen's
+claim.
+
+"Well, that's true, too," Trowbridge admitted. "I can see the point all
+right. What we want to do is to get something 'on' the Senator. I mean
+something sure--something like this Jensen shooting."
+
+Wade nodded slowly.
+
+"That's the idea, but I'm afraid we can't do it, Lem. I haven't a doubt
+but that Moran is mixed up in the killing, but I hardly believe Rexhill
+is. Anyhow, they've probably covered their tracks so well that we'll
+never be able to connect them with it."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. You can't always tell what time'll bring to light."
+Trowbridge lowered his voice. "What's your idea about Santry? Do you
+want help there?"
+
+"No." Wade spoke with equal caution. "I believe I can manage all right
+alone. The Sheriff will probably be looking for us to rush the jail, but
+he won't expect me to come alone. Bat Lewis goes on duty as the relief,
+about nine o'clock. I mean to beat him to it, and if the Sheriff opens
+up for me I'll be away with Santry before Bat appears. But I must get
+some sleep, Lem."
+
+The two men arose.
+
+"Well, good luck to you, Gordon." Trowbridge slapped his friend on the
+shoulder, and they separated.
+
+"Frank, can you let me have a bed?" Wade asked of the hotel proprietor,
+a freckled Irishman.
+
+"Sure; as many as you want."
+
+"One will do, Frank; and another thing," the ranchman said guardedly.
+"I'll need an extra horse to-night, and I don't want to be seen with him
+until I need him. Can you have him tied behind the school-house a little
+before nine o'clock?"
+
+"You bet I can!" The Irishman slowly dropped an eyelid, for the
+school-house was close by the jail.
+
+Wade tumbled into the bed provided for him and slept like a log, having
+that happy faculty of the healthy man, of being able to sleep when his
+body needed it, no matter what impended against the hour of awakening.
+
+When he did wake up, the afternoon was well advanced, and after another
+hearty meal he walked over to the Purnells' to pass the time until it
+was late enough for him to get to work.
+
+"Now, Gordon will tell you I'm right," Mrs. Purnell proclaimed
+triumphantly, when the young man entered the cottage. "I want Dorothy to
+go with me to call on Miss Rexhill, and she doesn't want to go. The
+idea! When Miss Rexhill was nice enough to call on us first."
+
+Mrs. Purnell set much store upon her manners, as the little Michigan
+town where she was born understood good breeding, and she had not been
+at all annoyed by Helen Rexhill's patronage, which had so displeased
+Wade. To her mind the Rexhills were very great people, and great people
+were to be expected to bear themselves in lofty fashion. Dorothy had
+inherited her democracy from her father and not from her mother, who,
+indeed, would have been disappointed if Helen Rexhill appeared any less
+than the exalted personage she imagined herself to be.
+
+"Oh, I'd like to meet her well enough, only...." Dorothy stopped,
+unwilling to say before Wade that she did not consider the Rexhills
+sufficiently good friends of his, in the light of recent developments,
+for them to be friends of hers.
+
+"Of course, go," he broke in heartily. "She's not responsible for what
+her father does in the way of business, and I reckon she'd think it
+funny if you didn't call."
+
+"There now!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed triumphantly.
+
+"All right, I'll go." In her heart Dorothy was curious to meet the other
+woman and gauge her powers of attraction. "We'll go to-morrow, mother."
+
+Quite satisfied, Mrs. Purnell made some excuse to leave them together,
+as she usually did, for her mother heart had traveled farther along the
+Road to To-morrow than her daughter's fancy. She secretly hoped that the
+young cattleman would some day declare his love for Dorothy and ask for
+her hand in marriage.
+
+In reply to the girl's anxious questions Wade told her of what had
+happened since their meeting on the trail, as they sat together on the
+porch of the little cottage. She was wearing a plain dress of green
+gingham, which, somehow, suggested to him the freshness of lettuce. She
+laughed a little when he told her of that and called him foolish, though
+the smile that showed a dimple in her chin belied her words.
+
+"Then the posse is still at the ranch?" she asked.
+
+"I think so. If they are, we are going to run them off to-morrow
+morning, or perhaps to-night. I've had enough of this nonsense and I
+mean to meet Moran halfway from now on."
+
+"Yes, I suppose you must," she admitted reluctantly. "But do be careful,
+Gordon."
+
+"As careful as I can be under the circumstances," he said cheerfully,
+and told her that his chief purpose in coming to see her was to thank
+her again for the service she had rendered him.
+
+"Oh, you don't need to thank me for that. Do you know"--she puckered up
+her brows in a reflective way--"I've been thinking. It seems very
+strange to me that Senator Rexhill and Moran should be willing to go to
+such lengths merely to get hold of this land as a speculation. Doesn't
+it seem so to you?"
+
+"Yes, it does, but that must be their reason."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that, Gordon. There must be something more behind
+all this. That's what I have been thinking about. You remember that when
+Moran first came here he had an office just across the street from his
+present one?"
+
+"Yes. Simon Barsdale had Moran's present office until he moved to
+Sheridan. You were his stenographer for a while, I remember." Wade
+looked at her curiously, wondering what she was driving at.
+
+"Moran bought Mr. Barsdale's safe." Her voice sounded strange and
+unnatural. "I know the old combination. I wonder if it has been
+changed?"
+
+"Lem Trowbridge was saying only this morning," said Wade thoughtfully,
+for he was beginning to catch her meaning, "that if we could only get
+proof of something crooked we might...."
+
+"Well, I think we can," Dorothy interrupted.
+
+They looked searchingly at each other in the gathering dusk, and he
+tried to read the light in her eyes, and being strangely affected
+himself by their close proximity, he misinterpreted it. He slipped his
+hand over hers and once more the desire to kiss her seized him. He let
+go of her hand and was just putting his arm around her shoulders when,
+to his surprise, she appeared suddenly indignant.
+
+"Don't!"
+
+He was abashed, and for a moment neither said a word.
+
+"What is the combination?" he finally asked hoarsely.
+
+"I promised Mr. Barsdale never to tell any one." Her lips wreathed into
+a little smile. "I'll do it myself."
+
+"No, you won't." Wade shook his head positively. "Do you suppose I'm
+going to let you steal for me? It will be bad enough to do it myself;
+but necessity knows no law. Well, we'll let it go for the present then.
+Don't you think of doing it, Dorothy. Will you promise me?"
+
+"I never promise," she said, smiling again, and ignoring her last words
+in womanly fashion, "but if you don't want me to...."
+
+"Well, I don't," he declared firmly. "Let it rest at that. We'll
+probably find some other way anyhow."
+
+She asked him then about Santry, but he evaded a direct answer beyond
+expressing the conviction that everything would end all right. They
+talked for a while of commonplaces, although nothing that he said seemed
+commonplace to her and nothing that she said seemed so to him. When it
+was fully dark he arose to go. Then she seemed a little sorry that she
+had not let him put his arm around her, and she leaned toward him as
+she had done on the trail; but he was not well versed in woman's
+subtleties, and he failed to guess her thoughts and walked away, leaving
+her, as Shakespeare put it, to
+
+          "Twice desire, ere it be day,
+          That which with scorn she put away."
+
+Having mounted his horse at the livery stable, he first made sure that
+the extra horse was behind the school-house, where he tied his own, and
+then walked around to the jail. On the outside, this building was a
+substantial log structure; within, it was divided into the Sheriff's
+office and sleeping room, the "bull pen," and a single narrow cell, in
+which Wade guessed that Santry would be locked. After examining his
+revolver, he slipped it into the side pocket of his coat and walked
+boldly up to the jail. Then, whistling merrily, for Bat Lewis, the
+deputy, was a confirmed human song-bird, he knocked sharply on the door
+with his knuckles.
+
+"It's me--Bat," he called out, mimicking Lewis' voice, in answer to a
+question from within.
+
+"You're early to-night. What's struck you?" Sheriff Thomas opened the
+door, and turning, left it so, for the "relief" to enter. He had half
+feared that an attempt might be made to liberate Santry, but had never
+dreamed that any one would try the thing alone. He was glad to be
+relieved, for a poker game at which he wanted to sit in would soon start
+at the Gulch Saloon.
+
+He was the most surprised man in Wyoming, when he felt the cold muzzle
+of Wade's Colt boring into the nape of his neck and heard the ranchman's
+stern warning to keep quiet or take the consequences. Sheriff Thomas had
+earned his right to his "star" by more than one exhibition of nerve, but
+he was too familiar with gun ethics to argue with the business end of a
+"45."
+
+"Not a sound!" Outwardly cold as ice, but inwardly afire, Wade shoved
+the weapon against his victim's neck and marched him to the middle of
+the room. "I've got the upper hand, Sheriff, and I intend to keep it."
+
+"You're a damn fool, Wade." The Sheriff spoke without visible emotion
+and in a low tone. "You'll go up for this. Don't you realize that...."
+
+"Can it!" snapped Wade, deftly disarming the officer with his free hand.
+"Never mind the majesty of the law and all that rot. I thought that all
+over before I came. Now that I've got you and drawn your teeth, you'll
+take orders from me. Get my foreman out of that cell and be quick about
+it!"
+
+There was nothing to do but obey, which Thomas quietly did, although
+somewhat in fear of what Santry might do when at liberty. When the cell
+door was unlocked, the old plainsman, in a towering rage at the
+injustice of his incarceration, seemed inclined to choke his erstwhile
+jailer.
+
+"None of that, Bill," Wade admonished curtly. "He's only been a tool in
+this business, although he ought to know better. We'll tie him up and
+gag him; that's all. Rip up one of those blankets."
+
+"I knew you'd come, boy!" The foreman's joy was almost like that of a
+big dog at sight of his master. "By the great horned toad, I knew it!"
+With his sinewy hands he tore the blanket into strips as easily as
+though the wool had been paper. "Now for him, drat him!"
+
+Wade stood guard while the helpless Sheriff was trussed up and his mouth
+stopped by Santry, and if the ranch owner felt any compunction at the
+sight, he had only to think of his own men as he had seen them the night
+before, lying on the floor of the ranch house.
+
+"Make a good job of it, Bill," was his only comment.
+
+"You bet!" Santry chuckled as he drew the last of the knots tight.
+"That'll hold him for a spell, I reckon. How you feel, Sheruff, purty
+comfortable?" The flowing end of the gag so hid the officer's features
+that he could express himself only with his eyes, which he batted
+furiously. "Course," Santry went on, in mock solicitude, "if I'd thought
+I mighta put a bit of sugar on that there gag, to remind you of your
+mammy like, but it ain't no great matter. You can put a double dose in
+your cawfee when you git loose."
+
+"Come on, Bill!" Wade commanded.
+
+"So long, Sheruff," Santry chuckled.
+
+There was no time to waste in loitering, for at any moment Bat Lewis
+might arrive and give an alarm which would summon reenforcements from
+amongst Moran's following. Hurrying Santry ahead of him, Wade swung open
+the door and they looked out cautiously. No one was in sight, and a
+couple of minutes later the two men were mounted and on their way out of
+town.
+
+"By the great horned toad!" Santry exulted, as they left the lights of
+Crawling Water behind them. "It sure feels good to be out of that there
+boardin'-house. It wasn't our fault, Gordon, and say, about this here
+shootin'...."
+
+"I know all about that, Bill," Wade interposed. "The boys told me.
+They're waiting for us at the big pine. But your arrest, that's what I
+want to hear about."
+
+"Well, it was this-a-way," the old man explained. "They sneaked up on
+the house in the dark and got the drop on us. Right here I rise to
+remark that never no more will I separate myself from my six-shooter.
+More'n one good man has got hisself killed just because his gun wasn't
+where it oughter be when he needed it. Of course, we put up the best
+scrap we could, but we didn't have no chance, Gordon. The first thing I
+knew, while I was tusslin' with one feller, somebody fetched me a rap on
+the head with a pistol-butt, an' I went down for the count. Any of the
+boys shot up?"
+
+Wade described the appearance of the ranch house on the previous night,
+and Santry swore right manfully.
+
+"What's on the cards now?" he demanded. "How much longer are we goin' to
+stand for...."
+
+"No longer," Wade declared crisply. "That's why the boys are waiting for
+us at the pine. We're going to run Moran and his gang off the ranch as
+soon as we can get there, and then we're going to run them out of the
+country."
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e-e-e!" The old plainsman's yell of exultation split the
+night like the yelp of a coyote, and he brought his hand down on Wade's
+back with a force which made the latter wince. "By the great horned
+toad, that's talkin! That's the finest news I've heard since my old
+mammy said to the parson, 'Call him Bill, for short.' Whoop-e-e-e-e!"
+
+Wade's warning to keep still was lost on the wind, for Santry stuck his
+spurs into his horse's flanks and charged along the trail like an
+old-time knight. With a grim smile his employer put on speed and
+followed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BATTLE AT THE RANCH
+
+
+When Wade and Santry approached the big pine, the waiting men came out
+from its shadow and rode forward, with the borrowed rifles across their
+saddle horns.
+
+"All right, boys?" the rancher asked, taking Trowbridge's new rifle, a
+beautiful weapon, which Lawson handed to him.
+
+"All right, sir," answered Tim Sullivan, adding the "sir" in extenuation
+of his befuddled condition the night before, while each man gave Santry
+a silent hand-shake to welcome him home.
+
+Grimly, silently, then, save for the dashing of their horses' hoofs
+against the loose stones, and an occasional muttered imprecation as a
+rider lurched in his saddle, the seven men rode rapidly toward the
+mountains. In numbers, their party was about evenly matched with the
+enemy, and Wade meant that the advantage of surprise, if possible,
+should rest with him in order to offset such advantage as Moran might
+find in the shelter of the house. But, however that might be, each man
+realized that the die had been cast and that the fight, once begun,
+would go to a finish.
+
+"I only hope," Santry remarked, as a steep grade forced them to lessen
+their speed, "I can get my two hands on that cussed tin-horn, Moran.
+Him and me has a misunderstandin' to settle, for sure."
+
+"You leave him to me, Bill." Wade spoke vindictively. "He's my meat."
+
+"Well, since you ask it, I'll try, boy. But there's goin' to be some
+fightin' sure as taxes, and when I get to fightin', I'm liable to go
+plumb, hog wild. Say, I hope you don't get into no trouble over this
+here jail business o' mine. That 'ud make me feel bad, Gordon."
+
+"We'll not worry about that now, Bill."
+
+"That's right. Don't worry till you have to, and then shoot instead.
+That's been my motto all my born days, and it ain't such durn bad
+philosophy at that. I wonder"--the old man chuckled to himself--"I
+wonder if the Sheruff et up most of that there gag before Bat let him
+loose?"
+
+Wade laughed out loud, and as though in response, an owl hooted
+somewhere in the timber to their right.
+
+"There's a durned old hoot owl," growled Santry. "I never like to hear
+them things--they most always mean bad luck."
+
+He rode to the head of the little column, and the rest of the way to the
+ranch was passed in ominous silence. When they finally arrived at the
+edge of the clearing and cautiously dismounted, everything seemed from
+the exterior, at least, just as it should be. The night being far gone,
+the lights were out, and there was no sign of life about the place. Wade
+wondered if the posse had gone.
+
+"There ain't no use in speculatin'," declared Santry. "They may be
+asleep, and they may be layin' for us there in the dark. This will take
+a rise out of 'em anyhow."
+
+At sight of the old fellow, pistol in hand, Wade called to him to wait,
+but as he spoke Santry fired two quick shots into the air.
+
+There was an immediate commotion in the ranch house. A man inside was
+heard to curse loudly, while another showed his face for an instant
+where the moonlight fell across a window. He hastily ducked out of
+sight, however, when a rifle bullet splintered the glass just above his
+head. Presently a gun cracked inside the house and a splash on a rock
+behind the attackers told them where the shot had struck.
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e-e!" Santry yelled, discharging the four remaining shots in
+his revolver at the window. "We've got 'em guessin'. They don't know how
+many we are."
+
+"They were probably asleep," said Wade a bit sharply. "We might have
+sneaked in and captured the whole crowd without firing a shot. That's
+what I meant to do before you cut loose."
+
+Santry shook his grizzled head as he loaded his revolver.
+
+"Well, now, that would have been just a mite risky, boy. The way things
+stand we've still got the advantage, an'...." He broke off to take a
+snapshot at a man who showed himself at the window for an instant in an
+effort to get a glimpse of the attacking force. "One!" muttered the old
+plainsman to himself.
+
+By this time Wade had thrown himself down on his stomach behind a
+bowlder to Santry's left and was shooting methodically at the door of
+the house, directly in front of him. He knew that door. It was built of
+inch lumber and was so located that a bullet, after passing through it,
+would rake the interior of the cabin from end to end. The only way the
+inmates could keep out of the line of his fire was by hugging the walls
+on either side, where they would be partially exposed to the leaden hail
+which Santry and the punchers were directing at the windows.
+
+There was a grim, baleful look on the young man's usually pleasant face,
+and his eyes held a pitiless gleam. He was shooting straight, shooting
+to kill, and taking a fierce delight in the act. The blood lust was upon
+him, that primal, instinctive desire for combat in a righteous cause
+that lies hidden at the very bottom of every strong man's nature. And
+there came to his mind no possible question of the righteous nature of
+his cause. He was fighting to regain possession of his own home from the
+marauders who had invaded it. His enemies had crowded him to the wall,
+and now they were paying the penalty. Wade worked the lever of his
+Winchester as though he had no other business in life. A streak of
+yellow clay mingled with a bloody trickle from a bullet scratch on his
+cheek gave his set features a fairly ferocious expression.
+
+Santry, glancing toward him, chuckled again, but without mirth. "The
+boy's woke up at last," he muttered to himself. "They've drove him to
+it, durn 'em. I knew almighty well that this law an' order stunt
+couldn't last forever. Wow!"
+
+The latter exclamation was caused by a bullet which ricocheted from a
+rock near his head, driving a quantity of fine particles into his face.
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e-e!" he howled a moment later. "We got 'em goin'. It's a
+cinch they can't stand this pace for more'n a week."
+
+Indeed, it was a marvel that the defenders kept on fighting as long as
+they did. Already the door, beneath Wade's machine-like shooting, had
+been completely riddled; the windows were almost bare of glass; and
+great splinters of wood had been torn from the log walls by the heavy
+rifle bullets on their way through to the interior. Soon the door sagged
+and crashed inward, and into the gaping hole thus made Wade continued to
+empty his rifle.
+
+At last, the fire of those within slackened and temporarily ceased. Did
+this mean surrender? Wade asked himself and ordered his men to stop
+shooting and await developments. For some moments all was still, and the
+advisability of rushing the house was being discussed when all at once
+the fire of the defenders began again. This time, however, there was
+something very odd about it. There was a loud banging of exploding
+cartridges, but only a few shots whistled around the heads of the
+cattlemen. Nevertheless, Wade told his men to resume shooting, and once
+more settled down to his own task.
+
+"What'n hell they tryin' to do?" Santry demanded. "Sounds like a Fourth
+o' July barbecue to me."
+
+"I don't know," Wade answered, charging the magazine of his rifle, "but
+whatever it is they'll have to stop mighty soon."
+
+Then gradually, but none the less certainly, the fire from within
+slackened until all was still. This seemed more like a visitation of
+death, and again Wade ordered his men to stop shooting. They obeyed
+orders and lay still, keenly watching the house.
+
+"Do you surrender?" Wade shouted; but there was no reply.
+
+Santry sprang to his feet.
+
+"By the great horned toad!" he cried. "I'm a-goin' in there! Anybody
+that wants to come along is welcome."
+
+Not a man in the party would be dared in that way, so, taking advantage
+of such cover as offered, they advanced upon the cabin, stealthily at
+first and then more rapidly, as they met with no resistance--no sign
+whatever of life. A final rush carried them through the doorway into the
+house, where they expected to find a shambles.
+
+Wade struck a light, and faced about with a start as a low groan came
+from a corner of the back room. A man lay at full length on the floor,
+tied hand and foot, and gagged. It was Ed Nelson, one of the Double
+Arrow hands who had been surprised and captured by the posse, and a
+little farther away in the shadow against the wall his two companions
+lay in a like condition. With his knife Wade was cutting them loose,
+and glancing about in a puzzled search for the wounded men he expected
+to find in the house, when Santry shouted something from the kitchen.
+
+"What is it, Bill?" the ranch owner demanded.
+
+Santry tramped back into the room, laughing in a shamefaced sort of way.
+
+"They done us, Gordon!" he burst out. "By the great horned toad, they
+done us! They chucked a bunch of shells into the hot cook-stove, an'
+sneaked out the side door while we was shootin' into the front room. By
+cracky, that beats...."
+
+"That's what they did," spoke up Nelson, as well as his cramped tongue
+would permit, being now freed of the gag. "They gagged us first, so's we
+couldn't sing out; then they filled up the stove an' beat it."
+
+What had promised to be a tragedy had proved a fiasco, and Wade smiled a
+little foolishly.
+
+"The joke's on us, I guess, boys," he admitted. "But we've got the ranch
+back, at any rate. How are you feeling, Ed, pretty stiff and sore?"
+
+"My Gawd, yes--awful!"
+
+"Me, too," declared Tom Parrish, the second of the victims; and the
+third man swore roundly that he would not regain the full use of his
+legs before Christmas.
+
+"Well, you're lucky at that," was Santry's dry comment. "All that saved
+you from gettin' shot up some in the fight was layin' low down in that
+corner where you was." He let his eyes travel around the littered,
+blood-spattered room. "From the looks o' this shebang we musta stung
+some of 'em pretty deep; but nobody was killed, I reckon. I hope Moran
+was the worst hurt, durn him!"
+
+"He'll keep," Wade said grimly. "We've not done with him yet, Bill.
+We've only just begun."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SENATOR GETS BUSY
+
+
+It was daylight when the routed posse, with Race Moran in the lead, his
+left arm tied up in a blood-stained handkerchief, rode into Crawling
+Water. A bullet had pierced the fleshy part of the agent's wrist, a
+trifling wound, but one which gave him more pain than he might have
+suffered from a serious injury. None of the members of the posse had
+been dangerously wounded; indeed, they had suffered more in the spirit
+than in the flesh; but there had been a number of minor casualties
+amongst the men, which made a sufficiently bloody display to arouse the
+little town to active curiosity.
+
+Under instructions from the leader, however, the fugitives kept
+grouchily silent, so that curiosity was able to feed only on
+speculations as to Wade's temper, and the fact that he had brought about
+Santry's release from jail. The story of that achievement had been
+bruited about Crawling Water since midnight, together with the
+probability that the Law would be invoked to punish the ranchman for his
+defiance of it. Popular sentiment was running high over the likelihood
+of such a step being taken, and the members of the posse were the
+targets of many hostile glances from the townspeople. At least
+two-thirds of the citizens were strongly in favor of Wade, but before
+they took active steps in his behalf they waited for the return of a
+horseman, who had hurried out to the ranch to learn at first hand
+exactly what had happened there.
+
+Meanwhile Moran, in an ugly mood, had awakened the Senator from the
+troubled sleep which had come to him after much wakeful tossing.
+Rexhill, with tousled hair, wrapped in a bathrobe, from the bottom of
+which his bare ankles and slippered feet protruded, sat on the edge of
+his bed, impatiently chewing an unlighted cigar while he listened to
+Moran's account of the fracas.
+
+"You went too far, Race,--you went too far," he burst out angrily at
+last. "You had no orders to jump the ranch. I told you...."
+
+"We've been fooling around long enough, Senator," Moran interrupted
+sullenly, nursing his throbbing wrist. "It was high time somebody
+started something, and when I saw my chance I seized it. You seem to
+think"--his voice trailed into scorn--"that we are playing marbles with
+boys, but, I tell you, it's men we're up against. My experience has
+shown me that it's the first blow that counts in any fight."
+
+"Well, who got in the hardest lick, eh?" Rexhill snorted sarcastically.
+"The first blow's all right, provided the second isn't a knockout from
+the other side. Why, confound it, Race, here we had Wade at our mercy.
+He'd broken into jail and set free a suspected murderer--a clear case of
+criminality. Then you had to spoil it all."
+
+Moran smothered an imprecation.
+
+"You seem to forget, Senator, that we had him at our mercy before, and
+you wouldn't hear of it. If you'd taken my advice in the first place,
+we'd have had Wade in jail instead of Santry and things might have been
+different."
+
+"Your advice was worthless under the circumstances; that's why I didn't
+take it." Rexhill deliberately paused and lighted his cigar, from which
+he took several soothing puffs. To have been aroused from his bed with
+such news had flustered him somewhat; but he had never known anything
+worth while to come out of a heated discussion, and he sought now to
+calm himself. Finally, he spoke slowly. "What you proposed to me then
+was a frame-up, and all frame-ups are dangerous, particularly when they
+have little to rest upon. For that reason I refused to fall in with your
+ideas, Race. This release of Santry from jail is--or was--an entirely
+different thing, an overt criminal act, with Sheriff Thomas on our side
+as an unimpeachable witness."
+
+Moran was suffering too keenly from his wound and smarting under his
+defeat too much to be altogether reasonable. His manner was fast losing
+the appearance of respect which he had previously shown his employer.
+His expression was becoming heated and contemptuous.
+
+"You didn't base your refusal on logic at the time, Senator," he said.
+"It was sentiment, if I remember right. Wade had broken bread with you,
+and all that. I don't see but what that applies just as well now as it
+did then."
+
+"It doesn't," the Senator argued smugly, still rankling from Wade's
+arraignment of him the day before, "because even hospitality has its
+limits of obligation. So long as I knew Wade to be innocent, I did not
+care to have him arrested; but I don't admit any sentiment of
+hospitality which compels me to save a _known_ criminal from the hand of
+justice. Sheriff Thomas came in to see me last night and I agreed with
+him that Wade should be brought to account for his contempt of the law.
+Wade forced his way into the jail and released his foreman at the point
+of a gun. Even so, I feel sorry for Wade and I am a little apprehensive
+of the consequences that will probably develop from his foolhardiness."
+
+"Well, by God, if there's any sympathy for him floating around this
+room, it all belongs to you, Senator." Moran tenderly fingered his
+aching wrist. "I'm not one of these 'turn the other cheek' guys; you can
+gamble on that!"
+
+"But now where are we?" Rexhill ignored the other's remarks entirely.
+"We are but little better off than Wade is. He pulled Santry out of
+jail, and we tried to steal his ranch. The only difference is that so
+far he has succeeded, and we have failed. He has as much law on his side
+now as we have on ours."
+
+Moran's head drooped a little before the force of this argument,
+although he was chiefly impressed by the fact that he had failed. His
+failures had been few, because Fortune had smiled upon him in the past;
+and doubtless for this reason he was the less able to treat failure
+philosophically. His plans at the ranch house had gone awry. He had
+counted on meeting Wade there in the daytime, in the open, and upon
+provoking him, before witnesses, into some hot-headed act which would
+justify a battle. The surprise attack had left the agent without this
+excuse for the hostilities which had occurred.
+
+Rexhill arose and walked up and down the room in thought, his slippered
+feet shuffling over the floor, showing now and then a glimpse of his
+fat, hairy legs as the skirt of his bathrobe fluttered about. A cloud of
+fragrant smoke from his cigar trailed him as he walked, and from the way
+he chewed on the tobacco his _confreres_ in the Senate could have
+guessed that he was leading up to one of his Czar-like pronouncements.
+Presently he stopped moving and twisted the cigar in his mouth so that
+its fumes would be out of his eyes, as his glance focused on Moran.
+
+"There's just one way out of this mess, Race," he began. "Now heed what
+I say to you. I'm going to send a telegram to the Department of the
+Interior which will bring a troop of cavalry down here from Fort
+Mackenzie. You must go slow from now on, and let the authorities settle
+the whole matter."
+
+The agent sat up alertly, as his employer, wagging a ponderous
+forefinger impressively, proceeded.
+
+"You were not on the ranch for the purpose of jumping it at all. Mind
+that now! You and I stand for the majesty of the law in this lawless
+community." Moran's eyes began to twinkle at this, but he said nothing.
+"When you and Sheriff Thomas went out to the ranch, you carried two
+warrants with you, one for Santry, as the accessory, and one for Wade,
+as the principal, in the Jensen shooting. Yes, yes, I know what you are
+going to say; but I must save my own bacon now. Since Wade has proved
+himself to be a lawbreaker, I'm not going to protect him."
+
+"Now, you're talking!" exclaimed Moran, delighted at the prospect of
+what such a course would start going.
+
+"I'll have the matter of the warrants fixed up with Thomas," the Senator
+continued. "Now, follow me carefully. Thomas arrested Santry at the
+ranch, and then left you, as his deputy, to serve the other warrant on
+Wade when he came home. It was because of his knowledge of what was in
+store for him that Wade, after getting Santry out of jail, attacked you
+and your men, and it was in defense of the law that you returned their
+fire. It will all work out very smoothly, I think, and any further
+hostilities will come from the other side and be to our great
+advantage."
+
+Moran looked at his employer in admiration, as the latter concluded and
+turned toward his writing table.
+
+"Senator," the agent declared, as Rexhill took up his fountain pen and
+began to write on a telegraph form, "you never should have started in
+Denver. If you'd been born in little old New York, you'd be in the White
+House now. From this minute on you and I are going to carry this whole
+valley in our vest-pockets."
+
+"You take this over and put it on the wire right away, Race. It's to the
+Secretary of the Interior and my signature on it should get immediate
+attention." Senator Rexhill handed over the telegraph form he had
+filled out.
+
+"But what about State rights in this business?" Moran asked, anxiously.
+"Will they send Government troops in here on your say so?"
+
+The Senator waved his hand in dismissal of the objection.
+
+"I'll have Thomas wire the Governor that the situation is beyond
+control. This town is miles from nowhere, and there's no militia within
+easy reach. The State will be glad enough to be saved the expense,
+especially with the soldiers close by at Fort Mackenzie. Besides, you
+know, although Wade's ranch is inside the State, a good deal of his land
+is Government land, or was until he filed on it."
+
+When Moran had left the room in a much easier frame of mind than he came
+into it, the Senator sat down heavily on the bed. He was puffing at his
+cigar and thinking intently, when he caught sight of the white, startled
+face of his daughter in the mirror of the bureau across the room.
+Whirling about, he found her standing in the doorway looking at him.
