Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed

[Illustration: (page 123) OVERLAND LIMITED!]

OVERLAND RED

A ROMANCE OF THE MOONSTONE CAÑON TRAIL

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANTON FISCHER

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

To I. J. K.

CONTENTS

          THE ROAD                                             xi
       I. THE PROSPECTOR                                        3
      II. WATER                                                10
     III. RAGGED ROMANCE                                       14
      IV. "ANY ROAD, AT ANY TIME, FOR ANYWHERE"                25
       V. "CAN HE RIDE?"                                       39
      VI. ADVOCATE EXTRAORDINARY                               48
     VII. THE GIRL WHO GLANCED BACK                            60
    VIII. THE TEST                                             72
      IX. A CELESTIAL ENTERPRISE                               88
       X. "PERFECTLY HARMLESS LITTLE OLE TENDERFOOT"           98
      XI. DESERT LAW                                          110
     XII. "FOOL'S LUCK"                                       125
    XIII. THE RETURN                                          132
     XIV. "CALL IT THE 'ROSE GIRL'"                           141
      XV. SILENT SAUNDERS                                     157
     XVI. BLUNDER                                             163
    XVII. GUESTS                                              177
   XVIII. A RED EPISODE                                       185
     XIX. "TO CUT MY TRAIL LIKE THAT"                         202
      XX. THE LED HORSE                                       211
     XXI. BORROWED PLUMES                                     223
    XXII. THE YUMA COLT                                       231
   XXIII. SILENT SAUNDERS SPEAKS                              247
    XXIV. "LIKE SUNSHINE"                                     254
     XXV. IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS                          262
    XXVI. SPECIAL                                             273
   XXVII. THE RIDERS                                          278
  XXVIII. GOPHERTOWN                                          288
    XXIX. TOLL                                                299
     XXX. TWO ROSES                                           305
    XXXI. NIGHT                                               320
   XXXII. MORNING                                             332
  XXXIII. A SPEECH                                            345

ILLUSTRATIONS

OVERLAND LIMITED! (page 123)                         Frontispiece
THE GIRL'S LEVEL GRAY EYES STUDIED THE TRAMP'S FACE            16
"IT'S A CLEAN-UP"                                             296
"CAN'T I HAVE ANOTHER ONE, ROSE GIRL?"                        340

The Road

Through the San Fernando Valley, toward the hills of Calabasas runs that
old road, El Camino Real of the early Mission days.

And now replicas of old Mission bells, each suspended in solitary
dignity from a rusted iron rod, mark intervals along the dusty way, once
a narrow trail worn by the patient feet of that gentle and great padre,
Junípero Serra,--a trail from the San Gabriel Valley to the shores of
Monterey. A narrow trail then, but, even then, to him it was broad in
its potential significance of the dawn of Grace upon the mountain shores
of Heaven's lost garden, California.

Not far from one iron-posted bell in the valley, El Camino Real falters,
to find, eventually, a lazy way round the low foothills, as though
reluctant to lift its winding length over the sharp pitch of the Canajo
Pass, beyond.

Near this lone bell another road, an offspring of old El Camino Real,
runs quickly from its gray and patient sire. Branching south in hurried
turns and multiple windings it climbs the rolling hills, ever dodging
the rude-piled masses of rock, with scattered brush between, but forever
aspiring courageously through the mountain sage and sunshine toward its
ultimate green rest in the shadowy hills.

In the sweet sage is the drone of bees, like the hum of a far city. The
thinning, acrid air is tinged with the faint fragrance of sunburnt
shrubs and grasses.

With the sinuous avoidings of a baffled snake the road turns and turns
upon itself until its earlier promise of high adventuring seems
doubtful. As often as not it climbs a semi-barren dun stretch of
sunbaked earth dotted with stubby cacti--passes these dwarfed
grotesques, and attempts the narrowing crest of the cañon-wall, to swing
abruptly back to the cacti again, gaining but little in its upward
trend.

Impatient, it finally plunges dizzily round a sharp, outstanding angle
of rock and down into the unexpected enchantment of Moonstone Cañon.
Here the gaunt cliffs rise to great wild gardens, draped with soft rose
and poignant red amid drowsy undertones of gray and green and gold. Dots
of vivid colors flame and fade and pass to ledges of dank, vineclad rock
and drifts of shale, as the road climbs again.

At the next turn are the indistinct voices of water, commingling in a
monotone--and the road ceases to be, as the cool silver of a mountain
stream cuts through it, with seemingly inconsequential meanderings, but
with the soft arrogance of a power too great to be denied. And the
indistinct voices, left behind, fade to unimaginable sounds as the
stream patters down its gravelly course, contented beyond measure with
its own adventuring.

Patiently the road takes up its way, moving in easier sweeps through a
widening valley, but forever climbing.

Again and again, fetlock deep across it runs the stream, gently
persistent and forever murmuring its happy soliloquies.

Here and there the road passes quickly through a blot of shade,--a group
of wide-spreading live-oaks,--and reappears, gray-white and hot in the
sun.

And then, its high ambition fulfilled, the road recovers from its last
climbing sweep round the base of a shouldering hill and runs straight
and smooth to its ultimate green rest in the shade of the sycamores.
Beyond these two huge-limbed warders of the mountain ranch gate, there
is a flower-bordered _way_, but it is the road no longer.

The mountain ranch takes its name from the cañon below. It is the
Moonstone Ranch, the home of Louise, whose ancestors, the Lacharmes,
grew roses in old France.

Among the many riders to and from the ranch, there is one, a great,
two-fisted, high-complexioned man, whose genial presence is ever
welcome. He answers to many names. To the youngsters he is "Uncle
Jack,"--usually with an exclamation. To some of the older folk he is
"Mr. Summers," or "Jack." Again, the foreman of the Moonstone Ranch
seldom calls him anything more dignified than "Red." Louise does
sometimes call him--quite affectionately--"Overland."

OVERLAND RED

CHAPTER I

THE PROSPECTOR

For five years he had journeyed back and forth between the little desert
station on the Mojave and the range to the north. The townspeople paid
scant attention to him. He was simply another "desert rat" obsessed with
the idea that gold was to be found in those northern hills. He bought
supplies and paid grudgingly. No one knew his name.

The prospector was much younger than he appeared to be. The desert sun
had dried his sinews and warped his shoulders. The desert wind had
scrawled thin lines of age upon his face. The desert solitude had
stooped him with its awesome burden of brooding silence.

Slowly his mind had been squeezed dry of all human interest save the
recurrent memory of a child's face--that, and the poignant memory of the
child's mother. For ten years he had been trying to forget. The last
five years on the desert had dimmed the woman's visioned face as the
child came more often between him and the memory of the mother, in his
dreams.

Then there were voices, the voices of strange spirits that winged
through the dusk of the outlands and hovered round his fire at night.

One voice, soft, insistent, ravished his imagination with visions of
illimitable power and peace and rest. "Gold! Lost gold!" it would
whisper as he sat by the meager flame. Then he would tremble and draw
nearer the warmth. "Where?" he would ask, tempting the darkness as a
child, fearfully certain of a reply.

Then another voice, cadenced like the soft rush of waves up the sand,
would murmur, "Somewhere away! Somewhere away! Somewhere away!" And in
the indefiniteness of that answer he found an inexplicable joy. The
vagueness of "Somewhere away" was as vast with pregnant possibilities as
his desert. His was the eternity of hope, boundless and splendid in its
extravagant promises. Drunk with the wine of dreams, he knew himself to
be a monarch, a monarch uncrowned and unattended, yet always with his
feet upon the wide threshold of his kingdom.

Then would come the biting chill of night, the manifold rays of stars
and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility
of the crouching beast, waiting ... waiting....

The desert, impassively withering him to the shell of a man, or wracking
him terribly in heat or in storm and cold, still cajoled him day and
night with promises, whispered, vague and intoxicating as the perfume of
a woman's hair.

Finally the desert flung wide the secret portals of her treasure-house
and gave royally like a courtesan of kings.

The man, his dream all but fulfilled, found the taste of awakening
bitter on his lips. He counted his years of toil and cursed as he viewed
his shrunken hands, claw-like, scarred, crippled.

He felt the weight of his years and dreaded their accumulated burdens.
He realized that the dream was all--its fulfillment nothing. He knew
himself to be a thing to be pointed at; yet he longed for the sound of
human voices, for the touch of human hands, for the living sweetness of
his child's face. The sirens of the invisible night no longer whispered
to him. He was utterly alone. He had entered his kingdom. Viewed from
afar it had seemed a vast pleasure-dome of infinite enchantment. He
found Success, as it ever shall be, a veritable desert, grudging man
foothold, yet luring him from one aspiration to another, only to consume
his years in dust.

A narrow cañon held his secret. He had wandered into it, panned a little
black sand, and found color. Finally he discovered the fountainhead of
the hoarded yellow particles that spell Power. There in the fastness of
those steep, purgatorial walls was the hermitage of the two
voices--voices that no longer whispered of hope, but left him in the
utter loneliness of possession and its birthright, Fear.

He cried aloud for the companionship of men--and glanced fearfully round
lest man had heard him call.

He again journeyed to the town beside the railroad, bought supplies and
vanished, a ragged wraith, on the horizon.

Back in the cañon he set about his labors, finding a numbing solace in
toil.

But at night he would think of the child's face. He had said to those
with whom he had left the child that he would return with a fortune.
They knew he went away to forget. They did not expect him to return.
That had been ten years ago. He had written twice. Then he had drifted,
always promising the inner voice that urged him that he would find gold
for her, his child, that she might ever think kindly of him. So he tried
to buy himself--with promises. Once he had been a man of his hands, a
man who stood straight and faced the sun. Now the people of the desert
town eyed him askance. He heard them say he was mad--that the desert had
"got him." They were wrong. The desert and its secret was his--a sullen
paramour, but _his_ nevertheless. Had she not given him of her very
heart?

He viewed his shrunken body, knew that he stooped and shuffled, realized
that he had paid the inevitable, the inexorable price for the secret.
His wine of dreams had evaporated.... He sifted the coarse gold between
his fingers, letting it fall back into the pan. Was it for _this_ that
he had wasted his soul?

In the desert town men began to notice the regularity of his comings and
goings. Two or three of them foregathered in the saloon and commented on
it.

"He packed some dynamite last trip," asserted one.

There was a silence. The round clock behind the bar ticked loudly,
ominously.

"Then he's struck it at last," said another.

"Mebby," commented the first speaker.

The third man nodded. Then came silence again and the absolute ticking
of the clock. Presently from outside in the white heat of the road came
the rush of hoofs and an abrupt stop. A spurred and booted rider, his
swarthy face gray with dust, strode in, nodded to the group and called
for whiskey.

"Which way did he go, Saunders?" asked one.

"North, as usual," said the rider.

"Let's set down," suggested the third man.

They shuffled to a table. The bartender brought glasses and a bottle.
Then, uninvited, he pulled up a chair and sat with them. The rider
looked at him pointedly.

"Oh, I'm in on this," asserted the bartender. "Daugherty is the
Wells-Fargo man here. He won't talk to nobody but me--about _business_."

"What's that got to do with it?" queried the rider.

"Just what you'd notice, Saunders. Listen! The rat left a bag of dust in
the Company's safe last trip. Daugherty says its worth mebby five
hundred. He says the rat's goin' to bring in some more. Do I come in?"

"You're on," said the rider. "Now, see here, boys, we got to find out if
he's filed on it yet, and what his name is, and then--"

"Mebby we'd better find out _where_ it is first," suggested one.

"And then jump him?" queried the rider over his glass.

"And then jump him," chorused the group. "He's out there alone. It's
easy." And each poured himself a drink, for which, strangely enough, no
one offered to pay, and for which the bartender evidently forgot to
collect.

Meanwhile the prospector toiled through the drought of that summer
hoarding the little yellow flakes that he washed from the gravel in the
cañon.

CHAPTER II

WATER

All round him for miles each way the water-holes had gone dry. The
little cañon stream still wound down its shaded course, disappearing in
a patch of sand at the cañon's mouth, so the prospector felt secure.
None had ridden out to look for him through that furnace of burning sand
that stretched between the hills and the desert town.

The stream dwindled slowly, imperceptibly.

One morning the prospector noticed it, and immediately explored the
creek clear to its source--a spurt of water springing from the roof of a
grotto in the cliff. Such a supply, evidently from the rocky heart of
the range itself, would be inexhaustible.

A week later he awoke to find the creek-bed dry save in a few
depressions among the rocks. He again visited the grotto. The place was
damp and cool, glistening with beads of moisture, but the flow from the
roof-crevice had ceased. Still he thought there must be plenty of water
beneath the rocks of the stream-bed. He would dig for it.

Another week, and he became uneasy. The stream had disappeared as though
poured into a colossal crevice. A few feet below the gravel he struck
solid rock. He tried dynamite unsuccessfully. Then he hoarded the
drippings from the grotto crevice till he had filled his canteen.
Carefully he stowed his gold in a chamois pouch and prepared to leave
the cañon. His burro had strayed during the week of drought--was
probably dead beside some dry water-hole.

The prospector set out to cross the range in the light of the stars.

Fearful that he might be seen, panic warped his reasoning. He planned to
journey south along the foothills, until opposite the desert town and
then cross over to it. If he approached from such a direction, no one
would guess his original starting-place. He knew of an unfailing
water-hole two days' journey from the cañon. This water-hole was far out
of his way, but his canteen supply would more than last till he reached
it.

Then Fate, the fate that had dogged his every step since first he
ventured into the solitudes, closed up and crept at his heels. He became
more morose and strangely fearful. His vision, refined by the wasting of
his body, created shadows that lay about his feet like stagnant pools,
shadows where no shadows should be.

Ominous was his fall as he crossed an arroyo. The canteen, slung over
his shoulder, struck a sharp point of rock that started one of the
seams. The leak was infinitesimal. The felt cover of the canteen
absorbed the drip, which evaporated. When he arrived at the water-hole,
_that_ was dry. His canteen felt strangely light. He could not remember
having used so much water. He changed his plan. He struck straight from
the hills toward the railroad. He knew that eventually he would, as he
journeyed west, cross it, perhaps near a water-tank.

Toward the blinding afternoon of that day he saw strange lakes and pools
spread out upon the distant sand and inverted mountain ranges stretching
to the horizon.

Fate crept closer to his heels, waiting with the dumb patience of the
desert to claim the struggling, impotent puppet whose little day was all
but spent.

He stumbled across the blazing bars of steel that marked the railroad.
His empty canteen clattered on the ties as he fell. He got to his knees
and dragged himself from the track. He laughed, for he had thwarted Fate
this once; he would not be run over by the train. He lay limp, wasted,
scarcely breathing.

