"I don' know where they hid the stuff. They didn't tell me."

"Sounds reasonable, and you in with them on the deal," said Sanders.
"Well, you're in hard luck. We don't give two hoots for you, anyhow, but
we decided to take you in to town with us if you came through clean.
If not--" He shrugged his shoulders and glanced up at the branch above.

Miller swallowed a lump in his throat. "You wouldn't treat me thataway,
Mr. Sanders. I'm gittin' to be an old man now. I done wrong, but I'm sure
right sorry," he whimpered.

The eyes of the man who had spent years in prison at Cañon City were hard
as jade. The fat man read a day of judgment in his stern and somber face.

"I'll tell!" The crook broke down, clammy beads of perspiration all over
his pallid face. "I'll tell you right where it's at. In the lean-to of
the shack. Southwest corner. Buried in a gunnysack."

They rode back across the valley to the cabin. Miller pointed out the
spot where the stolen treasure was cached. With an old axe as a spade
Dave dug away the dirt till he came to a bit of sacking. Crawford scooped
out the loose earth with his gauntlet and dragged out a gunnysack. Inside
it were a number of canvas bags showing the broken wax seals of the
express company. These contained gold pieces apparently fresh from the
mint.

A hurried sum in arithmetic showed that approximately all the gold taken
from the stage must be here. Dave packed it on the back of his saddle
while Crawford penciled a note to leave in the cache in place of the
money.

The note said:

This is no safe place to leave seventeen thousand dollars, Dug. I'm
taking it to town to put in the bank. If you want to make inquiries about
it, come in and we'll talk it over, you and me _and Applegate_.

EMERSON CRAWFORD

Five minutes later the three men were once more riding rapidly across the
valley toward the summit of the divide. The loop of Crawford's lariat
still encircled the gross neck of the convict.

CHAPTER XXVI

DAVE ACCEPTS AN INVITATION

Crawford and Dave, with their prisoner, lay out in the chaparral for an
hour, then made their way back to Malapi by a wide circuit. They did not
want to meet Shorty and Doble, for that would result in a pitched battle.
They preferred rather to make a report to the sheriff and let him attempt
the arrest of the bandits.

Reluctantly, under the pressure of much prodding, Miller repeated his
story to Sheriff Applegate. Under the circumstances he was not sorry that
he was to be returned to the penitentiary, for he recognized that his
life at large would not be safe so long as Shorty and Doble were ranging
the hills. Both of them were "bad men," in the usual Western acceptance
of the term, and an accomplice who betrayed them would meet short shrift
at their hands.

The sheriff gave Crawford a receipt for the gold after they had counted
it and found none missing.

The old cattleman rose from the table and reached for his hat.

"Come on, son," he said to Dave. "I'll say we've done a good day's work.
Both of us were under a cloud. Now we're clear. We're goin' up to the
house to have some supper. Applegate, you'll get both of the confessions
of Miller fixed up, won't you? I'll want the one about George Doble's
death to take with me to the Governor of Colorado. I'm takin' the train
to-morrow."

"I'll have the district attorney fix up the papers," the sheriff
promised.

Emerson Crawford hooked an arm under the elbow of Sanders and left the
office.

"I'm wonderin' about one thing, boy," he said. "Did Miller kill George
Doble accidentally or on purpose?"

"I'm wondering about that myself. You remember that Denver bartender said
they had been quarreling a good deal. They were having a row at the very
time when I met them at the gate of the corral. It's a ten-to-one shot
that Miller took the chance to plug Doble and make me pay for it."

"Looks likely, but we'll never know. Son, you've had a rotten deal handed
you."

The younger man's eyes were hard as steel. He clamped his jaw tight, but
he made no comment.

"Nobody can give you back the years of yore life you've lost," the
cattleman went on. "But we'll get yore record straightened out, anyhow,
so that won't stand against you. I know one li'l' girl will be tickled to
hear the news. Joy always has stuck out that you were treated shameful."

"I reckon I'll not go up to your house to-night," Dave said in a
carefully modulated voice. "I'm dirty and unshaven, and anyhow I'd rather
not go to-night."

Crawford refused to accept this excuse. "No, sir. You're comin' with me,
by gum! I got soap and water and a razor up at the house, if that's
what's troublin' you. We've had a big day and I'm goin' to celebrate by
talkin' it all over again. Dad gum my hide, think of it, you solemn-faced
old owl! This time last night I was 'most a pauper and you sure were.
Both of us were under the charge of havin' killed a man each. To-night
we're rich as that fellow Crocus; anyhow I am, an' you're haided that
way. And both of us have cleared our names to boot. Ain't you got any red
blood in that big body of yore's?"

"I'll drop in to the Delmonico and get a bite, then ride out to the
Jackpot."

"You will not!" protested the cattleman. "Looky here, Dave. It's a
showdown. Have you got anything against me?"

Dave met him eye to eye. "Not a thing, Mr. Crawford. No man ever had a
better friend."

"Anything against Joyce?"

"No, sir."

"Don't hate my boy Keith, do you?"

"How could I?"

"Then what in hell ails you? You're not parlor-shy, are you? Say the
word, and we'll eat in the kitchen," grinned Crawford.

"I'm not a society man," said Sanders lamely.

He could not explain that the shadow of the prison walls was a barrier he
could not cross; that they rose to bar him from all the joy and happiness
of young life.

"Who in Mexico's talkin' about society? I said come up and eat supper
with me and Joy and Keith. If you don't come, I'm goin' to be good and
sore. I'll not stand for it, you darned old killjoy."

"I'll go," answered the invited man.

He went, not because he wanted to go, but because he could not escape
without being an ungracious boor.

Joyce flew to meet her father, eyes eager, hands swift to caress his
rough face and wrinkled coat. She bubbled with joy at his return, and
when he told her that his news was of the best the long lashes of the
brown eyes misted with tears. The young man in the background was struck
anew by the matronly tenderness of her relation to her father. She
hovered about him as a mother does about her son returned from the wars.

"I've brought company for supper, honey," Emerson told her.

She gave Dave her hand, flushed and smiling. "I've been so worried," she
explained. "It's fine to know the news is good. I'll want to hear it
all."

"We've got the stolen money back, Joy," exploded her father. "We know who
took it--Dug Doble and that cowboy Shorty and Miller."

"But I thought Miller--"

"He escaped. We caught him and brought him back to town with us."
Crawford seized the girl by the shoulders. He was as keen as a boy to
share his pleasure. "And Joy--better news yet. Miller confessed he
killed George Doble. Dave didn't do it at all."

Joyce came to the young man impulsively, hand outstretched. She was
glowing with delight, eyes kind and warm and glad. "That's the best yet.
Oh, Mr. Sanders, isn't it good?"

His impassive face gave no betrayal of any happiness he might feel in his
vindication. Indeed, something almost sardonic in its expression chilled
her enthusiasm. More than the passing of years separated them from the
days when he had shyly but gayly wiped dishes for her in the kitchen,
when he had worshiped her with a boy's uncritical adoration.

Sanders knew it better than she, and cursed the habit of repression that
had become a part of him in his prison days. He wanted to give her happy
smile for smile. But he could not do it. All that was young and ardent
and eager in him was dead. He could not let himself go. Even when
emotions flooded his heart, no evidence of it reached his chill eyes and
set face.

After he had come back from shaving, he watched her flit about the room
while she set the table. She was the competent young mistress of the
house. With grave young authority she moved, slenderly graceful. He
knew her mind was with the cook in the kitchen, but she found time to
order Keith crisply to wash his face and hands, time to gather flowers
for the center of the table from the front yard and to keep up a running
fire of talk with him and her father. More of the woman than in the days
when he had known her, perhaps less of the carefree maiden, she was
essentially unchanged, was what he might confidently have expected her to
be. Emerson Crawford was the same bluff, hearty Westerner, a friend to
tie to in sunshine and in storm. Even little Keith, just escaping from
his baby ways, had the same tricks and mannerisms. Nothing was different
except himself. He had become arid and hard and bitter, he told himself
regretfully.

Keith was his slave, a faithful admirer whose eyes fed upon his hero
steadily. He had heard the story of this young man's deeds discussed
until Dave had come to take on almost mythical proportions.

He asked a question in an awed voice. "How did you get this Miller to
confess?"

The guest exchanged a glance with the host. "We had a talk with him."

"Did you--?"

"Oh, no! We just asked him if he didn't want to tell us all about it, and
it seems he did."

"Maybe you touched his better feelin's," suggested Keith, with memories
of an hour in Sunday School when his teacher had made a vain appeal to
his.

His father laughed. "Maybe we did. I noticed he was near blubberin'. I
expect it's 'Adios, Señor Miller.' He's got two years more to serve, and
after that he'll have another nice long term to serve for robbin' the
stage. All I wish is we'd done the job more thorough and sent some
friends of his along with him. Well, that's up to Applegate."

"I'm glad it is," said Joyce emphatically.

"Any news to-day from Jackpot Number Three?" asked the president of that
company.

"Bob Hart sent in to get some supplies and had a note left for me at the
post-office," Miss Joyce mentioned, a trifle annoyed at herself because a
blush insisted on flowing into her cheeks. "He says it's the biggest
thing he ever saw, but it's going to be awf'ly hard to control. Where
_is_ that note? I must have put it somewhere."

Emerson's eyes flickered mischief. "Oh, well, never mind about the note.
That's private property, I reckon."

"I'm sure if I can find it--"

"I'll bet my boots you cayn't, though," he teased.

"Dad! What will Mr. Sanders think? You know that's nonsense. Bob wrote
because I asked him to let me know."

"Sure. Why wouldn't the secretary and field superintendent of the Jackpot
Company keep the daughter of the president informed? I'll have it read
into the minutes of our next board meetin' that it's in his duties to
keep you posted."

"Oh, well, if you want to talk foolishness," she pouted.

"There's somethin' else I'm goin' to have put into the minutes of the
next meetin', Dave," Crawford went on. "And that's yore election as
treasurer of the company. I want officers around me that I can trust,
son."

"I don't know anything about finance or about bookkeeping," Dave said.

"You'll learn. We'll have a bookkeeper, of course. I want some one for
treasurer that's level-haided and knows how to make a quick turn when he
has to, some one that uses the gray stuff in his cocoanut. We'll fix a
salary when we get goin'. You and Bob are goin' to have the active
management of this concern. Cattle's my line, an' I aim to stick to it.
Him and you can talk it over and fix yore duties so's they won't
conflict. Burns, of course, will run the actual drillin'. He's an A1
man. Don't let him go."