+Rexhill had never before been physically conscious of the fact that he
+had a spine, but in that moment of discovery a chill crept up and down
+his back, for her expression told him that she had heard a good deal of
+his conversation with Moran. The most precious thing to him in life was
+the respect of his child; more precious even, he knew, than the
+financial security for which he fought; and in her eyes now he saw that
+he was face to face with a greater battle than any he had ever waged.
+
+"Father!"
+
+"What, are you awake, my dear?"
+
+He tried hard to make his tone cheery and natural, as he stood up and
+wrapped the bathrobe more closely around him.
+
+"I heard what you said to Race Moran."
+
+Helen came into the room, with only a dressing wrapper thrown over her
+thin night-dress, and dropped into a chair. She seemed to feel that her
+statement of the fact was accusation enough in itself, and waited for
+him to answer.
+
+"You shouldn't have listened, Helen. Moran and I were discussing private
+business matters, and I thought that you were asleep. It was not
+proper...."
+
+Her lips, which usually framed a smile for him, curled disdainfully and
+he winced in spite of himself. He avoided the keen appraisement of her
+gaze, which seemed now to size him up, as though to probe his most
+secret thoughts, whereas before she had always accepted him lovingly on
+faith.
+
+"Certainly, they were not matters that you would want an outsider to
+hear," she said, in a hard voice, "but I am very glad that _I_ listened,
+father. Glad"--her voice broke a little--"even though I shall never be
+able to think of you again as I...."
+
+He went to her and put his heavy hands on her shoulders, which shrank
+under his touch.
+
+"Now, don't say things that you'll regret, Helen. You're the only girl
+I have, and I'm the only father you have, so we ought to make the best
+of each other, oughtn't we, eh? You're prone to hasty judgments. Don't
+let them run away with you now."
+
+"Don't touch me!" He made way for her as she got to her feet.
+"Father,"--she tremblingly faced him, leaning for support against a
+corner of the bureau,--"I _heard_ all that you said to Mr. Moran. I
+don't want you to tell me what we've been to each other. Don't I know
+that? Haven't I felt it?"
+
+The Senator swallowed hard, touched to the quick at the sight of her
+suffering.
+
+"You want me to explain it--more fully?"
+
+"If you can. Can you?" Her lips twitched spasmodically. "I want you to
+tell me something that will let me continue to believe that you
+are--that you are--Oh, you know what I want to say." Rexhill blushed a
+deep purple, despite his efforts at self-control. "But what can you say,
+father; what _can_ you say, after what I've heard?"
+
+"You mean as regards young Wade? You know, I told you last night about
+his attack on the Sheriff. You know, too"--the blush faded as the
+Senator caught his stride again--"that I said I meant to crush him. You
+even agreed with me that he should be taught a lesson."
+
+"But you should fight fairly," Helen retorted, with a quick breath of
+aggression. "Do you believe that he killed Jensen? Of course you don't.
+The mere idea of such a thing is absurd."
+
+"Perhaps he planned it."
+
+"Father!" The scorn in her tone stung him like a whip-lash. "Did he plan
+the warrants, too? The warrant that hasn't been issued yet, although you
+are going to swear that it was issued yesterday. Did he plan that?"
+
+Once in his political career, the Senator had faced an apparent
+_impasse_ and had wormed out of it through tolerant laughter. He had
+laughed so long and so genially that the very naturalness of his
+artifice had won the day for him. Men thought that if he had had a
+guilty conscience, he could not have seemed so carefree. He tried the
+same trick now with his daughter; but it was a frightful attempt and he
+gave it up when he saw its ill-success.
+
+"See here, Helen," he burst out, "it is ridiculous that you should
+arraign me in this way. It is true that no warrant was out yesterday for
+Wade, but it is also true that the Sheriff intended to issue one, and it
+was only through my influence that the warrant was not issued. Since
+then Wade, besides insulting me, has proved himself a lawbreaker. I have
+nothing to do with the consequences of his actions, which rest entirely
+with him. You have overheard something that you were not intended to
+hear, and as is usually the case, have drawn wrong conclusions. The best
+thing you can do now is to try to forget what you have heard and leave
+the matter in my hands, where it belongs."
+
+He had spoken dominantly and expected her to yield to his will. He was
+totally unprepared, well as he knew her spirit, for what followed.
+
+She faced him with glowing eyes and her trembling lips straightened into
+a thin, firm line of determination. He was her father, and she had
+always loved him for what she had felt to be his worth; she had given
+him the chance to explain, and he had not availed himself of it; he was
+content to remain convicted in her eyes, or else, which was more likely,
+he could not clear himself. She realized now that, despite what she had
+said in pique, only the night before, she really loved Wade, and he, at
+least, had done nothing, except free a friend, who, like himself, was
+unjustly accused. She could not condemn him for that, any more than she
+could forget her father's duplicity.
+
+"I won't forget it!" she cried. "If necessary, I will go to Gordon and
+tell him what you've done. I'll tell it to every one in Crawling Water,
+if you force me to. I don't want to because, just think what that would
+mean to you! But you shall not sacrifice Gordon. Yes, I mean it--I'll
+sacrifice you first!"
+
+"Don't talk so loud," the Senator warned her anxiously, going a little
+white. "Don't be a fool, Helen. Why, it was only a few hours ago that
+you said Wade should be punished."
+
+She laughed hysterically.
+
+"That was only because I wanted to get him away from this awful little
+town. I thought that if he were--punished--a little, if he was made a
+laughing stock, he might be ashamed, and not want to stay here. Now, I
+see that I was wrong. I don't blame him for fighting with every weapon
+he can find. I hope he wins!"
+
+Rexhill, who had been really frightened at her hysterical threat of
+exposure, and assailed by it in his pride as well, felt his fear begin
+to leave him and his confidence in himself return. In the next minute or
+two, he thought rapidly and to considerable purpose. In the past he had
+resolutely refused to use his child in any way to further his own ends,
+but the present occasion was an emergency, and major surgery is often
+demanded in a crisis. If she were willing, as she said, to sacrifice
+him, he felt that he might properly make use of her and her moods to
+save himself and her as well. He realized that if she were to shout
+abroad through Crawling Water the conversation that had passed between
+him and Moran, the likelihood of either of the two men getting out of
+the county alive would be extremely remote.
+
+"So that was it, eh? And I complimented you upon your good sense!" His
+laugh was less of an effort now. "Well, doesn't it hold good now as well
+as it did then? Come, my dear, sit down and we'll thresh this out
+quietly."
+
+She shook her head stubbornly, but the woman in her responded to the new
+note of confidence in his voice, and she waited eagerly for what he had
+to say, hopeful that he might still clear himself.
+
+"You tell me that I must fight fair. Well, I usually do fight that way.
+I'm doing so now. When I spoke yesterday of crushing Wade, I meant it
+and I still mean it. But there are limits to what I want to see happen
+to him; for one thing, I don't want to see him hung for this Jensen
+murder, even if he's guilty."
+
+"You know he isn't guilty."
+
+"I think he isn't." Her eyes lighted up at this admission. "But he must
+be tried for the crime, there's no dodging that. The jury will decide
+the point; we can't. But even if he should be convicted, I shouldn't
+want to see him hung. Why, we've been good friends, all of us. I--I like
+him, even though he did jump on to me yesterday. That was why"--he
+leaned forward, impelled to the falsehood that hung upon his tongue by
+the desperate necessity of saving himself his daughter's love and
+respect--"I arranged with Moran to have the boy arrested on such a
+warrant. He is bound to be arrested"--Rexhill struck the table with his
+fist--"and if he should need a basis for an appeal after conviction, he
+could hardly have a better one than the evidence of conspiracy, which a
+crooked warrant would afford. I wanted to give him that chance because I
+realized that he had enemies here and that his trial might not be a fair
+one. When the right moment came I was going to have that warrant looked
+into."
+
+"Father!"
+
+Helen dropped on her knees before him, her eyelashes moist with tears
+and her voice vibrant with happiness.
+
+"Why didn't you explain all that before, Father? I knew that there must
+be _some_ explanation. I felt that I couldn't have loved you all my
+life for nothing. But do you really believe that any jury would convict
+Gordon of such a thing?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+Never had Senator Rexhill felt himself more hopelessly a scoundrel than
+now as he smoothed her hair from her forehead; but he told himself that
+the pain of this must be less than to be engulfed in bankruptcy, or
+exposure, which would submerge them all. Moreover, he promised himself
+that if future events bore too heavily against Wade, he should be saved
+at the eleventh hour. The thought of this made the Senator's position
+less hard.
+
+"I hope not, Helen," he repeated. "Of course, the serving of the warrant
+at this time will help my own interests, but since a warrant must be
+served, anyway, I feel justified, under the circumstances, in availing
+myself of this advantage."
+
+"Y-e-s, of course," Helen agreed doubtfully. "Oh, it is all too bad. I
+wish none of us had ever heard of Crawling Water."
+
+"Well, maybe the Grand Jury will not indict him, feeling runs so strong
+here," her father continued, and she took fresh hope at this prospect.
+"But, anyway, he will feel the pressure before all is done with, and
+very likely he'll be only too glad to dispose of his ranch and say
+good-by to Wyoming when he is free to do as he pleases. Then you and he
+can make a fresh start, eh? All will be sunshine and roses then, maybe,
+forever and aye."
+
+"That's what I want to do--get away from here; and that was all I meant
+when I said to punish Gordon."
+
+The Senator patted her cheek tenderly and drew a deep breath of relief.
+
+"By the way, father," Helen said casually, when she started back to her
+room, a little later, "I saw Miss Purnell on the street yesterday. You
+know, she was out when Gordon took me to see her."
+
+"Well, is she dangerous?"
+
+Helen looked at him in amusement, and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TANGLED THREADS
+
+
+Relieved though Helen was to some extent, by her father's assurances and
+by the explanation which he had given, she was far from being in a
+tranquil frame of mind.
+
+She knew that whatever might be the outcome of the graver charge against
+Gordon, he would probably have to suffer for his release of Santry, and
+she found herself wishing more than ever that her lover had never seen
+the West. What little it had contributed to his character was not worth
+what it had cost already and would cost in the future. Surely, his
+manhood was alive enough not to have needed the development of such an
+environment, and if his lot had been cast in the East, she could have
+had him always with her. A long letter, which she had recently received
+from Maxwell Frayne, recounting the gayeties of New York and Washington,
+made her homesick. Although she could scarcely think of the two men at
+the same moment, still, as she sat in the crude little hotel, she would
+have welcomed a little of young Frayne's company for the sake of
+contrast. She was yearning for the flesh-pots of her own Egypt.
+
+From the news of the fight at the ranch, which had been brought to town
+by the messenger, she gathered that Wade meant to intrench himself on
+the ranch and defy the law, which would probably embroil him in other
+criminal acts. Crawling Water, too, was rapidly filling up with armed
+cattlemen, who, she thought, would do Gordon's cause more harm than
+good. Toward afternoon, word came of a bloody skirmish on the Trowbridge
+range, between a number of his punchers and some of Moran's hired men,
+and that added to the tension among those crowding the main street.
+
+From the parlor windows of the hotel she watched what was going on
+outside, not without alarm, so high did feeling seem to run. The threats
+of the ranch men, handed about amongst themselves but loud enough for
+her to catch a word now and then, made her wonder if the town was really
+safe for her father, or for herself. A storm was coming up, and the
+rising wind whipped the flimsy lace curtains of the windows and kept
+them fluttering like flags. The distant muttering of the thunder and an
+occasional sharp flash of lightning wore on her tired nerves until she
+could sit still no longer.
+
+For the sake of something to do, she went up to her room, intending to
+write some letters there, but her bed had not been made up, so she
+returned to the parlor with her fountain pen and writing-pad. To Maxwell
+Frayne she wrote a brief note, which was not likely to cheer him much.
+She had become so in the habit of taking her moods out on Maxwell that
+to do so, even with a pen, was second nature to her. She despised him
+for his tolerance of her tyranny, never realizing that he reserved to
+himself the privilege of squaring their account, if she should ever
+become his wife.
+
+Then to ease her mind of the strain it bore, she wrote at some length to
+her mother; not telling the whole truth but enough of it to calm her own
+nervousness. She said nothing of the conversation she had overheard, but
+went fully into the scene between her father and Gordon Wade. With a
+little smile hovering on her lips, she wrote dramatically of the
+Senator's threat to crush the ranchman. "That will please mother," she
+said to herself, as her pen raced over the paper. "Gordon felt, you see,
+that"--she turned a page--"father knew Santry had not killed Jensen,
+and...."
+
+The hotel-keeper poked his head in at the doorway.
+
+"Two ladies to see you, Miss," he announced. "Mrs. Purnell and
+daughter."
+
+He gave Helen no chance to avoid the visit, for with the obviousness of
+the plains, he had brought the visitors upstairs with him, and so,
+blotting what she had written and weighing down her letter against the
+breeze, she arose to greet them.
+
+"This is good of you, Mrs. Purnell, and I am so glad to meet your
+daughter. I've been lonely and blue all day and now you have taken pity
+on me."
+
+Mrs. Purnell shot an "I told you so" glance at Dorothy, which made that
+young lady smile to herself.
+
+"I was sorry not to have been at home when you called, Miss Rexhill."
+
+The two girls looked at each other, each carefully veiling hostility,
+Dorothy beneath a natural sweetness of disposition, and Helen with the
+_savoir faire_ of social experience. Each felt and was stung by a
+realization of the other's points of advantage. Dorothy saw a perfection
+of well-groomed poise, such as she could hardly hope to attain, and
+Helen was impressed with her rival's grace and natural beauty.
+
+"Won't you sit down?"
+
+"But aren't we disturbing you?" Mrs. Purnell asked, with a glance toward
+the writing materials.
+
+"Indeed, you are not. I was writing some duty letters to kill time. I'm
+only too glad to stop because I'm really in no writing mood and I am
+most anxious to hear what is going on outside. Isn't it dreadful about
+Mr. Wade?"
+
+"You mean his helping Santry?" Dorothy asked, with a little touch of
+pride which did not escape her hostess.
+
+"Partly that; but more because he is sure to be arrested himself. I've
+been terribly worried."
+
+Dorothy glanced at her keenly and smiled.
+
+"I have an idea that they may find Gordon hard to arrest," she remarked.
+
+"Yes," Mrs. Purnell put in. "He is so popular. Still, I agree with you
+that there is every cause for anxiety." The good lady did not have a
+chance every day to agree with the daughter of a United States Senator,
+and the opportunity was not to be overlooked.
+
+"The people feel so strongly that Santry should never have been arrested
+that they are not likely to let Gordon be taken just for freeing him,"
+Dorothy explained.
+
+Helen shook her head with every indication of tremulous worry.
+
+"But it isn't that alone," she insisted. "He's to be arrested for the
+Jensen shooting. That was why the posse waited at his ranch after Santry
+had been caught."
+
+"For the Jensen shooting?" Dorothy showed her amazement very plainly.
+"Are you sure?" she demanded, and when Helen nodded, exclaimed: "Why,
+how utterly absurd! I understood that you were with him yourself when he
+received word of it?"
+
+"I was," Helen admitted. "He is supposed only to have planned the crime,
+I believe. He's supposed to have been the principal, isn't that what
+they call it?" She appealed to Mrs. Purnell.
+
+"Oh, but do you think he could do such a thing?" Mrs. Purnell asked,
+much shocked.
+
+"I don't know. I hope not."
+
+"I _do_ know!" Dorothy burst out emphatically. "I know Gordon Wade too
+well to think for one minute that he did it; and every true friend of
+his ought to speak out at once and say the same thing."
+
+The challenge in her voice was unmistakable, and Mrs. Purnell moved
+uneasily in her chair. She glanced anxiously at Helen and was relieved
+to see that the latter had lost none of her poise.
+
+"I hope so as fully as you do," Helen said sweetly, "but things move so
+fast here in these mountains that I find it hard to keep up with them."
+
+"Of course," Mrs. Purnell soothed, with a troubled look at her daughter.
+
+"Who swore out the warrant, I wonder?" Dorothy asked, in a more tranquil
+tone, a bit ashamed of her outburst. "Was it Mr. Moran?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Helen answered. "I supposed it was the Sheriff.
+Why should Mr. Moran have anything to do with it?"
+
+"Because he seems to have been concerned in all the trouble we have
+had," Dorothy replied calmly. "This was a peaceful little community
+until Mr. Moran moved into it."
+
+Helen made no direct reply to this, and for awhile Dorothy allowed her
+mother to sustain the conversation. She had no doubt but that Moran was
+back of it all, and she was thinking of what Lem Trowbridge had said;
+that if they could only "get something on" Moran and the Senator, a
+solution of the whole problem would be at hand. She thought that she had
+detected a defensive note in Helen's voice, and she was wondering why it
+should have been there.
+
+"But you haven't answered my question yet about Mr. Moran," Helen
+presently challenged her. "You seemed to have something more in mind
+than what you said. Would you mind telling me?"
+
+Dorothy looked steadily but not offensively at her.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing, Miss Rexhill. I was only thinking that he has gone
+rather far: been very zealous in your father's interests. Probably...."
+
+"Why, Dorothy--!" her mother interposed, in a shocked tone.
+
+"Miss Rexhill asked me, mother, and you know that I always speak
+frankly."
+
+"Yes, do go on," Helen urged, with even an added touch of sweetness in
+her manner. "I really want to know. I am so out of touch with things
+here, so ill informed."
+
+"Well, you can sit here at the windows and learn all you wish to know.
+There isn't a man in this town that would see Gordon arrested and not
+fight to free him. Feeling is running high here now. You know, it's
+something like a violin string. You can stretch it just so far and then
+it snaps. That's all."
+
+"Dorothy, I'm really mortified that you...."
+
+"Oh, you've no occasion to be, Mrs. Purnell," Helen interrupted,
+smiling. "I asked for the plain truth, you know."
+
+Mrs. Purnell laughed feebly.
+
+"Dorothy has known Mr. Wade so long and we both like him so well that
+she can't bear to hear a word against him," she explained. Her sense of
+_lese majeste_ was running away with her judgment, and Dorothy shot an
+irritated glance at her. "Not that I think he did it at all, you
+understand; but...."
+
+"Oh, perfectly," declared Helen, with rising color and an equal feeling
+of annoyance. "Oh, dear me, do look at my poor letters!"
+
+A gust of wind, stronger than any that had come before, had swept the
+weight to the floor and scattered letter paper, envelopes, and blotter
+about the room. Helen was just able to catch the writing-pad as it slid
+to the floor, while Dorothy and her mother laughingly salvaged the
+rest. The incident happily relieved the awkward drift of their
+conversation, and they all felt relieved.
+
+"Well, now, did you ever?" Mrs. Purnell ejaculated, looking at the
+lithographed blotter, which she held in her hand. "I declare this
+picture of a little girl reminds me of Dorothy when she was that age."
+
+"Oh, mother!"
+
+"Really?" Helen broke in. "How interesting. I hadn't noticed the
+picture. Do let me see."
+
+To be courteous, she agreed with Mrs. Purnell that there was a strong
+likeness, which Dorothy laughingly denied.
+
+"I guess I know what you looked like when you were five better than you
+do," Mrs. Purnell declared. "It's the image of you as you were then, and
+as Miss Rexhill says, there is a facial resemblance even yet."
+
+"Perhaps you would like to take it with you, then," Helen suggested, to
+Mrs. Purnell's delight, who explained that the only picture she had of
+Dorothy at that age had been lost.
+
+"If it wouldn't deprive you?"
+
+"No, indeed. You must take it. I have a large blotter in my writing-pad,
+so I really don't need that one at all. So many such things are sent to
+father that we always have more than we can use up."
+
+When Dorothy and her mother left the hotel, urged homeward by the first
+big drops of the coming rain, Mrs. Purnell tucked the blotter in the
+bosom of her dress, happy to have the suggestion of the picture to
+recall the days when her husband's presence cheered them all. Her world
+had been a small one, and little things like this helped to make it
+bright.
+
+Soon afterward the supper bell rang, and during the meal Helen told the
+Senator, who seemed somewhat morose and preoccupied, of the visit she
+had had.
+
+"Sure tiresome people. Goodness! I was glad to see them at first because
+I thought they would help me to pass the afternoon, but instead I was
+bored to death. That little minx is crazy about Gordon, though. I could
+see that."
+
+"Um!"
+
+"And the worst of it is that she just fits into the scenery here, and I
+don't. You know, father, I never could wax enthusiastic over shooing the
+cows to roost and things like that."
+
+"Um!"
+
+"I feel like a deaf person at a concert, here in this town."
+
+This remark brought a wry laugh from her father, and Helen smiled.
+
+"Well, I've made you laugh, anyway," she said. "You're frightfully
+grouchy this evening."
+
+"My dear, I'm busy, very busy, and I haven't time to think of trifles.
+I'll be at it most of the night."
+
+"Oh, shall you? Goodness, that's cheerful. I wish I had never come to
+this awful little place. I suppose I must go back to my letters for
+something to do. And, father," she added, as he lingered with her for a
+moment in the hallway, "the Purnells seem to think that you and Mr.
+Moran had better not go too far. The people here are very much wrought
+up."
+
+He patted her shoulder affectionately.
+
+"You leave all that to me and go write to your mother."
+
+There was nothing else for her to do, so she returned to the parlor.
+When she had finished her letters, she idly picked up a week-old copy of
+a Denver newspaper which lay on the table and glanced through the
+headlines. She was yawningly thinking of bed, when Moran came into the
+room.
+
+"Oh, are you and father through at last?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, smiling. "That is, we're through upstairs. I'm on my
+way over to the office to straighten up a few loose ends before I turn
+in. There's no rest for the weary, you know."
+
+"Don't let me keep you, then," she said dryly, as he lingered. "I'm
+going to bed."
+
+"You're not keeping me. I'm keeping myself." He quite understood her
+motive, but he was not thin-skinned, and he had learned that he had to
+make his opportunities with her. "Your father told me you were getting
+anxious."
+
+"Not anxious, tired."
+
+"Things are getting a little warm here, but before there's any real
+danger we expect to have the soldiers here to take charge."
+
+He rather ostentatiously displayed his bandaged wrist, hoping to win her
+sympathy, but she professed none. Instead, she yawned and tapped her
+lips with her fingers, and her indifference piqued him.
+
+"I was talking with Dorothy Purnell this afternoon," Helen finally
+remarked, eyeing him lazily, "and she seems to be of the opinion that
+you'll have hard work arresting Gordon Wade. I rather hope that you do."
+
+"Well--" He teetered a little on his feet and stroked his mustache. "We
+may have, at that. Miss Purnell is popular and she can make a lot of
+trouble for us if she wants to. Being very fond of Wade, she's likely to
+do all that she can."
+
+"Would she really have so much influence?" Helen asked, carefully
+guarding her tongue.
+
+He laughed softly as though amused at the thought.
+
+"Influence? Evidently you don't realize what a good looking girl means
+in a frontier town like this. She's part sister, part mother, sweetheart
+and a breath from Heaven to every man in Crawling Water. On that
+account, with one exception, I've had to import every last one of my
+men. The exception is Tug Bailey, who's beyond hope where women are
+concerned. To all the rest, Dorothy Purnell is 'Wade's girl,' and they
+wouldn't fight against her, or him, for all the money in Wyoming."
+
+He was watching her keenly as he spoke, and was gratified to see spots
+of color spring to her cheeks.
+
+"How interesting!" Helen could make her tone indifferent to the point of
+languor, but she could not keep the gleam of jealousy out of her eyes.
+"Gordon is a fortunate man to have such an able ally, isn't he?"
+
+"The finish will decide that, I should say," Moran replied sneeringly.
+"She may stir up more trouble than all her friends can take care of."
+
+For all of her social schooling, Helen was not proof against the sneer
+in his words, even though she fully saw through his purpose to wound
+her. She felt her temper rising, and with it came curiosity to learn how
+far the relationship between Wade and Dorothy Purnell had really gone.
+That Moran would exaggerate it, she felt sure, for he had his own ends
+to gain, but possibly from out of his exaggeration she could glean some
+truth. Yet she did not want to go so far in her anger as to gratify his
+malice, and this placed her in something of a dilemma.
+
+"I don't believe that she is 'Wade's girl,' as you call her, at all,"
+she said coldly. "They may be good friends, and if so, I'm glad; but
+they are nothing more than that. There is no 'understanding' between
+them."
+
+Moran carelessly waved his hand in the direction of the rain-swept
+street, illuminated now and then by the lightning.
+
+"Ask any one in Crawling Water."
+
+"That sounds well, but it's impracticable, even if I wanted to do it. I
+prefer to draw my own conclusions."
+
+The agent drew up a chair with his well hand, and sat down with that
+easy familiarity that came so natural to him. Helen watched him, lazily
+impertinent.
+
+"I've been wanting to have a talk with you, Helen," he began, "and this
+looks like a good chance to me. You've been foolish about Wade. Yes, I
+know that you're thinking that I've got my own ends to further, which is
+true enough. I have. I admit it. But what I am going to tell you is
+true, also. Fortune's been playing into my hand here lately. Now, if
+you'll be reasonable, you'll probably be happier. Shall I go on?"
+
+"Wild horses couldn't stop you," she answered, amused that he seemed
+flattered. "But if we were in Washington, I fancy I'd have you shown
+out."
+
+"We're not in Washington, my dear girl." He wagged his finger at her, in
+the way her father had, to give emphasis to his words. "That's where
+you've made your mistake with Wade. We're all just plain men and women
+out here in the cattle country, and I'm talking its language, not the
+language of drawing-rooms." He was himself a little surprised at the
+swift dilation of her pupils, but his words had probed deeper than he
+knew, reminding her as they did of the truth which she had so fully
+realized that afternoon. "Wade liked you--loved you, maybe, in Chicago,
+but this ain't the East. He cares nothing for you here, and he'd never
+be happy away from here. You know that picture of yourself that you sent
+to him?" She nodded. "Well, we found it on the floor of his room,
+covered with dust. He hadn't even troubled to pick it up from where it
+must have fallen weeks ago."
+
+She looked at him dumbly, unable to keep her lips from twitching. He
+knew that she believed him, and he was glad; that she had to believe
+him, because his story bore the impress of truth. It was not something
+that he could have made up.
+
+"And while your picture was lying there, Wade and this Purnell girl were
+making goo-goo eyes at each other. Why, it was she that rode out to warn
+him that we were after Santry." Helen's lips curled. "I can't swear to
+that, but I heard it and I believe it myself. They must've met on the
+trail somewhere in the dark, and you can bet he was grateful. I don't
+imagine that they stopped at a hand-shake. I imagine they kissed, don't
+you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm tired, worn out," Helen declared, forcing a smile so artificial
+that it could not deceive him. "Do go, please. I am going upstairs to
+bed."
+
+"Wait one minute." He put out his injured arm, and, thinking that he
+reached for her hand, she brushed it aside, accidentally striking his
+wound.
+
+"I'm sorry if I hurt you," she said coldly, as he winced.
+
+"Maybe I've hurt you worse," he persisted, with a tenderness that was
+intolerable to her, "but, if I have, your wound'll heal just as mine
+will." He gently pushed her back into her chair as she started to get
+up.
+
+"Are you making love to me, Race?" Under the ridicule of her tone his
+face darkened. "If you are, it's insufferable in you."
+
+"Go easy, now," he warned her. "I'll not be made a fool of."
+
+She did not heed his warning. Glad to have him on the rack, where she
+had been, she laughed at him.
+
+"Haven't you sense enough to know that, for that very reason, I'd refuse
+to believe anything you might say against Gordon Wade? I know how you
+hate him. Listen to me. Oh, this is absurd!" She laughed again at the
+picture he made. "You've pursued me for months with your attentions,
+although I've done everything but encourage you. Now I want you to know
+that I shall never again even listen to you. What Gordon is to Dorothy
+Purnell is for him, and her, and perhaps for me to be interested in, but
+not for you. Now I'm going to bed. Good night!"
+
+He caught her by the arm as she stood up, but immediately released her,
+and stepped in front of her instead.
+
+"Hold on," he begged, with a smile that meant wonderful mastery of
+himself. "I've got feelings, you know. You needn't walk on them. I love
+you, and I want you. What I want, I usually get. I mean to get you." She
+looked up at him with heavy-lidded insolence. "I may fail, but if I do,
+it'll be one more notch in my account against Wade. I know now where to
+strike him--to hurt."
+
+"You be reasonable, and _you'll_ be happier," she retorted. "May I go?"
+
+"Certainly." He stepped out of her way. "Good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+DESPERATE MEASURES
+
+
+If Moran or Helen, early in their conversation, had looked out of the
+window of the hotel, during one of those vivid lightning flashes, they
+might have seen a woman stealthily approaching the agent's office across
+the street. Taking advantage of the deeper shadows and of the darkness
+between lightning flashes, she stole to the rear of the building, where
+she found an unlatched window, through which she scrambled with the
+agility of a boy.
+
+Within, the place was pitch dark, but like one amid familiar
+surroundings, she crossed the hall and found the room she sought; the
+office room now of Moran, but formerly occupied by Simon Barsdale. She
+bent over the big safe, and was twirling the combination knob in her
+slim, cold fingers, when she was startled by a noise in the hallway
+outside. With a gasp of fright, she stood motionless, listening acutely,
+but there was no further sound; reassured, she produced a bit of candle,
+which she lighted and placed to one side of the safe, so that the flame
+was shaded from the windows. She was in the act of manipulating the
+combination again when, her whole body rigid with fear, she stood erect
+once more, holding her breath and striving for self-control. There was
+no doubt about the noise this time. Some one had entered the adjoining
+room.
+
+Hastily snuffing out the candle, she crouched into the darkness of a
+corner. She never doubted that the newcomer was Race Moran, or that he
+would almost immediately discover her. She tried to summon enough
+resolution to bluff things through when the moment of discovery should
+come.
+
+But, as the seconds slipped by and the lights were not turned on, she
+began to regain her courage. Perhaps Moran was sitting in the dark of
+the other room, smoking and thinking, and perhaps she could complete her
+task without being caught, if she moved swiftly and silently. She bent
+again over the shining knob, at the same time watching in the direction
+of the door, which was still closed as she had left it. It was difficult
+to work the lock in the dark, and, as she became engrossed with her
+purpose, she ceased temporarily to listen acutely. She had just
+succeeded in effecting the combination, when something touched her side.
+
+"Don't move!" a voice hissed behind her. "I'll shoot if you do!"