Serenely Fate crouched near him, patient, impassive....

He heard a man speak and another answer. He felt an arm beneath his
head, and water.... Water!

He drank, and all at once his strength flamed up. It was not water they
gave him; it was merely the taste of it--a mockery. He wanted more ...
all!

He lurched to his feet, struggling with a bearded giant that held him
from his desire--to drink until he could drink no more--to die drinking
the water they had taken from him even as they gave it. He fought
blindly. Fate, disdaining further patience, arose and flung itself about
his feet. He stumbled. A flash wiped all things from his vision and the
long night came swiftly.

RAGGED ROMANCE

At the wide gate of the mountain ranch stood the girl. Her black
saddle-pony Boyar fretted to be away. Glancing back through the
cavernous shade of the live-oaks, the girl hesitated before opening the
gate. A little breeze, wayfaring through Moonstone Cañon and on up to
the mountain ranch, touched the girl's cheek and she breathed deeply of
its cool fragrance.

The wide gate swung open, and Louise Lacharme, curbing Black Boyar, rode
out of the shadows into the hot light of the morning, singing as she
rode.

Against the soft gray of the cañon wall flamed a crimson flower like a
pomegranate bud. Across the road ran the cool mountain stream. Away and
away toward the empty sky the ragged edges of the cliffs were etched
sharply upon the blue.

The road ran swiftly round the eastern wall of the cañon. Louise, as
fragrantly bright as morning sunshine on golden flowers, laughed as the
pony's lithe bound tore the silver of the ford to swirling beads and
blade-like flashes.

On the rise beyond, the girl drew rein at the beginning of the Old
Meadow Trail, a hidden trail that led to a mountain meadow of ripe
grasses, groups of trees, and the enchantment of seclusion.

The pony shouldered through the breast-high greasewood and picked his
steps along the edge of the hill. The twigs and branches lisped and
clattered against the carved leather tapaderos that hooded the stirrups.
The warm sun awoke the wild fragrance of sage and mountain soil. Little
lizards of the stones raced from Black Boyar's tread, becoming rigid on
the sides of rocks, clinging at odd angles with heads slanted, like
delicate Orient carvings in dull brass.

The girl's eyes, the color of sea-water in the sun, were leveled toward
the distant hills across the San Fernando Valley. From her fingers
dangled the long bridle-reins. Her lips were gently parted. Her gaze was
the gaze of one who dreams in the daylight. And close in the hidden
meadow crouched Romance, Romance ragged, unkempt, jocular....

Boyar first scented the wood-smoke. Louise noticed his forward-standing
ears and his fidgeting. Immediately before her was the low rounded rock,
a throne of dreams that she had graced before. From down the slope and
almost hidden by the bulk of the rock, a little wand of smoke stood up
in the windless air, to break at last into tiny shreds and curls of
nothingness.

"It can't be much of a fire yet!" exclaimed Louise, forever watchful, as
are all the hill-folk, for that dread, ungovernable red monster of
destruction, a mountain fire. "It can't be much of a fire _yet_."

The pony Boyar, delicately scenting something more than wood-smoke,
snorted and swerved. Louise dismounted and stepped hurriedly round the
shoulder of the rock. A bristle-bearded face confronted her. "No, it
ain't much of a fire yet, but our hired girl she joined a movin'-picture
outfit, so us two he-things are doin' the best we can chasin' a
breakfast." And the tramp, Overland Red, ragged, unkempt, jocular, rose
from his knees beside a tiny blaze. He pulled a bleak flop of felt from
his tangled hair in an over-accentuated bow of welcome.

"We offer you the freedom of the city, ma'am. Welcome to our midst, and
kindly excuse appearances this morning. Our trunks got delayed in New
York."

Unsmilingly the girl's level gray eyes studied the tramp's face. Then
her glance swept him swiftly from bared head to rundown heel. "I was
just making up my mind whether I'd stay and talk with you, or ask you to
put out your fire and go somewhere else. But I think you are all right.
Please put on your hat."

[Illustration: THE GIRL'S LEVEL GRAY EYES STUDIED THE TRAMP'S FACE]

Overland Red's self-assurance shrunk a little. The girl's eyes were
direct and fearless, yet not altogether unfriendly. He thought that deep
within them dwelt a smile.

"You got my map all right," he said, a trifle more respectfully.
"'Course we'll douse the fire when we duck out of here. But what do you
think of Collie here, my pal? Is he all right?"

"Oh, he's only a boy," said Louise, glancing casually at the youth
crouched above the fire.

The boy, a slim lad of sixteen or thereabout, flushed beneath the
battered brim of his black felt hat. He watched the tomato-can
coffee-pot intently. Louise could not see his face.

"Yes, Miss. _I'm_ all right and so is he." And a humorous wistfulness
crept into the tramp's eyes. "He's what you might call a changeling."

"Changeling?"

"Uhuh! Always changin' around from place to place--when you're young.
Ain't that it?"

"Oh! And when you are older?" she queried, smiling.

Overland Red frowned. "Oh, then you're just a tramp, a Willie, a Bo, a
Hobo."

He saw the girl's eyes harden a little. He spoke quickly, and, she
imagined, truthfully. "I worked ten years for one outfit once, without
a change. And I never knowed what it was to do a day's work out of the
saddle. You know what that means."

"Cattle? Mexico?"

Overland Red grinned. "Say! You was born in California, wasn't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"'Cause Mexico has been about the only place a puncher could work that
long without doin' day labor on foot half the year. Yes, I been there.
'Course, now, I'm doin' high finance, and givin' advice to the young,
and livin' on my income. And say, when it comes to real brain work, I'm
the Most Exhausted Baked High Potentate, but I wouldn't do no mineral
labor for nobody. If I can't work in the saddle, I don't work--that's
all."

"Mineral labor? What, mining?" asked Louise.

"No, not mining. Jest mineral labor like Japs, or section-hands, or
coachmen with bugs on their hats. Ain't the papers always speakin' of
that kind as minerals?"

"Don't you mean menials?"

"Well, yes. It's all the same, anyway. I never do no hair-splittin' on
words. Bein' a pote myself, it ain't necessary."

"A--a poet! Really?"

"Really and truly, and carry one and add five. I've roped a lot of
po'try in my time, Miss. Say, are we campin' on your land?"

"No. This is government land, from here to our line up above--the
Moonstone Rancho."

"The Moonstone Rancho?" queried Overland Red, breaking a twig and
feeding the fire.

"Yes. It's named after the cañon. But don't let me keep you from
breakfast."

"Breakfast, eh? That's right! I almost forgot it, talkin' to you.
Collie's got the coffee to boilin'. No, _you_ ain't keepin' us from our
breakfast any that you'd notice. It would take a whole reg'ment of
Rurales to keep us from a breakfast if we seen one runnin' around loose
without its pa or ma."

Louise Lacharme did not smile. This was too real. Here was adventure
with no raconteur's glamour, no bookish gloss. Here was Romance. Romance
unshaven, illiterate, with its coat off making coffee in a
smoke-blackened tomato-can, but Romance nevertheless. That this romance
should touch her life, Louise had not the faintest dream. She was
alone ... but, pshaw! Boyar was grazing near, and besides, she was not
really afraid of the men. She thought she rather liked them, or, more
particularly, the boisterous one who had said his name was Overland Red.

The tramp gazed at her a moment before he lifted the tomato-can from the
embers. "We know you won't join us, but we're goin' to give you the
invite just the same. And we mean it. Ma'am, if you'll be so kind as to
draw up your chair, us gents'll eat."

"Thank you!" said Louise, and Overland's face brightened at the
good-fellowship in her voice. "Thank you both, but I've had breakfast."

She gazed at the solitary, bubbling, tomato-can coffee-pot of
"second-edition" coffee. There was nothing else to grace the board, or
rather rock. "I'll be right back," she said. "I'll just take off Boyar's
bridle. Here, Boy!" she called. "You'll be able to eat better."

And she ran to the pony. From a saddle-pocket she took her own lunch of
sandwiches and ripe olives wrapped in oiled paper. She delayed her
return to loosen the forward cincha of the saddle and to find the little
stock of cigarette-papers and tobacco that she carried for any chance
rider of the Moonstone who might be without them.

Collie, the boy tramp, glanced up at Overland Red. "I guess she's gone,"
he said regretfully.

"You're nutty, Collie. She ain't the kind to sneak off after sayin'
she's comin' back. I know a hoss and a real woman when I see 'em. I was
raised in the West, myself."

The boy Collie was young, sensitive, and he had not been "raised in the
West." He frowned. "Yes, you was raised in the West, and what you got to
show for it?"

"Well, hear the kid!" exclaimed Overland. "Out of the mouth of babes and
saplings! What have I got to show? What have I--! Wha--? Oh, you go
chase a snake! I know a good hoss and a good woman when I see 'em, and I
seen both together this morning."

"But what do _she_ want with us bos?" asked the boy.

"S-s-h-h! Why, she's interested in me romantic past, of course. Ain't I
the 'cute little gopher when it comes to the ladies? Fan me, Collie, and
slow music and a beer for one. I'm some lady's-man, sister!"

"You're a bo, the same as me," said the boy.

"S-s-h-h! For the love of Pete, don't you handle that word 'bo' so
careless. It's loaded. It has a jarrin' effect on ears
unattenuated--er--meanin' ears that ain't keyed up to it, as the pote
says. She's comin' back. Fold your napkin. Don't look so blame hungry!
Ain't you got any style?"

"She's the prettiest girl I ever seen," said the boy, hastily swallowing
his share of the hot, insipid coffee.

"Pretty?" whispered Overland, as Louise approached. "She's thoroughbred.
Did you see them eyes? Afraid of nothin', and smilin' at what might dast
to scare her. Not foolish, either. She's wise. And she's kind and
laughin', and not ashamed to talk to us. That's thoroughbred."

Round the rock came Louise, the neat package of sandwiches in one hand.
In the other was the tobacco and cigarette-papers. "I'm going to have my
luncheon," she said. "If you won't object, I'll take a sandwich. There,
I have mine. The rest are for you."

"We had our breakfast," said Overland quickly, "when you was talkin' to
your pony."

Louise glanced at the empty tomato-can. "Well, I'll excuse you for not
waiting for me, but I shall not excuse you from having luncheon with me.
I made these sandwiches myself. Have one. They're really good."

"Oh!" groaned Overland, grimacing. "If I could curry up my language
smooth, like that, I--I guess I'd get deaf listenin' to myself talk. You
said that speech like takin' two turns round the bandstand tryin' to
catch yourself, and then climbin' a post and steppin' on your own
shoulders so you could see the parade down the street. Do you get that?"
And he sighed heavily. "Say! These here sandwiches is great!"

"Will you have one?" asked Louise, gracefully proffering the olives.

"Seein' it's you. Thanks. I always take two. The second one for a chaser
to kill the taste of the first. It's the only way to eat 'em--if you
know where to stop. They do taste like somethin' you done and are sorry
for afterwards, don't they?"

"Were you ever sorry for anything?" asked the boy, feeling a little
piqued that he had been left out of the conversation.

"I was raised in the West, myself," growled the tramp, scowling. "But
that's a good pony you got, Miss. That your saddle too?"

"Yes."

"You rope any?"

"A little. How did you know?"

"Rawhide cover to the saddle-horn is wore with a rope," said Overland,
helping himself to a second sandwich.

Then the tramp and the girl, oblivious to everything else, discussed
rawhide riatas as compared with the regular three-strand stock rope, or
lariat,--center-fire, three quarter, and double rigs, swell forks and
old Visalia trees, spade bits and "U" curbs,--neither willing, even
lightly, to admit the other's superiority of chosen rig.

The boy Collie listened intently and a trifle jealously. Overland Red
and the girl had found a common ground of interest that excluded him
utterly. The boy itched for an excuse to make the girl speak to him,
even look at him.

The sandwiches gone, Louise proffered Overland tobacco and papers.
Actual tears stood in the ex-cowboy's eyes. "Smoke! Me?" he exclaimed.
"I was dyin' for it. I'd do time for you!"

Then in that boyish spirit that never quite leaves the range-rider,
Overland Red took the tobacco and papers and cleverly rolled a cigarette
with one hand. In the other he held his battered felt hat. His eyes had
a far-away look as he reached forward and lighted his cigarette at the
fire. "I was settin' on a crazy bronc', holdin' his head up so he
couldn't go to buckin'--outside a little old adobe down in Yuma,
Arizona, then," he explained, glancing at the girl. "Did you ever drift
away complete, like that, jest from some little old trick to make you
dream?"

CHAPTER IV

"ANY ROAD, AT ANY TIME, FOR ANYWHERE"

The boy Collie took the empty tomato-can and went for water with which
to put out the fire.

Louise and Overland Red gazed silently at the youthful figure crossing
the meadow. The same thought was in both their hearts--that the boy's
chance in life was still ahead of him. Something of this was in the
girl's level gray eyes as she asked, "Why did you come up here, so far
from the town and the railroad?"

"We generally don't," replied Overland Red. "We ain't broke. Collie's
got some money. We got out of grub from comin' up here. We come up to
see the scenery. I ain't kiddin'; we sure did! 'Course, speakin' in
general, a free lunch looks better to me any day than the Yosemite--but
that's because I need the lunch. You got to be fed up to it to enjoy
scenery. Now, on the road we're lookin' at lots of it every day, but we
ain't seein' much. But give me a good feed and turn me loose in the Big
Show Pasture where the Bridal Veil is weepin' jealous of the Cathedral
Spires, and the Big Trees is too big to be jealous of anything, where
Adam would 'a' felt old the day he was born--jest take off my hobbles
and turn me out to graze _there_, and _feed_, and say, lady, I scorn the
idea of doin' _any_thing but decomposin' my feelin's and smokin' and
writin' po'try. I been there! There's where I writ the song called 'Beat
It, Bo.' Mebby you heard of it."

"No, I should like to hear it."

The fire steamed and spluttered as Collie extinguished it. Overland Red
handed the tobacco and papers to him.

"About comin' up this here trail?" he resumed as the boy stretched
beside them on the warm earth. "Well, Miss, it was four years ago that I
picked up Collie here at Albuquerque. His pa died sudden and left the
kid to find out what a hard map this ole world is. We been across, from
Frisco to New York, twice since then, and from Seattle to San Diego on
the side, and 'most everywhere in California, it bein' my native State
and the best of the lot. You see, Collie, he's gettin' what you might
call a liberated education, full of big ideas--no dinky stuff. Yes, I
picked him up at Albuquerque, a half-starved, skinny little cuss that
was cryin' and beggin' me to get him out of there."