Dave was profoundly touched. No man could be kinder to his own son, could
show more confidence in him, than Emerson Crawford was to one who had no
claims upon him.

He murmured a dry "Thank you"; then, feeling this to be inadequate,
added, "I'll try to see you don't regret this."

The cattleman was a shrewd judge of men. His action now was not based
solely upon humanitarian motives. Here was a keen man, quick-witted,
steady, and wholly to be trusted, one certain to push himself to the
front. It was good business to make it worth his while to stick to
Crawford's enterprises. He said as much to Dave bluntly.

"And you ain't in for any easy time either," he added. "We've got oil.
We're flooded with it, so I hear. Seve-re-al thousand dollars' worth a
day is runnin' off and seepin' into the desert. Bob Hart and Jed Burns
have got the job of puttin' the lid on the pot, but when they do that
you've got a bigger job. Looks bigger to me, anyhow. You've got to get
rid of that oil--find a market for it, sell it, ship it away to make room
for more. Get busy, son." Crawford waved his hand after the manner of one
who has shifted a responsibility and does not expect to worry about it.
"Moreover an' likewise, we're shy of money to keep operatin' until we can
sell the stuff. You'll have to raise scads of mazuma, son. In this oil
game dollars sure have got wings. No matter how tight yore pockets are
buttoned, they fly right out."

"I doubt whether you've chosen the right man," the ex-cowpuncher said,
smiling faintly. "The most I ever borrowed in my life was twenty-five
dollars."

"You borrow twenty-five thousand the same way, only it's easier if the
luck's breakin' right," the cattleman assured him cheerfully. "The
easiest thing in the world to get hold of is money--when you've already
got lots of it."

"The trouble is we haven't."

"Well, you'll have to learn to look like you knew where it grew on
bushes," Emerson told him, grinning.

"I can see you've chosen me for a nice lazy job."

"Anything but that, son. You don't want to make any mistake about this
thing. Brad Steelman's goin' to fight like a son-of-a-gun. He'll strike
at our credit and at our market and at our means of transportation. He'll
fight twenty-four hours of the day, and he's the slickest, crookedest
gray wolf that ever skulked over the range."

The foreman of the D Bar Lazy R came in after supper for a conference
with his boss. He and Crawford got their heads together in the
sitting-room and the young people gravitated out to the porch. Joyce
pressed Dave into service to help her water the roses, and Keith hung
around in order to be near Dave. Occasionally he asked questions
irrelevant to the conversation. These were embarrassing or not as it
happened.

Joyce delivered a little lecture on the culture of roses, not because she
considered herself an authority, but because her guest's conversation was
mostly of the monosyllabic order. He was not awkward or self-conscious;
rather a man given to silence.

"Say, Mr. Sanders, how does it feel to be wounded?" Keith blurted out.

"You mustn't ask personal questions, Keith," his sister told him.

"Oh! Well, I already ast this one?" the boy suggested ingenuously.

"Don't know, Keith," answered the young man. "I never was really wounded.
If you mean this scratch in the shoulder, I hardly felt it at all till
afterward."

"Golly! I'll bet I wouldn't tackle a feller shootin' at me the way that
Miller was at you," the youngster commented in naïve admiration.

"Bedtime for li'l boys, Keith," his sister reminded him.

"Oh, lemme stay up a while longer," he begged.

Joyce was firm. She had schooled her impulses to resist the little
fellow's blandishments, but Dave noticed that she was affectionate even
in her refusal.

"I'll come up and say good-night after a while, Keithie," she promised as
she kissed him.

To the gaunt-faced man watching them she was the symbol of all most to be
desired in woman. She embodied youth, health, charm. She was life's
springtime, its promise of fulfillment; yet already an immaculate Madonna
in the beauty of her generous soul. He was young enough in his knowledge
of her sex to be unaware that nature often gives soft trout-pool eyes of
tenderness to coquettes and wonderful hair with the lights and shadows of
an autumn-painted valley to giggling fools. Joyce was neither coquette
nor fool. She was essential woman in the making, with all the faults and
fine brave impulses of her years. Unconsciously, perhaps, she was showing
her best side to her guest, as maidens have done to men since Eve first
smiled on Adam.

Dave had closed his heart to love. It was to have no room in his life. To
his morbid sensibilities the shadow of the prison walls still stretched
between him and Joyce. It did not matter that he was innocent, that all
his small world would soon know of his vindication. The fact stood. For
years he had been shut away from men, a leprous thing labeled "Unclean!"
He had dwelt in a place of furtive whisperings, of sinister sounds. His
nostrils had inhaled the odor of musty clothes and steamed food. His
fingers had touched moisture sweating through the walls, and in his small
dark cell he had hunted graybacks. The hopeless squalor of it at times
had driven him almost mad. As he saw it now, his guilt was of minor
importance. If he had not fired the shot that killed George Doble, that
was merely a chance detail. What counted against him was that his soul
was marked with the taint of the criminal through association and habit
of thought. He could reason with this feeling and temporarily destroy it.
He could drag it into the light and laugh it away. But subconsciously it
persisted as a horror from which he could not escape. A man cannot touch
pitch, even against his own will, and not be defiled.

"You're Keith's hero, you know," the girl told Dave, her face bubbling
to unexpected mirth. "He tries to walk and talk like you. He asks the
queerest questions. To-day I caught him diving at a pillow on the bed.
He was making-believe to be you when you were shot."

Her nearness in the soft, shadowy night shook his self-control. The music
of her voice with its drawling intonations played on his heartstrings.

"Think I'll go now," he said abruptly.

"You must come again," she told him. "Keith wants you to teach him how to
rope. You won't mind, will you?"

The long lashes lifted innocently from the soft deep eyes, which rested
in his for a moment and set clamoring a disturbance in his blood.

"I'll be right busy," he said awkwardly, bluntly.

She drew back within herself. "I'd forgotten how busy you are, Mr.
Sanders. Of course we mustn't impose on you," she said, cold and stiff as
only offended youth can be.

Striding into the night, Dave cursed the fate that had made him what he
was. He had hurt her boorishly by his curt refusal of her friendship. Yet
the heart inside him was a wild river of love.

CHAPTER XXVII

AT THE JACKPOT

The day lasted twenty-four hours in Malapi. As Sanders walked along
Junipero Street, on his way to the downtown corral from Crawford's house,
saloons and gambling-houses advertised their attractions candidly and
noisily. They seemed bursting with raw and vehement life. The strains of
fiddles and the sound of shuffling feet were pierced occasionally by the
whoop of a drunken reveler. Once there rang out the high notes of a
woman's hysterical laughter. Cowponies and packed burros drooped
listlessly at the hitching-rack. Even loaded wagons were waiting to take
the road as soon as the drivers could tear themselves away from the
attractions of keno and a last drink.

Junipero Street was not the usual crooked lane that serves as the main
thoroughfare for business in a mining town. For Malapi had been a cowtown
before the discovery of oil. It lay on the wide prairie and not in a
gulch. The street was broad and dusty, flanked by false-front stores,
flat-roofed adobes, and corrugated iron buildings imported hastily since
the first boom.

At the Stag Horn corral Dave hired a horse and saddled for a night ride.
On his way to the Jackpot he passed a dozen outfits headed for the new
strike. They were hauling supplies of food, tools, timbers, and machinery
to the oil camp. Out of the night a mule skinner shouted a profane and
drunken greeting to him. A Mexican with a burro train gave him a
low-voiced "Buenos noches, señor."

A fine mist of oil began to spray him when he was still a mile away from
the well. It grew denser as he came nearer. He found Bob Hart, in
oilskins and rubber boots, bossing a gang of scrapers, giving directions
to a second one building a dam across a draw, and supervising a third
group engaged in siphoning crude oil from one sump to another. From head
to foot Hart and his assistants were wet to the skin with the black crude
oil.

"'Lo, Dave! One sure-enough little spouter!" Bob shouted cheerfully.
"Number Three's sure a-hittin' her up. She's no cougher--stays right
steady on the job. Bet I've wallowed in a million barrels of the stuff
since mo'nin'." He waded through a viscid pool to Dave and asked a
question in a low voice. "What's the good word?"

"We had a little luck," admitted Sanders, then plumped out his budget of
news. "Got the express money back, captured one of the robbers, forced a
confession out of him, and left him with the sheriff."

Bob did an Indian war dance in hip boots. "You're the darndest go-getter
ever I did see. Tell it to me, you ornery ol' scalawag."

His friend told the story of the day so far as it related to the robbery.

"I could 'a' told you Miller would weaken when you had the rope round his
soft neck. Shorty would 'a' gone through and told you-all where to get
off at."

"Yes. Miller's yellow. He didn't quit with the robbery, Bob. Must have
been scared bad, I reckon. He admitted that he killed George Doble--by
accident, he claimed. Says Doble ran in front of him while he was
shooting at me."

"Have you got that down on paper?" demanded Hart.

"Yes."

Bob caught his friend's hand. "I reckon the long lane has turned for you,
old socks. I can't tell you how damn glad I am. Doble needed killin', but
I'd rather you hadn't done it."

The other man made no comment on this phase of the situation. "This
brings Dug Doble out into the open at last. He'll come pretty near going
to the pen for this."

"I can't see Applegate arrestin' him. He'll fight, Dug will. My notion is
he'll take to the hills and throw off all pretense. If he does he'll be
the worst killer ever was known in this part of the country. You an'
Crawford want to look out for him, Dave."

"Crawford says he wants me to be treasurer of the company, Bob. You and I
are to manage it, he says, with Burns doing the drilling."

"Tha's great. He told me he was gonna ask you. Betcha we make the ol'
Jackpot hum."

"D' you ever hear of a man land poor, Bob?"

"Sure have."

"Well, right now we're oil poor. According to what the old man says
there's no cash in the treasury and we've got bills that have to be paid.
You know that ten thousand he paid in to the bank to satisfy the note. He
borrowed it from a friend who took it out of a trust fund to loan it to
him. He didn't tell me who the man is, but he said his friend would get
into trouble a-plenty if it's found out before he replaces the money.
Then we've got to keep our labor bills paid right up. Some of the other
accounts can wait."