+
+She wanted to cry out, "Please don't shoot!" but her tongue clove to the
+roof of her mouth, which had suddenly gone dry. She had fallen forward
+against the door of the safe, and was curiously conscious how cold it
+felt. She was on the point of fainting, when in a rush of relief it
+dawned upon her that she knew the voice; it was not Moran's.
+
+"Gordon!" she cried joyously, finding the use of her tongue as quickly
+as she had lost it, and scrambling to her feet. "It's me--Dorothy!"
+
+With an exclamation as joyous as her own and equally surprised, he
+seized her by the shoulders, peering through the darkness into her face.
+
+"Dorothy! What the...?" A lightning flash revealed them clearly to each
+other. "I told you not to try this."
+
+"But what are you doing in town?" She clutched his arms, overcome by a
+fear greater than that for her own safety. "Gordon, Gordon, you must not
+stay here. There's a warrant out for you--no, no, not for that--for the
+Jensen shooting. You'll be arrested on sight."
+
+"What?" He stared at her, amazed, and she nodded. "So that's their game
+now, eh? They've stooped even to that. By God!" He struck a match.
+
+"Be careful," she warned him instantly. "The light--put it out. They'll
+see it from the street. But, oh, Gordon, why did you come?"
+
+He thrilled at the anxiety in her voice.
+
+"To find out what Moran is hiding here; and you're after the same thing,
+of course."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Impulsively, he squeezed her fingers, until she could have cried out in
+pain but for the sweetness of it; there are some agonies which do not
+hurt. Her throat swelled with joy, her breast heaved, and her eyelids
+fluttered. She was grateful for the darkness, which hid these outward
+signs of love from him. She blushed; she could feel the warm tide
+pulsing in her temples; and she laughed brokenly from sheer happiness.
+
+"You shouldn't have taken such a risk, Dorothy. I told you not to."
+
+"You're taking that risk, Gordon, and more."
+
+"That's different. It's so dark a night, I thought I'd chance it."
+
+"There's not much risk for me," she declared. "I can reach home in five
+minutes. Isn't it odd, though, that we both should have thought of doing
+it at exactly the same time. But come, Gordon, we must hurry!"
+
+Now that the safe was open, to remove its contents took only a moment,
+and they tossed all the papers they found into a corner. Then, when Wade
+had swung the safe around on its casters, they had a snug shelter behind
+it, where by shaded candle-light they ran rapidly through their loot.
+Most of the documents related to land purchases and development, but at
+the bottom of the pile Wade came upon a bundle of papers and
+blue-prints, held together by a rubber band, which he stripped off.
+
+"Oh, if we should find nothing, after all," Dorothy whispered, bending
+with him over the blue-prints. "What are they, Gordon?"
+
+"Maps of my own range, Dorothy!" His tone was tense with excitement, as
+he leaned nearer to the light. "Well, what do you know about that? By
+Heaven"--He fairly glared at the sheet before his eyes.--"It's all
+there!"
+
+"What's all there? What is it?"
+
+"Gold!" He looked at her in the flickering light, like a man gone mad.
+
+"Gold? On your range? Oh, Gordon!"
+
+"Yes; on my range. It's inconceivable, almost; but it seems to be true.
+See! Look here!" Their heads were almost touching, so that her soft hair
+caressed his face. "This is a map of the upper valley, and the
+description says these red crosses indicate the location of gold. One is
+near the head of Piah Creek, not half a mile from my buildings."
+
+"Oh, Gordon, I _am_ so glad!" Dorothy exclaimed. "How wonderful it all
+is. You'll be rich, won't you?" She was not too excited to remember that
+his wealth would probably be shared by another woman, but she was too
+generous to be any the less glad on that account.
+
+"That remains to be seen," he replied. "It may not prove to amount to
+much, you know. At any rate, Moran won't get any of it. That's worth a
+whole lot."
+
+She nodded vehemently.
+
+"I thought it must be something like that, Gordon. They would never have
+done the things they have without some powerful reason."
+
+"Yes, you were right, Dorothy. You're usually right." He caught her hand
+and squeezed it again, and in this moment of their triumph together she
+could not help returning the pressure. "You're a jewel, a brick, a
+trump--all those things and then some. The sweet...."
+
+"Now, we haven't time for that sort of thing, Mr. Man. We...."
+
+"Must get away while we can, yes," he finished for her. "But just the
+same I...."
+
+Her cold fingers on his lips stopped him.
+
+"Listen!"
+
+She put out the candle and they crouched down beside the safe. Some one
+was coming up the stairs, not stealthily this time but boldly, as one
+who had a right there, whistling softly. Wade could feel the girl's
+shoulder tremble against his side, as he slipped his revolver out of its
+holster.
+
+"Don't, Gordon! You--you mustn't shoot, no matter what happens." Her
+teeth were chattering, for she was far more frightened now than she had
+been for herself alone. "That's Moran. He mustn't see you here. Remember
+that warrant. Hide behind the safe. Please!"
+
+"Never!" he muttered grimly. "He'd find us anyhow."
+
+"Yes, yes. Please!" She was almost hysterical in her excitement. "I can
+bluff him till you can get away. He won't hurt me. If he does you can
+show yourself. Do it for me, for your friends. Please! Remember, he
+mustn't know that _you've_ learned his secret."
+
+It was Moran, for they heard him now in conversation with some passer-by
+in the hallway. Dorothy was grateful for the respite, for it gave them
+time to throw the loose papers back into the safe and close it. Wade
+then pushed the safe to its original position, the casters making little
+noise as they rolled. Then he crouched behind it.
+
+"I don't like this stunt!" he protested; but yielded to her beseeching
+"Please." She was right, too, he knew. It would be far better if Moran
+could be kept in ignorance of his visit there.
+
+The office now bore little sign of their invasion of it, and, drawing a
+deep breath, Dorothy schooled herself to calmness as she awaited Moran,
+who was walking down the hall toward the entrance to the room. A plan
+had flashed into her mind by means of which she might save both Wade and
+herself, if he and her heart would only be quiet. The unruly heart was
+beating so violently that it shook her thin dress, and that her voice
+must tremble, she knew.
+
+Moran was almost at the threshold, when Dorothy opened the door for him.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Moran. Did I startle you?"
+
+"Well, not exactly," he said, striking a match, after an instant's
+pause. "What are you doing here?"
+
+Passing her, he lighted the large oil lamp, and swept the room with a
+quick, keen glance. Finding nothing apparently wrong, he turned again to
+his visitor with a puzzled expression in his face.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I wanted to see you and I thought you'd be here. The door was unlocked
+so I just walked in. I've been here only a minute or two." Fortified by
+another deep breath, drawn while his back was turned, Dorothy found her
+voice steadier than she expected.
+
+The agent looked at her keenly.
+
+"That's strange," he commented. "I don't know what the door was doing
+unlocked. I always lock it when I leave."
+
+"You must have forgotten to do so to-night."
+
+"I surely must have, if you found it open."
+
+Half convinced that she was telling the truth, Moran could see but one
+reason for her evident fright: she was afraid of him. The suggestion of
+that strengthened the impulse which her beauty stirred in him. If she
+thought so, why not?
+
+"Say, you're a good-looking kid, all right," he leered. "What did you
+want to see me for?"
+
+A slight sound from behind the safe, or perhaps she imagined it, caused
+Dorothy's heart to flutter wildly. She had not anticipated this attitude
+in Moran, and she instantly realized that it brought a fresh danger into
+the situation. She knew that Wade would not remain in concealment if the
+agent insulted her. She must avoid the chance of that, if possible; must
+get him out of the office so that Gordon might escape.
+
+"This is no place to talk that way," she said bravely. "It isn't a good
+place for me to be anyway. If people knew I was here, there would be a
+terrible scandal. I've something important to tell you. Won't you come
+for a walk?"
+
+"In this rain? Not much," he chuckled. "Come here!" She shook her head
+and tried to smile. "Well, if you won't, I'll have to go to you." She
+shrank back from him, as he approached her, with an evil smile. "Say,
+little one," he went on, "this is a damned funny game of yours, coming
+here at night. What's the idea, eh?"
+
+"There isn't any, really." She snatched her hands away from him. "I've
+already tried to explain that I have important news for you; but I won't
+tell you what it is here."
+
+"Why not? We're dry and cozy here. Go ahead."
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, come on!" He had driven her to the wall, and now he slipped an arm
+about her waist and pulled her toward him. "Say, kiss me once, won't
+you?"
+
+"Hands up, you low-lived hound!"
+
+With an oath, Moran whirled around to find himself staring into the
+muzzle of Wade's revolver. The ranchman moved his weapon significantly.
+
+"Up!"
+
+As the agent's hands went above his head, Dorothy leaned against the
+wall for support. She had not made a sound, but she was the color of
+chalk, and her heart seemed to be trying to jump out of her mouth. She
+was no whiter than Wade, whose fury had driven every vestige of color
+from his face and fired his eyes with a murderous light.
+
+"Shall I kill him?" he asked Dorothy, and at the frightful tone of his
+voice she found the power to shake her head, although her mouth was too
+dry for speech.
+
+"Take his gun," said Wade sharply and the girl stepped forward.
+
+She reeled toward Moran, who, to do him justice, showed little fear,
+and pulled his revolver from his hip pocket. She held it out to Wade,
+who broke it with his free hand by pressing the butt against the top of
+the safe, and spilled the cartridges on the floor.
+
+"Now you can leave us, Dorothy," he said quietly.
+
+"No. I'll stay, Gordon," she answered.
+
+"Moran," Wade continued evenly, without paying any more attention to
+her, "the only reason why I shall not kill you is because Miss Purnell
+does not want your worthless life upon her conscience. A man like you
+ought to die. You're not fit to live."
+
+"Can I put my hands down?"
+
+"No; keep 'em where they are!" Wade gestured again with the gun. "I wish
+I had a string on each of your thumbs so I could hoist them higher. I've
+just been through this safe of yours." The agent started. "I've got
+those maps of my range in my pocket."
+
+"Much good they'll do you."
+
+"They'll do me more good alive than they will you dead, and you're going
+to die. So help me God, you are! We'll come together again some day."
+
+"I hope so," Moran declared venomously, and even Dorothy was struck by
+the courage he showed.
+
+"And then there won't be anybody to be held responsible but me." Wade
+grinned in a slow, horrible fashion. "It'll rest light on me, I promise
+you. And another thing. I'm going to leave you trussed up here in this
+office, like I left your friend the Sheriff a few days ago, and along
+about morning somebody'll find you and turn you loose. When you get
+loose, you want to forget that you saw Miss Purnell here to-night. I've
+meant to have her and her mother leave town for a bit until this mess
+blows over, but things aren't fixed right for that just now. Instead,
+I'm going to leave her in the personal care--the _personal_ care, you
+understand me, of every decent man in Crawling Water. If anything
+happens to her, you'll toast over a slow fire before you die. Do you get
+that?"
+
+"She's a good kid," said Moran, with a grin. Nor did he flinch when the
+weapon in Wade's hand seemed actually to stiffen under the tension of
+his grasp.
+
+"I guess it's a good thing you stayed, Dorothy," the latter remarked
+grimly. "This fellow must be tied up. I wonder what we can find to do it
+with?"
+
+"My cloak?" Dorothy suggested. "It's an old one."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"It's hard to tear that rain-proof stuff, and besides you'd get wet
+going home. There's no sense in that. Isn't there something else?"
+
+She blushed a little and turned away for a moment, during which she
+slipped off her underskirt. Then, as Moran watched her cynically, she
+tore it into strips. When she had thus made several stout bands, Wade
+spoke again.
+
+"You take the first throw or two about him," he directed, "and when you
+have him partly tied you can take my gun and I'll finish the job. Start
+with his feet, that's right. Now draw it as tight as you can. Put your
+arms down back of you! Tie them now, Dorothy. That's fine! Here, you
+take the gun. You know how to use it, if he struggles."
+
+Wade tightened up the linen bands, and kicked forward a straight-backed
+chair, into which he forced Moran and lashed him fast there, to all of
+which the agent made no great protest, knowing that to do so would be
+useless. He grunted and swore a bit under his breath, but that was all.
+When he was well trussed up, the ranchman made a gag out of what was
+left of the linen and his own handkerchief and strapped it into his
+prisoner's mouth with his belt.
+
+When the job was done, and it was a good one, he grinned again in that
+slow, terrible way. A grin that bore no semblance to human mirth, but
+was a grimace of combined anger and hatred. Once before, during the
+fight at the ranch, Bill Santry had seen this expression on his
+employer's face, but not to the degree that Dorothy now saw it. It
+frightened her.
+
+"Oh, Gordon, don't, please!" She closed her eyes to shut out the sight.
+"Come, we must hurry away."
+
+"Good night," Wade said ironically, with a last look at Moran.
+
+He let Dorothy draw him away then, and by the time they reached the
+street he was his old boyish self again. Aping Moran, he slipped his arm
+around her waist, but she did not shrink from _his_ embrace, unexpected
+though it was.
+
+"Say, kid," he laughed mockingly. "Kiss me once, won't you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+INTO THE DEPTHS
+
+
+"Good Lord, Race! What's happened?"
+
+Senator Rexhill, on the next morning, surprised that Moran did not show
+up at the hotel, had gone in search of him, and was dumbfounded when he
+entered the office.
+
+Moran, in his desperate efforts to free himself, had upset the chair
+into which he was tied, and being unable to right it again, had passed
+most of the night in a position of extreme discomfort. Toward morning,
+his confinement had become positive agony, and he had inwardly raved at
+Wade, the gag in his mouth making audible expression impossible, until
+he was black in the face.
+
+"My God, Race!" the Senator exclaimed, when, having cut the lashings and
+withdrawn the gag, he saw his agent in a state bordering on collapse,
+"what has happened to you?" He helped the man to his feet and held him
+up.
+
+"My throat--dry--whiskey!" Moran gasped, and groaned as he clutched at
+the desk, from which he slid into a chair, where he sat rubbing his
+legs, which ached with a thousand pains.
+
+Rexhill found a bottle of whiskey and a glass on a shelf in the closet.
+He poured out a generous drink of the liquor and handed it to Moran,
+but the agent could not hold it in his swollen fingers. The Senator
+picked up the glass, which had not broken in its fall and, refilling it,
+held it to Moran's lips. It was a stiff drink, and by the time it was
+repeated, the agent was revived somewhat.
+
+"Now, tell me," urged Rexhill.
+
+Prepared though he was for an outburst of fury, he was amazed at the
+torrent of blasphemous oaths which Moran uttered. He caught Wade's name,
+but the rest was mere incoherence, so wildly mouthed and so foul that he
+began to wonder if torture had unbalanced the man's mind. The expression
+of Moran's eyes, which had become mere slits in his inflamed and puffy
+face, showed that for the time he was quite beyond himself. What with
+his blued skin and distended veins, his puffed lips and slurred speech,
+he seemed on the brink of an apoplectic seizure. Rexhill watched him
+anxiously.
+
+"Come, come, man. Brace up," he burst out, at length. "You'll kill
+yourself, if you go on that way. Be a man."
+
+The words seemed to have their effect, for the agent made a supreme
+effort at the self-control which was seldom lacking in him. He appeared
+to seize the reins of self-government and to force himself into a state
+of unnatural quiet, as one tames a frantic horse.
+
+"The safe!" he muttered hoarsely, scrambling to his feet.
+
+His stiffened legs still refused to function, however, and Rexhill,
+hastening to the safe, threw open the door. One glance at the
+disordered interior told him the whole story. Moran watched feverishly
+as he dragged the crumpled papers out on the floor and pawed through
+them.
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"Gone!"
+
+They looked at each other, a thin tide of crimson brightening the
+congestion of Moran's visage, while Rexhill's face went ghastly white.
+With shaking fingers, the agent poured himself a third drink and tossed
+it down his throat.
+
+"It was Wade who tied you up?"
+
+Moran nodded.
+
+"Him and that--girl--the Purnell girl." Stirred more by the other's
+expression of contempt than by the full half pint of whiskey he had
+imbibed, he crashed his fist down on the desk. "Mind what you say now,
+because, by God, I'm in no mood to take anything from you. He got the
+drop on me, you understand. Let it go at that."
+
+"It's gone right enough--all gone." Rexhill groaned. "Why, he only needs
+to publish those plots to make this a personal fight between us and
+every property owner in the valley. They'll tar and feather us, if they
+don't kill us outright. It'll be gold with them--gold. Nothing else will
+count from now on."
+
+"I'll get back at him yet!" growled Moran.
+
+"You'll...." The Senator threateningly raised his gorilla-like arms, but
+let them drop helplessly again. "How did they get into the safe? Did you
+leave it open?"
+
+"Do you think I'm a fool?" Moran fixed his baleful eyes upon his
+employer, as he leaned heavily, but significantly, across the flat desk.
+"Say, let's look ahead to to-morrow, not back to last night. Do you
+hear? I'll do the remembering of last night; you forget it!"
+
+Rexhill tried to subdue him with his own masterful gaze, but somehow the
+power was lacking. Moran was in a dangerous frame of mind, and past the
+dominance of his employer. He had but one thought, that of vengeance
+upon the man who had misused him, to which everything else had for the
+time being to play second.
+
+"You talk like I let them truss me up for fun," he went on. "I did it
+because I had to, because I was looking into the muzzle of a six-shooter
+in the hands of a desperate man; that was why. Do you get me? And I
+don't need to be reminded of it. No, by Heaven! My throat's as dry yet
+as a fish-bone, and every muscle in me aches like hell! I'll remember it
+all right, and _he'll_ pay. Don't you have any worries about that."
+
+Rexhill was sufficiently a captain of men to have had experience of such
+moods in the past, and he knew the futility of arguing. He carefully
+chose a cigar from his case, seated himself, and began to smoke.
+
+Moran, apparently soothed by this concession to his temper, and a bit
+ashamed of himself, watched him for some moments in silence. When at
+last he spoke, his tone was more conciliatory.
+
+"Have you heard from Washington?" he asked.
+
+"I got a telegram this morning, saying that the matter is under
+advisement."
+
+"Under advisement!" Moran snorted, in disgust. "That means that they'll
+get the cavalry here in time to fire a volley over our graves--ashes to
+ashes and dust to dust. What are you going to do about it?"
+
+Rexhill blew a huge mouthful of fragrant smoke into the air.
+
+"Frankly, Race, I don't think you're in a proper mood to talk."
+
+"You're right." Something in Moran's voice suggested the explosion of a
+fire-arm, and the Senator looked at him curiously. "I'm through talking.
+We've both of us talked too damn much, and that's a fact."
+
+"I'll be obliged to you," the Senator remarked, "if you'll remember that
+you draw a salary from me and that you owe me a certain amount of
+respect."
+
+Moran laughed raucously.
+
+"Respect! I don't owe you a damn thing, Senator; and what you owe me you
+won't be able to pay if you sit here much longer waiting for something
+to turn up. You'll be ruined, that's what you'll be--ruined!" He brought
+his big hand down on the table with a thump.
+
+"By your own carelessness. Now, look here, Race, I've made allowances
+for you, because...."
+
+"You don't need to soft soap me, Senator; save that for your office
+seekers." The agent was fast working himself into another passion. "I've
+not ruined you, and you know it. A safe's a safe, isn't it? Instead of
+ruining you, I'm trying to save you. If you go broke, you'll do it
+yourself with your pap and sentiment. But if I am to pull your chestnuts
+out of the fire for you, you've got to give me a free hand. I've got to
+fight fire with fire."
+
+Rexhill wiped his glasses nervously, for despite his assumption of calm,
+his whole future swung upon the outcome of his Crawling Water venture.
+If he appeared calm, it was not because he felt so, but because the
+schooling of a lifetime had taught him that the man who keeps cool
+usually wins.
+
+"There's nothing to do but go on as we are headed now," he declared.
+"Wade's discovery of our purpose is most unfortunate"--his voice shook a
+trifle--"but it can't be helped. In the legal sense, he has added to the
+list of his crimes, and we have more against him than we ever had. He
+now has three charges to face--murder, assault, and robbery. It rests
+with us whether he shall be punished by the courts for any of the
+three."
+
+The Senator spoke emphatically in the effort to convince himself that
+his statements were practically true, but he avoided Moran's eyes as he
+did so. His show of optimism had little substance behind it, because now
+that his motives were likely to be bared to the public, he was too good
+a lawyer not to realize how little standing he would have before a jury,
+in that section at least; of course, Wade must realize this equally well
+and feel fortified in his own position. Rexhill's chief hope had been
+that the support of the cavalry from Fort Mackenzie would enable him to
+control the situation; but here, too, he was threatened by the
+unexpected hesitation of the authorities at Washington.
+
+Moran, however, was frankly contemptuous of the prospect of help from
+that source. He had never believed greatly in it, although at the time
+it was first mentioned his enthusiasm for any plan of action had
+inspired him with some measure of the Senator's confidence. Now that his
+lust of revenge made him intolerant of all opposition, he was thoroughly
+exasperated by the telegram received from Washington, and had no faith
+in aid from such a quarter.
+
+"What if your cavalry doesn't come?" he demanded.
+
+"Then we must rely upon the Sheriff here to maintain the law that he is
+sworn to support."
+
+"Bah! He's weakening now. He's not forgetting that he's to spend the
+rest of his days in this town, after we've gone back East, or perhaps to
+hell. Who's to look after him, then, if he's got himself in bad with the
+folks here? Senator"--Moran clumped painfully over to the safe and
+leaned upon it as he faced his employer--"it isn't cavalry that'll save
+you, or that old turkey buzzard of a sheriff either. I'm the man to do
+it, if anybody is, and the only way out is to lay for this man Wade and
+kidnap him." Rexhill started violently. "Kidnap him, and take him into
+the mountains, and keep him there with a gun at his head, until he signs
+a quit-claim. I've located the very spot to hide him in--Coyote Springs.
+It's practically inaccessible, a natural hiding-place."
+
+Rexhill turned a shade or two paler as he nervously brushed some cigar
+ashes from his vest and sleeve. He had already gone farther along the
+road of crime than he felt to be safe, but the way back seemed even more
+dangerous than the road ahead. The question was no longer one of ethics,
+but purely of expediency.
+
+"We haven't time to wait on cavalry and courts," Moran went on. "I'm
+willing to take the risk, if you are. If we don't take it, you know what
+the result will be. We may make our get-away to the East, or we _may_
+stop here for good--under ground. You have little choice either way. If
+you get out of this country, you'll be down and out. Your name'll be a
+byword and you'll be flat broke, a joke and an object of contempt the
+nation over. And it's not only yourself you've got to think of; you've
+got to consider your wife and daughter, and how they'll stand poverty
+and disgrace. Against all that you've got a chance, a fighting chance.
+Are you game enough to take it?"
+
+All that Moran said was true enough, for Rexhill knew that if he failed
+to secure control of Crawling Water Valley, his back would be broken,
+both politically and financially. He would not only be stripped of his
+wealth, but of his credit and the power which stood him in lieu of
+private honor. He would be disgraced beyond redemption in the eyes of
+his associates, and in the bosom of his family he would find no solace
+for public sneers. Failure meant the loss forever of his daughter's
+respect, which might yet be saved to him through the glamour of success
+and the reflection of that tolerance which the world is always ready to
+extend toward the successful.
+
+"You are right," he admitted, "in saying that I have my wife and
+daughter to consider, and that reminds me. I haven't told you that Helen
+overheard our conversation about Wade, in my room, the other day." He
+rapidly explained her indignation and threat of exposure. "I don't mean
+to say that your suggestion hasn't something to recommend it," he summed
+up, "but if Wade were to disappear, and she felt that he had been
+injured, I probably could not restrain her."
+
+The agent leaned across the desk, leeringly.
+
+"Tell her the truth, that I found Wade here in this room with Dorothy
+Purnell, at night; that they came here for an assignation, because it
+was the one place in Crawling Water...."
+
+Rexhill got to his feet with an exclamation of disgust.
+
+"Well, say, then, that they came here to rifle the place, but that when
+I caught them they were spooning. Say anything you like, but make her
+believe that it was a lovers' meeting. See if she'll care then to save
+him."
+
+The Senator dropped heavily back into his chair without voicing the
+protest that had been upon his tongue's end. He was quick to see that,
+contemptible though the suggestion was, it yet offered him a means
+whereby to save himself his daughter's respect and affection. The whole
+danger in that regard lay in her devotion to Wade, which was responsible
+for her interest in him. If she could be brought to feel that Wade was
+unworthy, that he had indeed wronged her, her own pride could be trusted
+to do the rest.
+
+"If I thought that Wade were the man to make her happy," Rexhill puffed
+heavily, in restraint of his excitement.
+
+"Happy? Him?" Moran's eyes gleamed.
+
+"Or if there was a shred of truth--but to make up such a story out of
+whole cloth...."
+
+"What's the matter with you, Senator? Why, I thought you were a master
+of men, a general on the field of battle!" The agent leaned forward
+again until his hot, whiskey-laden breath fanned the other man's face.
+
+"I'm a father, Race, before I'm anything else in God's world."
+
+"But it's true, Senator. True as I'm speaking. Ask any one in Crawling
+Water. Everybody knows that Wade and this Purnell girl are mad in love
+with each other."
+
+"Is that true, Race?"
+
+Rexhill looked searchingly into the inflamed slits which marked the
+location of the agent's eyes.
+
+"As God is my witness. It's the truth now, whatever he may have thought
+of Helen before. He's been making a fool of her, Senator. I've tried to
+make her see it, but she won't. You'll not only be protecting yourself,
+but you'll do her a service." He paused as Rexhill consulted his watch.
+
+"Helen will be over here in a few minutes. I promised to take a walk
+with her this morning."
+
+"Are you game?"
+
+"I'll do it, Race." Rexhill spoke solemnly. "We might as well fry for
+one thing as another." Grimacing, he shook the hand which the other
+offered him. "When will you start?"
+
+"Now," Moran answered promptly. "I'll take three or four men with me,
+and we'll hang around Wade's ranch until we get him. He'll probably be
+nosing around the range trying to locate the gold, and we shouldn't have
+much trouble. When we've got him safe...." His teeth ground audibly upon
+each other as he paused abruptly, and the sound seemed to cause the
+Senator uneasiness.
+
+"By the way, since I've turned near-assassin, you might as well tell me
+who shot Jensen." Rexhill spoke with a curious effort. "If Wade gets
+you, instead of you getting Wade, it may be necessary for me to know all
+the facts."
+
+Moran answered from the window, whither he had stepped to get his hat,
+which lay on the broad sill.
+
+"It was Tug Bailey, Senator. Here comes Helen now. You needn't tell her
+that I was tied up all night." He laid Wade's quirt on the desk. "He
+left that behind him."
+
+Rexhill grunted.
+
+"Yes, I will tell her," he declared sulkily, "and about the Jensen
+affair, if I've got to be a rascal, you'll be the goat. Give Bailey some
+money and get him out of town before he tanks up and tells all he
+knows."
+
+Helen came in, looking very sweet and fresh in a linen suit, and was at
+first inclined to be sympathetic when she heard of Moran's plight,
+without knowing the source of it. Before she did know, the odor of
+liquor on his breath repelled her. He finally departed, not at the
+bidding of her cool nod, but urged by his lust of revenge, which, even
+more than the whiskey, had fired his blood.
+
+"Intoxicated, isn't he? How utterly disgusting!"
+
+Her father looked at her admiringly, keenly regretting that he must
+dispel her love dream. But he took some comfort from the fact that Wade
+was apparently in love with another woman. The thought of this had been
+enough to make him seize upon the chance of keeping all her affection
+for himself.
+
+"He's had a drink or two," he admitted, "but he needed them. He had a
+hard night. Poor fellow, he was nearly dead when I arrived. Wade handled
+him very roughly."
+
+Helen looked up in amazement.
+
+"Did _Gordon_ do it? What was he doing here?" The Senator hesitated, and
+while she waited for his answer she was struck by a sense of humor in
+what had happened. She laughed softly. "Good for him!"
+
+"We think that he came here to--to see what he could find, partly,"
+Rexhill explained. "That probably was not his only reason. He wasn't
+alone."
+
+"Oh!" Her tone expressed disappointment that his triumph had not been a
+single-handed one. "Did they tie him with these?" she asked, picking up
+one of the crumpled strips of linen, which lay on the floor. Suddenly
+her face showed surprise. "Why--this is part of a woman's skirt?"
+
+Her father glanced at the strip of linen over his glasses.
+
+"Yes," he nodded. "I believe it is."
+
+"Somebody was here with Race?" Her voice was a blend of attempted
+confidence and distressing doubt.
+
+"My dear, I have painful news for you...."
+
+"With Gordon?" The question was almost a sob. "Who, father? Dorothy
+Purnell?"
+
+Helen dropped into a chair, and going to her, the Senator placed his
+hands on her shoulders. She looked shrunken, years older, with the bloom
+of youth blighted as frost strikes a flower, but even in the first and
+worst moments of her grief there was dignity in it. In a measure Race
+Moran had prepared her for the blow; he, and what she herself had seen
+of the partisanship between Dorothy and Gordon.
+
+"You must be brave, my dear," her father soothed, "because it is
+necessary that you should know. Race came upon them here last night, in
+each other's embrace, I believe, and with the girl's help, Wade got the
+upper hand."
+
+"Are you sure it was Gordon?" Her cold fingers held to his warm ones as
+in her childhood days, when she had run to him for protection.
+
+"His quirt is there on the desk."
+
+"But why should they have come here, father--here of all places? Doesn't
+that seem very improbable to you? That is what I can't understand. Why
+didn't he go to her house?"
+
+"For fear of arrest, I suppose. Their reason for coming here, you have
+half expressed, Helen, because it offered them the safest refuge, at
+that time of night, in Crawling Water. The office has not been used at
+night since we rented it, and besides Moran has been doubly busy with
+me at the hotel. But I don't say that was their sole reason for coming
+here. The safe had been opened, and doubtless their chief motive was
+robbery."
+
+She sprang to her feet and stood facing him with flaming cheeks, grieved
+still but aroused to passionate indignation.
+
+"Father, do you stand there and tell me that Gordon Wade has not only
+been untrue to me, but that he came here at night to steal from _you_;
+broke in here like a common thief?" Her breast heaved violently, and in
+her eyes shone a veritable fury of scorn.
+
+The Senator met her outburst gravely as became a man in his position. He
+spoke with judicial gravity, which could leave no doubt of his own
+convictions, while conveying a sense of dignified restraint, tempered
+with regret.