"Albuquerque?" queried Louise.

"Uhuh. Later, comin' acrost the Mojave, we got thrun off a freight by
mistake for a couple of sewin'-machines that we was ridin' with to
Barstow, so the tickets on the crates said. That was near Daggett, by a
water-tank. It was hotter than settin' on a stove in Death Valley at 12
o'clock Sunday noon. We beat it for the next town, afoot. Collie
commenced to give out. He was pretty tender and not strong. I lugged him
some and he walked some. He was talkin' of green grass and cucumbers in
the ice-box and ice-cream and home and the Maumee River, and a whole lot
of things you can't find in the desert. Well, I got him to his feet next
mornin'. We had some trouble, and was detained a spell in Barstow after
that. They couldn't prove nothin', so they let us go. Then Collie got to
talkin' again about a California road that wiggled up a hill and through
a cañon, and had one of these here ole Mission bells where it lit off
for the sky-ranch. Funny, for he was never in California then. Mebby it
was the old post-card he got at Albuquerque. You see his pa bought it
for him 'cause he wanted it. He was only a kid then. Collie, he says
it's the only thing his pa ever did buy for him, and so he kept it till
it was about wore out from lookin' at it. But considerin' how his pa
acted, I guess that was about all Collie needed to remember him by.
Anyhow, he dreamed of that road, and told me so much about it that I
got to lookin' for it too. I knowed of the old El Camino Real and the
bells, so we kept our eye peeled for that particular dream road, kind of
for fun. We found her yesterday."

"What, this? The road to our ranch?"

"Uhuh. Collie, he said so the minute we got in that cañon, Moonstone
Cañon, you said. We're restin' up and enjoyin' the scenery. We need the
rest, for only last week we resigned from doin' a stunt in a
movin'-picture outfit. They wanted somebody to do native sons. We said
we didn't have them kind of clothes, but the foreman of the outfit says
we'd do fine jest as we was. It was fierce--and, believe me, lady, I
been through some! I been through some!

"They was two others in checker clothes and dip-lid caps, and they
_wasn't_ native sons. They acted like sons of--I'd hate to tell you
what, Miss--to the chief dollie in the show. They stole her beau and
tied him to the S. P. tracks; kind of loose, though. She didn't seem to
care. She jest stood around chewin' gum and rollin' her lamps at the
head guy. Then the movin'-picture express, which was a retired
switch-engine hooked onto a Swede observation car, backs down on
Adolphus, and we was to rush up like--pretty fast, and save his life.

"She was a sassy little chicken with blond feathers and a three-quarter
rig skirt. She had a regular strawberry-ice-cream-soda complexion, and
her eyes looked like a couple of glass alleys with electric lights in
'em. I wondered if she took 'em out at night to go to sleep or only
switched off the current. Anyhow, up she rides in a big reddish kind of
automobile and twists her hands round her wrists and looks up the track
and down the track and sees us and says, 'Oh, w'ich way has he went?
W'ich way did Disgustus Adolphus beat it to?' And chewin' gum right on
top of that, too. It was tough on us, Miss, but we needed the money.

"'Bout the eighteenth time she comes coughin' up in that old one-lung
machine,--to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin',--why,
I gets sick and tired. If there's anything _doin_', why, I'm game, but
such monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank
as if he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his
fool cap turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and
Collie, the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because we was actin'
natural, jest restin'. I got sick and tired. The next time up coughs
that crippled-up automobile with the mumps on its front tire, and she
says, 'Where, oh, where has he went?' I ups and says, 'Crazy, Miss, and
can you blame him?'

"She didn't see no joke in that, so the boss he fired us. He wasn't
goin' to pay us at that, but I picks up the little picture-machine box
and I swings her up over the track kind of suggestive like. 'One!' said
I. 'Do we get our money?'

"'Drop that machine!' says he, rushin' up to me.

"'I'm a-goin' to,' says I, 'good and hard. Think again, while I count.
Do we get our money?'

"'You get pinched!' says he.

"'Two,' says I, and I swings the box up by the legs.

"'Hole on!' yells the boss. 'Pay the mutt, Jimmy, and, for Gord sake,
get that machine before he ruins the best reel we made yet!'

"We got paid."

"But the bell and Moonstone Cañon?" questioned Louise, glancing back at
Boyar grazing down the meadow.

"Sure! Well, we flopped near here that night--"

"Flopped?"

"Uhuh. Let's see, you ain't hep to that, are you? Why, we crawled to the
hay, hit the feathers, pounded our ear--er--went to bed! That's what it
used to be. Well, in the morning, me and Collie got some sardines and
crackers to the store and a little coffee. It was goin' over there that
we seen the bell and the road and the whole works. I got kind of
interested myself in that cañon. I never saw so many moonstones layin'
right on top the gravel, and I been in Mex., too. We liked it and we
stayed over last night, expectin' to be gone by now."

"And when you leave here?" queried Louise.

"Same old thing," replied Overland cheerfully. "I know the ropes. Collie
works by spells. Oh, we're livin', and that's all you need to do in
California."

"And that is all--now that you have found the road?"

"Oh, the road is like all of them dreams," said Overland. "Such things
are good for keepin' people interested in somethin' till it's done,
that's all. It was fun at first, lookin' up every arroyo and slit in the
hills, till we found it. Same as them marriages on the desert, after
that."

"Marriages?"

"Uhuh. Seein' water what ain't there, like."

"Oh, mirages!" And Louise laughed joyfully.

"I don't see no joke," said Overland, aggrieved.

"I really beg your pardon."

"That's all right, Miss. But what would you call it?"

"Oh, an illusion, a mirage, something that seems to be, but that is
not."

"I don't see where it's got anything on marriages, then, do you? But I
ain't generally peppermistic. I believe in folks and things, although
I'm old enough to know better."

"I'm glad you believe in folks," said Louise. "So do I."

"It's account of bein' a pote, I guess," sighed the tramp. "'Course I
ain't a professional. They got to have a license. I never took out one,
not havin' the money. Anyway, if I did have enough money for a regular
license, I'd start a saloon and live respectable."

"Won't you quote something?" And the girl smiled bewitchingly. "Boyar
and I must go soon. It's getting hot."

"I'm mighty sorry you're goin', Miss. You're real California stock.
Knowed it the minute I set eyes on you. Besides, you passed us the
smokes."

"Red, you shut up!"

Overland turned a blue, astonished eye on Collie. "Why, kiddo, what's
bitin' _you_?"

"Because the lady give us the makings don't say _she_ smokes, does it?"

Overland grunted. "Because you're foolish with the heat, don't say I am,
does it? Them sandwiches has gone to your head, Chico. Who said she did
smoke?"

Louise, grave-eyed, watched the two men, Overland sullen and scowling,
Collie fierce and flaming.

"We ain't used to--to real ladies," apologized Overland. "We could do
better if we practiced up."

"Of course!" said Louise, smiling. "But the poetry."

"U-m-m, yes. The po'try. What'll I give her, Collie?"

"I don't care," replied the boy. "You might try 'Casey Jones.' It's
better'n anything _you_ ever wrote."

"That? I guess not! That ain't her style. I mean one of my
_own_--somethin' _good_."

"Oh, I don't know. 'Toledo Blake,'" mumbled Collie.

"Nope! But I guess the 'Grand Old Privilege' will do for a starter."

"Oh, good!" And Louise clapped her hands. "The title is splendid. Is the
poem original?"

The tramp bowed a trifle haughtily. "Original? Me life's work, lady."
And he awkwardly essayed to button a buttonless coat, coughed, waved his
half-consumed cigarette toward the skies, and began:--

  "Folks say we got no morals--that they all fell in the soup;
  And no conscience--so the would-be goodies say;
  And I guess our good intentions _did_ jest up and flew the coop,
  While we stood around and watched 'em fade away.

  "But there's one thing that we're lovin' more than money, grub, or booze,
  Or even decent folks that speaks us fair;
  And that's the Grand Old Privilege to chuck our luck and choose,
  _Any_ road at _any_ time for _any_ where."

And Overland, his hand above his heart, bowed effusively.

"I like 'would-be goodies,'" said Louise. "Sounds just like a mussy,
sticky cookie that's too sweet. And 'Any road at any time for any
where--' I think that is real."

Overland puffed his chest and cleared his throat. "I can't help it,
Miss. Born that way. Cut my first tooth on a book of pomes ma got for a
premium with Mustang Liniment."

"Well, thank you." And Louise nodded gayly. "Keep the tobacco and papers
to remember me by. I must go."

"We don't need them to remember you by," said Overland gallantly. Then
the smile suddenly left his face.

Down the Old Meadow Trail, unseen by the girl and the boy, rode a single
horseman, and something at his hip glinted in the sun. Overland's hand
went to his own hip. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and slowly
recovered himself. "What's the use?" he muttered.

But there was that in his tone which brought Collie's head up. The lad
pushed back his battered felt hat and ran his fingers through his wavy
black hair, perplexedly. "What's the matter, Red? What's the matter?"

"Nothin'. Jest thinkin'." Yet the tramp's eyes narrowed as he glanced
furtively past the girl to where Boyar, the black pony, grazed in the
meadow.

Louise, puzzled by something familiar in the boy's upturned, questioning
face, raised one gauntleted hand to her lips. "Why, you're the boy I
saw, out on the desert, two years ago. Weren't you lying by a water-tank
when our train stopped and a man was kneeling beside you pouring water
on your face? Aren't you that boy?"

"Yes!" exclaimed Collie, getting to his feet. "Red told me about _you_,
too."

"Yes, it's her," muttered Overland, nodding to himself.

"And you chucked a rose out of the window to us?" said the boy.
"Overland said _she_ did."

"Yes. It's her, the Rose-Lady Girl," said Overland. "Some of the folks
in the train laughed when I picked up the rose. I remember. Some one
else says, 'They're only tramps.' I recollect that, too."

"But those men were arrested at Barstow, for murder, Uncle Walter said."

Again Overland Red nodded. "They was, Miss. But they couldn't prove
nothin', so they let us go."

"We always was goin' to say thanks to the girl with the rose if we ever
seen her," said the boy Collie. "We ain't had such a lot of roses give
to us."

"So we says it now," said Overland quickly. "Or mebby we wouldn't never
have another chance." Then he slowly rolled another cigarette.

Just then the black pony Boyar nickered. He recognized a friend entering
the meadow.

Overland lighted his cigarette. As he straightened up, Louise was
surprised to see him thrust both hands above his head while he continued
smoking placidly. "Excuse me, Miss," he said, turning the cigarette
round with his lips; "but the gent behind you with the gun has got the
drop on me. I guess he's waitin' for you to step out of range."

Louise turned swiftly. Dick Tenlow, deputy sheriff, nodded good-morning
to her, but kept his gun trained on the tramp.

"Just step out from behind that rock," said Tenlow, addressing
Overland.

"Don't know as I will," replied the tramp. "You're no gentleman; you
didn't say 'please.'"

"Come on! No bluff like that goes here," said the deputy.

"Can't you see I ain't finished smokin' yet?" queried Overland.

"Come on! Step along!"

"No way to address a gent, you Johnny. Say, I'll tell you _now_ before
you fall down and shoot yourself. Do you think you got me because you
rode up while I was talkin' to a lady, and butted into polite
conversation like a drunk Swede at a dance? Say, you think I'd 'a' ever
let you got this far if there hadn't been a lady present? Why, you
little nickle-plated, rubber-eared policeman, I was doin' the double
roll with a pair of Colts .45's when you was learnin' the taste of
milk!"

"That'll be about all for _you_," said the sheriff, grinning.

"No, it ain't. You ain't takin' me serious, and there's where you're
makin' your mistake. I'm touchy about some things, Mr. Pussy-foot. I
could 'a' got you three times while you was ridin' down that trail, and
I wouldn't 'a' had to stop talkin' to do it. And you with that little
old gun out before you even seen me!"

"Why didn't you, then?" asked Tenlow, restraining his anger; for Louise,
in spite of herself, had smiled at Overland's somewhat picturesque
resentment. "Why didn't you, then?"

"Huh!" snorted Overland scornfully. "Do you suppose I'd start anything
with a _lady_ around? That ain't my style. You're a kid. You'll get hurt
some day."

Deputy Tenlow scowled. He was a big man, slow of tongue, ordinarily
genial, and proverbially stupid. He knew the tramp was endeavoring to
anger him. The deputy turned to Louise. "Sorry, Miss Lacharme, but I got
to take him."

"There's really nothing to hinder, is there?" Louise asked sweetly.

CHAPTER V

"CAN HE RIDE?"

The tramp glanced up, addressing the deputy. "Yes, even now there is
something to hinder, if I was to get busy." Then he coolly dropped his
arms and leaned against the rock with one leg crossed before the other
in a manner sometimes supposed to reflect social ease and elegance. "But
I'm game to take what's comin'. If you'll just stick me up and extract
the .38 automatic I'm packin' on my hip,--and, believe me, she's a bad
Gat. when she's in action,--why, I'll feel lots better. The little gun
might get to shootin' by herself, and then somebody would get hurt sure.
You see, I'm givin' you all the chance you want to take me without
gettin' mussed up. I'm nervous about firearms, anyhow."

Deputy Dick Tenlow advanced and secured the gun.

"Now," said Overland Red, heaving a sigh; "now, I ain't ashamed to look
a gun in the face. You see, Miss," he added, turning to address the
girl, "I was sheriff of Abilene once, in the ole red-eye, rumpus days. I
have planted some citizens in my time. You see, I kind of owe the ones
I did plant a silent apology for lettin' this here chicken-rancher get
me so easy."

"You talk big," said Tenlow, laughing. "Who was you when you was sheriff
of Abilene, eh?"

"Jack Summers, sometimes called Red Jack Summers," replied Overland
quietly, and he looked the deputy in the eye.

"Jack Summers!"

Overland nodded. "Take it or leave it. You'll find out some day. And now
you got some excuse for packin' a gun round these here peaceful hills
and valleys the rest of your life. You took Jack Summers, and there
ain't goin' to be a funeral."

Something about the tramp's manner inclined the deputy to believe that
he had spoken truth. "All right," said Tenlow; "just step ahead. Don't
try the brush or I'll drop you."

"'Course you would," said Overland, stepping ahead of the deputy's pony.
"But the bunch you're takin' orders from don't want me dead; they want
me alive. I ain't no good all shot up. You ought to know that."

"I know there's a thousand dollars reward for you. I need the money."

Overland Red grinned. "It's against me morals to bet--with kids. But
I'll put up that little automatic you frisked off me, against the
thousand you expect to get, that you don't even get a long-range smell
of that money. Are you on?"