"Can't we borrow money on this gusher?"

"We'll have to do that. Trouble is that oil isn't a marketable asset
until it reaches a refinery. We can sell stock, of course, but we don't
want to do much of that unless we're forced to it. Our play is to keep
control and not let any other interest in to oust us. It's going to take
some scratching."

"Looks like," agreed Bob. "Any use tryin' the bank here?"

"I'll try it, but we'll not accept any call loan. They say Steelman owns
the bank. He won't let us have money unless there's some nigger in the
woodpile. I'll probably have to try Denver."

"That'll take time."

"Yes. And time's one thing we haven't got any too much of. Whoever
underwrites this for us will send an expert back with me and will wait
for his report before making a loan. We'll have to talk it over with
Crawford and find out how much treasury stock we'll have to sell locally
to keep the business going till I make a raise."

"You and the old man decide that, Dave. I can't get away from here till
we get Number Three roped and muzzled. I'll vote for whatever you two
say."

An hour later Dave rode back to town.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DAVE MEETS A FINANCIER

On more careful consideration Crawford and Sanders decided against trying
to float the Jackpot with local money except by the sale of enough stock
to keep going until the company's affairs could be put on a substantial
basis. To apply to the Malapi bank for a loan would be to expose their
financial condition to Steelman, and it was certain that he would permit
no accommodation except upon terms that would make it possible to wreck
the company.

"I'm takin' the train for Denver to-morrow, Dave," the older man said.
"You stay here for two-three days and sell enough stock to keep us off
the rocks, then you hot-foot it for Denver too. By the time you get there
I'll have it all fixed up with the Governor about a pardon."

Dave found no difficulty in disposing of a limited amount of stock in
Malapi at a good price. This done, he took the stage for the junction and
followed Crawford to Denver. An unobtrusive little man with large white
teeth showing stood in line behind him at the ticket window. His
destination also, it appeared, was the Colorado capital.

If Dave had been a believer in fairy tales he might have thought himself
the hero of one. A few days earlier he had come to Malapi on this same
train, in a day coach, poorly dressed, with no job and no prospects in
life. He had been poor, discredited, a convict on parole. Now he wore
good clothes, traveled in a Pullman, ate in the diner, was a man of
consequence, and, at least on paper, was on the road to wealth. He would
put up at the Albany instead of a cheap rooming-house, and he would meet
on legitimate business some of the big financial men of the West. The
thing was hardly thinkable, yet a turn of the wheel of fortune had done
it for him in an hour.

The position in which Sanders found himself was possible only because
Crawford was himself a financial babe in the woods. He had borrowed large
sums of money often, but always from men who trusted him and held his
word as better security than collateral. The cattleman was of the
outdoors type to whom the letter of the law means little. A debt was a
debt, and a piece of paper with his name on it did not make payment any
more obligatory. If he had known more about capital and its methods of
finding an outlet, he would never have sent so unsophisticated a man as
Dave Sanders on such a mission.

For Dave, too, was a child in the business world. He knew nothing of
the inside deals by which industrial enterprises are underwritten and
corporations managed. It was, he supposed, sufficient for his purpose
that the company for which he wanted backing was sure to pay large
dividends when properly put on its feet.

But Dave had assets of value even for such a task. He had a single-track
mind. He was determined even to obstinacy. He thought straight, and so
directly that he could walk through subtleties without knowing they
existed.

When he reached Denver he discovered that Crawford had followed the
Governor to the western part of the State, where that official had gone
to open a sectional fair. Sanders had no credentials except a letter of
introduction to the manager of the stockyards.

"What can I do for you?" asked that gentleman. He was quite willing to
exert himself moderately as a favor to Emerson Crawford, vice-president
of the American Live Stock Association.

"I want to meet Horace Graham."

"I can give you a note of introduction to him. You'll probably have to
get an appointment with him through his secretary. He's a tremendously
busy man."

Dave's talk with the great man's secretary over the telephone was not
satisfactory. Mr. Graham, he learned, had every moment full for the next
two days, after which he would leave for a business trip to the East.

There were other wealthy men in Denver who might be induced to finance
the Jackpot, but Dave intended to see Graham first. The big railroad
builder was a fighter. He was hammering through, in spite of heavy
opposition from trans-continental lines, a short cut across the Rocky
Mountains from Denver. He was a pioneer, one who would take a chance
on a good thing in the plunging, Western way. In his rugged, clean-cut
character was much that appealed to the managers of the Jackpot.

Sanders called at the financier's office and sent in his card by the
youthful Cerberus who kept watch at the gate. The card got no farther
than the great man's private secretary.

After a wait of more than an hour Dave made overtures to the boy. A
dollar passed from him to the youth and established a friendly relation.

"What's the best way to reach Mr. Graham, son? I've got important
business that won't wait."

"Dunno. He's awful busy. You ain't got no appointment."

"Can you get a note to him? I've got a five-dollar bill for you if you
can."

"I'll take a whirl at it. Jus' 'fore he goes to lunch."

Dave penciled a line on a card.

If you are not too busy to make $100,000 to-day you had better see me.

He signed his name.

Ten minutes later the office boy caught Graham as he rose to leave for
lunch. The big man read the note.

"What kind of looking fellow is he?" he asked the boy.

"Kinda solemn-lookin' guy, sir." The boy remembered the dollar received
on account and the five dollars on the horizon. "Big, straight-standin',
honest fellow. From Arizona or Texas, mebbe. Looked good to me."

The financier frowned down at the note in doubt, twisting it in his
fingers. A dozen times a week his privacy was assailed by some crazy
inventor or crook promoter. He remembered that he had had a letter from
some one about this man. Something of strength in the chirography of the
note in his hand and something of simple directness in the wording
decided him to give an interview.

"Show him in," he said abruptly, and while he waited in the office rated
himself for his folly in wasting time.

Underneath bushy brows steel-gray eyes took Dave in shrewdly.

"Well, what is it?" snapped the millionaire.

"The new gusher in the Malapi pool," answered Sanders at once, and his
gaze was as steady as that of the big state-builder.

"You represent the parties that own it?"

"Yes."

"And you want?"

"Financial backing to put it on its feet until we can market the
product."

"Why don't you work through your local bank?"

"Another oil man, an enemy of our company, controls the Malapi bank."

Graham fired question after question at him, crisply, abruptly, and
Sanders gave him back straight, short answers.

"Sit down," ordered the railroad builder, resuming his own seat. "Tell me
the whole story of the company."

Dave told it, and in the telling he found it necessary to sketch the
Crawford-Steelman feud. He brought himself into the narrative as little
as possible, but the grizzled millionaire drew enough from him to set
Graham's eye to sparkling.

"Come back to-morrow at noon," decided the great man. "I'll let you know
my decision then."

The young man knew he was dismissed, but he left the office elated.
Graham had been favorably impressed. He liked the proposition, believed
in its legitimacy and its possibilities. Dave felt sure he would send an
expert to Malapi with him to report on it as an investment. If so, he
would almost certainly agree to put money in it.

A man with prominent white front teeth had followed Dave to the office of
Horace Graham, had seen him enter, and later had seen him come out with a
look on his face that told of victory. The man tried to get admittance to
the financier and failed. He went back to his hotel and wrote a short
letter which he signed with a fictitious name. This he sent by special
delivery to Graham. The letter was brief and to the point. It said:

Don't do business with David Sanders without investigating his record. He
is a horsethief and a convicted murderer. Some months ago he was paroled
from the penitentiary at Cañon City and since then has been in several
shooting scrapes. He was accused of robbing a stage and murdering the
driver less than a week ago.

Graham read the letter and called in his private secretary. "McMurray,
get Cañon City on the 'phone and find out if a man called David Sanders
was released from the penitentiary there lately. If so, what was he
in for? Describe the man to the warden: under twenty-five, tall, straight
as an Indian, strongly built, looks at you level and steady, brown hair,
steel-blue eyes. Do it now."

Before he left the office that afternoon Graham had before him a
typewritten memorandum from his secretary covering the case of David
Sanders.

CHAPTER XXIX

THREE IN CONSULTATION

The grizzled railroad builder fixed Sanders with an eye that had read
into the soul of many a shirker and many a dishonest schemer.

"How long have you been with the Jackpot Company?"

"Not long. Only a few days."

"How much stock do you own?"

"Ten thousand shares."

"How did you get it?"

"It was voted me by the directors for saving Jackpot Number Three from an
attack of Steelman's men."

Graham's gaze bored into the eyes of his caller. He waited just a moment
to give his question full emphasis. "Mr. Sanders, what were you doing six
months ago?"

"I was serving time in the penitentiary," came the immediate quiet
retort.

"What for?"

"For manslaughter."

"You didn't tell me this yesterday."

"No. It has no bearing on the value of the proposition I submitted to
you, and I thought it might prejudice you against it."

"Have you been in any trouble since you left prison?"

Dave hesitated. The blazer of railroad trails rapped out a sharp,
explanatory question. "Any shooting scrapes?"

"A man shot at me in Malapi. I was unarmed."

"That all?"

"Another man fired at me out at the Jackpot. I was unarmed then."

"Were you accused of holding up a stage, robbing it, and killing the
driver?"

"No. I was twenty miles away at the time of the hold-up and had evidence
to prove it."

"Then you were mentioned in connection with the robbery?"

"If so, only by my enemies. One of the robbers was captured and made a
full confession. He showed where the stolen gold was cached and it was
recovered."

The great man looked with chilly eyes at the young fellow standing in
front of him. He had a sense of having been tricked and imposed upon.

"I have decided not to accept your proposition to cooperate with you in
financing the Jackpot Company, Mr. Sanders." Horace Graham pressed an
electric button and a clerk appeared. "Show this gentleman out, Hervey."

But Sanders stood his ground. Nobody could have guessed from his stolid
imperturbability how much he was depressed at this unexpected failure.

"Do I understand that you are declining this loan because I am connected
with it, Mr. Graham?"

"I do not give a reason, sir. The loan does not appeal to me," the
railroad builder said with chill finality.

"It appealed to you yesterday," persisted Dave.

"But not to-day. Hervey, I will see Mr. Gates at once. Tell McMurray so."

Reluctantly Dave followed the clerk out of the room. He had been
checkmated, but he did not know how. In some way Steelman had got to the
financier with this story that had damned the project. The new treasurer
of the Jackpot Company was much distressed. If his connection with the
company was going to have this effect, he must resign at once.