+
+"He not only did so, my dear, but he succeeded in escaping with
+documents of the greatest value to us, which, if prematurely published,
+may work us incalculable harm and subject our motives to the most
+grievous misconception."
+
+She lifted her head with so fine a gesture of pride that the Senator was
+thrilled by his own paternity. Before him, in his child, he seemed to
+see the best of himself, purified and exalted.
+
+"Then, if that is true, you may do with him what you will. I am
+through."
+
+He knew her too well to doubt that her renunciation of Wade had been
+torn from the very roots of her nature, but for all that, when she had
+spoken, she was not above her moment of deep grief.
+
+"My little girl, I know--I know!" Putting his arms around her, he held
+her while she wept on his shoulder. "But isn't it better to find out
+these things now, in time, before they have had a chance to really wreck
+your happiness?"
+
+"Yes, of course." She dried her eyes and managed to smile a little.
+"I--I'll write to Maxwell to-day and tell him that I'll marry him. That
+will please mother."
+
+It pleased the Senator, too, for it meant that no matter what happened
+to him, the women of his family would be provided for. He knew that
+young Frayne was too much in love to be turned from his purpose by any
+misfortune that might occur to Helen's father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A DASTARD'S BLOW
+
+
+At about the time when Rexhill was freeing Moran from his bonds, Wade
+and Santry, with rifles slung across their backs were tramping the banks
+of Piah Creek. In the rocky canyon, which they finally reached, the
+placid little stream narrowed into a roaring torrent, which rushed
+between the steep banks and the huge, water-worn bowlders, with fury
+uncontrolled.
+
+Neither of the cattlemen greatly feared the coming of a second posse, at
+least immediately, but for the sake of prudence, they went armed and
+kept a careful watch. Wade mounted guard while Santry, who in his
+younger days had prospected in California, squatted over a sandy,
+rock-rimmed pool and deftly "washed out" a pan of gravel. One glance at
+the fine, yellow residue in the bottom of the pan decided him. With a
+triumphant yell that echoed and reechoed through the gorge, he sprang to
+his feet.
+
+"Whoop-e-e-e! I've struck it!" he shouted excitedly, as Wade ran up to
+him. "Look there!" The old man held out a small handful of the yellow
+dust.
+
+Wade drew a long breath.
+
+"Gold! It's true, then!"
+
+"You betcher, and it's the richest pay-dirt I ever met up with. No
+wonder Moran has been willin' to do murder to get a-holt of this land.
+You're a rich man, boy; a millionaire, I reckon."
+
+"You mean that _we_ are rich, Bill." The younger man spoke slowly and
+emphatically. "Whatever comes out of here"--he waved his hand toward the
+creek--"is one-half yours. I decided on that long ago. Never mind asking
+me why." He clapped Santry on the back. "It's because we're partners in
+fact, if not in name. Because you've stuck with me through all the lean
+years. That's reason enough."
+
+The old plainsman carefully emptied the dust back into the pan before he
+said anything.
+
+"Have you gone clean crazy?" he finally demanded. "Givin' away a fortune
+like it was the makin's of a cigareet? If you have, I ain't. This
+stuff's yourn. I'm not sayin' that I won't take a ounce or two, maybe,
+of this here dust, for old times' sake, if you offer it to me, but
+that's all." His wrinkled face twisted into a grin. "You'll be needin'
+it all one o' these days to pay for your honeymoonin', if I read the
+signs right. Ain't that so, son?" He laughed softly as Wade flushed.
+"Shake, boy! Put 'er there! I wish you all the luck that's comin' to any
+white man, by the great horned toad, I do!"
+
+During the whole of the morning they examined the creek bed and they
+found signs of the yellow metal almost everywhere. At one point, Wade
+broke a knob of rock from the face of the cliff, the under surface of
+which was seamed and streaked with golden veins. Santry could scarcely
+restrain himself; usually taciturn, he was for once as light-hearted and
+joyous as a boy. But on the way back to the ranch-house he became
+serious.
+
+"Say, ain't the bulk of that lode on that forty-acre tract that you took
+up as a timber claim?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Wade answered. "That is, I think so. We can run over the lines
+this afternoon and make sure."
+
+"I reckon we'd better make sure, and if it is, you'll have to lay low
+until you get your deed. Your homestead rights might be hard to claim
+now that there's mineral in the ground. Moran'll most likely keep his
+mouth shut for reasons of his own, and he may not know about your not
+havin' proved up yet, but some other jasper might get wise."
+
+"I don't think any one around here would contest my right to the land,
+Bill," Wade replied thoughtfully. "Still, as you say, we'd better be
+careful. The gold will keep. We haven't heard the last of Moran and his
+crowd yet, not by a jugful." He chuckled grimly. "I wonder if anybody's
+cut him loose yet."
+
+"I reckon they have, boy. He'll keep monkeyin' around this territory
+until he meets up with some feller like me, with a bad temper and a
+quick gun hand, who'll make him good the same way we useter make good
+Injuns. Hullo, steady!"
+
+Although they were now in sight of the house and the men hanging about
+it for the noon-day meal, Santry had not relaxed his caution and his
+eyes had picked out two moving dots in the distance, which presently
+developed into galloping horses. He smiled instantly.
+
+"Can't be nobody lookin' for trouble," he observed, and presently his
+eyes twinkled. "Take a good look, boy. I reckon you know _one_ of 'em,
+anyhow."
+
+The horses came on rapidly, until upon the foremost of them Wade could
+see the fluttering skirt of a woman, while the other he recognized as
+belonging to Lem Trowbridge even before he could clearly make out the
+rider.
+
+"Tell the cook we'll have company to dinner," Wade called to Santry as
+he untied a horse from the hitching rack near the barn and rode off to
+meet the newcomers.
+
+With fine prescience, Trowbridge, when he saw him ride toward them, drew
+his horse down to a walk, and so was discreetly in the rear when Dorothy
+and Wade met.
+
+"Mighty glad to see you," he greeted her, "but that goes without
+saying."
+
+"Thanks," she responded, hoping that he would attribute the heightened
+color of her cheeks to the exertion of the ride. "We thought we'd ride
+out to see how you were getting along."
+
+Despite her blush, that had come at the recollection of his kiss the
+night before, she still looked him straight in the eyes, but with a
+sweet humility, an attitude of surrender, which he understood and which
+touched him. There was nothing bold about her look, but an engaging
+womanliness, which would have appealed to any decent man, even while it
+stirred his pulse. She wore a wide felt hat, from beneath the brim of
+which her hair floated, shaken out of its moorings by the jolting of
+her gallop. A flannel blouse, which was most becoming, and a divided
+skirt completed a sensible costume, which seemed to Wade more attractive
+than any he had ever seen in the East. She rode with the straight
+stirrups of the cattle country, and sat her mount with the grace of a
+born horsewoman.
+
+"What's happened to Moran?" he asked, waving his hat to Trowbridge, as
+the latter rode toward them.
+
+"He's out and around again. I saw him this morning. He was an awful
+sight. You must keep your eyes open, Gordon, really you must. He'll be
+more dangerous than ever now."
+
+"Oh, I guess we've clipped his claws for a while," he said lightly,
+unwilling that she should be anxious for his safety, sweet though he
+found her sympathy to be. "Hello, Lem!"
+
+"Hello, yourself!" They shook hands, the firm handclasp of strong men,
+and then all three rode on together to the house.
+
+After dinner, the plainness of which meant nothing to such appetites as
+their out-door living had aroused, they sat on the porch, the men over
+their cigarettes and Dorothy quite content in the contemplation of the
+sweetness which her heart had found.
+
+"How are things going on your place, Lem?" asked Wade.
+
+"Badly, Gordon. That's one reason I rode over to see you. Have you heard
+about the fight on my range? You haven't?"
+
+"I didn't have time last night to tell him," Dorothy interposed.
+
+"A number of my boys got into a shooting affray with some herders,"
+Trowbridge explained. "Two of the boys were hurt and one of the herders,
+I understand, was badly shot."
+
+"Too bad," Wade commented. "Confound it, Lem, what are these fellows
+thinking of? They must know that our patience won't last always, and
+when it breaks we're ten to their one."
+
+"Well,"--Trowbridge deftly flecked his cigarette stub over the porch
+railing,--"I'm through now, Gordon. I've given my men orders to stand
+for no more nonsense. I've told them to shoot at the drop of the hat,
+and I'll stand behind 'em, law or no law. The next time there's trouble,
+and it's likely to come any hour, I'm going to lead my outfit into a
+fight that'll be some fight, believe me. And I'm not going to quit until
+every sheep man in the county is headed East on the run."
+
+"We'll be with you," Wade said heartily. "Tip us the word and we'll be
+right after you."
+
+Trowbridge nodded.
+
+"I'll take you up on that, Gordon. Not that we need help, you
+understand, but because it'll be best for us to present a united front
+in this business. United, we stand; divided, we fall; that's the word,
+eh?"
+
+Dorothy leaned forward, with an anxious look.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I hope neither one of you will get shot."
+
+Trowbridge made her a bow from his chair.
+
+"We'll try not to," he said mockingly, and she was obliged to join in
+the general laugh.
+
+"If you feel that you ought to do it, of course you will--fight, I
+mean," she said, helplessly. "But I think it's dreadful, all the same."
+
+"What has Thomas done about me?" Wade asked. "I understand that he's
+holding quite a bunch of warrants up his sleeve?"
+
+"I don't think he's done anything, and I don't believe he's anxious to,"
+Trowbridge answered. "He's shown some courage, that fellow, in the past,
+but I always thought he had a yellow streak in him somewhere. I don't
+think you need fear him much."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to know that, not that I've been very uneasy, but we've
+had to keep a pretty close look-out here, and it's doubled us up
+uncomfortably. I want to go out to my timber claim this afternoon, and
+but for what you've said, I know Bill would insist on going along. Now I
+can leave him here to attend to his work."
+
+Dorothy was opposed to the idea and she said so, but her opinion was
+overridden by the two men. Trowbridge declared that there was absolutely
+nothing to fear from Sheriff Thomas, at least immediately.
+
+"I'm positive of that," he summed up. "If there was any new move on
+foot, I'd have heard of it."
+
+"That may be," Dorothy argued, "but you know Senator Rexhill is behind
+him to urge him on."
+
+"That's another man we ought to run out of this neighborhood,"
+Trowbridge declared. "The only trouble is that the old fox has laid so
+low that we haven't anything definite on him. We can suspect all we
+like; but when it comes right down to facts, he has us guessing. We
+can't prove a thing against him, and he's too big game to flush without
+powder. Well, we'd better be off."
+
+"Stay a while," Wade urged. "It's early yet. I didn't mean to hurry you
+when I spoke of going out to the claim. I've got plenty of time."
+
+"I haven't told him about the gold," Dorothy whispered, as he helped her
+into her saddle. "I thought you might want to keep it quiet for the
+present."
+
+"Sure, we'll tell him," he said, pressing her hand. "We're all on the
+same side in this business."
+
+He explained his good fortune to Trowbridge, who was delighted and
+enthusiastic over the prospect of the vein impinging upon his own range.
+
+"Well, that _is_ some luck, eh?" Trowbridge skillfully managed his
+horse, which was high-spirited enough to still be sportive in spite of
+the long ride of the morning. "Every cloud's got a silver lining, as the
+poet says. And another thing, it shows Rexhill's real motive, don't
+forget that. Oh, we'll get 'em by and by. Sure thing, we will. Well, so
+long."
+
+"So long, Lem! Call on us when you want us."
+
+"Good-by!" Dorothy waved to him as the horses sped away in the direction
+of Crawling Water.
+
+Wade watched them out of sight, and then entered the house to tell
+Santry that he would not be needed on the afternoon trip to the timber
+claim. The old man growled a little at the idea of Wade going alone,
+but he finally gave in.
+
+"I'll take my gun and keep my eye peeled," his employer promised. "If I
+can't stand off trouble until I get home, or you can get to me, I'll
+lose my bet. You've got your work to do, Bill. If you're going to nurse
+me all the time, I'll have to get another foreman to run the crew."
+
+He rode away, then, toward the foothills, confident of his ability to
+look after himself in case of trouble. There was nothing in the peaceful
+aspect of the range to suggest an enemy, but he kept his rifle ready and
+his ears and eyes open. Once he paused abruptly when a rabbit jumped out
+of a clump of quaking-aspens, a hundred yards ahead, only to chuckle at
+his own overcaution.
+
+The sun, which was still high, was shining as only a Wyoming sun can
+shine, from out of a blue-vaulted canopy, flecked with fleecy clouds.
+Swinging from the tops of the sagebrush, or an occasional cottonwood,
+yellow-breasted meadowlarks were singing sweetly. At intervals a flock
+of curlews circled above the rider, uttering their sharp, plaintive
+cries; then they would drop to the ground and run rapidly to and fro on
+their frail, stilt-like legs, their long ungainly bills darting from
+side to side in search of food.
+
+Over the plains, from which Wade now turned, hundreds of red and white
+cattle, their hides as sleek as velvet, were grazing, singly and in
+scattered groups, as far as the eye could see. Toward its mouth, the
+valley was spotted with many fenced alfalfa fields, and traversed by
+irrigation ditches; while to the right, in the direction in which Wade
+now rode, rose the timber belt. A fresh, soft breeze, fragrant with the
+odor of clean, damp earth, rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods, some
+of which were of enormous size, as the horseman pushed his way farther
+into the shadow of the mountains.
+
+After a careful scrutiny, which satisfied him that the vicinity harbored
+no enemies, he dismounted, but still actuated by caution, kept the
+bridle reins looped over his wrist, as he searched for further evidence
+of gold. Unlike Santry, the ranchman was not trained in the ways of
+prospecting, and he began to regret that he had not allowed the foreman
+to accompany him. He followed what he thought were promising signs
+deeper into the silence of the tall timber, and finally dropped on his
+knees to make sure of some outcroppings of quartz near the base of a
+huge bowlder. He was so crouched when a sudden movement of his horse
+warned him of danger; but he had not time to arise before a crushing
+blow on the head, delivered from behind, shook him to the very marrow of
+his spine. With a low groan, he toppled over onto his face, senseless.
+
+"Have you got him?" Moran peered around the side of the bowlder, and
+smiled exultantly when he saw Wade's still figure. "Throw him across
+your saddle," he commanded, "and follow me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FIRST CLEW
+
+
+"Let's see!" Trowbridge reined in his horse and meditated, when he and
+Dorothy had covered several miles of their ride back to Crawling Water.
+"Jensen was shot around here somewhere, wasn't he?"
+
+"I think it was over there." She pointed with her quirt in the direction
+of a distant clump of jack-pines. "Why?"
+
+"Suppose we ride over and take a look at the spot." He smiled at her
+little shudder of repugnance. "We haven't any Sherlock Holmes in this
+country, and maybe we need one. I'll have a try at it. Come on!"
+
+In response to the pressure of his knees, the trained cow-pony whirled
+toward the jack-pines, and Dorothy followed, laughing at the idea that
+so ingenuous a man as Lem Trowbridge might possess the analytical gift
+of the trained detective.
+
+"You!" she said mockingly, when she had caught up with him. "You're as
+transparent as glass; not that it isn't nice to be that way, but still
+you are. Besides, the rain we've had must have washed all tracks away."
+
+"No doubt, but we'll have a look anyhow. It won't do any harm.
+Seriously, though, the ways of criminals have always interested me. I'd
+rather read a good detective story than any other sort of yarn."
+
+"I shouldn't think that you had any gift that way."
+
+"That's got nothing to do with it," he laughed. "It's always like that.
+Haven't you noticed how nearly every man thinks he's missed his calling;
+that if he'd only gone in for something else he'd have been a rattling
+genius at it? Just to show you! I've got a hand over at the ranch, a
+fellow named Barry, who can tie down a steer in pretty close to the
+record. He's a born cowman, if I ever saw one, but do you suppose he
+thinks that's his line?"
+
+"Doesn't he?" she asked politely. One of the secrets of her popularity
+lay in her willingness to feed a story along with deft little
+interjections of interest.
+
+"He does not. Poetry! Shakespeare! That's his 'forty'! At night he gets
+out a book and reads Hamlet to the rest of the boys. Thinks that if he'd
+ever hit Broadway with a show, he'd set the town on fire."
+
+When Dorothy laughed heartily, as she now did, the sound of it was worth
+going miles to hear. There are all shades of temperament and character
+in laughter, which is the one thing of which we are least
+self-conscious; hers revealed not only a sense of humor, rare in her
+sex, but a blithe, happy nature, which made allies at once of those upon
+whose ears her merriment fell. Trowbridge's eyes sparkled with his
+appreciation of it.
+
+"Well, maybe he would," she said, finally.
+
+"Maybe I'll make good along with Sherlock Holmes." He winked at her as
+he slipped from his horse's back, on the edge of a rocky knoll, fronting
+the jack-pines. "This is the place, I reckon." His quick eyes had
+caught a dark stain on a flat rock, which the rain had failed to cleanse
+entirely of the dead herders' blood.
+
+When Dorothy saw it, too, her mirth subsided. To her mind, the thought
+of death was most horrible, and especially so in the case of a murderous
+death, such as had befallen the sheep men. Not only was the thing
+horrible in itself, but still more so in its suggestion of the dangers
+which threatened her friends.
+
+"Do hurry!" she begged. "There can't be anything here."
+
+"Just a minute or two." Struck by the note of appeal in her voice, so
+unlike its lilt of the moment before, he added: "Ride on if you want
+to."
+
+"No," she shuddered. "I'll wait, but please be quick."
+
+It was well for her companion that she did wait, or at least that she
+was with him for, when he had inspected the immediate vicinity of the
+shooting, he stepped backward from the top of the knoll into a little,
+brush-filled hollow, in which lay a rattlesnake. Deeply interested in
+his search, he did not hear the warning rattle, and Dorothy might not
+have noticed it either had not her pony raised its head, with a start
+and a snort. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the snake and called
+out sharply.
+
+"Look out, behind you, Lem!"
+
+There are men, calling themselves conjurors, who perform prodigies of
+agility with coins, playing-cards, and other articles of legerdemain,
+but they are not so quick as was Trowbridge in springing sidewise from
+the menacing snake. In still quicker movement, the heavy Colt at his
+side leaped from its holster. The next second the rattle had ceased
+forever, for the snake's head had been neatly cut from its body.
+
+"Close call! Thanks!" Trowbridge slid his weapon back into its resting
+place and smiled up at her.
+
+So close, indeed, had the call been that, coming upon the dreadful
+associations of the spot, Dorothy was unnerved. Her skin turned a sickly
+white and her lips were trembling, but not more so than were the flanks
+of the horses, which seemed to be in an agony of fear. When the girl saw
+Trowbridge pick up a withered stick and coolly explore the recesses of a
+small hole near which the snake had been coiled, she rebelled.
+
+"I'm not going to stay here another minute," she declared hotly.
+
+"Just a second. There may be another one.... Oh, all right, go on,
+then," he called out, as she whirled her pony and started off. "I'll
+catch you. Ride slow!"
+
+He looked after her with a smile of amusement, before renewing his
+efforts with the stick, holding his bridle reins with one hand so that
+his horse could not follow hers. To his disappointment there seemed to
+be nothing in the hole, but his prodding suddenly developed an amazing
+fact. He was on the point of dropping the stick and mounting his horse,
+when he noticed a small piece of metal in the leaves and grass at the
+mouth of the hole. It was an empty cartridge shell.
+
+"By Glory!" he exclaimed, as he examined it. "A clew, or I'm a sinner!"
+
+Swinging into his saddle, he raced after Dorothy, shouting to her as he
+rode. In her pique, she would not answer his hail, or turn in her
+saddle; but he was too exultant to care. He was concerned only with
+overtaking her that he might tell her what he had found.
+
+"For the love of Mike!" he said, when by a liberal use of his spurs he
+caught up with her. "What do you think this is, a circus?"
+
+"You can keep up, can't you?" she retorted banteringly.
+
+"Sure, I can keep up, all right." He reached out and caught her bridle
+rein, pulling her pony down to a walk in spite of her protests. "I want
+to show you something. You can't see it riding like a jockey. Look
+here!" He handed her the shell. "You see, if I had come when you wanted
+me to, I wouldn't have found it. That's what's called the detective
+instinct, I reckon," he added, with a grin. "Guess I'm some little
+Sherlock, after all."
+
+"Whose is it?" She turned the shell over in her palm a trifle gingerly.
+
+"Look!" He took it from her and pointed out where it had been dented by
+the firing-pin. "I reckon you wouldn't know, not being up in fire-arms.
+The hammer that struck this shell didn't hit true; not so far off as to
+miss fire, you understand, but it ain't in line exactly. That tells me a
+lot."
+
+"What does it tell you?" She looked up at him quickly.
+
+"Well," he spoke slowly, "there ain't but one gun in Crawling Water that
+has that peculiarity, that I know of, and that one belongs, or did
+belong, to Tug Bailey."
+
+She caught at his arm impulsively so that both horses were brought to a
+standstill.
+
+"Then _he_ shot Jensen, Lem?"
+
+Her voice was tremulous with eagerness, for although she had never
+doubted Wade or Santry; had never thought for a moment that either man
+could have committed the crime, or have planned it, she wanted them
+cleared of the doubt in the eyes of the world. Her disappointment was
+acute when she saw that Trowbridge did not deem the shell to be
+convincing proof of Bailey's guilt.
+
+"Don't go too fast now, Dorothy," he cautioned. "This shell proves that
+Bailey's gun was fired, but it doesn't prove that Bailey's finger pulled
+the trigger, or that the gun was aimed at Jensen. Bailey might have
+loaned the rifle to somebody, or he might have fired at a snake, like I
+did a few minutes ago."
+
+"Oh, he might have done anything, of course. But the shell is some
+evidence, isn't it? It casts the doubt on Tug Bailey, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes, it does that, all right. It casts it further than him." The
+cattleman spoke positively. "It's a clew, that's what it is. We've got a
+clew and we've got a motive, and we didn't have either of them
+yesterday."
+
+"How do you suppose that shell got where you found it?" she asked, her
+voice full of hope.
+
+"Bailey must have levered it out of his rifle, after the shooting, and
+it fell into that hole. You see,"--he could not resist making the
+triumphant point once more,--"if I hadn't stopped to look for another
+rattler, I never would have found it. Just that chance--just a little
+chance like that--throws the biggest criminals. Funny, ain't it?" But
+she was too preoccupied with the importance of the discovery to dwell on
+his gifts as a sleuth.
+
+"What can we do about it, Lem?" She gave her pony her head and they
+began to move slowly. "What ought we to do?"
+
+"I'll find this fellow, Bailey, and wring the truth out of him," he
+answered grimly; and her eyes sparkled. "If I'm not greatly mistaken,
+though, he was only the tool."
+
+"Meaning that Moran...."
+
+"And Rexhill," Trowbridge snapped. "They are the men higher up, and the
+game we're really gunning for. They hired Bailey to shoot Jensen so that
+the crime might be fastened on to Gordon. I believe that as fully as I'm
+alive this minute; the point is to prove it."
+
+"Then we've no time to waste," she said, touching her pony with the
+quirt. "We mustn't loiter here. Suppose Bailey has been sent away?"
+
+The thought of this caused them to urge their tired horses along at
+speed. Many times during the ride which followed Trowbridge looked
+admiringly at his companion as she rode on, untiringly, side by side
+with him. A single man himself, he had come to feel very tenderly toward
+her, but he had no hope of winning her. She had never been more than
+good friends with him, and he realized her feeling for Wade, but this
+knowledge did not make him less keen in his admiration of her.
+
+"Good luck to you, Lem," she said, giving him her hand, as they paused
+at the head of Crawling Water's main street. "Let me know what you do as
+soon as you can. I'll be anxious."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I know about where to find him, if he's in town. Oh, we're slowly
+getting it on them, Dorothy. We'll be ready to 'call' them pretty soon.
+Good-by!"
+
+Tug Bailey, however, was not in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte
+Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the
+stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale
+tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had
+gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a
+woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from the floor
+above.
+
+"Wait a minute."
+
+Trowbridge waited and the woman came down to him. He knew her by
+ill-repute, as did every man in the town, for she was Pansy Madder, one
+of the dance-hall habitues, good-looking enough by night to the inflamed
+fancy, but repulsive by day, with her sodden skin and hard eyes.
+
+"You want to know where Tug is?" she demanded.
+
+"Yes, where is he?"
+
+"He's headed for Sheridan, I reckon. If he ain't headed there, he'll
+strike the railroad at some other point; him and that--Nellie Lewis,
+that he's skipped with." Her lusterless eyes were fired by the only
+thing that could fire them: her bitter jealousy.
+
+"You're sure?" Trowbridge persisted, a little doubtfully.
+
+"Sure? Of course, I'm sure. Say,"--she clutched at his arm as he turned
+away,--"if he's wanted for anything, bring him back here, will you?
+Promise me that! Let me"--her pale lips were twisted by an ugly
+smile--"get my hands on him!"
+
+From the dance-hall, Trowbridge hastened to the jail to swear out a
+warrant for Bailey's arrest and to demand that Sheriff Thomas telegraph
+to Sheridan and to the two points above and below, Ranchester and
+Clearmont, to head off the fugitive there. Not knowing how far the
+Sheriff might be under the dominance of the Rexhill faction, the
+cattleman was not sure that he could count upon assistance from the
+official. He meant, if he saw signs of indecision, to do the
+telegraphing himself and to sign at the bottom of the message the name
+of every ranch owner in the district. That should be enough to awaken
+the law along the railroad without help from Thomas, and Trowbridge knew
+that such action would be backed up by his associates.
+
+He had no trouble on this score, however, for Sheriff Thomas was away on
+the trail of a horse-thief, and the deputy in charge of the jail was of
+sturdier character than his chief.
+
+"Will I help you, Lem?" he exclaimed. "Say, will a cat drink milk? You
+bet I'll help you. Between you and me, I've been so damned ashamed of
+what's been doing in this here office lately that I'm aching for a
+chance to square myself. I'll send them wires off immediate."
+
+"I reckon you're due to be the next Sheriff in this county, Steve,"
+Trowbridge responded gratefully. "There's going to be a change here
+before long."
+
+"That so? Well, I ain't sayin' that I'd refuse, but I ain't doin' this
+as no favor, either, you understand. I'm doin' it because it's the law,
+the good old-fashioned, honest to Gawd, s'help me die, law!"
+
+"That's the kind we want here--that, or no kind. So long, Steve!"
+
+With a nod of relief, Trowbridge left the jail, well-satisfied that he
+had done a good turn for Wade, and pleased with himself for having lived
+so well up to the standards set by the detectives of popular fiction.
+Since Bailey had not had time to reach the railroad, his arrest was now
+almost a certainty, and once he was back in Crawling Water, a bucket of
+hot tar and a bundle of feathers, with a promise of immunity for
+himself, would doubtless be sufficient to extract a confession from him
+which would implicate Rexhill and Moran.
+
+Feeling that he had earned the refreshment of a drink, the cattleman was
+about to enter the hotel when, to his consternation, he saw tearing
+madly down the street toward him Bill Santry, on a horse that had
+evidently been ridden to the very last spurt of endurance. He ran
+forward at once, for the appearance of the old man in Crawling Water,
+with a warrant for murder hanging over his head, could only mean that
+some tragedy had happened at the ranch.
+
+"Hello, Lem!" Santry greeted him. "You're just the man I'm lookin' for."
+
+"What's the trouble?" Trowbridge demanded.
+
+"The boy!" The old plainsman slid from his horse, which could hardly
+keep its feet, but was scarcely more spent in body than its rider was in
+nerve. His face was twitching in a way that might have been ludicrous
+but for its significance. "They've ambushed him, I reckon. I come
+straight in after you, knowin' that you'd have a cooler head for this
+here thing than--than I have."
+
+"My God!" The exclamation shot from Trowbridge like the crack of a gun.
+"How did it happen?"
+
+Santry explained the details, in so far as he knew them, in a few
+breathless sentences. The old man was clearly almost beside himself with
+grief and rage, and past the capacity to act intelligently upon his own
+initiative. He had not been satisfied, he said, to remain behind at the
+ranch and let Wade go to the timber tract alone, and so after a period
+of indecision he had followed him. Near the edge of the timber he had
+come upon Wade's riderless horse, trailing broken bridle reins. He had
+followed the animal's tracks back to the point of the assault, but
+there was no sign of Wade, which fact indicated that he had been carried
+away by those who had overcome him.
+
+"I could see by the tracks that there was a number of 'em; as many as
+five or six," the old man summed up. "I followed their sign as far as I
+could, but I lost it at the creek. Then I went back to the house and
+sent some of the boys out to scout around before I come down here after
+you."
+
+"Where do you suppose they could have taken him?" Trowbridge asked.
+"They'd never dare bring him to town."
+
+"Gawd knows, Lem! There's more pockets and drifts up in them hills than
+there is jack-rabbits. 'Tain't likely the boys'll find any new sign,
+leastways not in time; not before that ---- of a Moran--it was him did
+it, damn him! I know it was. Lem, for Gawd's sake, what are we goin' to
+do?"
+
+"The first thing to do, Bill, is to get you out of this town, before
+Thomas shows up and jumps you."
+
+"I don't keer for myself. I'll shoot the...."
+
+"Luckily, he's away just now," Trowbridge went on, ignoring the
+interruption. "Come with me!" He led the way into the hotel. "Frank," he
+said to the red-headed proprietor, "is Moran in town to-day?"
+
+"Nope." The Irishman regarded Santry with interest. "He went out this
+morning with four or five men."
+
+"Rexhill's here, ain't he?" Trowbridge asked then. "Tell him there's two
+gentlemen here to see him. Needn't mention any names. He doesn't know
+me."
+
+When Santry, with the instinct of his breed, hitched his revolver to a
+more convenient position on his hip, Trowbridge reached out and took it
+away from him. He dared not trust the old man in his present mood. He
+intended to question the Senator, to probe him, perhaps to threaten him;
+but the time had not come to shoot him.
+
+"I'll keep this for you, Bill," he said soothingly, and dropped the
+weapon into his coat pocket. "I'm going to take you up with me, for the
+sake of the effect of that face of yours, looking the way it does right
+now. But I'll do the talking, mind! It won't take long. We're going to
+act some, too."
+
+Their visit had no visible effect upon Rexhill, however, who was too
+much master of himself to be caught off his guard in a game which had
+reached the point of constant surprise. His manner was not conciliatory,
+for the meeting was frankly hostile, but he did not appear to be
+perturbed by it. He had not supposed that the extremes he had sanctioned
+could be carried through without difficulty, and he was prepared to meet
+any attack that might be offered by the enemy.