Tenlow motioned the other to step ahead.

"I'm bettin' my little gun to a thousand dollars less than nothin'.
Ain't you game? I'm givin' you the long end."

"Never mind," growled Tenlow. "You can talk later."

The boy Collie, recovering from his surprise at the arrest, stepped up
to the sheriff. "Where do I come in?" he asked. "You can't pinch Red
without me. I was with him that time the guy croaked out on the Mojave.
Red didn't kill him. They let us go once. What you doin' pinchin' us
again? How do _you_ know--"

"Hold on, Collie; don't get careless," said Overland. "He don't know
nothin'. He's followin' orders. The game's up."

Louise whistled Boyar to her and bridled him. The little group ahead
seemed to be waiting for her. She led the pony toward the trail. "Did he
do it?" she asked as she caught up with Collie.

"No," he muttered. "Red's the squarest pal on earth. Red tried to save
the guy--out there on the desert. Gave him all the water we had, pretty
near. He dassent to give him all, for because he was afraid it would
kill him. The guy fell and hit his head on the rail. Red said he was
dyin' on his feet, anyway. Then Red lugged me clean to that tank where
you seen us from the train. I was all in. I guess Red saved my life. He
didn't tell you that."

"Is he--was he really a cowboy? Can he ride?" asked Louise.

"Can he ride? Say, I seen him ride Cyclone once and get first money for
ridin' the worst buckin' bronc' at the rodeo, over to Tucson. Well, I
guess!"

"Boyar, my pony, is the fastest pony in the hills," said Louise
pensively.

"What you givin' us?" said the boy, glancing at her sharply.

"Nothing. I was merely imagining something."

"Red's square," asserted the boy.

"Sheriff Tenlow is a splendid shot," murmured Louise, with apparent
irrelevance.

They had crossed the meadow. Ahead of the sheriff walked Overland, his
slouch gone, his head carried high. Collie noted this unusual alertness
of poise and wondered.

"Don't try the brush," cautioned Tenlow, also aware of Overland's
alertness.

"When I leave here, I'll ride. Sabe?" And Overland stepped briskly to
the trail, turning his back squarely on the alert and puzzled sheriff.

"He's been raised in these hills," muttered the tramp. "He knows the
trails. I don't. But--I'd like to show that little Rose-Lady Girl some
real ridin' once. She's a sport. I'd ride into hell and rake out the
fire for her.... I hate to--to do it--but I guess I got to."

"Step up there," said Tenlow. "What you talkin' about, anyhow?"

"Angels," replied Overland. "I see 'em once in a while." And he glanced
back. He saw Collie talking to the girl, who stood by her pony, the
reins dangling lightly from her outstretched hand.

"Snake!" screamed Overland Red, leaping backward and flinging up his
arms, directly in the face of the deputy's pony. The horse reared.
Overland, crouching, sprang under its belly, striking it as he went.
Again the pony reared, nearly throwing the deputy.

"Overland Limited!" shouted the tramp, dashing toward Boyar. With a
spring he was in the saddle and had slipped the quirt from the
saddle-horn to his wrist. He would need that quirt, as he had no spurs.

Round swung Tenlow, cursing. Black Boyar shot across the meadow, the
quirt falling at each jump. The tramp glanced back. Tenlow's right hand
went up and his gun roared once, twice....

The boy Collie, white and gasping, threw himself in front of Tenlow's
horse. The deputy spurred the pony over him and swept down the meadow.

Louise, angered in that the boy had snatched Boyar's reins from her as
Overland shouted, relented as she saw the instant bravery in the lad's
endeavor to stop Tenlow's horse. She stooped over him. He rose stiffly.

"Oh! I thought you were hurt!" she exclaimed.

"Nope! I guess not. I was scared, I guess. Let's watch 'em, Miss!" And
forgetful of his bruised and shaken body, he limped to the edge of the
meadow, followed by Louise. "There they go!" he cried. "Red's 'way
ahead. The sheriff gent can't shoot again--he's too busy ridin'."

"Boyar! Boyar! Good horse! Good horse!" cried the girl as the black pony
flashed across the steep slope of the ragged mountain side like a winged
thing. "Boyar! Boy!"

She shivered as the loose shale, ploughed by the pony's flying hoofs,
slithered down the slope at every plunge.

"Can he ride?" shouted Collie, wild tears of joy in his eyes.

Suddenly Overland, glancing back, saw Tenlow stop and raise his arm. The
tramp cowboy swung Black Boyar half-round, and driving his unspurred
heels into the pony's ribs, put him straight down the terrific slope of
the mountain at a run.

Tenlow's gun cracked. A spray of dust rose instantly ahead of Boyar.

"Look! Look!" cried Louise. The deputy, angered out of his usual
judgment, spurred his horse directly down the footless shale that the
tramp had ridden across diagonally. "Look! He can't--The horse--! Oh!"
she groaned as Tenlow's pony stumbled and all but pitched headlong. "The
other man--knew better than that--" she gasped, turning to the boy. "He
waited--till he struck rock and brush before he turned Boyar."

"Can he ride?" shouted Collie, grinning. But the grin died to a gasp. A
burst of shale and dust shot up from the hillside. They saw the flash of
the cinchas on the belly of Tenlow's horse as the dauntless pony
stumbled and dove headlong down the slope, rolling over and over, to
stop finally--a patch of brown, shapeless, quivering.

Below, Overland Red had curbed Boyar and was gazing up at a spot of
black on the hillside--Dick Tenlow, motionless, silent. His sombrero lay
several yards down the slope.

"Oh! The horse!" cried Louise, chokingly, with her hand to her breast.

As for Dick Tenlow, lying halfway down the hillside, stunned and
shattered, she had but a secondary sympathy. He had sacrificed a gallant
and willing beast to his anger. The tramp, riding a strange pony over
desperately perilous and unfamiliar ground, had used judgment. "Your
friend is a man!" she said, turning to the boy. "But Dick Tenlow is
hurt--perhaps killed. He went under the horse when it fell."

"I guess it's up to us to see if the sheriff gent is done for, at that,"
said the boy. "Mebby we can do something."

"You'll get arrested, now," said the girl. "If Dick Tenlow is alive,
you'll have to go for help. If he isn't...."

"I'll go, all right. I ain't afraid. I didn't do anything. I guess I'll
stick around till Red shows up again, anyhow."

"You're a stranger here. I should go as soon as you have sent help,"
said the girl.

"Mebby I better. I'll help get him up the hill and in the shade. Then
I'll beat it for the doc. If I don't come back after that," he said
slowly, flushing, "it ain't because I'm scared of anything I done."

Far down in the valley Boyar's sweating sides glistened in the sun. An
arm was raised in a gesture of farewell as the tramp swung the pony
toward the town. Much to her surprise, Louise found herself waving a
vigorous adieu to the distant figure.

The tramp Overland, realizing that the deputy was badly injured, told
the first person he met about the accident, advising him to get help at
once for the deputy. Then he turned the pony toward the foothills. In a
clump of greasewood he dismounted, and, leaving the reins hanging to the
saddle-horn, struck Black Boyar on the flank. The horse leaped toward
the Moonstone Trail. The tramp disappeared in the brush.

CHAPTER VI

ADVOCATE EXTRAORDINARY

Louise Lacharme, more beautiful than roses, strolled across the
vine-shadowed porch of the big ranch-house and sat on the porch rail
opposite her uncle. His clear blue eyes twinkled approval as he gazed at
her.

Walter Stone was fifty, but the fifty of the hard-riding optimist of the
great outdoors. The smooth tan of his cheeks contrasted oddly with the
silver of his close-cropped hair. He appeared as a young man prematurely
gray.

"How is Boyar?" he asked, smiling a little as Louise, sitting sideways
on the porch-rail, swung her foot back and forth quickly.

"Oh, Boy is all right. The tramp turned him loose in the valley. Boy
came home."

"It was a clever bit of riding, to get the best of Tenlow on his own
range. Was Dick very badly hurt?" queried Walter Stone.

"Yes, his collar-bone was broken and he was crushed and terribly
bruised. His horse was killed. When I was down, day before yesterday,
the doctor said Dick would be all right in time."

"How about this boy, the tramp boy they arrested?"

"Oh," said Louise, "that was a shame! He stayed and helped the doctor
put Dick in the buggy and rode with him to town. Mr. Tenlow was
unconscious, and the boy had to go to hold him. Then the boy explained
it all at the store, and they arrested him anyway, as a suspicious
character. I should have let him go. When Mr. Tenlow became conscious
and they told him they had the boy, he said to keep him in the
calaboose; that that was where he belonged."

"And you want me to see what I can do for this boy?"

"I didn't say so." And Louise tilted her chin.

"Now, sweetheart, don't quibble. It isn't like you."

The gray silk-clad ankle flashed back and forth. "Really, Uncle Walter,
you could have done something for the boy without making me say that I
wanted you to. You're always doing something nice--helping people that
are in trouble. You don't usually have to be asked."

"Perhaps I like to be asked--by--Louise."

"You're just flattering me, I know! But uncle, if you had seen the boy
jump in front of Mr. Tenlow's horse when Dick shot at the tramp,--and
afterwards when the boy helped me with Dick and stuck right to him clear
to his house,--why, you couldn't help but admire him. Then they
arrested him--for what? It's a shame! I told him to run when I saw the
doctor's buggy coming."

"Yes, Louise; the boy may be brave and likable enough, but how are we to
know what he really is? I don't like to take the risk. I don't like to
meddle in such affairs."

"Uncle Walter! Risk! And the risks you used to take when you were a
young man. Oh, Aunty Eleanor has told me all about your riding bronchos
and the Panamint--and lots of things. I won't tell you all, for you'd be
flattered to pieces, and I want you in one whole lump to-day."

"Only for to-day, Louise?"

"Oh, maybe for to-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow. But, uncle, only
last week you said at breakfast that the present system of arrest and
imprisonment was all wrong. That was because they arrested that editor
who was a friend of yours. But now, when you have a chance to prove that
you were in earnest, you don't seem a bit interested."

"Did I really say all that, sweetness?"

"Now _you_ are quibbling. And does 'sweetness,' mean me, or what you
said at breakfast? Because you said 'the whole damn system'; and there
were two ladies at the table. Of course, that was before breakfast.
After breakfast you picked a rose for aunty, and kissed me."

Walter Stone laughed heartily. "But I do take a great deal of interest
in anything that interests you."

Louise slipped lithely from the porch-rail and swung up on the broad arm
of his chair, snuggling against him impetuously. "I know you do, uncle.
I just love you! I'll stop teasing."

"I surrender. I'm a pretty fair soldier at long range, but this"--and
his arm went round her affectionately--"this is utter defeat. I strike
my colors. Then, you always give in so gracefully."

"To you, perhaps, Uncle Walter. But I haven't given in this time. I'm
just as interested as ever."

"And you think they are the men we saw out on the Mojave by the
water-tank?"

"Oh, I know it! They remembered the rose. They spoke of it right away,
before I did."

"Yes, Louise. And you remember, too, that they were arrested at
Barstow--for murder, the conductor said?"

"That's just it! The boy Collie says the tramp Overland Red didn't kill
the man. He was trying to save him and gave him water. If you could only
hear what the boy says about it--"

"I don't suppose it would do any harm," said the rancher. "I dislike to
use my influence. You know, I practically control Dick Tenlow's place at
the elections."

"That's just why he should be willing to let the boy go," said Louise
quickly.

"No, sweetheart. That's just why I shouldn't ask Dick to do anything of
the kind. But I see I'm in for it. You have already interested your Aunt
Eleanor. She spoke to me about the boy last night."

"Aunty Eleanor is a dear. I didn't really ask her to speak to you."

"No," he said, laughing. "Of course not. You're too clever for that. You
simply sow your poppy-seed and leave it alone. The poppies come up fast
enough."

Louise laughed softly. "You're pretending to criticize and you're really
flattering,--deliberately,--aren't you, Uncle Walter?"

"Flattering? And you?"

"Because Aunt Eleanor said you could be simply irresistible when you
wanted to be. I think so, too. Especially when you are on a horse."

"Naturally. I always did feel more confident in the saddle. I could, if
need arose, ride away like the chap in Bobby Burns's verse, you
remember--

  "He gave his bridle-rein a shake,
  And turned him on the shore,
  With, 'Farewell, forever more, my dear,
  Farewell, forever more.'"

"But you didn't, uncle. Aunty said she used to be almost afraid that
you'd ride away with her, like Lochinvar."

"Yes." And Walter Stone sighed deeply.

"Oh, Uncle Walter! That sounded full of regrets and things."

"It was. It is. I'm fifty."

"It isn't fifty. It's a lack of exercise. And you wouldn't be half so
fine-looking if you were fat. I _always_ sigh when I don't know what to
do. Then I just saddle Boy and ride. And I'll _never_ let myself get
fat."

"A vow is a vow--at sixteen."

"Now I _know_ you need exercise. You're getting reminiscent, and that's
a sign of torpid liver."

Walter Stone laughed till the tears came. "Exercise!" he exclaimed. "Ah!
I begin to divine a subtle method in your doctrine of health. Ah, ha! I
look well on a horse! I need exercise! It's a very satisfactory ride
from here to town and back. Incidentally, Louise, I smell a rat. I used
to be able to hold my own."

"It isn't my fault if you don't now," said Louise, snuggling in his
arm.

"That's unworthy of you!" he growled, his arm tightening round her slim
young figure. "Tell me, sweetheart; how is it that you can be so
thoroughly practical and so unfathomably romantic in the same breath?
You have deliberately shattered me to bits that you might mould me
nearer to your heart's desire. And your heart's desire, just now, is to
help an unknown, a tramp, out of jail."

Louise pouted. "You say 'just now' as though my heart's desires weren't
very serious matters as a rule. You _know_ you wouldn't be half so happy
if I didn't tease you for something at least once a week. I remember
once I didn't ask you for anything for a whole week, and you went and
asked Aunty Eleanor if I were ill. Besides, the boy _needs_ help,
whether he did anything wrong or not. Can't you understand?"

"That's utopian, Louise, but it isn't generally practicable."

"Then make it individually practicable, uncle--just this time. Pshaw! I
don't believe you're half-trying to argue. Why, when Boyar bucked you
off that time and ran into the barb-wire, then _he_ didn't need
doctoring for that awful cut on his shoulder, because he had done
wrong."

"That is no parallel, Louise. Boyar didn't know any better. And this boy
is not sick or injured."

"How do you know that? He's down in that terribly hot, smelly jail. If
he did get sick, who would know it?"

"And Boyar isn't a human being. He can't reason."