He walked back to the hotel, and in the corridor of the Albany met a big
bluff cattleman the memory of whose kindness leaped across the years to
warm his heart.

"You don't remember me, Mr. West?"

The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle looked at the young man and
gave a little whoop. "Damn my skin, if it ain't the boy who bluffed a
whole railroad system into lettin' him reload stock for me!" He hooked an
arm under Dave's and led him straight to the bar. "Where you been? What
you doin'? Why n't you come to me soon as you ... got out of a job?
What'll you have, boy?"

Dave named ginger ale. They lifted glasses.

"How?"

"How?"

"Now you tell me all about it," said West presently, leading the way to a
lounge seat in the mezzanine gallery.

Sanders answered at first in monosyllables, but presently he found
himself telling the story of his failure to enlist Horace Graham in the
Jackpot property as a backer.

The cattleman began to rumple his hair, just as he had done years ago in
moments of excitement.

"Wish I'd known, boy. I've been acquainted with Horace Graham ever since
he ran a hardware store on Larimer Street, and that's 'most thirty years
ago. I'd 'a' gone with you to see him. Maybe I can see him now."

"You can't change the facts, Mr. West. When he knew I was a convict he
threw the whole thing overboard."

The voice of a page in the lobby rose in sing-song. "Mister Sa-a-anders.
Mis-ter Sa-a-a-anders."

Dave stepped to the railing and called down. "I'm Mr. Sanders. Who wants
me?"

A man near the desk waved a paper and shouted: "Hello, Dave! News for
you, son. I'll come up." The speaker was Crawford.

He shook hands with Dave and with West while he ejaculated his news in
jets. "I got it, son. Got it right here. Came back with the Governor this
mo'nin'. Called together Pardon Board. Here 't is. Clean bill of health,
son. Resolutions of regret for miscarriage of justice. Big story front
page's afternoon's papers."

Dave smiled sardonically. "You're just a few hours late, Mr. Crawford.
Graham turned us down cold this morning because I'm a penitentiary bird."

"He did?" Crawford began to boil inside. "Well, he can go right plumb to
Yuma. Anybody so small as that--"

"Hold yore hawsses, Em," said West, smiling.

"Graham didn't know the facts. If you was a capitalist an' thinkin' of
loanin' big money to a man you found out had been in prison for
manslaughter and that he had since been accused of robbin' a stage an'
killing the driver--"

"He was in a hurry," explained Dave. "Going East to-morrow. Some one must
have got at him after I saw him. He'd made up his mind when I went back
to-day."

"Well, Horace Graham ain't one of those who won't change his views for
heaven, hell, and high water. All we've got to do is to get to him and
make him see the light," said West.

"When are we going to do all that?" asked Sanders. "He's busy every
minute of the time till he starts. He won't give us an appointment."

"He'll see me. We're old friends," predicted West confidently.

Crestfallen, he met the two officers of the Jackpot Company three hours
later. "Couldn't get to him. Sent word out he was sorry, an' how was Mrs.
West an' the children, but he was in conference an' couldn't break away."

Dave nodded. He had expected this and prepared for it. "I've found out
he's going on the eight o'clock flyer. You going to be busy to-morrow,
Mr. West?"

"No. I got business at the stockyards, but I can put it off."

"Then I'll get tickets for Omaha on the flyer. Graham will take his
private car. We'll break in and put this up to him. He was friendly to
our proposition before he got the wrong slant on it. If he's open-minded,
as Mr. West says he is--"

Crawford slapped an open hand on his thigh. "Say, you get the _best_
ideas, son. We'll do just that."

"I'll check up and make sure Graham's going on the flyer," said the young
man. "If we fall down we'll lose only a day. Come back when we meet the
night train. I reckon we won't have to get tickets clear through to
Omaha."

"Fine and dandy," agreed West. "We'll sure see Graham if we have to bust
the door of his car."

CHAPTER XXX

ON THE FLYER

West, his friends not in evidence, artfully waylaid Graham on his way to
the private car.

"Hello, Henry B. Sorry I couldn't see you yesterday," the railroad
builder told West as they shook hands. "You taking this tram?"

"Yes, sir. Got business takes me East."

"Drop in to see me some time this morning. Say about noon. You'll have
lunch with me."

"Suits me. About noon, then," agreed West.

The conspirators modified their plans to meet a new strategic situation.
West was still of opinion that he had better use his card of entry to get
his friends into the railroad builder's car, but he yielded to Dave's
view that it would be wiser for the cattleman to pave the way at
luncheon.

Graham's secretary ate lunch with the two old-timers and the conversation
threatened to get away from West and hover about financial conditions in
New York. The cattleman brought it by awkward main force to the subject
he had in mind.

"Say, Horace, I wanta talk with you about a proposition that's on my
chest," he broke out.

Graham helped himself to a lamb chop. "Sail in, Henry B. You've got me at
your mercy."

At the first mention of the Jackpot gusher the financier raised a
prohibitive hand. "I've disposed of that matter. No use reopening it."

But West stuck to his guns. "I ain't aimin' to try to change yore mind on
a matter of business, Horace. If you'll tell me that you turned down the
proposition because it didn't look to you like there was money in it,
I'll curl right up and not say another word."

"It doesn't matter why I turned it down. I had my reasons."

"It matters if you're doin' an injustice to one of the finest young
fellows I know," insisted the New Mexican stanchly.

"Meaning the convict?"

"Call him that if you've a mind to. The Governor pardoned him yesterday
because another man confessed he did the killin' for which Dave was
convicted. The boy was railroaded through on false evidence."

The railroad builder was a fair-minded man. He did not want to be unjust
to any one. At the same time he was not one to jump easily from one view
to another.

"I noticed something in the papers about a pardon, but I didn't know it
was our young oil promoter. There are other rumors about him too. A stage
robbery, for instance, and a murder with it."

"He and Em Crawford ran down the robbers and got the money back. One of
the robbers confessed. Dave hadn't a thing to do with the hold-up.
There's a bad gang down in that country. Crawford and Sanders have been
fightin' 'em, so naturally they tell lies about 'em."

"Did you say this Sanders ran down one of the robbers?"

"Yes."

"He didn't tell me that," said Graham thoughtfully. "I liked the young
fellow when I first saw him. He looks quiet and strong; a self-reliant
fellow would be my guess."

"You bet he is." West laughed reminiscently. "Lemme tell you how I first
met him." He told the story of how Dave had handled the stock shipment
for him years before.

Horace Graham nodded shrewdly. "Exactly the way I had him sized up till
I began investigating him. Well, let's hear the rest. What more do you
know about him?"

The Albuquerque man told the other of Dave's conviction, of how he had
educated himself in the penitentiary, of his return home and subsequent
adventures there.

"There's a man back there in the Pullman knows him like he was his
own son, a straight man, none better in this Western country," West
concluded.

"Who is he?"

"Emerson Crawford of the D Bar Lazy R ranch."

"I've heard of him. He's in this Jackpot company too, isn't he?"

"He's president of it. If he says the company's right, then it's right."

"Bring him in to me."

West reported to his friends, a large smile on his wrinkled face. "I got
him goin' south, boys. Come along, Em, it's up to you now."

The big financier took one comprehensive look at Emerson Crawford and did
not need any letter of recommendation. A vigorous honesty spoke in the
strong hand-grip, the genial smile, the level, steady eyes.

"Tell me about this young desperado you gentlemen are trying to saw off
on me," Graham directed, meeting the smile with another and offering
cigars to his guests.

Crawford told him. He began with the story of the time Sanders and
Hart had saved him from the house of his enemy into which he had been
betrayed. He related how the boy had pursued the men who stole his pinto
and the reasoning which had led him to take it without process of law. He
told the true story of the killing, of the young fellow's conviction, of
his attempt to hold a job in Denver without concealing his past, and of
his busy week since returning to Malapi.

"All I've got to say is that I hope my boy will grow up to be as good
a man as Dave Sanders," the cattleman finished, and he turned over to
Graham a copy of the findings of the Pardon Board, of the pardon, and of
the newspapers containing an account of the affair with a review of the
causes that had led to the miscarriage of justice.

"Now about your Jackpot Company. What do you figure as the daily output
of the gusher?" asked Graham.

"Don't know. It's a whale of a well. Seems to have tapped a great lake of
oil half a mile underground. My driller Burns figures it at from twenty
to thirty thousand barrels a day. I cayn't even guess, because I know so
blamed little about oil."

Graham looked out of the window at the rushing landscape and tapped on
the table with his finger-tips absentmindedly. Presently he announced a
decision crisply.

"If you'll leave your papers here I'll look them over and let you know
what I'll do. When I'm ready I'll send McMurray forward to you."

An hour later the secretary announced to the three men in the Pullman the
decision of his chief.

"Mr. Graham has instructed me to tell you gentlemen he'll look into your
proposition. I am wiring an oil expert in Denver to return with you to
Malapi. If his report is favorable, Mr. Graham will cooperate with you
in developing the field."

CHAPTER XXXI

TWO ON THE HILLTOPS

It was the morning after his return. Emerson Crawford helped himself to
another fried egg from the platter and shook his knife at the bright-eyed
girl opposite.

"I tell you, honey, the boy's a wonder," he insisted. "Knows what he
wants and goes right after it. Don't waste any words. Don't beat around
the bush. Don't let any one bluff him out. Graham says if I don't want
him he'll give him a responsible job pronto."

The girl's trim head tilted at her father in a smile of sweet derision.
She was pleased, but she did not intend to say so.

"I believe you're in love with Dave Sanders, Dad. It's about time for me
to be jealous."

Crawford defended himself. "He's had a hard row to hoe, and he's comin'
out fine. I aim to give him every chance in the world to make good. It's
up to us to stand by him."

"If he'll let us." Joyce jumped up and ran round the table to him. They
were alone, Keith having departed with a top to join his playmates. She
sat on the arm of his chair, a straight, slim creature very much alive,
and pressed her face of flushed loveliness against his head. "It won't be
your fault, old duck, if things don't go well with him. You're good--the
best ever--a jim-dandy friend. But he's so--so--Oh, I don't know--stiff
as a poker. Acts as if he doesn't want to be friends, as if we're all
ready to turn against him. He makes me good and tired, Dad. Why can't he
be--human?"