+
+"Senator Rexhill," Trowbridge introduced himself, "you've never met me.
+I'm from the Piah Creek country. My name is Trowbridge."
+
+"Yes," the Senator nodded. "I've heard of you. I know your friend there
+by sight." He lingered slightly over the word "friend" as he glanced
+toward Santry, "There's a warrant out for him, I believe."
+
+"Yes. There's a warrant out for one of your--friends, too, Tug Bailey,"
+Trowbridge retorted dryly, hoping that something would eventuate from
+his _repartee_; but nothing did. If the news surprised Rexhill, as it
+must have, he did not show it. "I've just sworn it out," the rancher
+continued, "but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to tell you that
+Gordon Wade, whom you know, has been kidnaped."
+
+Santry stifled an exclamation of rage in answer to a quick look from his
+friend.
+
+"Kidnaped from his own range in broad daylight," the latter went on. "I
+represent his friends, who mean to find him right away, and it has
+occurred to me that you may be able to assist us in our search."
+
+"Just why has that idea occurred to you?" Rexhill asked calmly, as
+though out of mere curiosity. "I'd like to know."
+
+A bit baffled by this attitude of composure, Trowbridge hesitated, for
+it was not at all what he had expected to combat. If the Senator had
+flown into a passion, the cattleman would have responded with equal
+heat; now he was less sure of himself and his ground. It was barely
+possible, after all, that Tug Bailey had shot Jensen out of personal
+spite; or, at the worst, had been the tool of Moran alone. One could
+hardly associate the thought of murder with the very prosperous looking
+gentleman, who so calmly faced them and twirled his eyeglasses between
+his fingers.
+
+"Why should that idea have occurred to you?" the Senator asked again.
+"So far as I am informed, Wade is also liable to arrest for complicity
+in the Jensen murder; in addition to which he has effected a jail
+delivery and burglarized my office. It seems to me, if he has been
+kidnaped as you say, that I am the last person to have any interest in
+his welfare, or his whereabouts. Why do you come to me?"
+
+This was too much for Santry's self-restraint.
+
+"What's the use of talkin' to him?" he demanded. "If he ain't done it
+himself, don't we know that Moran done it for him? To hell with
+talkin'!" He shook a gnarled fist at Rexhill, who paid no attention
+whatever to him, but deliberately looked in another direction.
+
+"That is why we are here," said Trowbridge, when he had quieted Santry
+once more. "Because we have good reason to believe that, if these acts
+do not proceed from you, they do proceed from your agent, and you're
+responsible for what he does, if I know anything about law. This man
+Moran has carried things with a high hand in this community, but now
+he's come to the end of his rope, and he's going to be punished. That
+means that you'll get yours, too, if he's acted under your orders." The
+cattleman was getting into his stride now that the first moments of his
+embarrassment were passed. His voice rang with authority, which the
+Senator was quick to recognize, although he gave no evidence that he was
+impressed. "Has Moran been acting for you, that's what we want to know?"
+
+"My dear fellow,"--Rexhill laughed rumblingly,--"if you'll only stop for
+an instant to think, you'll see how absurd this is."
+
+"A frank answer to a frank question," Trowbridge persisted. "Has he
+been acting for you? Do you, at this moment, know what has become of
+Wade, or where he is?"
+
+"That's the stuff!" growled Santry, whose temples were throbbing under
+the effort he put forth to hold himself within bounds.
+
+"I do not!" the Senator said, bluntly. "And I'll say freely that I would
+not tell you if I did."
+
+Santry's hands opened and shut convulsively. He was in the act of
+springing upon Rexhill when Trowbridge seized him.
+
+"You're a liar!" he roared, struggling in his friend's grasp. "Let me at
+him. By the great horned toad, I'll make him tell!"
+
+"Put that man out of this room!" Rexhill had arisen in all of his
+ponderous majesty, roused to wrath at last. His pudgy finger shook as he
+pointed to the door, and his fat face was congested. "I'm not here to be
+insulted by a jail-bird. Put him out!"
+
+Trowbridge's eyes gleamed exultantly, although he still kept a tight
+hold on Santry, for this was the sort of thing he had expected to meet.
+He had not thought that Rexhill would confess complicity in the
+kidnaping this early in the game; but he had looked for an outburst of
+anger which would give him the chance he wanted to free his own mind of
+the hate that was in it. He had wanted the chance to make Rexhill feel
+that his hour of atonement was close at hand, and getting nearer every
+minute.
+
+"Easy, now!" he admonished. "We're going, both of us, but we won't be
+put out. You've said just what I looked for you to say. You've denied
+knowledge of this thing. I think with Santry here that you're a liar, a
+God-forsaken liar." He drew closer to the Senator, who seemed about to
+burst with passion, and held him with a gaze his fury could not daunt.
+"May Heaven help you, Senator, when we're ready to prove all this
+against you. If you're in Crawling Water then, we'll ride you to hell on
+a rail."
+
+"Now," Trowbridge said to Santry, when they were downstairs again, "you
+get out of town hot-foot. Ride to my place. Take this!" He scribbled a
+few lines on the back of an envelope. "Give it to my foreman. Tell him
+to meet me with the boys where the trail divides. We'll find Wade, if we
+have to trade our beds for lanterns and kill every horse in the valley."
+
+The two men shook hands, and Santry's eyes were fired with a new hope.
+The old man was grateful for one thing, at least: the time for action
+had arrived. He had spent his youth on the plains in the days when every
+man was a law unto himself, and the years had not lessened his spirit.
+
+"I'll be right after you, Bill," Trowbridge concluded. "I'm going first
+to break the news to Miss Purnell. She'd hear it anyway and be anxious.
+She'd better get it straight from me."
+
+Lem Trowbridge had seen only one woman faint, but the recollection was
+indelibly impressed upon his mind. It had happened in his boyhood, at
+the ranch where he still lived, when a messenger had arrived with word
+of the death of the elder Trowbridge, whose horse had stepped into a
+prairie-dog hole and fallen with his rider. The picture of his mother's
+collapse he could never forget, or his own horrible thought that she,
+too, had passed away, leaving him parentless. For months afterwards he
+had awakened at night, crying out that she was dead.
+
+The whole scene recurred to him when he told Dorothy of Wade's
+disappearance, and saw her face flush and then pale, as his mother's had
+done. The girl did not actually faint, for she was young and wonderfully
+strong, but she came so near to it that he was obliged to support her
+with his arm to keep her on her feet. That was cruel, too, for he loved
+her. But presently she recovered, and swept from his mind all thought of
+himself by her piteous appeal to him to go instantly in search of Wade.
+
+"We'll find him, Dorothy, don't you worry," he declared, with an
+appearance of confidence he was far from feeling. "I came around to tell
+you myself because I wanted you to know that we are right on the job."
+
+"But how can you find him in all those mountains, Lem? You don't even
+know which side of the range they've hidden him on."
+
+He reminded her that he had been born in Crawling Water Valley, and that
+he knew every draw and canyon in the mountains; but in his heart he
+realized that to search all these places would take half a lifetime. He
+could only hope that chance, or good fortune, might lead them promptly
+to the spot they sought.
+
+"Do you think that Senator Rexhill knows where Gordon is?" she asked.
+"Is he in this, too?"
+
+"I don't know for sure," he answered. "I believe Moran is acting under
+Rexhill's orders, but I don't know how much Rexhill knows of the
+details. If I knew that, it would be fairly easy. I'd...." His strong
+hands gripped the back of a chair until his knuckles showed white under
+their tan. "I'd choke it out of him!"
+
+"Oh, if there was only something I could do!" Dorothy wailed helplessly.
+"A woman never can do anything in a crisis but _wait_!" Her distress was
+so pitiable to witness that Trowbridge averted his gaze.
+
+"We'll do all that can be done, Dorothy," he assured her. "Trust me for
+that. Besides--" A thought had just flashed into his head which might
+relieve her sense of helplessness. "Besides, we're going to need you
+here in town to keep us informed of what goes on."
+
+"If I learn anything, how can I get word to you?" she asked, her face
+brightening somewhat. "You'll be up in the hills."
+
+"I'll try to keep a man at the big pine all the time. If you find out
+anything send word to him."
+
+"Oh, yes, I will, I will. That'll be something anyhow." Her eyes
+sparkling with tears, she gave him both her hands. "Good-by, Lem!"
+
+"Good-by, Dorothy," he said solemnly, wringing her hands. "I know just
+how it is. We'll find him for you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TRAPPED
+
+
+When Wade first opened his eyes, after he had been stricken senseless,
+he was first conscious of his throbbing head, and on seeking the reason
+of the pain, was amazed to find his fingers stained with the blood which
+matted his hair. With an exclamation he struggled to his feet, still too
+dazed to think clearly, but sufficiently aroused to be startled by the
+predicament in which he found himself.
+
+He was at the bottom of a rock-walled fissure, about six feet wide by
+twenty feet in length. There was no way to climb out of this natural
+prison, for its granite sides, fifteen feet in height, were without
+crack, projection, or other foothold; indeed, in the light of the
+afternoon sun, one _facade_ shone smooth as glass. If he should be left
+there without sustenance, he told himself, he might as well be entombed;
+then, to his delight, he caught the sound of splashing water. At least,
+he would not perish of thirst, for at one end of the rocky chamber a
+tiny stream fell down the face of the cliff, to disappear afterward
+through a narrow cleft. A draught of the cool water refreshed him
+somewhat, and when he had bathed his head as well as he could, he sat
+down on the warm sand to think over the situation.
+
+Now that his brain was clearing he felt sure that his capture was the
+work of Moran, doubtless planned as a revenge for the events of their
+last meeting, although what shape this revenge was to take the cattleman
+could not guess. He feared that he would either be shot or left to
+starve in this _cul-de-sac_ in the hills. The thought of all that he and
+his friends had suffered through Moran lashed the ranchman temporarily
+to fury; but that he soon controlled as well as he could, for he found
+its only result was to increase the pain in his head, without aiding to
+solve the problem of escape. The prospect of getting out of his prison
+seemed remote, for one glance at its precipitate walls had shown him
+that not even a mountain goat could scale them. Help, if it came at all,
+must come through Santry, who could be counted on to arouse the
+countryside. The thought of the state the old man must be in worried
+Wade; and he was too familiar with the vast number of small canyons and
+hidden pockets in the mountains to believe that his friends would soon
+find him. Before help could reach him, undoubtedly Moran would show his
+hand, in which for the present were all the trumps.
+
+It was characteristic of the cattleman that, with the full realization
+of his danger, should come a great calm. He had too lively an
+imagination to be called a man of iron nerve, for that quality of
+courage is not so often a virtue as a lack of sensitiveness. He who is
+courageous because he knows no fear is not so brave by half as he who
+gauges the extent of his peril and rises superior to it. Wade's courage
+was of the latter sort, an ascendancy of the mind over the flesh.
+Whenever danger threatened him, his nerves responded to his need with
+the precision of the taut strings of a perfectly tuned fiddle under a
+master hand. He had been more nervous, many a time, over the thought of
+some one of his men riding a dangerous horse or turning a stampede, than
+he was now that his own life seemed threatened.
+
+Shrugging his broad shoulders, he rolled and smoked a cigarette. The
+slight exhilaration of the smoke, acting on his weakened condition,
+together with the slight dizziness still remaining from the blow on his
+head, was far from conducing to clear thinking, but he forced himself to
+careful thought. He was less concerned about himself than he was about
+Santry and Dorothy; particularly Dorothy, for he had now come to
+appreciate how closely she had come into his life. Her sympathy had been
+very sweet to him, but he told himself that he would be sorry to have
+her worry about him now, when there was so little chance of their seeing
+each other again. He had no great hope of rescue. He expected to die,
+either by violence or by the slower process of starvation, but in either
+case he meant to meet his fate like a man.
+
+Of Helen Rexhill, he thought now with a sense of distaste. It was
+altogether unlikely that she had been privy to her father's
+depredations, but certainly she countenanced them by her presence in
+Crawling Water, and she had shown up so poorly in contrast with Dorothy
+Purnell that Wade could not recall his former tenderness for his early
+sweetheart. Even if great good fortune should enable him to escape from
+his prison, the interests of the Rexhill family were too far removed
+from his own to be ever again bridged by the tie of love, or even of
+good-feeling. He could not blame the daughter for the misdeeds of her
+parent, but the old sentiment could never be revived. It was not for
+Helen that the instinct of self-preservation stirred within him, nor was
+it in her eyes that he would look for the light of joy over his rescue,
+if rescue should come.
+
+He smoked several cigarettes, until the waning of his supply of tobacco
+warned him to economize against future cravings. Realizing that even if
+his friends were within a stone's throw of him they would not be likely
+to find him unless he gave some sign of his presence, he got to his feet
+and, making a trumpet out of his hands, shouted loudly. He repeated this
+a dozen times, or more, and was about to sink back upon the sand when he
+heard footsteps approaching on the ground overhead. He had little idea
+that a friend was responding to his call, but being unarmed he could do
+no more than crouch against the wall of the cliff while he scanned the
+opening above him.
+
+Presently there appeared in the opening the head of a Texan, Goat Neale,
+whom Wade recognized as a member of Moran's crew and a man of some note
+as a gunfighter.
+
+"How," drawled the Texan, by way of greeting. "Feelin' pretty good?"
+When the ranchman did not reply, his inquisitor seemed amused. "A funny
+thing like this here always makes me laff," he remarked. "It sure does
+me a heap of good to see you all corraled like a fly in a bottle. Mebbe
+you'd take satisfaction in knowin' that it was me brung you down out
+yonder in the timber. I was sure mighty glad to take a wallop at you,
+after the way you all done us up that night at the ranch."
+
+"So I'm indebted to you for this, eh?" Wade spoke casually, as though
+the matter were a trifling thing. He was wondering if he could bribe
+Neale to set him free. Unfortunately he had no cash about him, and he
+concluded that the Texan would not think promises worth while under the
+circumstances.
+
+"Sure. I reckon you'd like to see the boss? Well, he's comin' right on
+over. Just now he's eatin' a mess o' bacon and beans and cawfee, over to
+the camp. My Gawd, that's good cawfee, too. Like to have some, eh?" But
+Wade refused to play Tantalus to the lure of this temptation and kept
+silent. "Here he comes now."
+
+"Is he all right?" Wade heard Moran ask, as Neale backed away from the
+rim of the hole.
+
+"Yep," the Texan answered.
+
+The ranchman instinctively braced himself to meet whatever might befall.
+It was quite possible, he knew, that Moran had spared him in the
+timber-belt to torture him here; he did not know whether to expect a
+bullet or a tongue lashing, but he was resolved to meet his fate
+courageously and, as far as was humanly possible, stoically. To his
+surprise, the agent's tone did not reveal a great amount of venom.
+
+"Hello, Wade!" he greeted, as he looked down on his prisoner. "Find your
+quarters pretty comfortable, eh? It's been a bit of a shock to you, no
+doubt, but then shocks seem to be in order in Crawling Water Valley just
+now."
+
+"Moran, I've lived in this country a good many years." Wade spoke with a
+suavity which would have indicated deadly peril to the other had the two
+been on anything like equal terms. "I've seen a good many blackguards
+come and go in that time, but the worst of them was redeemed by more of
+the spark of manhood than there seems to be in you."
+
+"Is that so?" Moran's face darkened in swift anger, but he restrained
+himself. "Well, we'll pass up the pleasantries until after our business
+is done. You and I've got a few old scores to settle and you won't find
+me backward when the times comes, my boy. It isn't time yet, although
+maybe the time isn't so very far away. Now, see here." He leaned over
+the edge of the cliff to display a folded paper and a fountain-pen. "I
+have here a quit-claim deed to your ranch, fully made out and legally
+witnessed, needing only your signature to make it valid. Will you sign
+it?"
+
+Wade started in spite of himself. This idea was so preposterous that it
+had never occurred to him as the real motive for his capture. He could
+scarcely believe that so good a lawyer as Senator Rexhill could be blind
+to the fact that such a paper, secured under duress, would have no
+validity under the law. He looked up at the agent in amazement.
+
+"I know what you're thinking, of course," Moran went on, with an evil
+smile. "We're no fools. I've got here, besides the deed, a check made
+out to you for ten thousand dollars." He held it up. "You'll remember
+that we made you that offer once before. You turned it down then, but
+maybe you'll change your mind now. After you indorse the check I'll
+deposit it to your credit in the local bank."
+
+The cattleman's face fell as he caught the drift of this complication.
+That ten thousand dollars represented only a small part of the value of
+his property was true, but many another man had sold property for less
+than it was worth. If a perfectly good check for ten thousand dollars,
+bearing his indorsement, were deposited to the credit of his banking
+account, the fact would go far to offset any charge of duress that he
+might later bring. To suppose that he had undervalued his holdings would
+be no more unreasonable than to suppose that a man of Senator Rexhill's
+prominence would stoop to physical coercion of an adversary. The
+question would merely be one of personal probity, with the presumption
+on the Senator's side.
+
+"Once we get a title to the land, a handle to fight with, we sha'n't
+care what you try to do," Moran explained further. "We can afford to
+laugh at you." That seemed to Wade to be true. "If you accept my offer
+now, I will set you free as soon as this check is in the bank, and the
+settlement of our personal scores can go over to another time. I assure
+you that I am just as anxious to get at you as you are to get at me, but
+I've always made it a rule never to mix pleasure and business. You'll
+have a fair start to get away. On the other hand, if you refuse, you'll
+be left here without food. Once each day I'll visit you; at other times
+you'll be left alone, except when Goat may care to entertain himself by
+baiting you. You'll be perfectly safe here, guard or no guard, believe
+me."
+
+Moran chuckled ominously, his thoughts divided between professional
+pride, excited by the thought of successfully completing the work he had
+come to Crawling Water to do, and exultation at the prospect that his
+sufferings while gagged the previous night might be atoned for a
+thousand times if Wade should refuse to sign the quit-claim.
+
+"In plain speech," said Wade, pale but calm, "you propose to starve me
+to death."
+
+"Exactly," was the cheerful assurance. "If I were you, I'd think a bit
+before answering."
+
+Because the cattleman was in the fullest flush of physical vigor, the
+lust of life was strong in him. Never doubting that Moran meant what he
+said, Wade was on the point of compliance, thinking to assume the burden
+later on, of a struggle with Rexhill to regain his ranch. His manhood
+rebelled at the idea of coercion, but, dead, he could certainly not
+defend himself; it seemed to him better that he should live to carry on
+the fight. He would most likely have yielded but for the taunt of
+cowardice which had already been noised about Crawling Water. True, the
+charge had sprung from those who liked him least, but it had stung him.
+He was no coward, and he would not feed such a report now by yielding to
+Moran. Whatever the outcome of a later fight might be, the fact that he
+had knuckled under to the agent could never be lived down. Such success
+as he had won had been achieved by playing a man's part in man's world.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, Moran," he said, finally. "Give me a hand
+out of this hole, or come down here yourself. Throw aside your gun, but
+keep your knife. I'll allow you that advantage. Meet me face to face!
+Damn you, be a man! Anything that you can gain by my signature, you can
+gain by my death. Get the best of me, if you can, in a man's fight.
+Pah!" He spat contemptuously. "You're a coward, Moran, a white-livered
+coward! You don't dare fight with me on anything like equal terms. I'll
+get out of here somehow, and when I do--by Heaven, I'll corner you, and
+I'll make you fight."
+
+"Get out? How?" Moran laughed the idea to scorn. "Your friends can look
+for you from now till snowfall. They'll never find even your bones. Rot
+there, if you choose. Why should I take a chance on you when I've got
+you where I want you? You ought to die. You know too much."
+
+"Yes," Wade retorted grimly. "I know too much. I know enough to hang
+you, you murderer. Who killed Oscar Jensen? Answer that! You did it, or
+you had it done, and then you tried to put it on Santry and me, and I'm
+not the only one who knows it. This country's too small to hold you,
+Moran. Your fate is settled already, whatever may happen to me."
+
+"Still, I seem to be holding four aces now," Moran grinned back at him.
+"And the cards are stacked."
+
+Left alone, Wade rolled himself a cigarette from his scant hoard of
+tobacco. Already he was hungry, for deep shadows in his prison marked
+the approach of night, and he had the appetite of a healthy man. The
+knowledge that he was to be denied food made him feel the hungrier,
+until he resolutely put the thought of eating out of his mind. The
+water, trickling down the face of the rock, was a God-send, though, and
+he drank frequently from the little stream.
+
+By habit a heavy smoker, he viewed with dismay the inroads which he had
+already made on his store of tobacco for that deprivation he felt would
+be the most real of any that he could suffer. He tried to take shorter
+puffs upon his cigarette, and between them shielded the fire with his
+hand, so that the air-draughts in the fissure might not cheat him of any
+of the smoke. He figured that he had scarcely enough tobacco left for a
+dozen cigarettes, which was less than his usual daily allowance.
+
+On searching his pockets, in the hope of finding a second sack of
+Durham, he chanced upon his clasp-knife, and viewed the find with joy.
+The thought of using it as a weapon did not impress him, for his captors
+would keep out of reach of such a toy, but he concluded that he might
+possibly use it to carve some sort of foothold in the rock. The idea of
+cutting the granite was out of the question, but there might be strata
+of softer stone which he could dig into. It was a forlorn hope, in a
+forlorn cause, and it proved futile. At his first effort the knife's
+single blade snapped off short, and he threw the useless handle away.
+
+Darkness fell some time before the cool night air penetrated the
+fissure; when it did so the cold seemed likely to be added to his other
+physical discomforts. In the higher altitudes the nights were distinctly
+chilly even in mid-summer, and he had on only a light outing shirt,
+above his waist. As the hour grew late, the cold increased in severity
+until Wade was forced to walk up and down his narrow prison in the
+effort to keep warm. He had just turned to retrace his steps, on one
+such occasion, when his ears caught the soft pat-pat of a footfall on
+the ground above. He instantly became motionless and tensely alert,
+wondering which of his enemies was so stealthily returning, and for what
+reason.
+
+He thought it not unlikely that Moran had altered his purpose and come
+back to shoot him while he slept. Brave though he was, the idea of being
+shot down in such a manner made his flesh crawl. Stooping, he picked up
+a fragment of rock; although he realized the futility of the weapon, it
+was all he had. Certainly, whoever approached was moving with the utmost
+stealth, which argued an attack of some kind. Drawing back the hand that
+held the stone, the cattleman shrank into a corner of the fissure and
+waited. Against the starlit sky, he had an excellent view of the opening
+above him, and possibly by a lucky throw the stone would serve against
+one assailant, at least.
+
+The pat-pat-pat drew nearer and stopped, at last, on the extreme edge
+of the hole. A low, long-drawn sniff showed that this was no human
+enemy. If the sound had been louder, Wade would have guessed that it was
+made by a bear; but as it was he guessed the prowler to be a
+mountain-lion. He had little fear of such a beast; most of them were
+notorious cowards unless cornered, and when presently a pair of glowing
+eyes peered down into the fissure, he hurled the stone at them with all
+his might. His aim was evidently true, for with a snarl of pain the
+animal drew back.
+
+But just as amongst the most pacific human races there are some brave
+spirits, so amongst the American lions there are a few which possess all
+the courage of their jungle brothers. Actuated by overweening curiosity,
+or else by a thirst for blood, the big cat returned again and again to
+the edge of the hole. After his first throw Wade was unable to hit the
+beast with a stone, although his efforts had the temporary effect of
+frightening it. Gradually, however, it grew bolder, and was restrained
+from springing upon him only, as it seemed, by some sixth sense which
+warned it of the impossibility of getting out of the fissure after once
+getting in. Baffled and furious, the lion sniffed and prowled about the
+rim of the hole until the ranchman began to think it would surely leap
+upon him.
+
+He picked up his broken pocket-knife and waited for this to happen. The
+shattered blade would be of little use, but it might prove better than
+his bare hands if he had to defend himself against the brute's teeth and
+claws.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A WAR OF WITS
+
+
+"Kidnaped? Gordon Wade?"
+
+At Dorothy's announcement, Mrs. Purnell sank, with a gasp, into her
+rocking-chair, astonished beyond expression. She listened, with anxiety
+scarce less than her daughter's, to the girl's account of the event as
+she had it from Trowbridge. Her mouth opened and shut aimlessly as she
+picked at her gingham apron. If Wade had been her own son, she could
+hardly have loved him more. He had been as tender to her as a son, and
+the news of his disappearance and probable injury was a frightful shock.
+
+Weakly she attempted to relieve her own anxiety by disputing the fact of
+his danger.
+
+"Oh, I guess nothing's happened to him--nothing like that, anyway. He
+may have had a fall from his horse. Or maybe it broke away from him and
+ran off."
+
+"Bill Santry found their trail," Dorothy said, with a gesture so tragic
+that it wrung her mother's heart strings. "He followed it as far as he
+could, then lost it." In any other case she would have tried to keep the
+bad news from her mother, because of her nerves, but just now the girl
+was too distraught to think of any one but the man she loved. "Oh, if I
+could only do something myself," she burst out. "It's staying here,
+helpless, that is killing me. I wish I'd gone with Lem up into the
+mountains. I would have if he hadn't said I might better stay in town.
+But how can I help? There's nothing to do here."
+
+"The idea!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed. "They'll be out all night. How could
+you have gone with them? I don't believe Gordon has been kidnaped at
+all. It's a false alarm, I tell you. Who could have done such a thing?"
+
+"Who?" The question broke Dorothy's patience. "Who's done everything
+that's abominable and contemptible lately here in Crawling Water? That
+Moran did it, of course, with Senator Rexhill behind him. Oh!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said her mother, indignantly.
+
+"Lem Trowbridge thinks so. Nearly everybody does."
+
+"Then he hasn't as good sense as I thought he had." Mrs. Purnell arose
+and moved toward the kitchen. "You come on and help me make some waffles
+for supper. Perhaps that will take such foolishness out of your head.
+The idea of a Senator of the United States going about kidnaping
+people."
+
+Dorothy obeyed her mother's wish, but not very ably. Her face was
+flushed and her eyes hot; ordinarily she was a splendid housekeeper and
+a dutiful daughter, but there are limits to human endurance. She mixed
+the batter so clumsily and with such prodigal waste that her mother had
+to stop her, and she was about to put salt into the sugar bowl when
+Mrs. Purnell snatched it out of her hands. "Go into the dining-room and
+sit down, Dorothy," she exclaimed. "You're beside yourself." It is
+frequently the way with people, who are getting on in years and are
+sick, to charge their own shortcomings on any one who may be near. Mrs.
+Purnell was greatly worried.
+
+"What's the matter now?" she demanded, when Dorothy left her supper
+untasted on her plate.
+
+"I was thinking."
+
+"Well, can't you tell a body what you're thinking about? What are you
+sitting there that way for?"
+
+"I was wondering," said Dorothy in despair, "if Helen Rexhill knows
+where Gordon is."
+
+Mrs. Purnell snorted in disdain.
+
+"Land's sakes, child, what put that into your head? Drink your tea.
+It'll do you good."
+
+"Why shouldn't she know, if her father does?" The girl pushed her
+tea-cup farther away from her. "She wouldn't have come all the way out
+here with him--he wouldn't have brought her with him--if they weren't
+working together. She must know. But I don't see why...."
+
+"Dorothy Purnell, I declare to goodness, I believe you're going crazy."
+Mrs. Purnell dropped her fork. "All this about Gordon is bad enough
+without my being worried so...."
+
+"I'd even give him up to her, if she'd tell me that." Dorothy's voice
+was unsteady, and she seemed to be talking to herself rather than to her
+mother. "I know she thinks I've come between her and Gordon, but I
+haven't meant to. He's just seemed to like me better; that's all. But
+I'd do anything to save him from Moran."
+
+"I should say that you might better wait until he asks you, before you
+talk of giving him up to somebody." Mrs. Purnell spoke with the primness
+that was to be expected, but her daughter made no reply. She had never
+mentioned the night in Moran's office, and her mother knew nothing of
+Wade's kiss. But to the girl it had meant more than any declaration in
+words. She had kept her lips inviolate until that moment, and when his
+kiss had fallen upon them it had fallen upon virgin soil, from out of
+which had bloomed a white flower of passion. Before then she had looked
+upon Wade as a warm friend, but since that night he had appeared to her
+in another guise; that of a lover, who has come into his own. She had
+met him then, a girl, and had left him a woman, and she felt that what
+he had established as a fact in the one rare moment of his kiss,
+belonged to him and her. It seemed so wholly theirs that she had not
+been able to bring herself to discuss it with her mother. She had won it
+fairly, and she treasured it. The thought of giving him up to Helen
+Rexhill, of promising her never to see Wade again, was overwhelming, and
+was to be considered only as a last resource, but there was no suffering
+that she would not undertake for his sake.
+
+Mrs. Purnell was as keenly alive as ever to the hope that the young
+ranch owner might some day incline toward her little girl, but she was
+sensitive also to the impression which the Rexhills had made upon her.
+Her life with Mr. Purnell had not brought her many luxuries, and perhaps
+she over-valued their importance. She thought Miss Rexhill a most
+imposing young woman and she believed in the impeccability of the
+well-to-do. Her heart was still warmed by the memory of the courtesy
+with which she had been treated by the Senator's daughter, and was not
+without the gratification of feeling that it had been a tribute to her
+own worth. She had scolded Dorothy afterward for her frank speech to
+Miss Rexhill at the hotel, and she felt that further slurs on her were
+uncalled for.
+
+"I'm sure that Miss Rexhill treated us as a lady should," she said
+tartly. "She acted more like one than you did, if I do have to say it.
+She was as kind and sweet as could be. She's got a tender heart. I could
+see that when she up and gave me that blotter, just because I remarked
+that it reminded me of your childhood."
+
+"Oh, that old blotter!" Dorothy exclaimed petulantly. "What did it
+amount to? You talk as though it were something worth having." She was
+so seldom in a pet that her mother now strove to make allowance for her.
+
+"I'm not saying that it's of any value, Dorothy, except to me; but it
+was kind of her to seem to understand why I wanted it."
+
+"It wasn't kind of her. She just did it to get rid of us, because we
+bored her. Oh, mother, you're daffy about the Rexhills, why not admit it
+and be done with it? You think they're perfect, but I tell you they're
+not--they're not! They've been behind all our troubles here.