"Oh, Uncle Walter! I thought you knew horses better than that. Boyar can
reason much better than most people."

"The proof being that he prefers you to any one else?"

"No," replied Louise, smiling mischievously. "That isn't Boyar's
_reason_; it's his affection. That's different."

"Yes, quite different," said Walter Stone. "Is this boy good-looking?"
And the rancher fumbled in his pocket for a cigar.

Louise slipped from the arm of his chair and stood opposite him, her
lips pouted teasingly, the young face glowing with mischief and fun. "Am
I?" she asked, curtsying and twinkling. "'Cause if you're going to ride
down to the valley to see the boy just because Beautiful asked you,
Beautiful will go alone. But if you come because _I_ want you,"--and
Louise smiled bewitchingly,--"why, Beautiful will come too, and sing for
you--perhaps."

"My heart, my service, and my future are at your feet, Señorita Louisa,
my mouse. Are your eyes gray or green this morning?"

"Both," replied Louise quickly. "Green for spunk and gray for love.
That's what Aunty Eleanor says."

"Come a little nearer. Let me see. No, they are quite gray now."

"'Cause why?" she cooed, and stooping, kissed him with warm, careless
affection. "You always ask me about my eyes when you want me to kiss
you. Of course, when you want to kiss _me_, why, you just come and take
'em."

"My esteemed privilege, sweetheart. I am your caballero."

"Did Aunty Eleanor?" said Louise.

But Walter Stone rose and straightened his shoulders. "That will do,
mouse. I can't have any jealousy between my sweethearts."

"Never! And, Uncle Walter, do you want to ride Major or Rally? Rally and
Boyar get along better together. I'll saddle Boy in a jiffy."

To ride some ten miles in the blazing sun of midsummer requires a kind
of anticipatory fortitude, at fifty, especially when one's own vine and
fig tree is cool and fragrant, embowered in blue flowers and graced by,
let us say, Louise. And a cigar is always at its best when half-smoked.
But when Louise came blithely leading the two saddle-ponies, Black Boyar
and the big pinto Rally, Walter Stone shook an odd twenty years from
his broad shoulders and swung into the saddle briskly.

From the shade of the great sycamore warders of the wide gate, he waved
a gauntleted salute to Aunt Eleanor, who stood on the porch, drawing a
leaf of the graceful moon-vine through her slender fingers. She nodded a
smiling farewell.

Louise and her uncle rode as two lovers, their ponies close together.
The girl swayed to Boyar's quick, swinging walk. Walter Stone sat the
strong, tireless Rally with solid ease.

The girl, laughing happily at her triumph, leaned toward her escort
teasingly, singing fragments of old Spanish love-songs, or talking with
eager lips and sparkling eyes. Of a sudden she would assume a
demureness, utterly bewitching in its veiled and perfect mimicry. Quite
seriously he would set about to overcome this delightful mood of hers
with extravagant vows of lifelong love and servitude, as though he were
in truth her chosen caballero and she his Señorita of the Rose.

And as they played at love-making, hidden graces of the girl's sweet
nature unfolded to him, and deep in his heart he wondered, and found
life good, and Youth still unspoiled by the years, and Louise a
veritable enchantress of infinite moods, each one adorable.
Golden-haired, gray-eyed, quick with sympathy, sweetly subtle and subtly
sweet was Louise.... And one must worship Youth and Beauty and Love,
even with their passing bitter on one's lips.

But to Walter Stone no such bitterness had come, this soldierly, wise
caballero escorting his adorable señorita on an errand of mercy. His was
the heart of Youth, eternal and undaunted Youth. And Beauty was hers, of
the spirit as well as of the flesh. And Love....

"Why, Louise! There are tears on your lashes, my colleen!"

"But I am singing, uncle." And she smiled through her tears.

"Sweetheart?"

"Yes, Uncle Walter?"

"What is it? Tell me."

"I wish I could. I don't know. I think I'm getting to be grown up--just
like a woman. It--it makes me--think of lots of things. Let's ride." And
her silver spurs flashed.

Boyar, taken quite by surprise, grunted as he leaped down the Moonstone
Trail. He resented this undeserved punishment by plunging sideways
across the road. Again came the flash of the silver spurs, and Walter
Stone heard Louise disciplining the pony.

"Just a woman. Just like a woman," murmured the rancher. "Now, Boyar,
and some others of us, will never quite understand what that means." And
with rein and voice he lifted the pinto Rally to a lope.

CHAPTER VII

THE GIRL WHO GLANCED BACK

At the crossroads in the valley stood the local jail, or "coop," as it
was more descriptively called. Unpainted, isolated, its solitary
ugliness lacked even the squalid dignity commonly associated with the
word "jail." The sun pelted down upon its bleached, unshaded roof and
sides. The burning air ran over its warped shingles like a kind of
colorless fire.

The boy Collie, half-dreaming in the suffocating heat of the place,
started to his feet as the door swung open. He had heard horses coming.
They had stopped. He could hardly realize that the sunlight was swimming
through the close dusk of the place. But the girl of Moonstone Cañon,
reining Boyar round, was real, and she smiled and nodded a greeting.

"This is Mr. Stone, my uncle," she said. "He wants to talk with you."

With a glance that noted each unlovely detail of the place, the broken
iron bed, the cracked pitcher, and the unspeakable blankets, Louise
touched her pony and was gone.

Collie rubbed his eyes, blinking in the sun as he stood gazing after
her.

Walter Stone, standing near the doorway, noted the lad's clear, healthy
skin, his well-shaped head with its tumble of wavy black hair, and the
luminous dark eyes. He felt an instant sympathy for the boy, a sympathy
that he masked with a business-like brusqueness. "Well, young man?"

"Yes, sir."

"Come outside. It's vile in there."

Stone led his pony to the north side of the "coop."

Collie followed.

Away to the west he saw the hazy peaks. A lake of burning air pulsed
above the flat, hot floor of the valley. Over there lay the hills and
the shade and the road.... Somewhere beyond was Overland, his friend,
penniless, hunted, hungry....

"She brung you?" queried the boy.

"Yes. I have seen Tenlow, the sheriff. He is willing to let you go at my
request. What do you intend doing, now that you are free?"

"I don' know. Find Red, I guess."

Walter Stone nodded. "What then?"

"Oh, stick it out with Red. They'll be after him sure now. Red's my
pal."

"What has he done to get the police after him?"

"Nothin'. It's the bunch."

"The bunch?"

"Uhuh. Them guys out on the Mojave. But say, are you workin' me to get
next to Red and get him pinched again?"

"No. You don't have to answer me. This man Red is nothing to me, one way
or the other. He took Miss Lacharme's pony, but she has overlooked that.
I thought, perhaps, you might care to explain your position. Perhaps you
had rather not. You may go now if you wish."

"Is that straight?"

"Yes."

For several tense seconds the lad gazed at his questioner. Finally his
gaze shifted to the hills. "I guess you're straight," he said presently.
"I guess she wouldn't have you for a relation if you wasn't straight."

The elder man laughed. "That's right--she wouldn't, young man."

"How's the sheriff guy?" asked the boy.

"He's getting along well enough. What made you ask?"

"Oh, nothin'. I hate to see any guy get hurt."

"I'm glad to hear you say that. I begin to think you are a bigger man
than he is."

"Me?" And Collie flushed, misunderstanding the other's drift. "I guess
you're kiddin'."

"No, I mean it. Mr. Tenlow still seemed pretty hot about your share in
this--er--enterprise. You seem to have no hard feelings against him."

"Huh! He shouldn't to be sore at _me_. I didn't spur no horse onto him
and ride him down like a dog. I guess Red would 'a' killed him if he'd
seen it. Say, nobody got Red, did they?"

"I haven't heard of it. How did this man Red come to pick you up? You're
pretty young to be tramping."

"Cross your heart you ain't tryin' to queer Red? You ain't tryin' to put
the Injun sign on us, are you?"

"No. I have heard all about the Mojave affair--the prospector that died
on the track--and the arrest of Overland Red at Barstow. You told my
niece that this Overland Red was 'square.' How did you come to be mixed
up in it?"

"I guess I'll have to tell you the whole thing, straight. Red always
said that to tell the truth was just as good as lyin', because nobody
would believe us, anyway. And if a fella gets caught tellin' the truth,
why, he's that much to the good."

"Well, I shall try and believe you this time," said Stone. "Miss
Lacharme thinks you're honest."

"A guy couldn't lie to her!" said the boy.

"Then just consider me her representative," said Stone, smiling.

Collie squatted in the meager shade of the "coop."

Walter Stone, dropping the pony's reins, came and sat beside the lad.
There was something in the older man's presence, an unspoken assurance
of comradeship and sincerity that annulled the boy's tendency to
reticence about himself. He began hesitatingly, "My dad was a drinkin'
man. Ma died, and he got worse at it. I was a kid and didn't care, for
he never done nothin' to me. We lived back East, over a pawnbroker's on
Main Street. One day pa come home with a timetable. He sat up 'most all
night readin' it. Every time I woke up, he was readin' it and talkin' to
himself. That was after ma died.

"In the mornin', when I was gettin' dressed, he come over and says to
take the needle he had and stick it through the timetable anywhere. I
was scared he was goin' to have the jimmies. But I took the needle--it
had black thread in it--and stuck it through the timetable. He opened
the page and laughed awful loud and queer. Albuquerque was where the
needle went in. He couldn't say the name right, but he kept lookin' at
it.

"Then he went out and was gone all day and all night. When he come back
he showed me a whole wad of money. I says, 'Where did you get it?' He
got mad and tells me to shut up.

"That day we got on a train. I says, 'Where are we goin'?' and he says
to never mind, and did I want some peanuts.

"We kept ridin' and ridin' in the same car, and eatin' bananas and
san'wiches and sleepin' settin' up at nights. I was just about sick when
we come to Albuquerque. You see, that was where the needle went through
the timetable, and dad said we would get off there. He got awful drunk
that night.

"Next day he said he was goin' to quit liquor and make a fresh start. I
knowed he wouldn't, 'cause he always said that next mornin'. But I guess
he tried to quit. I don't know.

"One night he didn't come back to the room where we was stayin' upstairs
over the saloon. They found him 'way down the track next day, all cut to
pieces by the train."

The boy paused, reached forward, and plucked a withered stem of grass
which he wound round and round his finger.

Walter Stone sat looking across the valley.

"I guess his money was all gone," resumed the boy. "Anyhow, 'bout a year
after, Overland Red comes along. He comes to the saloon where I was
stayin',--they give me a job cleanin' out every day,--and he got to
talkin' a lot of stuff about scenery and livin' the simple life, and all
that guff. The bartender got to jawin' with him, and I laughed, and the
bartender hits me a lick side the head. Red, he hits the bartender a
lick side of _his_ head--and the bartender don't get up right away.
'I'll learn him to hit kids,' said Red. 'If you learn him to hit 'em as
hard as that,' I says to Red, 'then it will be all off with me the next
time.'

"Does he hit you very often?' said Red.

"Whenever he feels like it,' I told him.

"Red laughed and said to come on. I was sick of there, so I run away
with Red. We tried it on a freight and got put off. Red had some water
in a canteen he swiped. It was lucky for us he did. We kept walkin' and
goin' nights, and mebby ridin' on freights in the daytime if we could.
One day, a long time after that, we was crossin' the desert again. We
got put off a freight that time, too. We was walkin' along when we found
a guy layin' beside the track. Red said he wasn't dead, but was dyin'.
We give him some water. Then he kind of come to and wanted to drink it
all. Red said, 'No.' Then the guy got kind of crazy. He got up and
grabbed Red. I was scared.

"Red, he passed me the canteen and told me to keep it away from the guy
because more water would kill him. Then the guy went for Red. 'He's
dyin' on his feet,' said Red. 'It's his last flash.' And he tried to
hold the guy quiet, talkin' decent to him all the time. They was
staggerin' around when the guy tripped backwards over the rail. His head
hit on the other rail and Red fell on top of him. Anyway, the guy was
dead."

Walter Stone shifted his position, turning to gaze at the boy's white
face. "Yes--go on," he said quietly.

"Red was for searchin' the guy, but I says to come on before we got
caught. Red, he laughed kind of queer, and asked me, 'Caught at what?'
Then I said, 'I dunno,' but I was scared.

"Anyway, he went through the dead guy's clothes and found some papers
and old letters and a little leather bag with a whole lot of gold-dust
in it. Red said mebby five hundred dollars!"

"Gold-dust?"

"Uhuh! Then Red _was_ scared. He buried the bag and the papers 'way out
in the sand and made a mark on the ties to find it by."

"Did you find out the dead man's name?" asked Stone, glancing curiously
at the boy.

"Nope. We just beat it for the next station. I was feelin' sick. I give
out, and Red, he lugged me to the next water-tank. He was pourin' water
on me when the Limited come along and stopped, and _she_ throwed the
rose to us. Red told me about it after. You wouldn't go back on a pal
like that, would you?"

"No, I don't know that I should."

"That's me!" said the boy. "Then they went to work and pinched us at
Barstow. Said we killed the guy because his head was smashed in where he
hit the rails. They tried to make Red say that he robbed the guy after
killin' him. But Red told everything, except he didn't tell about the
letters and the gold-dust. They tried to make me say it, but I dassent.
I knowed they would fix Red sure if I did, and he told me not to tell
about the gold if they did pinch us."

"They let you go--after the police examination. Then how is it that the
authorities are after you again?"

"It's the bunch," replied the boy. "Them guys out there knowed the dead
guy had a mine or a ledge or somethin' where he got the gold. Nobody was
wise to where. They told at the jail how he used to come in once in a
while and send his dust to Los Angeles by the express company. All them
guys like the sheriff and the station agent and all the people in that
town are workin' tryin' to find out where the gold come from. They think
because Red and me is tramps that they can make us tell and arrest us
whenever they like. But even Red don't know, unless it's in the papers
he hid in the sand."

"That sounds like a pretty straight story," said Stone. "So you intend
to stick to this man Red?"

"Sure! Would you quit him now, when they're after him worst?"

"They will get him finally."

"Mebby. But Red's pretty slick at a getaway. If they do pinch him again,
that's where I come in. I'm the only witness and the only friend he's
got."

"Of course. But don't you see, my boy, that your way of living is so
much against you that you couldn't really help him? A man's naked word
is worth just what his friends and neighbors will allow him for it, and
no more."

"But ain't a guy got no rights in this country?"

"Certainly he has. But he has to prove that he is entitled to them, by
his way of living."

"Then he's got to go to church, and work, and live decent, or he don't
get a square deal, hey?"

"But why shouldn't he do that much?"