"Now, Joy, you got to remember--"

"--that he was in prison and had an awful time of it. Oh, yes, I remember
all that. He won't let us forget it. It's just like he held us off all
the time and insisted on us not forgetting it. I'd just like to shake the
foolishness out of him." A rueful little laugh welled from her throat at
the thought.

"He cayn't be gay as Bob Hart all at onct. Give him time."

"You're so partial to him you don't see when he's doing wrong. But I see
it. Yesterday he hardly spoke when I met him. Ridiculous. It's all right
for him to hold back and be kinda reserved with outsiders. But with his
friends--you and Bob and old Buck Byington and me--he ought not to shut
himself up in an ice cave. And I'm going to tell him so."

The cattleman's arm slid round her warm young body and drew her close.
She was to him the dearest thing in the world, a never-failing, exquisite
wonder and mystery. Sometimes even now he was amazed that this rare
spirit had found the breath of life through him.

"You wanta remember you're a li'l lady," he reproved. "You wouldn't want
to do anything you'd be sorry for, honeybug."

"I'm not so sure about that," she flushed, amusement rippling her face.
"Someone's got to blow up that young man like a Dutch uncle, and I think
I'm elected. I'll try not to think about being a lady; then I can do my
full duty, Dad. It'll be fun to see how he takes it."

"Now--now," he remonstrated.

"It's all right to be proud," she went on. "I wouldn't want to see him
hold his head any lower. But there's no sense in being so offish that
even his friends have to give him up. And that's what it'll come to if he
acts the way he does. Folks will stand just so much. Then they give up
trying."

"I reckon you're right about that, Joy."

"Of course I'm right. You have to meet your friends halfway."

"Well, if you talk to him don't hurt his feelin's."

There was a glint of mirth in her eyes, almost of friendly malice. "I'm
going to worry him about _my_ feelings, Dad. He'll not have time to think
of his own."

Joyce found her chance next day. She met David Sanders in front of a
drug-store. He would have passed with a bow if she had let him.

"What does the oil expert Mr. Graham sent think about our property?" she
asked presently, greetings having been exchanged.

"He hasn't given out any official opinion yet, but he's impressed. The
report will be favorable, I think."

"Isn't that good?"

"Couldn't be better," he admitted.

It was a warm day. Joyce glanced in at the soda fountain and said
demurely, "My, but it's hot! Won't you come in and have an ice-cream soda
on me?"

Dave flushed. "If you'll go as my guest," he said stiffly.

"How good of you to invite me!" she accepted, laughing, but with a tint
of warmer color in her cheeks.

Rhythmically she moved beside him to a little table in the corner of the
drug-store. "I own stock in the Jackpot. You've got to give an accounting
to me. Have you found a market yet?"

"The whole Southwest will be our market as soon as we can reach it."

"And when will that be?" she asked.

"I'm having some hauled to relieve the glut. The railroad will be
operating inside of six weeks. We'll keep Number Three capped till then
and go on drilling in other locations. Burns is spudding in a new well
to-day."

The clerk took their order and departed. They were quite alone, not
within hearing of anybody. Joyce took her fear by the throat and plunged
in.

"You mad at me, Mr. Sanders?" she asked jauntily.

"You know I'm not."

"How do I know it?" she asked innocently. "You say as little to me as you
can, and get away from me as quick as you can. Yesterday, for instance,
you'd hardly say 'Good-morning.'"

"I didn't mean to be rude. I was busy." Dave felt acutely uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry if I didn't seem sociable."

"So was Mr. Hart busy, but he had time to stop and say a pleasant word."
The brown eyes challenged their vis-à-vis steadily.

The young man found nothing to say. He could not explain that he had not
lingered because he was giving Bob a chance to see her alone, nor could
he tell her that he felt it better for his peace of mind to keep away
from her as much as possible.

"I'm not in the habit of inviting young men to invite me to take a soda,
Mr. Sanders," she went on. "This is my first offense. I never did it
before, and I never expect to again.... I do hope the new well will come
in a good one." The last sentence was for the benefit of the clerk
returning with the ice-cream.

"Looks good," said Dave, playing up. "Smut's showing, and you know that's
a first-class sign."

"Bob said it was expected in to-day or to-morrow.... I asked you because
I've something to say to you, something I think one of your friends ought
to say, and--and I'm going to do it," she concluded in a voice modulated
just to reach him.

The clerk had left the glasses and the check. He was back at the fountain
polishing the counter.

Sanders waited in silence. He had learned to let the burden of
conversation rest on his opponent, and he knew that Joyce just now
was in that class.

She hesitated, uncertain of her opening. Then, "You're disappointing your
friends, Mr. Sanders," she said lightly.

He did not know what an effort it took to keep her voice from quavering,
her hand from trembling as it rested on the onyx top of the table.

"I'm sorry," he said a second time.

"Perhaps it's our fault. Perhaps we haven't been ... friendly enough."
The lifted eyes went straight into his.

He found an answer unexpectedly difficult. "No man ever had more generous
friends," he said at last brusquely, his face set hard.

The girl guessed at the tense feeling back of his words.

"Let's walk," she replied, and he noticed that the eyes and mouth had
softened to a tender smile. "I can't talk here, Dave."

They made a pretense of finishing their sodas, then walked out of the
town into the golden autumn sunlight of the foothills. Neither of them
spoke. She carried herself buoyantly, chin up, her face a flushed cameo
of loveliness. As she took the uphill trail a small breath of wind
wrapped the white skirt about her slender limbs. He found in her a new
note, one of unaccustomed shyness.

The silence grew at last too significant. She was driven to break it.

"I suppose I'm foolish," she began haltingly. "But I had been
expecting--all of us had--that when you came home from--from Denver--the
first time, I mean--you would be the old Dave Sanders we all knew and
liked. We wanted our friendship to--to help make up to you for what you
must have suffered. We didn't think you'd hold us off like this."

His eyes narrowed. He looked away at the cedars on the hills painted in
lustrous blues and greens and purples, and at the slopes below burnt to
exquisite color lights by the fires of fall. But what he saw was a gray
prison wall with armed men in the towers.

"If I could tell you!" He said it in a whisper, to himself, but she just
caught the words.

"Won't you try?" she said, ever so gently.

He could not sully her innocence by telling of the furtive whisperings
that had fouled the prison life, made of it an experience degrading and
corrosive. He told her, instead, of the externals of that existence, of
how he had risen, dressed, eaten, worked, exercised, and slept under
orders. He described to her the cells, four by seven by seven, barred,
built in tiers, faced by narrow iron balconies, each containing a stool,
a chair, a shelf, a bunk. In his effort to show her the chasm that
separated him from her he did not spare himself at all. Dryly and in
clean-cut strokes he showed her the sordidness of which he had been the
victim and left her to judge for herself of its evil effect on his
character.

When he had finished he knew that he had failed. She wept for pity and
murmured, "You poor boy.... You poor boy!"

He tried again, and this time he drew the moral. "Don't you see, I'm a
marked man--marked for life." He hesitated, then pushed on. "You're fine
and clean and generous--what a good father and mother, and all this have
made you." He swept his hand round in a wide gesture to include the sun
and the hills and all the brave life of the open. "If I come too near
you, don't you see I taint you? I'm a man who was shut up because--"

"Fiddlesticks! You're a man who has been done a wrong. You mustn't grow
morbid over it. After all, you've been found innocent."

"That isn't what counts. I've been in the penitentiary. Nothing can wipe
that out. The stain of it's on me and can't be washed away."

She turned on him with a little burst of feminine ferocity. "How dare you
talk that way, Dave Sanders! I want to be proud of you. We all do. But
how can we be if you give up like a quitter? Don't we all have to keep
beginning our lives over and over again? Aren't we all forever getting
into trouble and getting out of it? A man is as good as he makes himself.
It doesn't matter what outside thing has happened to him. Do you dare
tell me that my dad wouldn't be worth loving if he'd been in prison forty
times?"

The color crept into his face. "I'm not quitting. I'm going through. The
point is whether I'm to ask my friends to carry my load for me."

"What are your friends for?" she demanded, and her eyes were like stars
in a field of snow. "Don't you see it's an insult to assume they don't
want to stand with you in your trouble? You've been warped. You're
eaten up with vain pride." Joyce bit her lip to choke back a swelling in
her throat. "The Dave we used to know wasn't like that. He was friendly
and sweet. When folks were kind to him he was kind to them. He wasn't
like--like an old poker." She fell back helplessly on the simile she had
used with her father.

"I don't blame you for feeling that way," he said gently. "When I first
came out I did think I'd play a lone hand. I was hard and bitter and
defiant. But when I met you-all again--and found you were just like home
folks--all of you so kind and good, far beyond any claims I had on
you--why, Miss Joyce, my heart went out to my old friends with a rush.
It sure did. Maybe I had to be stiff to keep from being mushy."

"Oh, if that's it!" Her eager face, flushed and tender, nodded approval.

"But you've got to look at this my way too," he urged. "I can't repay
your father's kindness--yes, and yours too--by letting folks couple your
name, even in friendship, with a man who--"

She turned on him, glowing with color. "Now that's absurd, Dave Sanders.
I'm not a--a nice little china doll. I'm a flesh-and-blood girl. And I'm
not a statue on a pedestal. I've got to live just like other people.
The trouble with you is that you want to be generous, but you don't want
to give other folks a chance to be. Let's stop this foolishness and be
sure-enough friends--Dave."

He took her outstretched hand in his brown palm, smiling down at her.
"All right. I know when I'm beaten."

She beamed. "That's the first honest-to-goodness smile I've seen on your
face since you came back."

"I've got millions of 'em in my system," he promised. "I've been hoarding
them up for years."

"Don't hoard them any more. Spend them," she urged.

"I'll take that prescription, Doctor Joyce." And he spent one as evidence
of good faith.

The soft and shining oval of her face rippled with gladness as a mountain
lake sparkles with sunshine in a light summer breeze. "I've found again
that Dave boy I lost," she told him.

"You won't lose him again," he answered, pushing into the hinterland
of his mind the reflection that a man cannot change the color of his
thinking in an hour.

"We thought he'd gone away for good. I'm so glad he hasn't."

"No. He's been here all the time, but he's been obeying the orders of a
man who told him he had no business to be alive."