+They've...." Her voice broke under the stress of her emotion and she
+rose to her feet.
+
+"Dorothy, if you have no self-respect, at least have some...."
+
+"I won't have that blotter in the house." The strain was proving more
+than the girl's nerves could stand. "I won't hear about it any longer.
+I'm going to--to tear it up!"
+
+"Dorothy!"
+
+For all the good that Mrs. Purnell's tone of authority did, it might as
+well have fallen upon the wind. She hastily followed her daughter, who
+had rushed from the room, and overtook her just in time to prevent her
+from destroying the little picture. Her own strength could not have
+sufficed to deter the girl in her purpose, if the latter had not
+realized in her heart the shameful way in which she was treating her
+mother.
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, child? Look in that glass at your face!
+No wonder you don't think you look like the sweet child in the picture.
+You don't look like her now, nor act like her. That was why I wanted the
+blotter, to remind me of the way you used to look."
+
+"I'm sorry, mother."
+
+Blushing deeply as she recovered her self-control, Dorothy stole a
+glance at her reflection in the looking-glass of the bureau, before
+which she stood, and shyly contrasted her angry expression of
+countenance with the sweet one of the child on the blotter. Suddenly
+she started, and leaned toward the mirror, staring at something she saw
+there. The blood seemed driven from the surface of her skin; her lips
+were parted; her eyes dilated. She drew a swift breath of amazed
+exultation, and turned to her mother, who had viewed the sudden
+transformation with surprise.
+
+"I'll be back soon, mother. I can't tell you what it is." Dorothy's
+voice rang with the suggestion of victory. "But I've discovered
+something, wonderful!"
+
+Before Mrs. Purnell could adjust herself to this new mood, the girl was
+down the stairs and running toward the little barn. Slipping the bridle
+on her pony, she swung to its back without thought of a saddle, and
+turned the willing creature into the street. As she passed the house,
+she waved her hand to her mother, at the window, and vanished like a
+specter into the night.
+
+"Oh, hurry, Gypsy, hurry!" she breathed into the pony's twitching ear.
+
+Her way was not far, for she was going first to the hotel, but that
+other way, into the mountains after Gordon, would be a long journey, and
+no time could be wasted now. She was going to see Helen Rexhill, not as
+a suppliant bearing the olive branch, but as a champion to wage battle
+in behalf of the missing ranchman. She no longer thought of giving him
+up, and the knowledge that she might now keep the love which she had won
+for her very own made her reel on the pony's back from pure joy. She was
+his as he was hers, but the Rexhills were his enemies: she knew that
+positively now, and she meant to defeat them at their own game. If they
+would tell her where Gordon was, they might go free for all she cared;
+if they would not, she would give them over to the vengeance of Crawling
+Water, and she would not worry about what might happen to them.
+Meanwhile she thanked her lucky stars that Trowbridge had promised to
+keep a man at the big pine.
+
+She tied her pony at the hitching-rack in front of the hotel and entered
+the office. Like most of the men in the town, the proprietor was her
+ardent admirer, but he had never seen her before in such radiant mood.
+He took his cigar from between his lips, and doffed his Stetson hat,
+which he wore indoors and out, with elaborate grace.
+
+"Yes, Miss, Miss Rexhill's in, up in the parlor, I think. Would you like
+me to step up and let her know you're here?"
+
+"No, thank you, I'll go right up myself," said Dorothy; her smile doubly
+charming because of its suggestion of triumph.
+
+Miss Rexhill, entirely unaware of what was brewing for her, was
+embroidering by the flickering light of one of the big oil lamps, with
+her back to the doorway, and so did not immediately note Dorothy's
+presence in the room. Her face flushed with annoyance and she arose,
+when she recognized her visitor.
+
+"You will please pardon me, but I do not care to receive you," she said
+primly.
+
+This beginning, natural enough from Helen's standpoint, after what her
+father had told her in Moran's office, convinced Dorothy that she had
+read the writing on the blotter correctly. She held her ground,
+aggressively, between Miss Rexhill and the door.
+
+"You must hear what I have to say to you," she declared quietly. "I have
+not come here to make a social call."
+
+"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I do not wish to talk to you?"
+Helen lifted her brows and shrugged her shoulders. "Surely, it should be
+enough. Will you please stand aside so that I may go to my room?"
+
+"No, I won't! You can't go until you've heard what I've got to say."
+Stung by the other woman's contemptuous tone, and realizing that the
+situation put her at a social disadvantage, Dorothy forced an aggressive
+tone into her voice, ugly to the ear.
+
+"Very well!" Miss Rexhill shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and
+resumed her seat. "We must not engage in a vulgar row. Since I must
+listen to you, I must, but at least I need not talk to you, and I
+won't."
+
+"You know that Gordon Wade has disappeared?" Helen made no response to
+this, and Dorothy bit her lip in anger. "I know that you know it," she
+continued. "I know that you know where he is. Perhaps, however, you
+don't know that his life is in danger. If you will tell me where he is,
+I can save him. Will you tell me?" The low throaty note of suffering in
+her voice brought a stiletto-like flash into the eyes of the other
+woman, but no response.
+
+"Miss Rexhill," Dorothy went on, after a short pause. "You and Mr. Wade
+were friends once, if you are not now. Perhaps you don't realize just
+how serious the situation is here in this town, where nearly everybody
+likes him, and what would happen to you and your father, if I told what
+I know about you. I don't believe he would want it to happen, even after
+the way you've treated him. If you will only tell me...."
+
+Helen turned abruptly in her chair, her face white with anger.
+
+"I said that I would not talk to you," she burst out, "but your
+impertinence is so--so insufferable--so absolutely insufferable, that I
+must speak. You say you will tell people what you know about me. What _do_
+you know about me?" She arose to face Dorothy, with blazing eyes.
+
+"I am sure that you know where Gordon is."
+
+"You are sure of nothing of the kind. I do not know where Mr. Wade is,
+and why should I tell you if I did? Suppose I were to tell what I know
+about you? I don't believe the whole of it is known in Crawling Water
+yet. You--you must be insane."
+
+"About me?" Dorothy's surprise was genuine. "There is nothing you could
+tell any one about me."
+
+Miss Rexhill laughed scornfully, a low, withering laugh that brought a
+flush to the girl's cheeks, even though her conscience told her that she
+had nothing to be ashamed of. Dorothy stared at the other woman with
+wide-open, puzzled eyes, diverted for the moment from her own purpose.
+
+"At least, you need not expect me to help you," Helen said acidulously.
+"I have my own feelings. I respected Mr. Wade at one time and valued his
+friendship. You have taken from me my respect for him, and you have
+taken from him his self-respect. Quite likely you had no respect for
+yourself, and so you had nothing to lose. But if you'll stop to
+consider, you may see how impertinent you are to appeal to me so
+brazenly."
+
+"What are you talking about?" Dorothy's eyes, too, were blazing now, but
+more in championship of Wade than of herself. She still did not fully
+understand the drift of what Miss Rexhill had said.
+
+"Really, you are almost amusing." Helen looked at her through
+half-closed lids. "You are quite freakish. I suppose you must be a moral
+degenerate, or something of the sort." She waited for the insult to sink
+in, but Dorothy was fairly dazed and bewildered. "Do you want me to call
+things by their true names?"
+
+"Yes," answered Dorothy, "I do. Tell me what you are talking about."
+
+"I don't mind, I'm sure. Plain speaking has never bothered me. It's the
+deed that's horrible, not the name. You were found in Mr. Moran's office
+with Mr. Wade, late at night, misbehaving yourself. Do you dare to come
+now to me and...."
+
+"That is not true!" The denial came from Dorothy with an intensity that
+would have carried conviction to any person less infuriated than the
+woman who faced her. "Oh!" Dorothy raised her hands to her throat as
+though struggling for breath. "I never dreamed you meant that. It's a
+deliberate lie!"
+
+In the grip of their emotions, neither of the girls had noticed the
+entrance of Senator Rexhill. Helen saw him first and dramatically
+pointed to him.
+
+"There is my father. Ask him!"
+
+"I do not need to ask him what I've done." Dorothy felt as though she
+would suffocate. "No one would believe that story of Gordon, whatever
+they might think of me."
+
+"Ask me? Ask me what?" the Senator nervously demanded. He had in his
+pocket a telegram just received from Washington, stating that the
+cavalry would be sent from Fort Mackenzie only at the request of the
+Governor of Wyoming. The Governor was not at all likely to make such a
+request, and Rexhill was more worried than he had been before, in years.
+He could only hope that Tug Bailey would escape capture. "Who is this?"
+He put on his glasses, and deliberately looked Dorothy over. "Oh, it's
+the young woman whom Race found in his office."
+
+"She has come here to plead for Gordon Wade--to demand that I tell her
+where he is now. I don't know, of course; none of us know; but I
+wouldn't tell her if I did." Helen spoke triumphantly.
+
+"You had better leave us," Rexhill said brusquely to Dorothy. "You are
+not wanted here. Go home!"
+
+While they were talking, Dorothy had looked from one to the other with
+the contempt which a good woman naturally feels when she is impugned.
+Now she crossed the room and confronted the Senator.
+
+"Did you tell your daughter that I was caught in your office with Gordon
+Wade?" she demanded; and before her steady gaze Rexhill winced.
+
+"You don't deny it, do you?" he blustered.
+
+"I don't deny being there with him, and I won't deny anything else to
+such a man as you. I'm too proud to. For your own sake, however, you
+would have done better not to have tried to blacken me." She turned
+swiftly to his daughter. "Perhaps you don't know all that I supposed you
+did. We were in Moran's office--Mr. Wade and myself--because we felt
+sure that your father had some criminal purpose here in Crawling Water.
+We were right. We found papers showing the location of gold on Mr.
+Wade's ranch, which showed your father's reasons for trying to seize the
+land."
+
+Helen laughed scornfully.
+
+"Do you expect me to believe that?"
+
+"No, of course not," her father growled. "Come on up to our rooms. Let
+her preach here until she is put out." He was on his way to the door
+when the vibrant command in Dorothy's voice halted him.
+
+"Wait. You'd better listen to me, for it's the last chance you'll have.
+I have you absolutely at my mercy. I've caught you! You are trapped!"
+There was no doubting that the girl believed what she said, and the
+Senator's affairs were in a sufficiently precarious state to bid him
+pause.
+
+"Nonsense!" He made his own tone as unconcerned as he could, but there
+was a look of haunting dread in his eyes.
+
+"Senator Rexhill,"--Dorothy's voice was low, but there was a quality in
+it which thrilled her hearers,--"when my mother and I visited your
+daughter a few days ago, she gave my mother a blotter. There was a
+picture on it that reminded my mother of me as a child; that was why she
+wanted it. It has been on my mother's bureau ever since. I never noticed
+anything curious about it until this evening." She looked, with a quiet
+smile at Helen. "Probably you forgot that you had just blotted a letter
+with it."
+
+Helen started and went pale, but not so pale as her father, who went so
+chalk-white that the wrinkles in his skin looked like make-up, against
+its pallor.
+
+"I was holding that blotter before the looking-glass this evening,"
+Dorothy continued, in the same low tone, "and I saw that the ink had
+transferred to the blotter a part of what you had written. I read it. It
+was this: 'Father knew Santry had not killed Jensen....'"
+
+The Senator moistened his lips with his tongue and strove to chuckle,
+but the effort was a failure. Helen, however, appeared much relieved.
+
+"I remember now," she said, "and I am well repaid for my moment of
+sentiment. I was writing to my mother and was telling her of a scene
+that had just taken place between Mr. Wade and my father. I did not
+write what you read; rather, it was not all that I wrote. I
+said--'Gordon thought that father knew Santry had not killed Jensen.'"
+
+"Have you posted that letter?" her father asked, repressing as well as
+he could his show of eagerness.
+
+"No. I thought better about sending it. I have it upstairs."
+
+"If you hadn't it, of course you could write it again, in any shape you
+chose," Dorothy observed crisply, though she recognized, plainly enough,
+that the explanation was at least plausible.
+
+"There is nothing in that," Rexhill declared, when he had taken a deep
+breath of relief. "Your championship of Wade is running away with you.
+What other--er!--grave charges have you to bring against me?"
+
+"I have one that is much more grave," she retorted, so promptly that he
+could not conceal a fresh start of uneasiness. "This morning, Mr.
+Trowbridge and I were out for a ride. We rode over to the place where
+Jensen was shot, and Mr. Trowbridge found there a cartridge shell which
+fits only one gun in Crawling Water. That gun belongs to a man named Tug
+Bailey."
+
+By now Rexhill was thoroughly aroused, for although he was too good a
+jurist not to see the flaws in so incomplete a fabric of evidence
+against him, he was impressed with the influence such a story would
+exert on public opinion. If possible, this girl's tongue must be
+stopped.
+
+"Pooh!" He made a fine show of indifference. "Why bring such tales to
+me? You'd make a very poor lawyer, young woman, if you think that such
+rumors will serve to impeach a man of my standing."
+
+"There is a warrant out for Bailey," Dorothy went on quietly. "If he is
+caught, and I choose to make public what I know and can guess, I am
+sure that you will never reach a court. You underestimate the people
+here. I would not have to prove what I have told you. I need only to
+proclaim it, and--I don't know what they'd do to you. It makes me a bit
+sick to think about it."
+
+The thought made the Senator sick, too, for of late he had seen that
+things were going very badly for him. He was prepared to temporize, but
+there was no need for him to contemplate surrender, or flight, so long
+as Bailey remained at large. If the man were captured, and there was
+likelihood of a confession being wrung from him, then most decidedly
+discretion would be the better part of valor.
+
+"Oh, of course," he confessed, "I am willing to admit that in such a
+community as this you might make trouble, unjustly, for me and my
+daughter. I am anxious to avoid that, because my interests are valuable
+here and I have my daughter's safety to consider."
+
+"Don't think of me," Helen interposed quickly. Above all fear for
+herself would be the shame of being beaten by Dorothy and of having her
+triumph go to the making of Wade's happiness. The thought of that
+appeared far worse to her mind than any physical suffering. "Do what you
+think is right. We are not cowards."
+
+"But I must think of you, my dear. I am responsible to your mother." He
+turned to Dorothy again. "How much do you want?"
+
+"How much? Oh!" She flushed hotly beneath the insult, but she chose to
+ignore it. "There is only one price that will purchase my silence. Tell
+me where Mr. Wade is?"
+
+"Bless my soul, I don't know." The Senator affected a display of injured
+innocence, which sat oddly upon his harried countenance. "I am willing
+to do what I can to save trouble, but I can't do the impossible."
+
+For a moment, in a wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her
+conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking
+the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also
+the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told
+herself that she must keep her countenance, and she did so.
+
+"There is not a man in Crawling Water who does not believe that Race
+Moran is responsible for Mr. Wade's disappearance," she declared. "That
+is another thing that you should consider, for it is one more link in
+the chain of evidence--impressions, you may call them, but they will be
+accepted as evidence by Wade's friends."
+
+Rexhill was considering it, and swiftly, in the light of the visit he
+had had from Trowbridge. The cattleman had left him with a distinct
+feeling that every word spoken had been meant. "If we can prove it
+against you, we'll ride you to hell on a rail." The language was
+melodramatic, but it seemed very suggestive as the Senator called it to
+mind. He regretted that he had supported Moran in his lust for revenge.
+The lawless spirit of the West seemed to have poisoned his own blood,
+but somehow the feeling of indifference as to suffering personal
+violence had been left out, and he realized that the West was no place
+for him.
+
+"Even so," he said pompously, "even if what you say of Moran should
+prove true, it does not follow that I know it, or am a party to it. Race
+Moran is his own master."
+
+"He is your employee--your agent--and you are responsible for what he
+does in your behalf," Dorothy retorted desperately. "Why do you bandy
+words with me like this? You may be able to do it with me, but don't
+think that you can do it with Mr. Trowbridge, and the others, if I tell
+them what I know. I tell you, you can't. You feel safe before me alone,
+but you are in much greater danger than you think. You don't seem to
+realize that I am holding your lives in my hand."
+
+Helen's cheeks blanched at this.
+
+"I do realize it." There was a slight quaver in the Senator's voice,
+although he tried to speak with easy grace. "I assure you, I do and I
+shall be very grateful to you"--his anxiety was crowding out his
+discretion--"if you will help me to save my daughter...."
+
+"I say just what I said before," Helen interposed, courageous to the
+last. There is, many times, in the woman a finer fiber of courage than
+runs in the man.
+
+Dorothy regarded the Senator scornfully, her feminine intuition assuring
+her that he was weakening. She no longer doubted that he knew; she was
+certain of it and happy to feel that she had only to press him harder to
+wring the truth from him.
+
+"Grateful? For helping you? I am not trying to help you. You deserve any
+punishment that could be inflicted upon you, I would say that, even if
+you had not insulted me and lied about me. You are an evil man. I am
+offering you your safety, so far as I can grant, only for the sake of
+Mr. Wade. If it were not for him, I should not have come here at all."
+
+Her sense of approaching triumph had carried her a little too far. It
+aroused Helen to bitter resentment, and when she began to speak Dorothy
+was sorry that she had not kept silent.
+
+"Father, don't do it!" Miss Rexhill burst out. "It is insufferable that
+this woman should threaten us so. I would rather run any risk, I don't
+care what, than give in to her. I won't tolerate such a thing."
+
+"You may be urging him to his death," Dorothy warned her. "I will not
+stop at anything now. If I tell the cattlemen what I know they will go
+wild. I mean what I say, believe me!"
+
+"I know you will not stop at anything. I have seen that," Helen
+admitted. "A woman who can do what you've already done...."
+
+"Helen!" The Senator was carrying with him a sense of gratitude toward
+Dorothy, and in the light of her spirit he was a little ashamed of the
+part he had played against her. "Let's try to forget what has past. At
+least, this young woman is offering us a chance."
+
+"Listen!" Dorothy cried out suddenly.
+
+Outside, in the street, a galloping horseman was shouting to some one as
+he rode. The girl ran to the window and raised the shade to look out.
+The lusty voice of the horseman bore well into the room. "They've caught
+Bailey at Sheridan. He'll be here to-morrow."
+
+"Senator Rexhill," said Dorothy, turning away from the window, "you'd
+better take the chance I've offered you, while you can. Do it for the
+sake of the old friendship between you and Gordon Wade, if for no other
+reason. No matter how bitter he may feel toward you, he would not want
+you in Crawling Water when Tug Bailey confesses. It would be too awful."
+She shuddered at the thought. "Tell me where he is and get out of town
+at once."
+
+"Bailey hasn't confessed yet," Helen cut in gamely.
+
+"No; but he will," Dorothy declared positively. "They'll put a rope
+around his neck, and he'll confess. Such men always do. Try to remember
+the position you are in. You'd be sorry if your father were lynched. Go
+with him, while you can. I know these people better than you do."
+
+The Senator swallowed hard and mopped his damp forehead with his
+handkerchief. There was nothing to do but follow the girl's advice, and
+that quickly, he knew. After all, in the face of death, financial ruin
+seemed a mere bagatelle.
+
+"So far as I have been informed, Wade is confined at Coyote Springs,
+somewhere in the mountains," he said bluntly. "That's all I know of the
+matter. I hope you will find him all right there. He ought to be very
+proud of you."
+
+Dorothy caught her hands to her breast in a little gesture of
+exultation, and the expression on her face was a wonderful thing to see.
+
+"You'll go?"
+
+"In the morning," Senator Rexhill answered.
+
+Eager as Dorothy was to reach the big pine with her message, she could
+not leave without giving Helen such a glance of triumph as made her
+wince.
+
+Then, hurrying to her pony, she rode rapidly out of town into the black
+night which cloaked the trail leading to the pine. She knew that her
+mother would miss her and be anxious, but the minutes were too precious
+now to be wasted even on her mother. She did not know what peril Gordon
+might be in, and her first duty was to him. She was almost wild with
+anxiety lest the courier should not be at his post, but he was there
+when she dashed up to the pine.
+
+"Take me to Mr. Trowbridge. Quick!" she panted.
+
+"He's somewhere between Bald Knob and Hatchet Hill," the man explained,
+knocking the ashes from his pipe. "It's some dark, too, miss, for ridin'
+in this country. Can't you wait until morning?"
+
+"I can't wait one second. I have found out where Mr. Wade is, and I
+mean to be with you all when you find him."
+
+"You have, eh?" The man, who was one of Trowbridge's punchers, swung
+into his saddle. "That bein' so, we'd get there if this here night was
+liquid coal."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A RESCUE AND A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
+
+
+At the end of an hour, or so, the lion withdrew and Wade thought he had
+seen the last of it. He began to pace up and down the fissure once more,
+for now that his thin shirt was damp with perspiration, set flowing by
+the nervous strain he had been under, he began to get chilly again. He
+had just begun to warm up, when he heard the animal returning. He
+crouched back against the cavern wall, but the lion had evidently lost
+the zest for such impossible prey. It walked about and sniffed at the
+edges of the fissure for some minutes; then it sneaked off into the
+timber with a cat-like whimper.
+
+The exhausted ranchman kept his feet as long as he could, but when the
+first rays of the morning sun cast purple shadows into the depths of the
+hole, he could no longer keep awake. With his hands, he drifted the
+loose sand about him, as travelers do when exposed to a snow-blizzard,
+and slept until Goat Neale aroused him, in broad daylight. The Texan
+performed this service by deftly dropping a small stone upon the
+sleeping man's face.
+
+"I just stepped over to inquire what you-all'd like for breakfast this
+mornin'," he said with a grin. "Not that it matters much, 'cause the
+dumb-waiter down to where you be ain't waitin' to-day, but it's
+manners, kinder, to ask."
+
+Wade looked up at him grimly, but said nothing. Just awake as he was,
+his healthy stomach clamored for food, but since none would be given
+him, he knew that he might as well try to be patient.
+
+"Mebbe you'd like to step over to our hotel an' take your meals, eh?"
+The Texan went on, after a short pause. "I've got a pot of coffee bilin'
+an' a mess o' bacon fryin'. No?" He grinned sardonically. "How'd you
+like me to give you some o' this here cabareet stuff, while you're
+waitin'? I ain't no great shucks as a entertainer, but I'll do what I
+can. Mebbe, you'd like to know how I happened to catch you that clump on
+the head yesterday. Huh?
+
+"I was up in the low branches of a thick pine, where you was moseyin'
+along. You was that busy watchin' the ground, you never thought to raise
+them eyes o' yourn. I just reached down and lammed you good with a piece
+of stick, an' here you be, safe an' sound as a beetle in a log. Here
+you'll stay, too, likely, on-less you get some sense, and I don't know
+when that there dumbwaiter'll get to runnin'. It's a shame, too, if you
+ask me, 'cause a man needs his three or four squares a day in this here
+climate."
+
+"How much do you want to give me a hand out of here, Neale?" the
+cattleman demanded abruptly, tired of listening to the fellow's
+monotonous drawl; and after all the chance was worth taking.
+
+The eyes of the Texan glittered.
+
+"Got the money on you?"
+
+"You'd get the money all right."
+
+"Sure, son, I know that--if you had it! I'd just hold my gun on you, an'
+you'd toss the roll up here, without puttin' me to the trouble o' givin'
+you no hand." He chuckled in appreciation of his own humor. "But I know
+you ain't got it on you--we frisked you down yonder in the timber--an' I
+don't deal in no promises. This here is a cash game. If I thought
+tha...."
+
+He whirled about suddenly, looking behind him and seemed to listen for
+an instant; then his hand dropped to the gun at his hip. He never drew
+the weapon, however, for with a horrible facial grimace, as his body
+contorted under the impact of a bullet, he threw his arms into the air
+and reeled over the edge of the hole. A second afterward the report of a
+rifle came to Wade's ears.
+
+"Hello!" the rancher shouted, springing from under the Texan's falling
+body. The instant it struck the sand, Wade snatched Neale's revolver
+from its holster and waited for him to try to rise; but he did not move.
+A bloody froth stained his lips, while a heavier stain on his shirt,
+just under the heart, told where the bullet had struck. The man was
+dead.
+
+"Hello! Hello!" Wade shouted repeatedly, and discharged the revolver
+into the sand. He realized that, although a friend must have fired the
+rifle, there was nothing to show where he was. "Hello!"
+
+"Hello!" The hail was answered by the newcomer, who, thus guided,
+approached the spot until his voice was near at hand. "Hello!"
+
+"Hello! Come on!" The prisoner threw his hat up out of the hole. "Here I
+am!"
+
+The next moment Bill Santry, with tears streaming down his
+weather-beaten cheeks, was bending over the edge of the fissure with
+down-stretched hands. Beneath his self-control the old man was
+soft-hearted as a woman, and in his delight he now made no attempt to
+restrain himself.
+
+"Thank Gawd for this minute!" he exclaimed. "Give me your hands, boy. I
+can just reach 'em if I stretch a little an' you jump." Wade did so and
+was drawn up out of the hole. "Thank Gawd! Thank Gawd!" the old fellow
+kept exclaiming, patting his employer on the back. "Didn't hurt you
+much, did they?"
+
+Before Wade could answer, a patter of hoofs caused him to turn, as
+Dorothy slipped from Gypsy's bare back and ran toward him. She stumbled
+when she had almost reached him, and he caught her in his arms.
+
+"Are you all right? Oh, your head! It's hurt--see, the blood?" She clung
+to him and searched his face with her eyes, while he tried to soothe
+her.
+
+"It's nothing, just a bad bruise, but how--?" He checked the question
+upon his lips. "We mustn't stay here. Moran may have...."
+
+"There ain't nobody here. I wish to Gawd he was here. I'd...." Santry's
+face was twisted with rage. "'Course," he added, "I knew it was him,
+so'd Lem Trowbridge. But we come right smack through their camp, and
+there was nobody there. This here skunk that I plugged, he must be the
+only one. I got him, I reckon."
+
+"Yes," Wade answered simply, as he watched three men from the Trowbridge
+ranch ride up to them. "Where's Lem?"
+
+Dorothy explained that she had set out to find him in company with the
+man she had met at the big pine; but on the way they had met Santry and
+the three cowboys. One of the men had then ridden on to Bald Knob after
+Trowbridge, while the rest had come straight to Coyote Springs. She
+tried to speak quietly, but she could not keep the song of happiness out
+of her voice, or the love out of her eyes.
+
+"Then you did this, too?" Wade wrung her hands and looked at her
+proudly. "But how--I don't understand?"
+
+"I'll tell you, when we're in the saddle," she said shyly. "There's so
+much to tell."
+
+"Santry!" The ranch owner threw his arm fondly across the shoulders of
+his foreman. "You, too, and Lem. I've got all my friends to thank. Say,
+dig a grave for this fellow, Neale. There was a lion around here last
+night, and I'd hate to have him get Neale, bad as he was. Then--" His
+voice became crisp with determination. "Hunt up Trowbridge and ask him
+to pass the word for everybody to meet at the ranch, as soon as
+possible. There's going to be open war here in the valley from now on."
+He turned again to Dorothy. "Dorothy, I'm going to take you right on
+home with me."
+
+"Oh, but...." The gleam in his eyes made her pause. She was too glad to
+have found him safe, besides, to wish to cross him in whatever might be
+his purpose.
+
+"No buts about it. I'll send for your mother, too, of course. Town won't
+be any place for either of you until this business is settled. George!"
+he called to one of the three cowmen, who rode over to him. "I suppose
+it'll be all right for you to take orders from me?"
+
+"I reckon so."
+
+"I want you to ride into Crawling Water. Get a buckboard there and bring
+Mrs. Purnell out to my place. Tell her that her daughter is there, and
+she'll come. Come now, little girl." He caught Dorothy in his arms and
+lifted her on to Gypsy's back. "All right, boys, and much obliged." He
+waved the little cavalcade on its way, and swung into the saddle on the
+extra horse, which Santry had provided.
+
+On the way down through the timber, Dorothy modestly told him of the
+part she had played, with the help of Lem Trowbridge. He listened with
+amazement to the story of her generalship, and was relieved to hear that
+the Rexhills were probably already out of Crawling Water, for that left
+him a free hand to act against Moran. This time the agent must suffer
+the penalty of his misdeeds, but greater even than his pleasure at that
+thought, was Wade's gratitude to Dorothy for all she had done for him.
+He was filled with a wonderful tenderness for her, which made him see in
+the play of her facial expression; the shy lowering of her lashes; the
+color which ebbed and flowed in her cheeks; the free use which she made
+of her red lips, a greater fascination than she had ever before exerted
+over him. There, in the fissure, he had expected never to be at her side
+again, and now that he was so, and knew what she had come to mean to
+him, the old friendship between them seemed no longer possible;
+certainly not from his side. He felt, in its place, all the confusion of
+a lover, anxious to speak and yet struck dumb with clumsiness and the
+fear, never absent no matter what the degree of encouragement, that his
+suit might not find favor with the lady when put into words.
+
+"You're a wonderful girl," he burst out, at last, with a heartiness
+that, in bringing a flush to her cheeks, made the old phrase seem new to
+her ears.
+
+"I'm not at all," she denied shyly. "I just had to do it, that was all.
+People always do what they have to do."
+
+"They do not. Lots of them can't, but you--you're always capable; that's
+what makes you so wonderful, Dorothy!" He pulled his horse closer to
+hers, meaning to put his arm around her, but he dared not attempt it,
+when her dress brushed his sleeve.
+
+"Yes?" She was trembling now far more than when she had faced the
+Rexhills. "What is it?"
+
+His arm dropped to his side, and he suddenly became acutely conscious of
+his appearance, what with his blood-matted hair; his blood-stained and
+soiled face; his generally woe-begone and desperate state. At least,
+before he risked his future on such a question, he ought to make
+himself as presentable as he could.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"But--" She looked at him curiously. "You were going to say something,
+weren't you?"
+
+"Yes; but I'm not going to do it until I can get to a hair-brush, and a
+wash-basin, and a clean shirt," he answered lugubriously. "What I've got
+on my mind is a church-going sentiment and I want to be in church-going
+clothes." The expression of his countenance contributed more than his
+words to the humor he strove for, and she laughed at him, merrily with
+her mouth, very tenderly with her eyes.
+
+"There's the house." She pointed ahead. "Even though I'm riding
+bareback, I can beat you to it. Come on!"