Collie did not answer. Instead, he inspected his questioner critically
from head to foot. "I guess you're right," he said finally. "I've heard
folks talk like that before, but I never took no stock. They kind of
said it because they knowed it. I guess you say it because you mean it."

"Of course I do," said Stone heartily. "Well, here comes my niece with
the mail. See! Over there is El Camino Real, running north. My ranch is
up _there_, in the hills. My foreman's name is Williams. If you should
ask him for work, I believe he might give you something to do. I heard
him say he needed a man, not long ago."

Walter Stone cinched up the saddle and mounted his pony. The boy's eyes
shone as he gazed at the strong, soldierly figure. Ah, to look like
that, and ride a horse like that!

Boyar, the black pony, clattered up and stopped. "Hello, folks!" said
Louise, purposely including the boy in her greeting.

Collie flushed happily. Then a bitterness grew in his heart as he
thought of his friend Overland, hunted from town to town by the same law
that protected these people--an unjust law that they observed and
fostered.

"Well?" said Stone.

Collie's gaze was on the ground. "I don' know," he muttered. "I don'
know."

"Well, good luck to you!" And the ponies swung into that philosophical
lope of the Western horse who knows his journey's length.

The figures of the riders grew smaller. Still the boy stood in the road,
watching them. Undecided, he gazed. Then came an answer to his stubborn
self-questioning. Louise glanced back--glanced back for an instant in
mute sympathy with his loneliness.

Slowly the boy turned and entered the jail. He folded his coat over his
arm, stepped outside, and closed the door.

Before him stretched the hot gray level of El Camino Real, the road to
the beyond. From it branched a narrower road, reaching up into the
southern hills,--on, up to the mysterious Moonstone Cañon with its
singing stream and its gracious shade. Somewhere beyond, higher, and in
the shadowy fastness of the great ranges lay the Moonstone Ranch ... her
home.

"I guess, steppin' up smart, I'll be there just about in time for
supper," said the boy. And whistling cheerily, he set his feet toward
the south and the Moonstone Trail.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TEST

After a week of weeding in the vegetable garden, Collie was put to work
repairing fence. There were many miles of it, inclosing some twenty
thousand acres of grazing-land, and the cross-fencing of the oat,
alfalfa, fruit, and vegetable acreage. The fence was forever in need of
repair. The heavy winter rains, torrential in the mountains, often
washed away entire hillsides, leaving a dozen or so staggering posts
held together by the wires, tangled and sagging. Cattle frequently
pulled loosened posts from the earth by kneeling under the wire and
working through, oblivious to the barbs. Again, "stock gone a little
loco" would often charge straight through the rigid and ripping wire
barriers as though their strands were of thread. Posts would split in
the sun, and staples would drop out, leaving sagging spaces which cattle
never failed to find and take advantage of. Trees uprooted by the rain
and wind would often fall across the fence.

Altogether, the maintaining of a serviceable fence-line on a
well-ordered ranch necessitates eternal vigilance.

The Moonstone Rancho was well ordered under the direct supervision of
Walter Stone's foreman, "Brand" Williams. Williams was a Wyoming cowman
of the old school; taciturn, lean, sinewy.

Some ten years before, Williams, seeking employment, had ridden over the
range with Stone. Returning, the cowman remarked disconsolately, "I like
your stock, and I'll tie to you. But, say, it's only playin' at ranchin'
on twenty thousand fenced. I was raised in Wyoming."

"All right," Stone had replied. "Play hard and we'll get along
first-rate."

Every inch of Brand Williams's six feet was steeped in the astringent of
experience. He played hard and prospered, as did his employer.

Collie stood awaiting the foreman's instructions.

"Ever mend fence?" asked Williams.

"Nope."

"Good. Then you can learn right. Go rope a cayuse--get some staples and
that leetle axe in my office, and go to it. There's plenty fence."

The "Go rope a cayuse" momentarily staggered the boy, but he went
silently to the corral, secured a riata, and by puzzling the playful
ponies by his amateur tactics he finally entangled "Baldy," a
white-faced cow-pony of peaceful mien but uncertain disposition.

Williams, watching the performance, lazily rolled a straw-paper
cigarette.

Snubbed to the post, bridled and saddled awkwardly, Baldy gave no
outward sign of his malignant inward intent of getting rid of the lad
the minute he mounted.

Williams slowly drew a match across his sleeve from elbow to wrist,
ending with a flame that was extremely convenient to his cigarette. He
wasted no effort at anything. He was a man who never met a yawn halfway,
but only gave in to it when actually obliged to. Collie climbed into the
saddle and started for the corral gate. He arrived there far ahead of
the horse. He got to his feet and brushed his knees. The pony was
humping round the corral with marvelous agility for so old a horse.

"He never did like a left-handed man," said Williams gravely. "Next time
get on him from the _other_ side, and see if he don't behave. Hold on;
don't be in a hurry. Let him throw a few more jumps, then he'll quit for
to-day most likely. And say, son, if he does take to buckin' with you
again, don't choke that saddle to death hangin' on to the horn. Set up
straight, lean a little back, and clinch your knees. You'll get piled,
anyhow, but you might as well start right."

The boy approached the horse again, secured the dangling reins, and
again mounted. Baldy was as demure as a spinster in church. He actually
looked pious.

Collie urged the pony toward the gate. Baldy reared.

"A spade bit ain't made to pull teeth with, although you can," said
Williams. "Baldy's old, but his teeth are all good yet. Just easy now.
Ride in your saddle, not on your reins. That's it! And say, kid, I would
'a' got them staples and that axe before crawlin' the hoss, eh?"

Collie flushed. He dismounted and walked to the foreman's office. When
he returned to the corral, the horse was gone. Williams still sat on the
corral bars smoking and gazing earnestly at nothing.

Round the corner of the stable Collie saw the pony, his nose peacefully
submerged in the water-trough, but his eye wide and vigilant. The boy
ran toward him. Baldy snorted and, wheeling, ran back into the corral,
circled it with an expression which said plainly, "Let us play a little
game of tag, in which, my young friend, you shall always be 'It.'"

Again Collie tried to rope the pony.

"Want any help?" asked Williams, as he slid from the corral bars to the
ground.

"Nope." And Collie disentangled his legs from an amazing contortion of
the riata and tried to whirl the loop as he had seen the cowmen whirl
it.

"Hold on, son!" said Williams. "You mean right, but don't go to rope him
with the saddle on. If you looped that horn, he, like as not, would yank
you clean to Calabasas before you got your feet out of that mess of rope
you're standin' in. Anyway, you ain't goin' to Calabasas; you're due up
the other way."

Collie was learning things rapidly, and, better still, he was learning
in a way that would cause him to remember.

Williams spoke sharply to the pony. Baldy stopped and eyed the foreman
with vapid inquisitiveness. "Now, son, I got three things to tell you,"
and the foreman gathered up the reins. "First--keep on keepin' your
mouth shut and tendin' to business. It pays. Second--always drop your
reins over a hoss's head when you get off, whether he's trained that way
or not. And last--always figure a hoss thinks he knows more than you do.
Sometimes he does. Sometimes he don't. Then he won't fool you so
frequent, for you'll be watchin' him. I wouldn't 'a' said that much,
only you're a tenderfoot from the East, I hear. If you was a tenderfoot
from the West, you would 'a' had to take your own medicine."

Collie's shoulder was lame from his fall and was becoming stiff, but he
grinned cheerfully, and said nothing, which pleased Williams.

The foreman leveled his slow, keen eyes at him for a minute. "You'll
find a spring under the live-oaks by the third cross-fence north. Reckon
you'll get there about noon. Keep your eye peeled for fire. I thought I
seen somebody up there as I come across from the corral early this
mornin'. We come close to burnin' out here once, account of a hobo's
fire. Understand, if you ketch anybody cantelopin' around _a-foot_, you
just ride 'em off the range pronto. That's all."

As Collie rode away through the morning sunshine, Williams loafed across
the corral, roped and saddled a white-eyed pinto, and, spurring up a
narrow cañon west of the ranch buildings, disappeared round a turn of
the shady trail. As the foreman rode, he alternately talked to the pony
and himself.

"Tramp, eh?" he said, addressing the pony. "What do you say, Sarko?
Nothin', eh? Same as me.... Overland Red's kid pal, eh? Huh! I knowed
Jack Summers, Red Jack Summers, down in Sonora in '83. Mexico was some
open country then. Jack was a white pardner, too. Went to the bad,
account of that Chola girl that he was courtin' goin' wrong.... Funny
how the boss come to pick up that kid. Thinks there's somethin' in him.
O' course they is. But what? Eh, Sarko, what? You say nothin', same as
me.... Here, you! That's a lizard, you fool hoss. Never seen one before,
so you're try in' to catch it by jumpin' through your bridle after it,
eh? Never seen one before, oh, no! Don't like that, eh? Well, you quit,
and I will. Exactly. It's me, and my ole Spanish spurs. I'm
listenin'.... Nothin' to say?... Uhuh! I reckon little Louise had
somethin' to do with gettin' the kid the job. Well, if _she_ likes him,
I got to. Guess I'd love a snake if she said to. Yes, I'm listenin' to
myself ..." And the taciturn foreman's hard, weathered face wrinkled in
a smile. "I'm listenin' ... None of the boys know Red's camped up by the
spring. I do. Red used to be a damn white Injun in the old days. I'll
give the kid a chance to put him wise for old times. And I'll find out
if the kid means business or not ... which is some help to know how to
handle him later."

Williams picketed his pony in the meadow above the third cross-fence.
Loafing down the slope toward the spring, he noticed the faint smoke of
a fire. Farther down the line fence, he could see Collie in the
distance, riding slowly toward the three live-oaks. The foreman found a
convenient seat on a ledge, rolled another of his eternal cigarettes,
and watched the boy approach from below.

Collie had already dismounted three times that morning; twice to mend
fence, and once more involuntarily. He determined, with a mighty vow to
the bow-legged god of all horseflesh, to learn to stay on a broncho or
die learning.

The boy had a native fondness for animals, and he had already thought of
buying a pony with his first few months' wages. But the vision of his
erstwhile companion Overland, perhaps imprisoned and hopeless in the
grip of the "bunch," annulled that desire. He would save every cent for
that emergency.

Arrived at the spring, both boy and horse drank gratefully, for the day
was hot. Then Collie noticed the thin smoke coming through the trees and
strode toward it.

"It ain't much of a fire yet," said Overland. "Our hired girl--" and he
grinned through a two-weeks' tangle of red beard. "Oh, but ain't he the
'cute little workin'-man with his little ole hoss and his garments of
toil."

"Oh, Red!" exclaimed the boy.

"Me sure! I been hidin' in my whiskers so long I didn't know if you'd
know me."

"I been thinking about you every day."

"Uhuh. So have I. I reckon some others has, too. Say, what you been
doin' lately, studyin' law or learnin' the piano? I been lookin' for
you for a week. It's the first day I seen you out on the range."

"I was working in the garden first. Then they put me at this, this
mornin'."

"Uhuh. Well, Col, that there getaway of mine is in all the papers.
'Tramp Cowboy Steals Horse and Escapes.' Say, did she yip about my
borrowin' the cayuse?"

"She was mad at first. But your fancy ridin' kind of made her forget. I
told her you was square, Red."

"Huh! I guess she could tell that herself."

"But, Red, I'm not kidding. I told her uncle about the bunch and the guy
on the desert."

"Did he believe it?"

"I guess so. He ain't said much. But he gives me the chance to make
good. He must have believed somethin'."

"Well, stick to it, Collie. You never was cut out for a genuine towerist
like me, anyhow. It ain't in your blood."

"What you goin' to do now, Red?"

"Me? Listen! There's gold out there, somewhere. I'm broke now. I need
some dough. I got ideas. Ten dollars does it. I get a new set of clothes
and get shaved and me hair trimmed close. Then I commence me good work
in Main Street, in Los. Down on North Main is where I catch the gent
from the East who will fall for anything that wears a Stetson and some
outdoors complexion. I tell all about my ledge in the Mojave and get
staked to go out and prospect. It's bein' done every day--it and the
other fella."

"But, Red--"

"Hold on, kid. I ain't goin' to bunk nobody. This here's square. I need
financin'--a burro and a grubstake and me for the big dry spot. Ship the
outfit to the desert town, and then hit it along the rails to where we
hid it. If the papers we hid is any good, me to locate the ledge.
Anyhow, there's a good five hundred in the poke, and that's better than
a kick in the pants."

"You'll get pinched sure, Red."

"Nix, kiddo. Not out there. Money talks. 'Course it ain't makin' any
distressin' sounds around here jest now, but, say, got the makin's?"

"I ain't smoked since I been here, Red."

"Excuse me, Miss Collie. What denomination did you say?"

"Straight, Red. I'm savin' my money."

"What do they pay you for settin' on that cayuse?"

"Fifteen a month, and board, and the horse to ride."

"Don't mention the hoss, pal. Jest make motions with your hands when you
mean him. Talkin' is apt to wake him up."

"He pitched me twice."

"Just havin' bad dreams, that's all," said Overland, grinning. "Fifteen
a month and found ain't bad for a bum, is it?"

"Cut that out, Red. I ain't no bum."

"Ex-cuse me. There I gone and laminated your feelin's again. Why in hell
don't you blush, or drop your little ole lace handkerchief, or fix your
back hair, so I can remember I'm talkin' to a lady? It ain't manners,
this here impersonatin' you're a boy like that."

"Quit your kiddin', Red. Mebby you think it was easy to cut out the old
stuff, and everybody on the ranch on to what I used to be. I was cryin'
the first night. I was lonesome for you."

Overland's eyelids flickered. He grinned. "Uhuh! I could hear you clean
over in the Simi Valley. I was thinkin' of comin' right back, only--"

"Oh, if you think I'm lyin to you--"

Overland thrust up a soiled palm. "Nix; you never did yet. How much coin
can you rustle?"

"I got that eight-and-a-half I had when we was pinched. It's down to the
bunk-house."

"Well, bring it up here to-morrow mornin'. And, say, swipe a sogun for
me. I near froze last night."

Collie's brows drew together. "I'll bring the money, sure! but I can't
swipe no blanket, even for you. The boss thinks I'm square, and so does
she. I'll bring tobacco and papers. Got any grub?"

"Well, some. I ain't exactly livin' on sagebrush and scenery yet. I been
trainin' some chickens to do the Texas Tommy. Every one that learns to
do it in one lesson gets presented with a large hot fryin'-pan.
Surprisin' how them chickens is fond of dancin'. I reckon I learned six
of 'em since I seen you last. But don't forget the eight rollers and
four bits. I need ten, but eight-fifty will do. I'll have to leave out
the silk pejammies and the rosewater this trip. But kickie pants is good
enough for me to sleep in. How's that sheriff gent?"