He looked at her with deep, inscrutable eyes. As a boy he had been
shy but impulsive. The fires of discipline had given him remarkable
self-restraint. She could not tell he was finding in her face the quality
to inspire in a painter a great picture, the expression of that brave
young faith which made her a touchstone to find the gold in his soul.

Yet in his gravity was something that disturbed her blood. Was she
fanning to flame banked fires better dormant?

She felt a compunction for what she had done. Maybe she had been
unwomanly. It is a penalty impulsive people have to pay that later they
must consider whether they have been bold and presumptuous. Her spirits
began to droop when she should logically have been celebrating her
success.

But Dave walked on mountain-tops tipped with mellow gold. He threw off
the weight that had oppressed his spirits for years and was for the hour
a boy again. She had exorcised the gloom in which he walked. He looked
down on a magnificent flaming desert, and it was good. To-day was his.
To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows of the world were in his hand. He
refused to analyze the causes of his joy. It was enough that beside him
moved with charming diffidence the woman of his dreams, that with her
soft hands she had torn down the barrier between them.

"And now I don't know whether I've done right," she said ruefully. "Dad
warned me I'd better be careful. But of course I always know best. I
'rush in.'"

"You've done me a million dollars' worth of good. I needed some good
friend to tell me just what you have. Please don't regret it."

"Well, I won't." She added, in a hesitant murmur, "You
won't--misunderstand?"

His look turned aside the long-lashed eyes and brought a faint flush of
pink to her cheeks.

"No, I'll not do that," he said.

CHAPTER XXXII

DAVE BECOMES AN OFFICE MAN

From Graham came a wire a week after the return of the oil expert to
Denver. It read:

Report satisfactory. Can you come at once and arrange with me plan of
organization?

Sanders was on the next train. He was still much needed at Malapi to look
after getting supplies and machinery and to arrange for a wagon train of
oil teams, but he dropped or delegated this work for the more important
call that had just come.

His contact with Graham uncovered a new side of the state builder, one
that was to impress him in all the big business men he met. They might be
pleasant socially and bear him a friendly good-will, but when they met to
arrange details of a financial plan they always wanted their pound of
flesh. Graham drove a hard bargain with him. He tied the company fast by
legal control of its affairs until his debt was satisfied. He exacted a
bonus in the form of stock that fairly took the breath of the young man
with whom he was negotiating. Dave fought him round by round and found
the great man smooth and impervious as polished agate.

Yet Dave liked him. When they met at lunch, as they did more than once,
the grizzled Westerner who had driven a line of steel across almost
impassable mountain passes was simple and frank in talk. He had taken
a fancy to this young fellow, and he let him know it. Perhaps he found
something of his own engaging, dogged youth in the strong-jawed
range-rider.

"Does a financier always hogtie a proposition before he backs it?" Dave
asked him once with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

"Always."

"No matter how much he trusts the people he's doing business with?"

"He binds them hard and fast just the same. It's the only way to do. Give
away as much money as you want to, but when you loan money look after
your security like a hawk."

"Even when you're dealing with friends?"

"Especially when you're dealing with friends," corrected the older man.
"Otherwise you're likely not to have your friends long."

"Don't believe I want to be a financier," decided Sanders.

"It takes the hot blood out of you," admitted Graham. "I'm not sure, if I
had my life to live over again, knowing what I know now, that I wouldn't
choose the outdoors like West and Crawford."

Sanders was very sure which choice he would like to make. He was at
present embarked on the business of making money through oil, but some
day he meant to go back to the serenity of a ranch. There were times
when he left the conferences with Graham or his lieutenants sick at heart
because of the uphill battle he must fight to protect his associates.

From Denver he went East to negotiate for some oil tanks and material
with which to construct reservoirs. His trip was a flying one. He
entrained for Malapi once more to look after the loose ends that had been
accumulating locally in his absence. A road had to be built across the
desert. Contracts must be let for hauling away the crude oil. A hundred
details waited his attention.

He worked day and night. Often he slept only a few hours. He grew lean in
body and curt of speech. Lines came into his face that had not been there
before. But at his work apparently he was tireless as steel springs.

Meanwhile Brad Steelman moled to undermine the company. Dave's men
finished building a bridge across a gulch late one day. It was blown
up into kindling wood by dynamite that night. Wagons broke down
unexpectedly. Shipments of supplies failed to arrive. Engines were
mysteriously smashed.

The sabotage was skillful. Steelman's agents left no evidence that could
be used against them. More than one of them, Hart and Sanders agreed,
were spies who had found employment with the Jackpot. One or two men were
discharged on suspicion, even though complete evidence against them was
lacking.

The responsibility that had been thrust on Dave brought out in him
unsuspected business capacity. During his prison days there had developed
in him a quality of leadership. He had been more than once in charge of a
road-building gang of convicts and had found that men naturally turned to
him for guidance. But not until Crawford shifted to his shoulders the
burdens of the Jackpot did he know that he had it in him to grapple with
organization on a fairly large scale.

He worked without nerves, day in, day out, concentrating in a way that
brought results. He never let himself get impatient with details.
Thoroughness had long since become the habit of his life. To this he
added a sane common sense.

Jackpot Number Four came in a good well, though not a phenomenal one
like its predecessor. Number Five was already halfway down to the sands.
Meanwhile the railroad crept nearer. Malapi was already talking of its
big celebration when the first engine should come to town. Its council
had voted to change the name of the place to Bonanza.

The tide was turning against Steelman. He was still a very rich man, but
he seemed no longer to be a lucky one. He brought in a dry well. On
another location the cable had pulled out of the socket and a forty-foot
auger stem and bit lay at the bottom of a hole fifteen hundred feet deep.
His best producer was beginning to cough a weak and intermittent flow
even under steady pumping. And, to add to his troubles, a quiet little
man had dropped into town to investigate one of his companies. He was a
Government agent, and the rumor was that he was gathering evidence.

Sanders met Thomas on the street. He had not seen him since the
prospector had made his wild ride for safety with the two outlaws hard
on his heels.

"Glad you made it, Mr. Thomas," said Dave. "Good bit of strategy. When
they reached the notch, Shorty and Doble never once looked to see if we
were around. They lit out after you on the jump. Did they come close to
getting you?"

"It looked like bullets would be flyin'. I won't say who would 'a' got
who if they had," he said modestly. "But I wasn't lookin' for no trouble.
I don't aim to be one of these here fire-eaters, but I'll fight like a
wildcat when I got to." The prospector looked defiantly at Sanders,
bristling like a bantam which has been challenged.

"We certainly owe you something for the way you drew the outlaws off our
trail," Dave said gravely.

"Say, have you heard how the Government is gettin' after Steelman?
He's a wily bird, old Brad is, but he slipped up when he sent out his
advertisin' for the Great Mogul. A photographer faked a gusher for him
and they sent it out on the circulars."

Sanders nodded, without comment.

"Steelman can make 'em flow, on paper anyhow," Thomas chortled. "But he's
sure in a kettle of hot water this time."

"Mr. Steelman is enterprising," Dave admitted dryly.

"Say, Mr. Sanders, have you heard what's become of Shorty and Doble?" the
prospector asked, lapsing to ill-concealed anxiety. "I see the sheriff
has got a handbill out offerin' a reward for their arrest and conviction.
You don't reckon those fellows would bear me any grudge, do you?"

"No. But I wouldn't travel in the hills alone if I were you. If you
happened to meet them they might make things unpleasant."

"They're both killers. I'm a peaceable citizen, as the fellow says. O'
course if they crowd me to the wall--"

"They won't," Dave assured him.

He knew that the outlaws, if the chance ever came for them, would strike
at higher game than Thomas. They would try to get either Crawford or
Sanders himself. The treasurer of the Jackpot did not fool himself with
any false promises of safety. The two men in the hills were desperate
characters, game as any in the country, gun-fighters, and they owed both
him and Crawford a debt they would spare no pains to settle in full. Some
day there would come an hour of accounting.

CHAPTER XXXIII

ON THE DODGE

Up in the hills back of Bear Cañon two men were camping. They breakfasted
on slow elk, coffee, and flour-and-water biscuits. When they had
finished, they washed their tin dishes with sand in the running brook.

"Might's well be hittin' the trail," one growled.

The other nodded without speaking, rose lazily, and began to pack
the camp outfit. Presently, when he had arranged the load to his
satisfaction, he threw the diamond hitch and stood back to take a chew of
tobacco while he surveyed his work. He was a squat, heavy-set man with a
Chihuahua hat. Also he was a two-gun man. After a moment he circled an
arrowweed thicket and moved into the chaparral where his horse was
hobbled.

The man who had spoken rose with one lithe twist of his big body. His
eyes, hard and narrow, watched the shorter man disappear in the brush.
Then he turned swiftly and strode toward the shoulder of the ridge.

In the heavy undergrowth of dry weeds and grass he stopped and tested the
wind with a bandanna handkerchief. The breeze was steady and fairly
strong. It blew down the cañon toward the foothills beyond.

The man stripped from a scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very
brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it
for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp
foliage. Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs, dry
as powder from a four-months' drought, crackled like miniature fireworks.
The grass caught, and a small line of fire ran quickly out.

The man rose. On his brown face was an evil smile, in his hard eyes
something malevolent and sinister. The wind would do the rest.

He walked back toward the camp. At the shoulder crest he turned to look
back. From out of the chaparral a thin column of pale gray smoke was
rising.

His companion stamped out the remains of the breakfast fire and threw
dirt on the ashes to make sure no live ember could escape in the wind.
Then he swung to the saddle.

"Ready, Dug?" he asked.

The big man growled an assent and followed him over the summit into the
valley beyond.

"Country needs a rain bad," the man in the Chihuahua hat commented.
"Don't know as I recollect a dryer season."

The big hawk-nosed man by his side cackled in his throat with short,
splenetic mirth. "It'll be some dryer before the rains," he prophesied.

They climbed out of the valley to the rim. The short man was bringing up
the rear along the narrow trail-ribbon. He turned in the saddle to look
back, a hand on his horse's rump. Perhaps he did this because of the
power of suggestion. Several times Doble had already swung his head to
scan with a searching gaze the other side of the valley.

Mackerel clouds were floating near the horizon in a sky of blue. Was that
or was it not smoke just over the brow of the hill?

"Cayn't be our camp-fire," the squat man said aloud. "I smothered that
proper."