+
+Once Wade was within reach of food, his hunger became insistent, and he
+could not wait for the cook to prepare a meal of fried chicken. He
+foraged in the larder beforehand, and then did full justice to the meal
+put before him. By the time this was over, Mrs. Purnell arrived, and he
+had no chance to get into his "church-going clothes," as he called them.
+He had to tell the old lady all that had befallen him.
+
+"I never would have thought it of that Miss Rexhill," Mrs. Purnell
+declared.
+
+"It wasn't Miss Rexhill, it was her father and Race Moran," Dorothy
+interposed.
+
+"Or the Senator either, speaking merely from the looks of him," her
+mother retorted. "And think of the position he holds, a Senator of the
+United States!"
+
+"That's no hall-mark of virtue these days," Wade laughed.
+
+"Well, it should be. If we're to have people like him running the
+Nation, there's no telling where we'll end."
+
+"It just goes to show how an honest man, for I think Rexhill was an
+honest man when I first knew him, can go wrong by associating with the
+wrong people," said Wade. He could not forget his earlier friendship for
+the Rexhills, and to him the word friendship meant much. "He not only
+got in with a bad crowd, but he got going at a pace that wrung money out
+of him every time he moved. Then, in the last election, he was hit hard,
+and I suppose he felt that he had to recoup, even if he had to sacrifice
+his friends to do it. We mustn't judge a man like that too hard. We live
+differently out here, and maybe we don't understand those temptations.
+I'm mighty glad they've gone away. I can get right down to work now,
+without any qualms of conscience."
+
+"But think of you, Dorothy, out all night in those mountains!" Mrs.
+Purnell exclaimed.
+
+"Mother--" Dorothy smiled tenderly. "You always think backward to
+yesterday, instead of forward to to-morrow."
+
+By then, the first of the neighboring ranchers were drifting in, in
+response to Wade's summons. When all were present, and Trowbridge had
+wrung Wade's hand in a hearty pressure of congratulation, they were
+asked into the living-room, where Santry stood in a corner, munching
+slowly on a mouthful of tobacco and smiling grimly to himself.
+
+"Gentlemen," began Wade, facing the little group of stern-faced men,
+"you all know why we are here. To a greater or lesser extent, we've all
+suffered from Race Moran's depredations, although until lately none of
+us knew his motive. Now, however, we know that there is gold here in the
+valley--on our land--which Moran is trying to get possession of. He has
+proved that he is willing to resort to any villainy to get what he
+wants, and while he and his men are at large our lives and most of our
+ranches are in danger.
+
+"We have tried the law, but it has not helped us. Such little law as we
+have here is entirely in the hands of the enemy. We must now assume the
+direction of our own affairs. Many of you have already served in a
+vigilance committee, and you all know the purpose of such an
+organization. My idea is to form one now to take possession of Crawling
+Water and run Moran and his hired bullies out of the county. Between us,
+we can muster about a hundred men; more than enough to turn the trick,
+and the quicker we get to work the sooner we'll be able to go about our
+business affairs without fear of being shot in the back. My plan is
+this: Let us assemble our force quietly, ride into Crawling Water,
+capture Moran and his followers, and escort them out of the county.
+There must be no lynching or unnecessary bloodshed; but if they resist,
+as some of them will, we must use such force as is needed to overcome
+them."
+
+He stopped speaking, and for some minutes silence prevailed. Then Bill
+Santry shifted the quid in his cheek, spat unerringly through the open
+window, and began to talk. His loose-jointed figure had suddenly become
+tense and forceful; his lean face was determined and very grim.
+
+"Being as I've suffered some from this skunk, and have lived here some
+while, so to say, mebbe I can horn in?" he began.
+
+"Go ahead!" said Wade heartily.
+
+"Gordon here has stated the gist o' this business a whole lot better'n I
+could, but I'd like to make a few additional remarks. We've all been
+neighbors for some years, and in the natural course of things we've been
+pretty good friends. Until this feller, Moran, got to monkeyin' around
+here, there wasn't no trouble to talk about, and we was all able to
+carry on our work calm and peaceful like. But since this skunk camped
+among us, we ain't hardly knowed what a decent sleep is like; he's
+grabbed our range, butchered our stock, shot up our men, lied, and
+carried on high, in general. We've given the law a chance to do the
+square thing by us. All we asked was a fair shake, and we turned the
+other cheek, as the Bible says, hopin' that we could win through without
+too much fightin', but we've been handed the muddy end of the stick
+every time. It's come to a showdown, gents. We either got to let Moran
+do as he damn pleases 'round here, or show him that he's tackled a
+buzz-saw. Most of us was weaned some earlier than the day before
+yisterday. We gradooated from the tenderfoot class some time back, and
+it's up to us to prove it."
+
+He paused and looked around him earnestly for a moment; then, as his
+audience remained silent, he went on:
+
+"I'm older'n you men, an' I've lived a heap in my time. For nearly forty
+years I've been knockin' 'round this Western country without no nurse or
+guardeen to look after me. I've mixed with all kinds, and I've been in
+some scrapes; there's notches on my gun handles to prove that I ain't
+been no quitter. I've rode with the vigilantes more'n once, and the
+vigilantes has rode after me--more'n once; in my young days I wa'n't
+exactly what you'd call a nickel-plated saint. But I never killed a man,
+'cept in a fair fight, an' I don't believe in violence unless it's
+necessary. It's necessary right now, fellers! Moran's gone too far!
+Things have drawed to a point where we've got to fight or quit. In my
+experience, I ain't never seen but one judge that couldn't be bought;
+money an' influence don't count a whoop with him. It's Judge Colt,
+gents! You all know him; an' with him on our side we can round up Moran
+an' his crew of gun-fighters, an' ship 'em out of the country for keeps.
+Now's the time! The quicker we get busy, the quicker the air in these
+hills will be fit for a white man to breathe."
+
+"It's a go with me," Lem Trowbridge declared grimly. "That's what I'm
+here for. How about the rest of you?"
+
+When the other stock men assented, Wade smiled, for he knew their type.
+Honest, hard-working, peace-loving men though they were, when aroused
+they possessed the courage and tenacity of bull-dogs. They were aroused
+now, and they would carry on to the end, with a step as firm and
+relentless as the march of Time. Woe to whoever attempted to thwart them
+in their purpose!
+
+Wade's neighbor to the north, Dave Kelly, spoke up in his slow, nasal
+drawl. "You say there's to be no lynchin'," he remarked. "How about Tug
+Bailey, when he gets here from Sheridan? According to what Lem says,
+Bailey shot Jensen."
+
+"Sure, he did," Trowbridge put in. "We'll just slip a noose over his
+head and make him confess. That'll publicly clear Gordon and Bill. Then
+we'll give him a good coat of tar and feathers and run him out of town."
+
+"That's right," said Santry. "Jensen was only a Swede and a sheepherder.
+This here committee's to protect men."
+
+Kelly chuckled. "Have it your own way," he said. "I'm not particular. As
+it is, there'll be plenty doing."
+
+For an hour or more the cattlemen went over the plan of their campaign,
+which worked out into simplicity itself. Early the next evening they
+would marshal their force outside of Crawling Water, each man armed and
+mounted. After dark they would ride up the main street, where they would
+halt at each crossing, while a squad detailed for the purpose searched
+each saloon and other gathering place for members of Moran's gang. After
+the prisoners were rounded up they would be assembled in a compact body
+and marched to the railroad where they would be set free, under threat
+of instant death if they ever returned to Crawling Water.
+
+Although counting on superior numbers and the morale of his men, Wade,
+who had been chosen to command the little army, knew that there would be
+considerable hard fighting. Moran's people would probably be scattered
+and otherwise unprepared for the attack, but many of them would resist
+to the death. If Moran should attempt an organized resistance, the
+cattlemen meant to storm the town. Once the first shot was fired, the
+fight would be to a finish, for any other outcome than victory would
+spell ruin for the cattle interests in that section.
+
+The prospect was more than serious. Moran had established himself in
+Crawling Water and practically ruled it, surrounded as he was by some
+sixty adherents, the off-scouring of a dozen lawless communities. The
+decent citizens held aloof from him, but on the other hand the lower
+element viewed his reign with favor. The gamblers, particularly Monte
+Joe, who proclaimed himself Moran's lieutenant, had welcomed him, as had
+the saloonkeepers, to all of whom the presence of his men meant gainful
+trade. The better class, in the town itself, was in the minority and
+unable to restrain the unbridled license which flourished everywhere.
+
+No matter how stiff Moran's resistance proved, however, Wade felt very
+sure of the final result. He knew the men in his party and he knew that
+they meant business. He was relieved to believe that Dorothy and her
+mother would be safe at the ranch until after the trouble was over, and
+that Helen and Senator Rexhill had left Crawling Water. The two factions
+were now arrayed against each other almost like opposing armies, and the
+cattleman shuddered to think what his state of mind would have been had
+Dorothy and Mrs. Purnell remained in Crawling Water.
+
+"You'll be entirely safe here," he told them, when he was ready to leave
+for Crawling Water on the following evening. "I shall leave Barker to
+look after your wants, but you won't really need him. There isn't a
+sheepherder, or any of the Moran gang, between here and Crawling Water.
+The fighting will all be in town, thank goodness."
+
+At the word "fighting" Dorothy caught her breath sharply, too proud to
+urge him against his duty and yet afraid for him. He had not been able
+to muster courage enough to speak to her of what was in his heart,
+foolish though that was in him, and he sat there in the saddle for a
+moment, looking tenderly down on her as she stood smoothing out his
+horse's forelock.
+
+"Do be careful of yourself, Gordon," Mrs. Purnell called to him from the
+porch, but he did not hear her.
+
+"I haven't had a chance yet to get into my church-going clothes, have
+I?" he said whimsically to Dorothy, who flushed prettily and looked
+away.
+
+"I don't see what clothes have to do with talking to me," she said half
+coyly and half mischievously.
+
+"Neither do I," he agreed. She had stepped aside and his horse's head
+was free. "I guess they haven't a thing to do with it, but I haven't
+been seeing things exactly straight lately. I reckon I've been half
+locoed."
+
+Touching his horse with the spurs, he loped away to join Santry, who was
+waiting for him on ahead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+BAFFLED, BUT STILL DANGEROUS
+
+
+When Trowbridge left Dorothy Purnell, promising to find his friend for
+her sake, he had assumed a confidence that he was far from feeling. No
+man knew the country thereabout any better than he did, and he realized
+that there was, at best, only a meager chance of trailing the miscreant
+who had succeeded in trapping his victim somewhere in the mountains. A
+weaker man would have paused in dismay at the hopelessness of the task
+he had undertaken, but Lem Trowbridge was neither weak nor capable of
+feeling dismay, or of acknowledging hopelessness. Time enough for all
+that after he should have failed. In the meantime it was up to him to
+follow Moran. He had learned from Santry of the place where Wade was
+stricken down, but how far from there, or in what direction he had been
+taken, was a matter of conjecture only, and the only way to learn was to
+trail the party that had undoubtedly carried the helpless man away
+perhaps to his death, but possibly, and more probably, to hold him
+captive.
+
+Desperate as he knew Moran to be, he did not believe that the immediate
+murder of Gordon Wade was planned. That would be poor strategy and Moran
+was too shrewd to strike in that fashion.
+
+It seemed clear enough that parley of some sort was intended but knowing
+both Wade and Moran as he did, Trowbridge realized that in order to be
+of any assistance, he must be on the spot without delay. He had planned
+rapidly and he now acted rapidly.
+
+One of his men was stationed at the big pine, as he had told Dorothy,
+but all the others in his employ rode with him as swiftly as the best
+horses on his ranch could carry them, to the spot Santry had told him
+of. There they found unmistakable traces of half a dozen or more horses,
+besides the footprints of Wade's mount, and a brief examination was
+enough to show which way the party had gone. Undoubtedly they had taken
+Wade with them, so the pursuing party followed.
+
+It was one thing to follow, however, and another thing to overtake.
+Moran was better versed in the intricacies of big cities than in those
+of the wilderness, but he was shrewd enough to realize that Wade's
+friends would start an instant search, as soon as they should miss the
+ranchman, and it was no part of his plans to be taken by surprise.
+
+Therefore, as soon as he had had his victim thrown into the prison from
+which escape seemed impossible, Moran selected a camp site nearby, from
+which he had a view of the surrounding country for miles around in every
+direction, and scanning the horizon carefully after his vain attempt to
+intimidate Wade, he saw Trowbridge's party approaching, while they were
+still half a dozen miles away.
+
+His first thought was to stay where he was and give battle. In this he
+would have had a good chance of victory, for, by opening fire on
+Trowbridge and his followers as they came up, he could undoubtedly have
+picked off three or four of them before they reached him, and so secured
+odds in his own favor, if it should come to an immediate encounter.
+
+Second thought, however, showed him the folly of such a course. There
+was too much remaining for him to do, and the temporary advantage he
+might gain would not compensate him for the havoc it would make in his
+ultimate designs. He therefore called Goat Neale aside and said:
+"There's a party of Wade's friends coming up from the East, looking for
+him, and I've got to lead them away. You stay here, but keep in hiding
+and take care that nobody learns where Wade is. He'll live for a few
+days without grub and I'll come back and tend to his case after I've got
+this party going round in circles.
+
+"You stay, and the rest of us will all ride off to the north, and
+they'll think we have Wade with us, so they'll follow us, but we'll lose
+them somewhere on the way. Sabe?"
+
+Neale demurred at first to the plan, but consented willingly enough when
+Moran promised him extra pay; so he stayed, and we already know the
+result. Moran, however, followed out his plans successfully enough, and
+before night he reached Crawling Water in safety, while Trowbridge,
+getting word through one of his scouts of Wade's rescue, abandoned the
+pursuit. He had been prepared to shoot Moran down at sight, but he was
+ready enough to leave that work to the man who had a better claim to
+the privilege than he had.
+
+Accordingly Moran had ridden into town, exhausted by the exertions of
+his trip, and had slept for twelve hours before thinking of anything
+else. When he learned on awakening of all that had happened during his
+absence, he was furious with rage. Tug Bailey had been arrested and was
+on his way to Crawling Water in custody. Senator Rexhill and Helen had
+taken an Eastward-bound train without leaving any word for him, and to
+crown it all, he presently learned that Neale had been shot and Wade had
+been found, and that the whole countryside was aflame with indignation.
+
+It was characteristic of the man that even in this emergency he had no
+thought of following his cowardly accomplice in flight. It might be
+hopeless to stay and fight, but he was a fighting man, and he really
+exulted in the thought of the inevitable struggle that was coming.
+
+Sitting alone in his office studying the situation, he felt the need of
+liquor even more strongly than usual, though the habit had grown on him
+of late, and accordingly he drank again and again, increasing his rage
+thereby, but getting little help towards a solution of his difficulties.
+
+He was enraged most of all at Wade's escape from Coyote Springs and was
+still puzzled to think how this had happened, for Senator Rexhill in
+leaving had kept his own counsel on that point, and Moran did not dream
+of his having betrayed the secret.
+
+Not only had the ranchman been able to turn another trick in the game
+by escaping, but he had also evaded Moran's intended vengeance, for the
+latter had had no thought of letting his prisoner go alive. He had meant
+first to secure Wade's signature, and then to make away with him so
+cleverly as to escape conviction for the act.
+
+He realized now, when it was too late, that he had acted too
+deliberately in that matter, and he was sorry for it. He considered the
+departure of the Rexhills a cowardly defection. He was furious to think
+that Helen had refused to listen to him while she stayed, or to say
+good-by to him before leaving. The sting of these various reflections
+led him to take further pull at a silver flask which he kept in his
+pocket, and which bore the inscription, "To Race Moran from his friends
+of the Murray Hill Club."
+
+"So," he muttered, chewing his mustache, "that's what I get for sticking
+to Rexhill." Leaning back in his swivel chair, he put his feet up on the
+desk and hooked his fingers in the arm-holes of his vest. "Well, I ain't
+ready to run yet, not by a jugful."
+
+In his decision to remain, however, he was actuated by a desire to close
+with Wade, and not by any enthusiasm for the cause of the hired rascals
+who were so loudly singing his praise. They were not cowards, nor was
+he, but he had had too much experience with such people to be deluded
+into believing that, when the showdown came, they would think of
+anything but their own precious skins. He had heard rumors of the
+activity of the cattlemen but he discounted such rumors because of many
+false alarms in the past. He would not be frightened off; he determined
+to remain until there was an actual clash of arms, in the hope that
+events would so work out as to allow him a chance to get back, and
+severely, at Wade.
+
+He got to his feet and rolled about the room, like a boozy sailor,
+puffing out volumes of smoke and muttering beneath his breath. When he
+had worked off some of his agitation, the big fellow seated himself
+again, shrugged his massive shoulders, and lapsed into an alcoholic
+reverie. He was applying his inflamed brain to the problem of vengeance,
+when hurried footsteps on the stairs aroused him. Going to the door, he
+flung it open and peered out into the dimly lighted hallway.
+
+"Hello, Jed!" he exclaimed, upon finding that the newcomer was one of
+his "heelers." "What d'you want? Hic!" He straightened up with a
+ludicrous assumption of gravity.
+
+"The night riders! They've...." The man was breathless and visibly
+panic-stricken.
+
+"Riders? Hic! What riders?" Moran growled. "Out with it, you
+jelly-fish!"
+
+"The ranchers--the cattlemen--they've entered the town: they're on the
+warpath. Already a lot of our fellows have been shot up."
+
+"The hell they have! How long ago? Where?"
+
+"Other end of town. Must be two hundred or more. I hustled down here to
+put you wise to the play."
+
+"Thanks!" said Moran laconically. "You're headed in the right direction,
+keep going!"
+
+But the man lingered, while Moran, as lightly as a cat, despite his
+great bulk and the liquor he carried, sprang to the nearest window. Far
+up the street, he could distinguish a huddled mass, pierced by flashes
+of fire, which he took to be horsemen; as he watched, he heard scattered
+shots and a faint sound of yelling. The one hasty glance told him all
+that he needed to know; he had not thought this move would come so soon,
+but luck seemed to be against him all around. Something of a fatalist,
+in the final analysis, he no longer wasted time in anger or regrets. He
+was not particularly alarmed, and would not have been so could he have
+known the truth, that the yelling he had heard marked the passing of Tug
+Bailey, who had confessed but had made his confession too late to please
+the crowd, which had him in its power. Nevertheless, Moran realized that
+there was no time now to form his men into anything like organized
+resistance. The enemy had caught him napping, and the jig was up. He had
+seen the vigilantes work before, and he knew that if he intended to save
+his own skin he must act quickly. When he turned from the window, short
+though the interval had been, he had formed a plan of escape.
+
+"They've brought every man they could rake up," Jed added. "I reckon
+they've combed every ranch in the county to start this thing."
+
+Moran looked up quickly, struck by the significance of the remark. If it
+were true, and it probably was, then Wade's ranch also would be
+deserted. He half opened his mouth, as though to confide in his
+companion, when he evidently concluded to keep his own counsel.
+
+"All right," he said simply. "I guess there's still plenty of time. I've
+got a good horse at the lower end of the street. Take care of yourself.
+So long!"
+
+The man clattered down the stairs, and Moran turned to his desk, from
+which he took some papers and a roll of money, which he stuffed into his
+pockets. In the hallway he paused for a moment to examine a wicked
+looking revolver, which he took from his hip pocket; for, contrary to
+the custom of the country, he did not wear his gun openly in a holster.
+Convinced that the weapon was in good working order, he walked calmly
+down to the street, sobered completely by this sudden call on his
+reserve powers.
+
+His horse, a large, rawboned gray, was where he had left it, and shaking
+his fist in the direction of the vigilantes, he mounted and rode off. He
+meant to make a wide detour and then work back again to the Double Arrow
+range. If the ranch were really deserted, he meant to fire the
+buildings, before attempting his escape. Such a revenge would be a
+trifle compared to that which he had planned, but it would be better
+than nothing, while one more offense would not lengthen his term in jail
+any, if he were caught afterward. He felt in his pocket for the whiskey
+flask, and swore when he found it missing. He wanted the liquor, but he
+wanted the flask more, for its associations; he drew rein and thought of
+returning to search for it, but realizing the folly of this, he pressed
+on again.
+
+The round-about way he took was necessarily a long one and the ride
+entirely sobered him, except for a crawling sensation in his brain, as
+though ants were swarming there, which always harassed him after a
+debauch. At such times he was more dangerous than when under the first
+influence of whiskey. It was close upon noon, and the silvery sagebrush
+was shimmering beneath the direct rays of the sun, when he rode his
+lathered horse out of a cottonwood grove to gaze, from the edge of a
+deep draw, at Wade's ranch buildings. That very morning a gaunt, gray
+timber-wolf had peered forth at almost the same point; and despite
+Moran's bulk, there was a hint of a weird likeness between man and beast
+in the furtive suspicious survey they made of the premises. The wolf had
+finally turned back toward the mountains, but Moran advanced. Although
+he was reasonably certain that the place was deserted, a degree of
+caution, acquired overnight, led him first to assure himself of the
+fact. He tied his horse to a fence post and stealthily approached the
+house to enter by the back door.
+
+Dorothy was alone in the building, for her mother had gone with the
+overly confident Barker to pick blackberries, and the Chinese cook was
+temporarily absent. The girl was making a bed, when the door swung open,
+and she turned with a bright greeting, thinking that her mother had
+returned. When she saw Moran leering at her, the color fled from her
+cheeks, in a panic of fright which left her unable to speak or move. She
+was looking very pretty and dainty in a cool, fresh gown, which fitted
+her neatly, and her sleeves were rolled up over her shapely forearms,
+for the task of housekeeping which she had assumed. In her innocent way,
+she would have stirred the sentiment in any man, and to the inflamed
+brute before her she seemed all the more delectable because helpless.
+Here was a revenge beyond Moran's wildest dreams. To her he appeared the
+incarnation of evil, disheveled, mud-splashed and sweaty, as his puffed
+and blood-shot eyes feasted on her attractiveness.
+
+"Good morning!" He came into the room and closed the door. "I didn't
+expect to find you, but since you're here, I'll stop long enough to
+return your visit of the other night. That's courteous, ain't it?"
+
+Dorothy gulped down the lump in her throat, but made no reply. Realizing
+the importance of a show of bravery, she was fighting to conquer her
+panic.
+
+"You're sure a good-looking kid," he went on, trying to approach her;
+but she put the width of the bed between him and herself. "Each time I
+see you, you're better looking than you were the last time. Say, that
+last time, we were talking some about a kiss, weren't we, when we were
+interrupted?"
+
+"Mr. Wade may come in at any moment," Dorothy lied desperately, having
+found her tongue at last. "You'd better not let him find you here."
+
+"I shouldn't mind," Moran said nonchalantly. "Fact is, on my way out of
+the country, I thought I'd pay a farewell call on my good friend, Wade.
+I'm real sorry he ain't here--and then again I'm not. I'll--I'll leave
+my visiting card for him, anyhow." He chuckled, a nasty, throaty,
+mirthless chuckle that sent chills up and down the girl's spine. "Say,
+what's the matter with giving me that kiss now? There's nobody around to
+interrupt us this time."
+
+Dorothy shuddered, for already she had divined what was in his mind. The
+avid gleam in his eyes had warned her that he would not restrain himself
+for long, and summoning all her strength and courage, she prepared to
+meet the fearful crisis she must face.
+
+"Will you please go?"
+
+"No!" Moran chuckled again, and stepped toward her. "Will you come to me
+now, or shall I go after you?"
+
+"You brute! You coward!" she cried, when she found herself, after a
+desperate struggle, held firmly in his grasp.
+
+She screamed, then, at the top of her lung power until his hand fell
+firmly across her mouth, and she could only struggle with the mad
+strength of desperation. Her muscles could offer him no effective
+resistance, although for a moment the sudden fury of her attack drove
+him back, big though he was; but it was only for a moment. It gave her a
+chance to scream once more; then, closing in upon her, he seized her
+again in his ape-like embrace. She fought like a cornered wild-cat, but
+slowly and surely he was bending her to his will. Her nails were leaving
+raw marks upon him, until the blood ran down his face, and presently
+catching between her teeth one of the fingers of the hand which gagged
+her, she bit it so fiercely that he cried out in pain.
+
+"Curse you, you little she-devil," he grunted savagely. "I'll make you
+pay twice for that!"
+
+"Gordon! Oh, come to me! Quick! Quick!"
+
+Quivering all over, she sank on her knees before the brute who
+confronted her, a figure of distress that must have appealed to the
+heart of any man above the level of a beast. But in the heat of passion
+and rage, Moran had lost kinship with even the beasts themselves. Lust
+burned in his eyes and twisted his features horribly as he seized her
+again, exhausted by the brave struggle she had made, and all but
+helpless in his grasp.
+
+"Gordon! Mother! Barker! Save me! Oh, my God!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE STORM BURSTS
+
+
+The vigilantes had entered Crawling Water at about ten o'clock, when the
+saloons and gambling joints were in full swing. Ribald songs and oaths
+from the players, drinkers, and hangers-on floated into the street, with
+now and then the bark of a six-shooter telling of drunken sport or
+bravado. Few people were abroad; good citizens had retired to their
+homes, and the other half was amusing itself.
+
+So it was, at first, that few noticed the troop of horsemen which swung
+in at one end of the town, to ride slowly and silently down the main
+street. Each of the hundred men in the troop carried a rifle balanced
+across his saddle pommel; each was dressed in the garb of the
+range-rider; and the face of each, glimpsed by the light from some
+window or doorway, was grimly stern. The sight was one calculated to
+make Fear clutch like an ice-cold hand at the hearts of those with
+guilty consciences; a spectacle which induced such respectable men as
+saw it to arm themselves and fall in behind the advancing line. These
+knew without being told what this noiseless band of stern-eyed riders
+portended, and ever since the coming of Moran into Crawling Water
+Valley, they had been waiting for just this climax.
+
+Before the first of the dives, the troop halted as Wade raised his right
+arm high in the air. Twenty of the men dismounted to enter the
+glittering doorway, while the remainder of the vigilantes waited on
+their horses. A few seconds after the twenty had disappeared, the music
+of the piano within abruptly ceased. The shrill scream of a frightened
+woman preceded a couple of pistol shots and the sounds of a scuffle;
+then, profound silence. Presently the twenty reappeared guarding a
+handful of prisoners, who were disarmed and hustled across the street to
+an empty barn, where they were placed under a guard of citizen
+volunteers.
+
+So they proceeded, stopping now and then to gather in more prisoners,
+who were in turn escorted to the temporary jail, while the column
+continued its relentless march. The system in their attack seemed to
+paralyze the activities of the Moran faction and its sycophants; there
+was something almost awe-inspiring in the simple majesty of the thing.
+By now the whole town was aware of what was taking place; men were
+scurrying hither and thither, like rats on a sinking ship. Occasionally
+one, when cornered and in desperation, put up a fight; but for the most
+part, the "bad men" were being captured without bloodshed. Few bad men
+are so "bad" that they would not rather live, even in captivity, than
+come to their full reward in the kingdom of Satan. Frightened and
+disorganized, the enemy seemed incapable of any concentrated resistance.
+As Santry succinctly put it: "They've sure lost their goat."
+
+Not until the troop reached Monte Joe's place, which was the most
+imposing of them all, was real opposition encountered. Here a number of
+the choicer spirits from the Moran crowd had assembled and barricaded
+the building, spurred on by the knowledge that a rope with a running
+noose on one end of it would probably be their reward if captured alive.
+Monte Joe, a vicious, brutal ruffian, was himself in command and spoke
+through the slats of a blind, when the vigilantes stopped before the
+darkened building.
+
+"What d'you want?" he hoarsely demanded.
+
+"You, and those with you," Wade curtly answered.
+
+The gambler peered down into the street, his little blood-shot eyes
+blinking like a pig's. "What for?" he growled.
+
+"We'll show you soon enough," came in a rising answer from the crowd.
+"Open up!"
+
+Monte Joe withdrew from the window, feeling that he was doomed to death,
+but resolved to sell his life dearly. "Go to hell!" he shouted.
+
+Wade gave a few tersely worded orders. Half a dozen of his men ran to a
+nearby blacksmith shop for sledge hammers, with which to beat in the
+door of the gambling house, while the rest poured a hail of bullets into
+the windows of the structure. Under the onslaught of the heavy hammers,
+swung by powerful arms, the door soon crashed inward, and the besiegers
+poured through the opening. The fight which ensued was short and fierce.
+Outnumbered though the defenders were, they put up a desperate battle,
+but they were quickly beaten down and disarmed.
+
+Shoved, dragged, carried, some of them cruelly wounded and a few dead
+but all who lived swearing horribly, the prisoners were hustled to the
+street. Last of all came Monte Joe, securely held by two brawny
+cow-punchers. At sight of his mottled, blood-besmeared visage, the crowd
+went wild.
+
+"Hang him! Lynch the dirty brute! Get a rope!" The cry was taken up by
+fifty voices.
+
+Hastily running the gambler beneath a convenient tree, they proceeded to
+adjust a noose about his neck. In another instant Monte Joe's soul would
+have departed to the Great Beyond but for a series of interruptions.
+Wade created the first of these by forcing his big, black horse through
+the throng.
+
+"Listen, men!" he roared. "You must stop this! This man--all of
+them--must have a fair trial."
+
+"Trial be damned!" shouted a bearded rancher. "We've had enough law in
+this valley. Now we're after justice."
+
+Cheering him the crowd roared approbation of the sentiment, for even the
+law-abiding seemed suddenly to have gone mad with blood-lust. Wade, his
+face flushed with anger, was about to reply to them when Santry forced
+his way to the front. Ever since Wade had released the old man from
+jail, he had been impressed with the thought that, no matter what his
+own views, gratitude demanded that he should instantly back up his
+employer.
+
+"Justice!" snapped the old man, pushing his way into the circle that had
+formed around the prisoner, a pistol in each hand. "Who's talkin' o'
+justice? Ain't me an' Wade been handed more dirt by this bunch o'
+crooks than all the rest o' you combined? Joe's a pizenous varmint, but
+he's goin' to get something he never gave--a square deal. You hear me?
+Any man that thinks different can settle the p'int with me!"
+
+He glared at the mob, his sparse, grizzled mustache seeming actually to
+bristle. By the dim light of a lantern held near him his aspect was
+terrifying. A gash on his forehead had streaked one side of his face
+with blood, while his eyes, beneath their shaggy thatch of brows,
+appeared to blaze like live coals. Involuntarily, those nearest him
+shrank back a pace but only for a moment for such a mob was not to be
+daunted by threats. A low murmur of disapproval was rapidly swelling
+into a growl of anger, when Sheriff Thomas appeared.