"Busted his collar-bone and killed his horse."

"I'm sad for the hoss. How do you like livin' decent?"

"Fine, Red! I wish you would--"

"Hold on, Collie, not me! I'm gettin' too old, too plumb old and
disgusted with this vale of steers to change and tie down to short
grass. Now you're near enough to the age of that little Louise girl to
make life interestin'."

"Who said anything about her?"

"Whoa, Chico! Back up. You're steppin' on your bridle. Don't go 'way
mad. Why, I said somethin' about her, that's who. You got any idea of
hobblin' my talk?"

"No. But--"

"Oh, you can't flim your ole pal, nohow. You're just commencin' life on
what that little Louise lady thinks you ought to be. And you will be it
some day, if you keep straight. So will I."

"You?" Collie was unable to associate a reconstructive idea with
Overland's mode of life.

"Say! Just as if I never knowed a good woman. Say, I could actooly give
up smokin' for her, if I had to hire some guy to do it for me. That's
what I think of her. When I get me plush rags and the dizzy lid, I'll
call around in me private caboose and take you both for a little ride."

For a moment the boy gazed away to where the silver of the Southern
Pacific rails glinted in the valley. Overland Red's presence brought
back poignantly the long, lazy days of loafing and the wide, starry
nights of wayside fire, tobacco, and talk. There was a charm in the free
life of the road--that long gray road that never ended--never ended in
the quiet shade of a mountain ranch or in the rose-bordered pathway to a
valley cottage. The long gray road held out no promise of rest for worn
and aged folk. After all, its only freedom was the freedom of eternal
wandering ... until one could adventure no longer ... and then? Better
to tread the harder path of duty.

The boy's black eyes were lifted pleadingly. "Red," he said
hesitatingly. "Red, I got to tell you to camp the other side of that
line fence till I come to-morrow."

Overland understood instantly that the lad was but following general
instructions. He loved the boy, and so, perversely, worked upon his
feelings. "Oh, the _other_ side? Ex-cuse me, chief, for intrudin' on
this here resavation. Sorry I'm crowdin' you so."

"Now, Red, wait--"

"Wait? What, for you to insult your ole pal again by tellin' him he
might drink all the water in this here spring, mebby, or inflooence the
morals of the cattle, or steal the wire off the fence? Huh! I thought I
was your _pal_?"

"Oh, Red, quit kiddin'. Don't you see I got orders? I got orders."

"You're gettin' civilized fast, all right. The first thing civilization
does is to projooce hobos and bums. Then she turns up her nose because
hobos and bums ain't civilized. Did you ever see a ma cat get mad
because one of her kittens was born with sore eyes? I guess not. Cats
has got sense. Now, what if I don't indignify myself to the extent of
crawlin' under that line fence?"

"'Course I'll bring you the coin in the mornin'. But if you don't go
now, why, I got to quit this job. I got to play square to him."

"So it's orders or me, eh?"

"Yes, Red, and I want to use you right, and be square, too."

Overland Red's beard hid the quiver of his lips as he asked huskily:
"And you would be comin' back on the road with your ole pal again? You
would give up the job and the chance of a smile from that little
Rose-Lady Girl and flew the coop with me again if I said the word?"

"Sure I would. You come first and the job comes second; but--but I want
to keep the job."

Overland's keen blue eyes filled with instant emotion. "Oh, you go chase
a snake up your sleeve. Do you think I'd bust your chances of makin'
good here? Do you reckon I'd let a line fence stand between me and you,
speakin' poetical? Say, I'll go camp in that sheriff gent's front yard
if it'll do any good to you, or before I'll see you in bad with the
little Rose Girl!"

"Please, Red; I mean it."

"So do I. I'll fade quicker than spit on a hot stove. Don't forget
to-morrow mornin'. Some day I'll put you hep to how to ride. You better
get to your fence job."

Brand Williams watched the man and the boy as they walked along the
line-fence trail together. Collie leading the pony, the man talking and
gesticulating earnestly. Finally they shook hands. The tramp crawled
under the fence. The boy mounted Baldy and rode away.

Williams, catching up his own horse, spurred quickly across the ridge
above the spring that the boy might not see him.

CHAPTER IX

A CELESTIAL ENTERPRISE

Broad avenues of feathery pepper trees, long driveways between shadowy
rows of the soldierly eucalyptus, wide lawns and gigantic palms of the
southern isles, weaving pampas grass, gay as the plumes of romance,
jasmine, orange-bloom, and roses everywhere. Over all is the eternal
sunshine and noon breeze of the sea, graciously cooling. Roundabout is a
girdle of far hills.

Some old Spanish padre named it "Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles,"
making melody that still lures with its ancient charm. A city for
angels, verily. A city of angels? Verily; some fallen, indeed, for there
is much nefarious trafficking in real estate, but all in all the
majority of souls in Los Angeles are celestial bound, treading upon
sunbeams in their pilgrimage.

The plaza, round which the new town roars from dawn to dusk, is still
haunted by a crumbling old adobe, while near it droop dusty pepper trees
that seem to whisper to each other endlessly--"Mañana! Mañana!" Whisper
as did those swarthy vaqueros and the young, lithe, low-voiced
señoritas who strolled across the plaza in the dusk of by-gone days.
"Mañana! Mañana!--To-morrow! To-morrow!"

And the to-morrows have come and gone as did those Spanish lovers,
riding up through the sunshine on their silver-bitted pinto ponies and
riding out at dusk with tinkling spur-chains into that long to-morrow
that has shrouded the ancient plaza in listless dreams. Mexicans in
black sombreros and blue overalls still prowl from cantina to cantina,
but the gay vaquero and his señorita are no more.

Overland Red, a harsh note in the somnolence of the place, stepped
buoyantly across the square. And here, if ever, Overland was at home.

A swarthy, fat Mexican shaved him while a lean old rurale of Overland's
earlier acquaintance obligingly accepted some pesos with which to drink
the señor's health, and other pesos with which to purchase certain
clothing for the señor.

The retired rurale drove a relentless bargain with a countryman,
returning with certain picturesque garments that Overland donned in the
back room of the little circus-blue barber shop.

The tramp had worthily determined to hold wise and remunerative converse
with the first Easterner that "looked good to him." He would make
half-truths do double duty. He needed money to purchase a burro, packs,
canteen, pick, shovel, dynamite, and provisions. He intended to repay
the investor by money-order from some desert town as soon as he found
the hidden gold. This unusual and worthy intention lent Overland added
assurance, and he needed it. Fortune, goddess evanishing and coy, was
with him for once. If he could but dodge the plain-clothes men long
enough to outfit and get away....

The "Mojave Bar," on North Main Street of the City of Angels was all but
empty. Upon it the lassitude of early afternoon lay heavily. The
spider-legged music-racks of the Mexican string orchestra, the empty
platform chairs, the deserted side-tables along the pictured wall, the
huge cactus scrawled over with pin-etched initials,--all the impedimenta
of the saloon seemed to slumber.

The white-coated proprietor, with elbows on the bar, gazed listlessly at
a Remington night-scene--a desert nocturne with a shadowy adobe against
the blue-black night, a glimmer of lamplight through a doorway, and in
the golden pathway a pony and rider and the red flash of pistol shots.

Opposite the bartender, at a table against the wall, sat a young man,
clad in cool gray. He smoked a cigarette, and occasionally sipped from a
tall glass. He was slender, clean-cut, high-colored, an undeniable
patrician. In his mild gray eyes, deep down, gleamed a latent humor, an
interior twinkling not apparent to the multitude.

Sweeney Orcutt, the saloon-keeper, noticed this reserve characteristic
now for the first time, as the young man turned toward him. Sweeney was
a retired plain-clothes man with a record, and a bank account. It was
said that he knew every crook from Los Angeles to New York. Be it added,
to his credit, that he kept his own counsel--attending to his own
business on both sides of the bar.

"Do they ever do those things now?" queried the young man, nodding
toward the picture.

Sweeney Orcutt smiled a thin-lipped smile. "Not much. Sometimes in Texas
or Mexico. I seen the day when they did."

The young man lazily crossed his legs. "Nice and cool here," he remarked
presently.

"Been in town long?" asked Sweeney.

"No, only a few days."

"I was goin' to say there's a good show over on Spring
Street--movin'-pictures of the best ridin' and buckin' and ropin' I seen
yet."

"Yes? Is there any one in town who is not working for the movies?"

Again Sweeney Orcutt smiled his thin-lipped smile. "Yes, I guess there
is. I might scare up one or two I used to know who is workin' the
transients, which ain't exactly workin' _for_ the movies."

"I should like to meet some character who is really doing something in
earnest; that is, some cowboy, miner, prospector, teamster,--one of
those twenty-mule-team kind, you know,--or any such chap. Why, even the
real estate men that have been up to my hotel seem to be acting a part.
One expects every minute to see one of them pull a gun and hold up a
fellow. No doubt they mean business."

"Bank on that," said Orcutt dryly.

"You see," continued the young man, "I have too much time on my hands
just now. The doctors tell me to rest, and I've been doing nothing else
all my life. It's pretty monotonous. I've tried to get interested in
some of the chaps on North Main Street, and around the plaza. I've
offered to buy them drinks and all that, but they seem to shy off. I
suppose they think I'm a detective or something of that kind."

"More like, a newspaper man after a story. Hello, there! Now, what's
doin'?"

Outside near the curb a crowd had collected. A traffic officer was
talking to the driver of an automobile. As Sweeney Orcutt strolled
toward the doorway, Overland Red, clean-shaven, clothed in new corduroys
and high lace boots, and a sombrero aslant on his stiff red hair, dove
into the saloon and called for a "bucket of suds."

"Close--shave--Red--" whispered Orcutt.

"Had me Orcutt, likewise," replied the tramp. "Say, Sweeney, stall off
the Dick out there. I think he piped me as I blew in, but I ain't sure.
He'll be pokin' in here in a minute. If he sees me talkin',--to the guy
there, for instance,--and you give him a steer, he won't look too close.
Sabe?" And Overland drank, observing the Easterner at the table over the
top of his glass.

"They got that guy Overland Red mugged in every station from here to
Chicago," whispered Orcutt. "Paper says he put it over a desert rat up
near Barstow. Did you hear about it?"

"Some," replied Overland sententiously.

"And did you hear about his last get-away on one of the Moonstone Rancho
ponies? Some class to that!"

"I read somethin' about it," replied Overland.

"Well, Red, if you won't tumble, all I got to say is, beat it. You're
worth a thousand bucks to any fly-cop that nips you in this town. I'm
handin' you a little dope that you can slide out on and not get stuck."

"Thanks, Sweeney. Well, I'll ring you up from Kalamazoo."

"Kalamazoo? In them clothes?"

"Sure. There's a law against travelin' naked in some States. Where you
been grazin' lately?"

"In the bull-pasture; and say, Red, it's gettin' warm there, for some."

"Well, I guess I'll beat it," said Overland.

"Take a slant at the door first."

Overland turned leisurely. In the doorway stood the traffic officer. He
glanced from Orcutt to the two men near the table. "Hello, Sweeney!" he
called, glancing a second time at Overland.

"Hello!" answered Sweeney, strolling to the end of the bar. "Somebody
speedin'?"

"Yes. Say, who's the guy, the big one?"

"Him? Oh, that's Billy Sample, the fella that does the desert stuff for
the General Film Company. The kid is his pardner who acts the
tenderfoot. They 're waitin' for the machine now to take 'em out to
Glendale. Got some stunt to pull off this afternoon, so Billy was
tellin' me. They're about half-stewed now. They make me sick."

"Thought I saw the big guy out on the street a minute ago," said the
officer, hesitating. "There's a card out for a fella that looks like
him. I guess--"

"He thought it was his machine comin'," said Orcutt. "He run out to see.
It's a wonder how them movie actors can make up to look like most
anybody. Why, I been in your line of business, as you know, and I been
fooled lots of times. Makes a fella feel like he don't know where he's
at with the town full of them movin'-picture actors."

"Well, so long, Sweeney." And the traffic officer, a little afraid of
being laughed at by the famous ex-officer, Sweeney Orcutt, departed,
just a thousand dollars poorer than he might have been had he had the
courage of his convictions.

Overland and Orcutt exchanged glances. Orcutt's glance rested meaningly,
for an instant, on the Easterner at the table. Overland grinned. Orcutt
spoke to the young Easterner, who immediately rose to his feet and
bowed.

"You was lookin' for somebody that's the real thing, you said. This
here's my friend Jack Summers. He used to be sheriff of Abilene once. He
ain't workin' for a movin'-picture outfit and he won't borrow your
watch. Mebby he has a little business deal to put up to you and mebby
not. Take my word for it, he's straight."

"I'm William Winthrop, back East. 'Billy' will do here. I'm a
tenderfoot, but I'm not exactly a fool. I observed the delicacy with
which you engineered the recent exodus of the policeman. I'm
interested."

"Sounds like plush to me," said Overland. "I got a little time--not
much. You're correct about the cop. I got a pretty good thing out in
the Mojave--gold--"

Winthrop laughed. "You aren't losing any time, are you?"

"You wouldn't neither if you was in my boots," said Overland, grinning
cheerfully.

"Oh, Red's all right," said Orcutt. "What'll you gents have?"

"Seein' I'm all right, Sweeney, I'll take five dollars in small change.
I need the coin for entertainin' purposes, I'll pay you in the mornin'."

"You got me that time," said Orcutt. "Here's the coin."

"Shall we sit down here?" asked Winthrop, indicating one of the tables.

"Sure! Now this ain't no frame-up. No, I'll set where I can watch
Sweeney. He's like to steal his own cash-register if you don't watch
him." And Winthrop noticed that his companion faced the door. He also
noticed, as the man's coat brushed against a chair as he sat down, that
that same coat covered a shiny black shoulder holster in which gleamed
the worn butt of an automatic pistol.

"My real name is Jack Summers," began Overland Red. "Some folks took to
callin' me 'Overland Red,' seein' as I been some towerist in my time."

"Great!" murmured the Easterner. "'Overland Red!' That name has me
hypnotized."

"You was sayin'?" queried Overland.

"Beg your pardon. Nothing worth while. I haven't been so happy for a
year. Let me explain. I have a little money, pretty well invested. I
also have lungs, I believe. The doctors don't quite agree about that,
however. The last one gave me six months to live. That was a year ago. I
owe him an apology and six months. I'm not afraid, exactly, and I'm
certainly not glad. But I want to forget it. That's all. Go ahead about
that desert and the gold. I'm listening."