"Them's clouds," pronounced Doble quickly. "Clouds an' some mist risin'
from the gulch."

"I reckon," agreed the other, with no sure conviction. Doble must be
right, of course. No fire had been in evidence when they left the
camping-ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had
cooked the biscuits. Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like
smoke. He hung in the wind, half of a mind to go back and make sure. Fire
in the chaparral now might do untold damage.

Shorty looked at Doble. "If tha's fire, Dug--"

"It ain't. No chance," snapped the ex-foreman. "We'll travel if you don't
feel called on to go back an' stomp out the mist, Shorty," he added with
sarcasm.

The cowpuncher took the trail again. Like many men, he was not proof
against a sneer. Dug was probably right, Shorty decided, and he did not
want to make a fool of himself. Doble would ride him with heavy jeers all
day.

An hour later they rested their horses on the divide. To the west lay
Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long,
bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It
was the bed of the new road already spiked with shining rails.

"I'm goin' to town," announced Doble.

Shorty looked at him in surprise. "Wanta see yore picture, I reckon. It's
on a heap of telegraph poles, I been told," he said, grinning.

"To-day," went on the ex-foreman stubbornly.

"Big, raw-boned guy, hook nose, leather face, never took no prize as a
lady's man, a wildcat in a rough-house, an' sudden death on the draw,"
extemporized the rustler, presumably from his conception of the reward
poster.

"I'll lie in the chaparral till night an' ride in after dark."

With the impulsiveness of his kind, Shorty fell in with the idea. He was
hungry for the fleshpots of Malapi. If they dropped in late at night,
stayed a few hours, and kept under cover, they could probably slip out of
town undetected. The recklessness of his nature found an appeal in the
danger.

"Damfidon't trail along, Dug."

"Yore say-so about that."

"Like to see my own picture on the poles. Sawed-off li'l runt. Straight
black hair. Some bowlegged. Wears two guns real low. Doncha monkey with
him onless you're hell-a-mile with a six-shooter. One thousand dollars
reward for arrest and conviction. Same for the big guy."

"Fellow that gets one o' them rewards will earn it," said Doble grimly.

"Goes double," agreed Shorty. "He'll earn it even if he don't live to
spend it. Which he's liable not to."

They headed their horses to the west. As they drew down from the
mountains they left the trail and took to the brush. They wound in and
out among the mesquite and the cactus, bearing gradually to the north and
into the foothills above the town. When they reached Frio Cañon they
swung off into a timbered pocket debouching from it. Here they unsaddled
and lay down to wait for night.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A PLEASANT EVENING

Brad Steelman sat hunched before a fire of piñon knots, head drooped low
between his high, narrow shoulders. The restless black eyes in the dark
hatchet face were sunk deeper now than in the old days. In them was
beginning to come the hunted look of the gray wolf he resembled. His
nerves were not what they had been, and even in his youth they were not
of the best. He had a way of looking back furtively over his shoulder,
as though some sinister shadow were creeping toward him out of the
darkness.

Three taps on the window brought his head up with a jerk. His lax fingers
crept to the butt of a Colt's revolver. He waited, listening.

The taps were repeated.

Steelman sidled to the door and opened it cautiously. A man pushed in and
closed the door. He looked at the sheepman and he laughed shortly in an
ugly, jeering way.

"Scared, Brad?"

The host moistened his lips. "What of, Dug?"

"Don't ask me," said the big man scornfully. "You always had about as
much sand in yore craw as a rabbit."

"Did you come here to make trouble, Dug?"

"No, I came to collect a bill."

"So? Didn't know I owed you any money right now. How much is it?"

Steelman, as the leader of his gang, was used to levies upon his purse
when his followers had gone broke. He judged that he would have to let
Doble have about twenty-five dollars now.

"A thousand dollars."

Brad shot a quick, sidelong look at him. "Wha's wrong now, Dug?"

The ex-foreman of the D Bar Lazy R took his time to answer. He enjoyed
the suspense under which his ally was held. "Why, I reckon nothin'
a-tall. Only that this mo'nin' I put a match to about a coupla hundred
thousand dollars belongin' to Crawford, Sanders, and Hart."

Eagerly Steelman clutched his arm. "You did it, then?"

"Didn't I say I'd do it?" snapped Doble irritably. "D'ya ever know me rue
back on a bargain?"

"Never."

"Wha's more, you never will. I fired the chaparral above Bear Cañon. The
wind was right. Inside of twenty-four hours the Jackpot locations will go
up in smoke. Derricks, pumps, shacks, an' oil; the whole caboodle's
doomed sure as I'm a foot high."

The face of the older man looked more wolfish than ever. He rubbed his
hands together, washing one over the other so that each in turn was
massaged. "Hell's bells! I'm sure glad to hear it. Fire got a good start,
you say?"

"I tell you the whole country'll go up like powder."

If Steelman had not just reached Malapi from a visit to one of his sheep
camps he would have known, what everybody else in town knew by this time,
that the range for fifty miles was in danger and that hundreds of
volunteers were out fighting the menace.

His eyes glistened. "I'll not wear mournin' none if it does just that."

"I'm tellin' you what it'll do," Doble insisted dogmatically.

"Shorty with you?"

"He was, an' he wasn't. I did it while he wasn't lookin'. He was saddlin'
his horse in the brush. Don't make any breaks to him. Shorty's got a soft
spot in him. Game enough, but with queer notions. Some time I'm liable to
have to--" Doble left his sentence suspended in air, but Steelman,
looking into his bleak eyes, knew what the man meant.

"What's wrong with him now, Dug?"

"Well, he's been wrong ever since I had to bump off Tim Harrigan. Talks
about a fair break. As if I had a chance to let the old man get to a gun.
No, I'm not so awful sure of Shorty."

"Better watch him. If you see him make any false moves--"

Doble watched him with a taunting, scornful eye.

"What'll I do?"

The other man's gaze fell. "Why, you got to protect yoreself, Dug, ain't
you?"

"How?"

The narrow shoulders lifted. For a moment the small black eyes met those
of the big man.

"Whatever way seems best to you, Dug," murmured Steelman evasively.

Doble slapped his dusty hat against his thigh. He laughed, without mirth
or geniality. "If you don't beat Old Nick, Brad. I wonder was you ever
out an' out straightforward in yore life. Just once?"

"I don't reckon you sure enough feel that way, Dug," whined the older man
ingratiatingly. "Far as that goes, I'm not making any claims that I love
my enemies. But you can't say I throw off on my friends. You always know
where I'm at."

"Sure I know," retorted Doble bluntly. "You're on the inside of a heap of
rotten deals. So am I. But I admit it and you won't."

"Well, I don't look at it that way, but there's no use arguin'. What
about that fire? Sure it got a good start?"

"I looked back from across the valley. It was travelin' good."

"If the wind don't change, it will sure do a lot of damage to the
Jackpot. Liable to spoil some of Crawford's range too."

"I'll take that thousand in cash, Brad," the big man said, letting
himself down into the easiest chair he could find and rolling a
cigarette.

"Soon as I know it did the work, Dug."

"I'm here tellin' you it will make a clean-up."

"We'll know by mornin'. I haven't got the money with me anyhow. It's in
the bank."

"Get it soon as you can. I expect to light out again pronto. This town's
onhealthy for me."

"Where will you stay?" asked Brad.

"With my friend Steelman," jeered Doble. "His invitation is so hearty I
just can't refuse him."

"You'd be safer somewhere else," said the owner of the house after a
pause.

"We'll risk that, me 'n' you both, for if I'm taken it's liable to be bad
luck for you too.... Gimme something to eat and drink."

Steelman found a bottle of whiskey and a glass, then foraged for food in
the kitchen. He returned with the shank of a ham and a loaf of bread. His
fear was ill-disguised. The presence of the outlaw, if discovered, would
bring him trouble; and Doble was so unruly he might out of sheer ennui or
bravado let it be known he was there.

"I'll get you the money first thing in the mornin'," promised Steelman.

Doble poured himself a large drink and took it at a swallow. "I would,
Brad."

"No use you puttin' yoreself in unnecessary danger."

"Or you. Don't hand me my hat, Brad. I'll go when I'm ready."

Doble drank steadily throughout the night. He was the kind of drinker
that can take an incredible amount of liquor without becoming helpless.
He remained steady on his feet, growing uglier and more reckless every
hour.

Tied to Doble because he dared not break away from him, Steelman's busy
brain began to plot a way to take advantage of this man's weakness for
liquor. He sat across the table from him and adroitly stirred up his
hatred of Crawford and Sanders. He raked up every grudge his guest had
against the two men, calling to his mind how they had beaten him at every
turn.

"O' course I know, Dug, you're a better man than Sanders or Crawford
either, but Malapi don't know it--yet. Down at the Gusher I hear they
laugh about that trick he played on you blowin' up the dam. Luck, I call
it, but--"

"Laugh, do they?" growled the big man savagely. "I'd like to hear some o'
that laughin'."

"Say this Sanders is a wonder; that nobody's got a chance against him.
That's the talk goin' round. I said any day in the week you had him beat
a mile, and they gave me the laugh."

"I'll show 'em!" cried the enraged bully with a furious oath.

"I'll bet you do. No man livin' can make a fool outa Dug Doble, rustle
the evidence to send him to the pen, snap his fingers at him, and on top
o' that steal his girl. That's what I told--"

Doble leaned across the table and caught in his great fist the wrist of
Steelman. His bloodshot eyes glared into those of the man opposite. "What
girl?" he demanded hoarsely.

Steelman looked blandly innocent. "Didn't you know, Dug? Maybe I ought
n't to 'a' mentioned it."

Fingers like ropes of steel tightened on the wrist, Brad screamed.

"Don't do that, Dug! You're killin' me! Ouch! Em Crawford's girl."

"What about her and Sanders?"

"Why, he's courtin' her--treatin' her to ice-cream, goin' walkin' with
her. Didn't you know?"

"When did he begin?" Doble slammed a hamlike fist on the table. "Spit it
out, or I'll tear yore arm off."

Steelman told all he knew and a good deal more. He invented details
calculated to infuriate his confederate, to inflame his jealousy. The big
man sat with jaw clamped, the muscles knotted like ropes on his leathery
face. He was a volcano of outraged vanity and furious hate, seething with
fires ready to erupt.