+
+"Gentlemen!" he shouted, springing upon a convenient box. "The law must
+be respected, and as its representative in this community...."
+
+"Beat it, you old turkey buzzard!" cried an irate puncher, wildly
+brandishing a brace of Colts before the officer. "To hell with the law
+and you, too. You ain't rep'sentative of nothin' in this community!"
+
+"Men!" Wade began again.
+
+"String the Sheriff up, too," somebody yelled.
+
+"By right of this star...." Thomas tapped the badge on his vest. "I
+am...."
+
+"Pull on the rope!" cried the bearded rancher, and his order would have
+been executed but for Wade's detaining hand.
+
+"I'm Sheriff here." Thomas was still trying to make himself heard,
+never noticing three men, who were rolling in behind him a barrel, which
+they had taken from a nearby store. "I demand that the law be respected,
+and that I be permitted to--to...." He stopped to sneeze and sputter,
+for having knocked in the top of the barrel, which contained flour, the
+three men had emptied its contents over the officer's head.
+
+His appearance as he tried to shake himself free of the sticky stuff,
+which coated him from head to foot, was so ludicrous that a roar of
+laughter went up from the mob. It was the salvation of Monte Joe, for
+Wade, laughing himself, took advantage of the general merriment to urge
+his plea again in the gambler's behalf. This time the mob listened to
+him.
+
+"All right, Wade," a man cried. "Do as you like with the cuss. This is
+mostly your funeral, anyhow."
+
+"Yes, let the ---- go," called out a dozen voices.
+
+By this time the close formation of the vigilantes was broken. From time
+to time, men had left the ranks in pursuit of skulkers, and finding the
+way back blocked by the crowd, had taken their own initiative
+thereafter. Wade and Santry could not be everywhere at once, and so it
+happened that Lem Trowbridge was the only one of the leaders to be
+present when Tug Bailey was taken out of the jail. Trowbridge had not
+Wade's quiet air of authority, and besides, he had allowed his own blood
+to be fired by the "clean up." He might have attempted to save the
+murderer had time offered, but when the confession was wrung from him,
+the mob, cheated of one lynching, opened fire upon him as by a common
+impulse. In the batting of an eyelash, Bailey fell in a crumpled heap,
+his body riddled by bullets.
+
+Meanwhile, Wade and Santry were searching for the chief cause of all
+their trouble, Race Moran. They were not surprised to find his office
+vacant, but as the night wore on and the saffron hues of dawn appeared
+in the sky, and still he was not found, they became anxious. Half of the
+gratification of their efforts would be gone, unless the agent was made
+to pay the penalty of his crimes. Wade inquired of the men he met, and
+they too had seen nothing of the wily agent. The search carried them to
+the further end of the town without result, when Wade turned to Santry.
+
+"Hunt up Lem and see if he knows anything," he said. "I'll meet you in
+front of the hotel. I'm going to ride out and see if I can dig up any
+news on the edge of town. Moran may have made a get-away."
+
+With a nod, Santry whirled his horse and dashed away, and Wade rode
+forward toward an approaching resident, evidently of faint heart, who
+meant, so it seemed, to be in for the "cakes" even though he had missed
+the "roast." A little contemptuously, the ranchman put his question.
+
+"Yes, I seen him; leastwise, I think so," the man answered. "He went
+past my house when the shootin' first started. How are the boys makin'
+out?"
+
+"Which way did he go?" the cattleman demanded, ignoring the other's
+question. The resident pointed in the direction taken by Moran. "Are you
+sure?"
+
+"If it was him, I am, and I think it was."
+
+Wade rode slowly forward in the indicated direction, puzzled somewhat,
+for it led away from Sheridan, which should have been the agent's
+logical objective point. But a few moments' consideration of the
+situation made him think that the route was probably chosen for
+strategic reasons. Very likely Moran had found his escape at the other
+end of the town blocked, and he meant to work to some distant point
+along the railroad. Wade drew rein, with the idea of bringing his
+friends also to the pursuit, but from what his informant had told him
+Moran already had a long start and there was no time to waste in
+summoning assistance. Besides, if it were still possible to overtake the
+quarry, the ranchman preferred to settle his difference with him, face
+to face, and alone.
+
+He urged his horse into a lope, and a little beyond the town dismounted
+to pick up the trail of the fugitive, if it could be found. Thanks to a
+recent shower, the ground was still soft, and the cattleman soon picked
+up the trail of a shod horse, leading away from the road and out upon
+the turf. By the growing light, he was able to follow this at a fairly
+rapid pace, and as he pressed on the reflection came to him that if the
+agent continued as he was now headed, he could hope to come out
+eventually upon the Burlington Railroad, a full seventy miles from
+Sheridan. The pursuit was likely to be a long one, in this event, and
+Wade was regretting that he had not left some word to explain his
+absence, when he suddenly became aware of the fact that he had lost the
+trail.
+
+With an exclamation of annoyance, he rode back a hundred yards or so,
+until he picked up the tracks again, when he found that they turned
+sharply to the right, altogether away from the railroad. Puzzled again,
+he followed it for half a mile, until convinced that Moran had
+deliberately circled Crawling Water. But why? What reason could the man
+have which, in a moment of desperate danger to himself, would lead him
+to delay his escape? What further deviltry could he have on foot? There
+was nothing to lead him in the direction he was now traveling,
+unless...! Wade's heart suddenly skipped a beat and beads of cold sweat
+bedewed his forehead, for Dorothy Purnell and her mother had come into
+his mind. There was nothing ahead of Moran but the Double Arrow ranch!
+If that were the agent's objective point, there would be nothing between
+him and the women save Barker, and the "drop" of a gun might settle
+that!
+
+Never had the big black horse been spurred as cruelly as he was then,
+when Wade plunged his heels into his flanks. With a snort the horse
+bolted and then settled into his stride until the gentle breeze in the
+rider's face became a rushing gale. But the pain which the animal had
+felt was nothing to the fear which tugged at the ranchman's
+heartstrings, as he reproached himself bitterly for having left only one
+man at the ranch, although at the time the thought of peril to the women
+had never occurred to him. With the start that Moran had, Wade reasoned
+that he stood small chance of arriving in time to do any good. He could
+only count upon the watchfulness and skill of Barker to protect them.
+
+Failing that, there was but one hope, that the rider who had gone on
+ahead might not be Moran after all. But presently all doubt of the man's
+identity was removed from the ranchman's mind, for on the soggy turf
+ahead his quick eyes caught the glitter of something bright. Sweeping
+down from his saddle, he picked it up without stopping, and found that
+it was a half emptied whiskey flask. Turning it over in his hand, he
+read the inscription: "To Race Moran from his friends of the Murray Hill
+Club."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+WITH BARE HANDS AT LAST
+
+
+In after years, when Wade tried to recall that mad ride, he found it
+only a vague blur upon his memory. He was conscious only of the fact
+that he had traveled at a speed which, in saner moments, he would have
+considered suicidal. Urging the big black over the rougher ground of the
+higher levels, he rode like a maniac, without regard for his own life
+and without mercy for the magnificent horse beneath him. Time and again
+the gelding stumbled on the rocky footing and almost fell, only to be
+urged to further efforts by his rider.
+
+Five miles out of Crawling Water, the cattleman thought of a short-cut,
+through a little used timber-trail, which would save him several miles;
+but it was crossed by a ravine cut by a winter avalanche like the slash
+of a gigantic knife. To descend into this ravine and ascend on the
+farther side would be a tortuous process, which would take more time
+than to continue by the longer route. But if the gelding could jump the
+narrow cleft in the trail, the distance saved might decide the issue
+with Moran. On the other hand, if the leap of the horse was short,
+practically certain death must befall both animal and rider.
+
+Wade decided, in his reckless mood, that the chance was worth taking and
+he rode the black to the edge of the cleft, where trembling with
+nervousness, the animal refused the leap. Cursing furiously, Wade drove
+him at it again, and again the gelding balked. But at the third try he
+rose to the prick of the spurs and took the jump. The horse's forelegs
+caught in perilous footing and the struggling, slipping animal snorted
+in terror, but the ranchman had allowed the impulse of the leap to carry
+him clear of his saddle. Quickly twisting the bridle reins around one
+wrist, he seized the horse's mane with his free hand, and helped by the
+violent efforts the animal made, succeeded in pulling him up to a firmer
+footing. For some minutes afterward he had to soothe the splendid brute,
+patting him and rubbing his trembling legs; then, with a grim expression
+of triumph on his face, he resumed his journey. The chance had won!
+
+There was less likelihood now that he would be too late, although the
+thought that he might be so still made him urge the horse to the limit
+of his speed. He kept his eyes fastened on a notch in the hills, which
+marked the location of the ranch. He rode out on the clearing which held
+the house just in time to hear Dorothy's second scream, and plunged out
+of his saddle, pulling his rifle from the scabbard beneath his right leg
+as he did so. From the kitchen chimney a faint wisp of smoke curled
+upward through the still air; a rooster crowed loudly behind the barn
+and a colt nickered in the corral. Everywhere was the atmosphere of
+peace, save for that scream followed now by another choking cry, and a
+barking collie, which danced about before the closed door of the house
+in the stiff-legged manner of his breed, when excited.
+
+Wade burst into the house like a madman and on into the back room, where
+Moran, his face horribly distorted by passion, was forcing the girl
+slowly to the floor. But for the protection which her supple body
+afforded him, the ranchman would have shot him in his tracks.
+
+"Gordon!" The overwhelming relief in her face, burned into Wade's soul
+like a branding-iron. "Don't shoot! Oh, thank God!" She fell back
+against the wall, as Moran released her, and began to cry softly and
+brokenly.
+
+Snarling with baffled rage and desire, Moran whirled to meet the
+cattleman. His hand darted, with the swift drop of the practised gun
+man, toward his hip pocket; but too late, for he was already covered by
+the short-barreled rifle in Wade's hands. More menacing even than the
+yawning muzzle was the expression of terrible fury in the ranchman's
+face. For a space of almost a minute, broken only by the tense breathing
+of the two men and a strangled sob from Dorothy, Moran's fate hung on
+the movement of an eyelash. Then Wade slowly relaxed the tension of his
+trigger finger. Shooting would be too quick to satisfy him!
+
+Moran breathed more freely at this sign, for he knew that he had been
+nearer death than ever before in all his adventurous life, and the sway
+of his passion had weakened his nervous control. Courage came back to
+him rapidly, for with all his faults he was, physically at least, no
+coward. He took hope from his belief that Wade would not now shoot him
+down.
+
+"Well, why don't you pull that trigger?" His tone was almost as cool as
+though he had asked a commonplace question.
+
+"I've heard," said Wade slowly, "that you call yourself a good
+rough-and-tumble fighter; that you've never met your match. I want to
+get my--hands--on you!"
+
+Moran's features relaxed into a grin; it seemed strange to him that any
+man could be such a fool. It was true that he had never met his match in
+rough fighting, and he did not expect to meet it now.
+
+"You're a bigger man than I am," the cattleman went on. "I'll take a
+chance on you being a better one. I believe that I can break you with
+my--hands--like the rotten thing you are." He paid no heed to Dorothy's
+tearful protests. "Will you meet me in a fair fight?" Wade's face
+suddenly contorted with fury. "If you won't...." His grip on the rifle
+tightened significantly.
+
+"No, Gordon, no! Oh, please, not that!" the girl pleaded.
+
+"Sure, I'll fight," Moran answered, a gleam of joy in his eyes. He
+gloried in the tremendous strength of a body which had brought him
+victory in half a hundred barroom combats. He felt that no one lived,
+outside the prize-ring, who could beat him on an even footing.
+
+"Take his gun away from him," Wade told Dorothy. "It's the second time
+you've disarmed him, but it'll be the last. He'll never carry a gun
+again. Take it!" he repeated, commandingly, and when she obeyed, added:
+"Toss it on the bed." He stood his rifle in a corner near the door.
+
+"You're a fool, Wade," Moran taunted as they came together. "I'm going
+to kill you first and then I'll take my will of her." But nothing he
+could say could add to Wade's fury, already at its coldest, most deadly
+point.
+
+He answered by a jab at the big man's mouth, which Moran cleverly
+ducked; for so heavy a man, he was wonderfully quick on his feet. He
+ducked and parried three other such vicious leads, when, by a clever
+feint, Wade drew an opening and succeeded in landing his right fist,
+hard as a bag of stones, full in the pit of his adversary's stomach. It
+was an awful blow, one that would have killed a smaller man; but Moran
+merely grunted and broke ground for an instant. Then he landed a
+swinging left on the side of Wade's head which opened a cut over his ear
+and nearly floored him.
+
+Back and forth across the little room they fought, with little advantage
+either way, while Dorothy watched them breathlessly. Like gladiators
+they circled each other, coming together at intervals with the shock of
+two enraged bulls. Both were soon bleeding from small cuts on the head
+and face, but neither was aware of the fact. Occasionally they collided
+with articles of furniture, which were overturned and swept aside
+almost unnoticed; while Dorothy was forced to step quickly from one
+point to another to keep clear of them. Several times Wade told her to
+leave the room, but she would not go.
+
+Finally the ranchman's superior condition began to tell in his favor. At
+the end of ten minutes' fighting, the agent's breathing became labored
+and his movements slower. Wade, still darting about quickly and lightly,
+had no longer much difficulty in punishing the brutal, leering face
+before him. Time after time he drove his fists mercilessly into Moran's
+features until they lost the appearance of anything human and began to
+resemble raw meat.
+
+But suddenly, in attempting to sidestep one of his opponent's bull-like
+rushes, the cattleman slipped in a puddle of blood and half fell, and
+before he could regain his footing Moran had seized him. Then Wade
+learned how the big man's reputation for tremendous strength had been
+won. Cruelly, implacably, those great, ape-like arms entwined about the
+ranchman's body until the very breath was crushed out of it. Resorting
+to every trick he knew, he strove desperately to free himself, but all
+the strength in his own muscular body was powerless to break the other's
+hold. With a crash that shook the house to its foundation, they fell to
+the floor, and by a lucky twist Wade managed to fall on top.
+
+The force of the fall had shaken Moran somewhat, and the cattleman, by
+calling on the whole of his strength, succeeded in tearing his arms
+free. Plunging his fingers into the thick, mottled throat, he squeezed
+steadily until Moran's struggles grew weaker and weaker. Finally they
+ceased entirely and the huge, heavy body lay still.
+
+Wade stumbled to his feet and staggered across the room.
+
+"It's all right," he said thickly, and added at sight of Dorothy's wide,
+terror-stricken eyes: "Frightened you, didn't we? Guess I should have
+shot him and made a clean job of it; but I couldn't, somehow."
+
+"Oh, he's hurt you terribly!" the girl cried, bursting into fresh tears.
+
+Wade laughed and tenderly put his arms around her, for weak though he
+was and with nerves twitching like those of a recently sobered drunkard,
+he was not too weak or sick to enjoy the privilege of soothing her. The
+feel of her in his arms was wonderful happiness to him and her tears for
+him seemed far more precious than all the gold on his land. He had just
+lifted her up on the sill of the open window, thinking that the fresh
+air might steady her, when she looked over his shoulder and saw Moran,
+who had regained consciousness, in the act of reaching for his revolver,
+which lay on the bed where she had tossed it.
+
+"Oh, see what he's doing! Look out!"
+
+Her cry of warning came just too late. There was a flash and roar, and a
+hot flame seemed to pass through Wade's body. Half turning about, he
+clutched at the air, and then pitched forward to the floor, where he lay
+still. Flourishing the gun, Moran got unsteadily to his feet and turned
+a ghastly, dappled visage to the girl, who, stunned and helpless, was
+gazing at him in wide-eyed horror. But she had nothing more to fear
+from him, for now that he believed Wade dead, the agent was too
+overshadowed by his crime to think of perpetrating another and worse
+one. He had already wasted too much valuable time. He must get away.
+
+"I got him," he croaked, in a terrible voice. "I got him like I said I
+would, damn him!" With a blood-curdling attempt at a laugh, he staggered
+out of the house into the sunshine.
+
+For a moment Dorothy stared woodenly through the empty doorway; then,
+with a choking sob, she bent over the man at her feet. She shook him
+gently and begged him to speak to her, but she could get no response and
+under her exploring fingers his heart apparently had ceased to beat. For
+a few seconds she stared at the widening patch of red on his torn shirt;
+then her gaze shifted and focused on the rifle in the corner by the
+door. As she looked at the weapon her wide, fear-struck eyes narrowed
+and hardened with a sudden resolve. Seizing the gun, she cocked it and
+stepped into the doorway.
+
+Moran was walking unsteadily toward the place where he had tied his
+horse. He was tacking from side to side like a drunken man, waving his
+arms about and talking to himself. Bringing the rifle to her shoulder,
+Dorothy steadied herself against the door-frame and took long, careful
+aim. As she sighted the weapon her usually pretty face, now scratched
+and streaked with blood from her struggles with the agent, wore the
+expression of one who has seen all that is dear in life slip away from
+her. At the sharp crack of the rifle Moran stopped short and a
+convulsive shudder racked his big body from head to foot. After a single
+step forward he crumpled up on the ground. For several moments his arms
+and legs twitched spasmodically; then he lay still.
+
+Horrified by what she had done, now that it was accomplished Dorothy
+stepped backward into the house and stood the rifle in its former
+position near the door, when a low moan from behind made her turn
+hurriedly. Wade was not dead then! She hastily tore his shirt from over
+the wound, her lips twisted in a low cry of pity as she did so. To her
+tender gaze, the hurt seemed a frightful one. Dreading lest he should
+regain consciousness and find himself alone, she decided to remain with
+him, instead of going for the help she craved; most likely she would be
+unable to find her mother and Barker, anyway. She stopped the flow of
+blood as best she could and put a pillow under the ranchman's head,
+kissing him afterward. Then for an interval she sat still. She never
+knew for how long.
+
+Santry reached the house just as Mrs. Purnell and Barker returned with
+their berries, and the three found the girl bathing the wounded man's
+face, and crying over him.
+
+"Boy, boy!" Santry sobbed, dropping on his knees before the unconscious
+figure. "Who done this to you?"
+
+Dorothy weepingly explained, and when she told of her own part in
+shooting Moran the old fellow patted her approvingly on the back. "Good
+girl," he said hoarsely. "But I wish that job had been left for me."
+
+"Merciful Heavens!" cried Mrs. Purnell. "I shall never get over this."
+With trembling hands she took the basin and towel from her daughter and
+set them one side, then she gently urged the girl to her feet.
+
+"You!" said Santry, so ferociously to Barker that the man winced in
+spite of himself. "Help me to lay him on the bed, so's to do it
+gentle-like."
+
+Dorothy, who felt certain that Wade was mortally hurt, struggled
+desperately against the feeling of faintness which was creeping over
+her. She caught at a chair for support, and her mother caught her in her
+arms.
+
+"My poor dear, you're worn out. Go lie down. Oh, when I think...!"
+
+"Don't talk to me, mother!" Dorothy waved her back, for the presence
+close to her of another person could only mean her collapse. "I'm all
+right. I'm of no consequence now. He needs a doctor," she added, turning
+to Santry, who stood near the bed bowed with grief. He, too, thought
+that Wade would never be himself again.
+
+"I'll go," said Barker, eager to do something to atone for his absence
+at the critical moment, but Santry rounded upon him in a rage.
+
+"You--you skunk!" he snarled, and gestured fiercely toward the bed. "He
+left you here to look after things and you--you went _berry pickin'_!"
+Barker seemed so crushed by the scorn in the old man's words that
+Dorothy's sympathy was stirred.
+
+"It wasn't Barker's fault," she said quickly. "There seemed to be no
+danger. Gordon said so himself. But one of you go, immediately, for the
+doctor."
+
+"I'll go," Santry responded and hurried from the room, followed by
+Barker, thoroughly wretched.
+
+Dorothy went to the bedside and looked down into Wade's white face; then
+she knelt there on the floor and said a little prayer to the God of all
+men to be merciful to hers.
+
+"Maybe if I made you a cup of tea?" Mrs. Purnell anxiously suggested,
+but the girl shook her head listlessly. Tea was the elder woman's
+panacea for all ills.
+
+"Don't bother me, mother, please. I--I've just been through a good deal.
+I can't talk--really, I can't."
+
+Mrs. Purnell, subsiding at last, thereafter held her peace, and Dorothy
+sat down by the bed to be instantly ready to do anything that could be
+done. She had sat thus, almost without stirring, for nearly an hour,
+when Wade moved slightly and opened his eyes.
+
+"What is it?" She bent over him instantly, forgetting everything except
+that he was awake and that he seemed to know her.
+
+"Is it you, Dorothy?" He groped weakly for her fingers.
+
+"Yes, dear," she answered, gulping back the sob in her throat. "Is there
+anything you want? What can I do for you?"
+
+He smiled feebly and shook his head.
+
+"It's all right, if it's you," he said faintly, after a moment. "You're
+all right--always!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+CHURCH-GOING CLOTHES
+
+
+After his few words to Dorothy the wounded man lapsed again into coma,
+in which condition he was found by the physician, who returned with
+Santry from Crawling Water. During the long intervening time the girl
+had not moved from the bedside, though the strain of her own terrible
+experience with Moran was making itself felt in exhaustive fatigue.
+
+"Go and rest yourself," Santry urged. "It's my turn now."
+
+"I'm not tired," she declared, trying to smile into the keen eyes of the
+doctor, who had heard the facts from the old plainsman as they rode out
+from town.
+
+Wade lay with his eyes closed, apparently in profound stupor, but gave
+signs of consciousness when Dr. Catlin gently shook him. Dorothy felt
+that he should not be disturbed, although she kept her own counsel, but
+Catlin wanted to see if he could arouse his patient at all, for the
+extent of the injury caused by the bullet, which had entered the back in
+the vicinity of the spinal cord, could be gauged largely by the amount
+of sensibility remaining. The wounded man was finally induced to answer
+monosyllabically the questions put to him, but he did so with surly
+impatience. The physician next made a thorough examination, for which
+he was better fitted than many a fashionable city practitioner, by
+reason of his familiarity with wounds of all kinds.
+
+When he arose Santry, who had watched him as a cat watches a mouse,
+forced himself to speak, for his throat and mouth were dry as a bone.
+
+"Well, Doc, how about it?"
+
+"Oh, he won't die this time; but he may lie there for some weeks. So far
+as I can tell the bullet just grazed the spinal cord, and it's the shock
+of that which makes him so quiet now. A fraction of an inch closer and
+he would have died or been paralyzed, a cripple, probably for life. At
+is it, however, barring the possibility of infection, he should pull
+through. The bullet passed straight through the body without injury to
+any vital organ, and there is no indication of severe internal
+hemorrhage."
+
+Santry moistened his lips with his tongue and shook his head heavily.
+
+"What gets me," he burst out, "is that Gawd A'mighty could 'a' let a
+skunk like Moran do a thing like that! And then"--his voice swelled as
+though the words he was about to utter exceeded the first--"and then let
+the varmint get away from me!"
+
+Dr. Catlin nodded sympathy with the statement and turned to Dorothy. She
+had been anxiously searching his face to discover if he were encouraging
+them unduly, and when she felt that he was not stretching the facts a
+tremendous weight was lifted from her mind.
+
+"You are going to stay here?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; oh, yes!" she answered.
+
+"That's good." He opened his medicine case and mixed a simple
+antipyretic. "I'll explain what you're to do then. After that you better
+lay down and try to sleep. Wade won't need much for some days, except
+good nursing."
+
+"I'm not tired," she insisted, at which he smiled shrewdly.
+
+"I'm not asking you if you're tired. I'm telling you that you are. Those
+nerves of yours are jumping now. You've got our patient to consider
+first, and you can't look after him unless you keep well yourself. I'm
+going to mix something up for you in a few minutes and then you're going
+to rest. A nurse must obey orders."
+
+He explained to her what she was to do for the patient and then gave her
+something to offset the effects of her own nervous shock. Then
+counseling them not to worry too much, for there would be no fatal
+result if his directions were followed, the physician mounted his horse
+and rode back to town. Such journeys were all in the day's work to him,
+and poor pay they often brought him, except as love of his fellow-men
+rewarded his spirit.
+
+During the long days and nights that followed Dorothy scarcely left
+Wade's bedside, for to her mother now fell the burdens of the ranch
+household. From feeling that she never would be equal to the task of
+caring for so many people, Mrs. Purnell came to find her health greatly
+improved by her duties, which left her no opportunity for morbid
+introspection.
+
+Santry, too, was in almost constant attendance upon the sick man, and
+was as tender and solicitous in his ministrations as Dorothy herself. He
+ate little and slept less, relieving his feelings by oaths whispered
+into his mustache. He made the ranch hands move about their various
+duties as quietly as mice. Dorothy grew to be genuinely fond of him,
+because of their common bond of sympathy with Wade. Frequently they sat
+together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from
+town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth
+awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without
+permitting a single crackle, she softly laughed at him.
+
+"You needn't be so careful. I don't think it would disturb him."
+
+The old fellow sagely shook his head.
+
+"Just the same, I ain't takin' no chances," he said.
+
+A moment afterward he tiptoed over to her, grinning from ear to ear, and
+with a clumsy finger pointed out the item he had been reading. An
+expression of pleased surprise flooded her face when she read it; they
+laughed softly together; and, finding that he was through with the
+paper, she put it away in a bureau drawer, meaning to show that item
+some day to Gordon.
+
+Under the care of Dr. Catlin who rode out from Crawling Water each day,
+and even more because of Dorothy's careful nursing, the wounded man was
+at last brought beyond the danger point and started on the road to
+health. He was very weak and very pale, but the one danger that Catlin
+had feared and kept mostly to himself, the danger of blood-poisoning,
+was now definitely past, and the patient's physical condition slowly
+brought about a thorough and complete recovery.
+
+"Some of it you owe to yourself, Wade, as the reward of decent living,
+and some of it you owe to the Lord," Catlin told him smilingly. "But
+most of it you owe to this little girl here." He patted Dorothy on the
+shoulder and would not permit her to shirk his praise. "She's been your
+nurse, and I can tell you it isn't a pleasant job for a woman, tending a
+wound like yours."
+
+"Is that so?" said Dorothy, mischievously. "That's as much as you know
+about it. It's been one of the most delightful jobs I ever had."
+
+"She's a wonderful girl," said Wade, with a tender look at her, after
+they had laughed at her outburst.
+
+"Oh, you just think that because I'm the only girl around here," she
+blushingly declared, and the physician kept right on laughing.
+
+"There _was_ another girl here once," said Wade. "Or at least she acted
+somewhat differently from anything you've done lately."
+
+He was well enough now to receive his friends on brief visits, and
+Trowbridge was the first to drop in. Dorothy did not mind having Lem,
+but she was not sure she enjoyed having the others, for she had found
+the close association with Gordon so very sweet; but she told herself
+that she must not be foolish, and she welcomed all who came. Naturally
+so pretty a girl doing the honors of the house so well, and so closely
+linked with the fortunes of the host, gave rise to the usual deductions.
+Many were the quiet jokes which the cattlemen passed amongst themselves
+over the approaching wedding, and the festival they would make of the
+occasion.
+
+"Well, good-by, Miss Purnell," said Trowbridge one day, smiling and yet
+with a curiously pathetic droop to his mouth.
+
+"_Miss_ Purnell?" Dorothy exclaimed, in the act of shaking hands.
+
+"That's what I said." He nodded wisely. "Good-by, Miss Purnell."
+Refusing to be envious of his friend's good fortune, he laughed cheerily
+and was gone before she saw through his little joke.
+
+The next afternoon she was reading to Gordon when the far-away look in
+his eyes told her that he was not listening. She stopped, wondering what
+he could be dreaming about, and missing the sound of her voice, he
+looked toward her.
+
+"You weren't even listening," she chided, smilingly.
+
+"I was thinking that I've never had a chance to get into those
+church-going clothes," he said, with a return of the old whimsical mood.
+"But I look pretty clean, don't I?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, suddenly shy.
+
+"Hair brushed? Tie right? Boots clean?"
+
+To each question she had nodded assent. Her heart was beating very fast
+and the rosy color was mounting to the roots of her hair, but she
+refused to lower her eyes in panic. She looked him straight in the face
+with a sweet, tender, cool gaze.
+
+"Yes," she said again.
+
+"Well, then, give me your hand." He hitched his rocker forward so as to
+get closer to her, and took both her hands in this. "Dorothy, I've got
+something to tell you. I guess you know what it is." Her eyes suddenly
+became a little moist as she playfully shook her head. "Oh, yes, you do,
+dear, but I've got to say it, haven't I? I love you, Dorothy. It sort of
+chokes me to say it because my heart's so full."
+
+"Mine is, too," she whispered, a queer catch in her voice. "But are you
+sure you love me?"
+
+"Sure? Why, that other was only...."
+
+Withdrawing her hands from his, she laid her fingers for an instant on
+his lips.
+
+"I want to show you something," she said.
+
+She went to the bureau, and taking out the paper which she had hidden
+there, brought it to him. It was a moment before she could find the item
+again, then she pointed it out. They read it together, as she and Santry
+had done the first time she had seen it. The item was an announcement
+from the Rexhills of the engagement of their daughter Helen to Mr.
+Maxwell Frayne.
+
+Dorothy watched Wade's face eagerly as he read, and she was entirely
+content when she saw there no trace of his former sentiment for Helen
+Rexhill. He expressed genuine pleasure that Helen was not to be carried
+down with her father's ruin, but the girl knew that otherwise the news
+had left him untouched. She had always thought that this would be so,
+but she was comforted to be assured of it.
+
+"Why, that was only an infatuation," he explained. "Now I'm really in
+love. Thank Heaven, I...." When she looked at him there was a light in
+her glorious violet-shaded eyes that fairly took his breath away.
+
+"Hush, dear," she said softly. "You've said enough. I understand, and
+I'm so...."
+
+The rest was lost to the world as his arms went around her.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Minor changes have been made to make spelling and punctuation consistent
+through the text; otherwise, every effort has been made to be true to
+the original book.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hidden Gold, by Wilder Anthony
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN GOLD ***
+
+***** This file should be named 25043.txt or 25043.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/0/4/25043/
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/25043.zip b/25043.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6329a94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25043.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2fe594
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #25043 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25043)