CHAPTER X

"PERFECTLY HARMLESS LITTLE OLE TENDERFOOT"

William Stanley Winthrop woke next morning with a vague impression of
having lost something. He gazed indolently at the sunlight filtering
through the curtains of his sleeping-room. Beyond the archway to the
adjoining room of his suite, a ray of sunshine lay like living gold upon
the soft, rich-hued fabric of the carpet.

"Gold!" he murmured. "Mojave Desert! Overland Red! Lost gold! No, it
isn't the two hundred dollars I invested in the rascal's story, for it
was worth the money. I never spent four happier hours in my life, at
fifty dollars an hour. The best of it is he actually made me believe
him. I think he believed himself."

Winthrop sat up in bed, yawning. "I think black coffee will be about
all, this morning," he murmured, as he dressed leisurely.

He was tying a fastidiously correct bow on his tan oxford when he
happened to glance out of the window. It was early, altogether too
early, he reflected, to appear in the breakfast-room of the hotel.
Winthrop's indefinite soliloquy melted into the rapt silence of
imagination. Below on the smooth black pavement pattered two laden
burros. On their packs hung dusty, weatherworn canteens, a pick and
shovel, and a rifle in its soiled and frayed scabbard. The sturdy,
shaggy burros followed a little, lean old man, whose flop-brimmed hat,
faded shirt, and battered boots told a tale of the outlands, whispered
of sun-swept immensities, of sage and cacti, sand and silence. Winthrop
drew a long breath. Such an adventurer was the Overland Red he had
talked with the evening previous. The tramp had mentioned a town far out
on the desert. Winthrop sauntered down to the deserted office and
secured a timetable.

When the east-bound express left Los Angeles the following morning,
Winthrop was aboard, uncomfortably installed in the private drawing-room
of a sleeper. He had cheerfully paid the double fare that he might have
the entire space to himself, and he needed it. Around him, on the floor,
in the seats, in the racks, and on the hooks were innumerable packages,
bags, and bundles.

"Very eccentric. He must be rich," whispered the wife of a dry-goods
merchant from Keokuk, as her husband pushed her ahead of him past the
door of the drawing-room.

"Just plain hog!" said the dry-goods merchant. "A man that'll pay
double fare to have the whole earth to himself when other folks has to
be packed into a berth and suffocate! The conductor said he paid double
to Chicago to get that compartment, and he's only goin' out in the
desert a little ways. I'd 'a' took it myself."

"Well, we could hardly afford it, anyway," said the woman pleasantly.
"We've had such a good time I don't mind sleeping in a berth, Hiram."

They crowded on and finally found their seats.

Winthrop smiled to himself. He liked the woman's voice.

He lighted a cigarette and gazed wistfully, even despairingly, at the
"outfit" which surrounded him. He sighed. "Awful accumulation of
plunder. Wonder what I'll do with it?"

As the train climbed the grade beyond San Bernardino, he grew restless.
Flinging down his cigarette, he began unwrapping his belongings. Out
came blankets, extra clothing, a rifle, canteens of several patterns,
two pack-saddles, a coil of rope, a pair of high lace boots,--hobnailed,
heavy, and unserviceable,--a pocket compass, a hunting-knife, a patent
filter, two halters, two galvanized pails, a small, compact, silk tent,
an axe, a fishing-rod, a rubber cup, a box of cigars, a bottle of
brandy, several neckerchiefs, a cartridge-belt, a Colts revolver of
large and aggressive caliber, cartridges, a prospector's pick, a shovel,
a medicine-case, a new safety razor, a looking-glass, a clinic
thermometer, and a copy of "Robinson Crusoe."

He pondered over the agglomeration of articles pensively. "He was a good
salesman," he said, smiling. "I'll be either a juggler or a strong man
before I'm through with these things. I think I'll begin now and
re-pack. I'll make one glorious bundle of it. That's the ticket!"

Winthrop went to work, whistling cheerfully. He spread the blanket and
rearranged his possessions, finally rolling them up into an uncertain
bundle which he roped with the weird skill of the amateur packer. He
tried to lift the bundle to the opposite seat. He decided to leave it on
the floor.

Over the grade and on the level of the desert the train gathered speed.
The shimmering spaces revolved slowly, to meet the rushing track ahead.
Hour after hour sat Winthrop, reading and occasionally glancing out
across the desert. His was the wildest of wild-goose chases. A stranger
had told him of a mysterious ledge of gold somewhere out on the desert,
and the stranger had named a desert town--the town toward which Winthrop
was journeying. Would the eccentric Overland Red be there? Winthrop
hoped so. He wanted to believe that this Ulysses of the outlands had
spoken truth. He imagined vividly Overland Red's surprise when one
William Stanley Winthrop, late of New York, should appear, equipped to
the chin and eager to participate in the hunt for the lost gold. Then
again, the prospector might not care to be burdened with the
companionship of a tenderfoot. Still, the uncertainty of his welcome
lent zest to Winthrop's enterprise. He closed the door of his
drawing-room and wound through a mahogany maze toward the dining-car.

Next morning, as the train slowed down for the desert town, Winthrop was
in the vestibule, peering out anxiously. It did not occur to him that
Overland Red knew nothing of his coming, or that the other would be
waiting on the station platform if he did. The tramp had not the
faintest desire to make himself conspicuous. Some of Winthrop's
enthusiasm had evaporated during the hot night in the sleeper.

"Thank you very much," called the lady from Keokuk, Iowa.

"Don't mention it," said Winthrop, disembarking behind the porter with
his "plunder." Then, as the Pullman slid away, Winthrop deliberately and
gracefully threw a kiss to the dry-goods merchant's wife. "Nice little
woman," he reflected. "Too nice to associate with that grampus. Well, I
hope they'll enjoy the rest of the trip in the drawing-room. I'm glad I
was able to arrange it."

He watched the train crawl down the track. He wondered how long he would
be able to distinguish the pattern of the brasswork on the observation
car-rail.

Out of the empty distance came the _click_, _clink_, _clank_ of hammers
and shovels as the section-men, a mile down the track, stepped into work
behind the train.

"Prospectin'?" queried a lank individual, slouching up to Winthrop.

"A little," said Winthrop. "It's pretty dry work."

"Uhuh. It's goin' to be hot about noon."

"I suppose so. Will you kindly give me a hand with this monstrosity,"
said Winthrop, indicating the pack. "The agent seems to be busy."

"Sure! She ain't roped very tight."

Which proved to be true. The bundle, with a kind of animate
indifference, slowly sagged, opened, and things began to trickle from it
in its journey across the platform. Among the things was the bottle of
brandy. The lank individual picked this up tenderly and set it to one
side. Winthrop noticed his solicitude, and smiled.

"We can rope 'em up again," said the lank one, suddenly becoming
enthusiastic. "My name's Jim Hicks. I'm constable here."

"I see. Well, I'm William Winthrop, from Los Angeles. I'm a naturalist.
Will you accept a cigar?"

"Thanks. You want to pack this here bottle, too?"

"Not right away. Whew! It is getting hot."

"Goin' up to the hotel?" queried the constable.

Winthrop glanced along the street. The hotel did not look inviting. "I
don't know. I'd like to get in the shade somewhere."

"There's old Fernando's 'dobe down the track under them pepper trees.
He's a friend of mine. He ain't to home to-day. Mebby you'd like to set
down there and wait for your friend."

"My friend?"

"Why, ain't you waitin' for anybody? You ain't goin' to tackle that
bug-huntin' trip alone, be you? It's dangerous out there for a
tenderfoot. Now I have took folks out, and brought 'em back all
right,--gone as far as them hills over there, and that's a good jag from
here,--and I only charge four dollars a day and grub."

"I thought you said you were constable?"

"So I be. Takin' parties across the desert is on the side. How far you
figurin' on goin'?"

"I haven't made up my mind yet. Say we go down as far as the adobe you
spoke about, as a beginning. Perhaps we can arrange terms."

"I'm on, pard," said the constable.

Under the pepper trees shading Fernando's adobe sat Winthrop and the
constable. The brandy-bottle was half empty and a box of cigars was open
beside it on the bench. The afternoon shadows were lengthening. The
constable had been discursive, voluminous, in his entertaining. Time was
as nothing. He borrowed generously of to-morrow and even the next day.
He became suddenly quite fond of this quiet, gentlemanly chap opposite
him, who said little, but seemed to be a prince of good fellows.

"'S this way," said the constable, leaning forward and waving his cigar.
"You're fren' of mine--sure thing. 'S af'ernoon now, but I was plumb
fooled this mornin'. Y' know i's af'ernoon now. Thought you was the guy
I'm lookin' for. H'overlan' Red--bum--tram'. Wire from Loshangeles to
upperan' him if he shows up here. See?"

"You're not quite clear to me," replied Winthrop. "But never mind about
apprehending any one. Let's talk about this glorious prospect of sand,
silence, and solitude. I feel like a fallen angel. Never mind about
arresting anybody. Life is too short. Let's talk of roses."

"Roshes! Huh!" sniggered the constable. "You're kin' of sof, ain't you?
Roshes nothin'! I'm goin' talk 'bout business. It's business, my
business to talk 'bout it, see? 'T ain't your business. You c'n lissen,
an' when I get through, then you c'n talk roshes."

"But what is your business?" asked Winthrop, with an indifference that
he did not feel.

"S-s-s-h-h! I'm cons'able. Tha's on the quiet. Thousand dollars rewar'
f'r th' appr'enshun of 'Verlan' Red. Thought you was him--hic--hee!
hee!"

"Please don't laugh like that. It hurts my feelings," said Winthrop. "It
is bad enough to be taken for a--er--tramp."

"Nobody's feelin's--pologishe. '_Course_ you ain' him! You're jus' a
li'l' ole ten'erfoot--perfec'ly harmless li'l' ole ten'erfoot."

"Thanks. May I ask you to have another?"

"Nope. 'Nough's 'nough. 'S time f'r dinner."

"Nearly. Well, if you flatly refuse to drink my health, I'll have to
drink it alone, and that's rather egotistical, isn't it?"

"Never. B' Gosh! You're sport. Funny li'l' ole ten'erfoot--perf'ly
harmless. Sure, I'll drink all th' health you got, 'n then go
home--dinner."

"One will be sufficient, I think," said Winthrop.

"Sufficen' wha'?" And the constable leered cunningly.

"To drown all pangs. Well, here's pleasant dreams."

Far down the line came the faint thrill of wheels and the distant,
clear-cut blast of a locomotive. The local freight from Los Angeles was
whistling for the "block."

Winthrop glanced at his watch, then at the constable. "What train is
that?" asked the Easterner.

The constable's eyelids drooped, then opened languidly. "Railro' train,
'f course." And he slid forward to his elbow and thence to the bench.
Presently he snored.

Winthrop strolled toward the approaching train. "Pretty stiff session,"
he commented. "Now if happy chance should bring Overland Red on this
freight, with his burro and outfit; I'll have one reason to offer for
wanting to go with him. I've probably saved him some annoyance,
indirectly, but rather effectively, I think."

The great oil-burning locomotive roared in, casting heat-waves that
smelled of steam, iron, and mechanical energy. The hot air sickened
Winthrop.

A car was cut out and shunted to a siding. Then the engine, pausing to
drink a gargantuan draught at the tank, simmered away in the dusk,
clanking across the switch-points. A figure leaped from the freight-car
to the ground. Then out came a burro and several bundles. The figure
strode to the station and filled two canteens. Winthrop walked toward
the burro. When he of the burro and canteens returned, he found Winthrop
stroking the little animal's nose.

"What the--! How the--! Who lost you out here?" asked Overland.

Winthrop spoke rapidly and to the point. "Express this morning. Lonesome
again. Thought I'd make a change. My outfit is over at the station.
Don't say 'No' before you hear me. You're going to need me--tenderfeet
and all."

"But you can't--"

"Wait. The local constable has a wire from the Los Angeles police to
look out for you. Perhaps you got this far because you're traveling in a
freight-car. No doubt all the passenger trains have been watched all
along the line. The constable has been my--er--my guest since morning.
He is asleep now. I had to do it. He told me, after either the sixth or
seventh glass, I forget which, that he was looking for you. Come on over
to the station and inspect my outfit, please. I think we had better
vanish."

Overland breathed once, deeply. "Lead me to it!" he exclaimed. "You got
my number. I guess you're some lame chicken, eh? No? I'll never call you
a tenderfoot as long as I live. Shake!"

The inspection of the outfit was brief. "Take the Colts and the
cartridges, and the blankets and the rope. T' hell with the rest."

CHAPTER XI

DESERT LAW

Away out in the night of stars and silence plodded the patient burro,
and beside him shuffled Overland Red and Billy Winthrop.

"We'll fool 'em," said Overland. "Keep joggin'. We'll be over the range
before mornin'. Then let 'em find us."

Winthrop, staggering along, felt his moral stamina crumbling within him.
"I don't know--about that. Perhaps I'll be a drag to the expedition. I'm
pretty tired."

Overland, experienced in the remorse that follows liquor on an empty
stomach, swore vigorously and picturesquely. "You'll stick! Do you
suppose I'd shake you now after you overcomin' a genuine nickel-plated
desert constable? Nix. That ain't my style. You believed me when I said
I was comin' to this particular town. It's worth somethin' to have a
fella around that believes a fella once in a while. But what I want to
know is, why you done up the constable so offhand like, not knowin'
whether I'd show up here or not?"

"Why?" And Winthrop smiled wanly. "Because I'm a perfectly harmless
little old tenderfoot." And his voice caught as he tried to laugh.

An hour of plodding through the dusk, two hours, and they were at a
water-hole near the northern hills. Overland unroped one of the packs,
made a fire, and presently had some hot coffee for his companion, who
was pretty well used up. Nature was taking inexorable toll for his
conquest of the constable.

"You take it easy and don't worry," said Overland.

Winthrop raised on his elbow and gazed at the tiny fire. "Tiger, tiger
burning bright!" he quoted.

"This here coffee'll fix you right," responded Overland Red, grinning.
"Didn't know I was a pote, did you? Now if I was a doc, I'd give you a
shot in the arm that would put you to sleep. Seein' I ain't, it's coffee
for yours."

"Do you think they will follow us?" Winthrop asked presently.

"As sure as snakes," said Overland. "And this here water-hole is the
first place they'll strike for. They'll wait till mornin' to find our
trail."

"When they do find it?"

"I'll show 'em a Mexican trick with a hole in it. You go to sleep,
pardner."

The moon rolled down to the rim of the world. The infinitesimal
mountain peaks rose slowly along the lower edge of the flat silver
shield, black and growing bolder in outline and size as they blotted
half, three quarters, finally all of the burnished radiance. Then along