"Some folks say it's Hart she's engaged to," purred the hatchet-faced
tempter. "Maybeso. Looks to me like she's throwin' down Hart for this
convict. Expect she sees he's gonna be a big man some day."

"Big man! Who says so?" exploded Doble.

"That's the word, Dug. I reckon you've heard how the Governor of Colorado
pardoned him. This town's crazy about Sanders. Claims he was framed for
the penitentiary. Right now he could be elected to any office he went
after." Steelman's restless black eyes watched furtively the effect of
his taunting on this man, a victim of wild and uncurbed passions. He was
egging him on to a rage that would throw away all caution and all
scruples.

"He'll never live to run for office!" the cattleman cried hoarsely.

"They talk him for sheriff. Say Applegate's no good--too easy-going. Say
Sanders'll round up you an' Shorty pronto when he's given authority."

Doble ripped out a wild and explosive oath. He knew this man was playing
on his vanity, jealousy, and hatred for some purpose not yet apparent,
but he found it impossible to close his mind to the whisperings of the
plotter. He welcomed the spur of Steelman's two-edged tongue because he
wanted to have his purpose of vengeance fed.

"Sanders never saw the day he could take me, dead or alive. I'll meet him
any time, any way, an' when I turn my back on him he'll be ready for the
coroner."

"I believe you, Dug. No need to tell me you're not afraid of him, for--"

"Afraid of him!" bellowed Doble, eyes like live coals. "Say that again
an' I'll twist yore head off."

Steelman did not say it again. He pushed the bottle toward his guest and
said other things.

CHAPTER XXXV

FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL

A carpenter working on the roof of a derrick for Jackpot Number Six
called down to his mates:

"Fire in the hills, looks like. I see smoke."

The contractor was an old-timer. He knew the danger of fire in the
chaparral at this season of the year.

"Run over to Number Four and tell Crawford," he said to his small son.

Crawford and Hart had just driven out from town.

"I'll shag up the tower and have a look," the younger man said.

He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to
long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an
expert at reading such news as the landscape had written on it.

"Fire in Bear Cañon!" he shouted down. "Quite a bit of smoke risin'."

"I'll ride right up and look it over," the cattleman called back. "Better
get a gang together to fight it, Bob. Hike up soon as you're ready."

Crawford borrowed without permission of the owner the nearest saddle
horse and put it to a lope. Five minutes might make all the difference
between a winning and a losing fight.

From the tower Hart descended swiftly. He gathered together all the
carpenters, drillers, enginemen, and tool dressers in the vicinity and
equipped them with shovels, picks, brush-hooks, saws, and axes. To each
one he gave also a gunnysack.

The foot party followed Crawford into the chaparral, making for the hills
that led to Bear Cañon. A wind was stirring, and as they topped a rise it
struck hot on their cheeks. A flake of ash fell on Bob's hand.

Crawford met them at the mouth of the cañon.

"She's rip-r'arin', Bob! Got too big a start to beat out. We'll clear a
fire-break where the gulch narrows just above here and do our fightin'
there."

The sparks of a thousand rockets, flung high by the wind, were swept down
the gulch toward them. Behind these came a curtain of black smoke.

The cattleman set his crew to work clearing a wide trail across the gorge
from wall to wall. The undergrowth was heavy, and the men attacked with
brush-hooks, shovels, and axes. One man, with a wet gunnysack, was
detailed to see that no flying sparks started a new blaze below the
safety zone. The shovelers and grubbers cleared the grass and roots off
to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the
lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the
furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped
forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches
were crackling like fireworks.

"I'll scout round over the hill and have a look above," Bob said. "We've
got to keep it from spreading out of the gulch."

"Take the horse," Crawford called to him.

One good thing was that the fire was coming down the cañon. A downhill
blaze moves less rapidly than one running up.

Runners of flame, crawling like snakes among the brush, struck out at the
fighters venomously and tried to leap the trench. The defenders flailed
at these with the wet gunnysacks.

The wind was stiffer now and the fury of the fire closer. The flames
roared down the cañon like a blast furnace. Driven back by the intense
heat, the men retreated across the break and clung to their line. Already
their lungs were sore from inhaling smoke and their throats were
inflamed. A pine, its pitchy trunk ablaze, crashed down across the
fire-trail and caught in the fork of a tree beyond. Instantly the foliage
leaped to red flame.

Crawford, axe in hand, began to chop the trunk and a big Swede swung an
axe powerfully on the opposite side. The rest of the crew continued to
beat down the fires that started below the break. The chips flew at each
rhythmic stroke of the keen blades. Presently the tree crashed down into
the trail that had been hewn. It served as a conductor, and along it
tongues of fire leaped into the brush beyond. Glowing branches, flung by
the wind and hurled from falling timber, buried themselves in the dry
undergrowth. Before one blaze was crushed half a dozen others started in
its place. Flails and gunnysacks beat these down and smothered them.

Bob galloped into the cañon and flung himself from the horse as he pulled
it up in its stride.

"She's jumpin' outa the gulch above. Too late to head her off. We better
get scrapers up and run a trail along the top o' the ridge, don't you
reckon?" he said.

"Yes, son," agreed Crawford. "We can just about hold her here. It'll be
hours before I can spare a man for the ridge. We got to get help in a
hurry. You ride to town and rustle men. Bring out plenty of dynamite
and gunnysacks. Lucky we got the tools out here we brought to build the
sump holes."

"Betcha! We'll need a lot o' grub, too."

The cattleman nodded agreement. "And coffee. Cayn't have too much coffee.
It's food and drink and helps keep the men awake."

"I'll remember."

"And for the love o' Heaven, don't forget canteens! Get every canteen in
town. Cayn't have my men runnin' around with their tongues hangin' out.
Better bring out a bunch of broncs to pack supplies around. It's goin' to
be one man-sized contract runnin' the commissary."

The cañon above them was by this time a sea of fire, the most terrifying
sight Bob had ever looked upon. Monster flames leaped at the walls of the
gulch, swept in an eyebeat over draws, attacked with a savage roar the
dry vegetation. The noise was like the crash of mountains meeting.
Thunder could scarce have made itself heard.

Rocks, loosened by the heat, tore down the steep incline of the walls,
sometimes singly, sometimes in slides. These hit the bed of the ravine
with the force of a cannon-ball. The workers had to keep a sharp lookout
for these.

A man near Bob was standing with his weight on the shovel he had been
using. Hart gave a shout of warning. At the same moment a large rock
struck the handle and snapped it off as though it had been kindling wood.
The man wrung his hands and almost wept with the pain.

A cottontail ran squealing past them, driven from its home by this new
and deadly enemy. Not far away a rattlesnake slid across the hot rocks.
Their common fear of man was lost in a greater and more immediate one.

Hart did not like to leave the battle-field. "Lemme stay here. You can
handle that end of the job better'n me, Mr. Crawford."

The old cattleman, his face streaked with black, looked at him from
bloodshot eyes. "Where do you get that notion I'll quit a job I've
started, son? You hit the trail. The sooner the quicker."

The young man wasted no more words. He swung to the saddle and rode for
town faster than he had ever traveled in all his hard-riding days.

CHAPTER XXXVI

FIGHTING FIRE

Sanders was in the office of the Jackpot Company looking over some
blue-prints when Joyce Crawford came in and inquired where her father
was.

"He went out with Bob Hart to the oil field this morning. Some trouble
with the casing."

"Thought Dad wasn't giving any of his time to oil these days," she said.
"He told me you and Bob were running the company."

"Every once in a while he takes an interest. I prod him up to go out and
look things over occasionally. He's president of the company, and I tell
him he ought to know what's going on. So to-day he's out there."

"Oh!" Miss Joyce, having learned what she had come in to find out, might
reasonably have departed. She declined a chair, said she must be going,
yet did not go. Her eyes appeared to study without seeing a field map on
the desk. "Dad told me something last night, Mr. Sanders. He said I might
pass it on to you and Bob, though it isn't to go farther. It's about that
ten thousand dollars he paid the bank when it called his loan. He got the
money from Buck Byington."

"Buck!" exclaimed the young man. He was thinking that the Buck he used to
know never had ten dollars saved, let alone ten thousand.

"I know," she explained. "That's it. The money wasn't his. He's executor
or something for the children of his dead brother. This money had come in
from the sale of a farm back in Iowa and he was waiting for an order of
the court for permission to invest it in a mortgage. When he heard Dad
was so desperately hard up for cash he let him have the money. He knew
Dad would pay it back, but it seems what he did was against the law, even
though Dad gave him his note and a chattel mortgage on some cattle which
Buck wasn't to record. Now it has been straightened out. That's why Dad
couldn't tell where he got the money. Buck would have been in trouble."

"I see."

"But now it's all right." Joyce changed the subject. There were teasing
pinpoints of mischief in her eyes. "My school physiology used to say that
sleep was restful. It builds up worn-out tissue and all. One of these
nights, when you can find time, give it a trial and see whether that's
true."

Dave laughed. The mother in this young woman would persistently out. "I
get plenty of sleep, Miss Joyce. Most people sleep too much."

"How much do you sleep?"

"Sometimes more, sometimes less. I average six or seven hours, maybe."

"Maybe," she scoffed.

"Hard work doesn't hurt men. Not when they're young and strong."

"I hear you're trying to work yourself to death, sir," the girl charged,
smiling.

"Not so bad as that." He answered her smile with another for no reason
except that the world was a sunshiny one when he looked at this trim and
dainty young woman. "The work gets fascinating. A fellow likes to get
things done. There's a satisfaction in turning out a full day and in
feeling you get results."

She nodded sagely, in a brisk, business-like way. "I know. Felt it myself
often, but we have to remember that there are other days and other people
to lend a hand. None of us can do it all. Dad thinks you overdo. So he
told me to ask you to supper for to-morrow night. Bob will be there too."

"I say thanks, Miss Joyce, to your father and his daughter."

"Which means you'll be with us to-morrow."

"I'll be with you."

But he was not. Even as he made the promise a shadow darkened the
doorsill and Bob Hart stepped into the office.

His first words were ominous, but before he spoke both of those looking
at him knew he was the bearer of bad news. There was in his boyish face
an unwonted gravity.

"Fire in the chaparral, Dave, and going strong."

Sanders spoke one word. "Where?"

"Started in Bear Cañon, but it's jumped out into the hills."

"The wind must be driving it down toward the Jackpot!"

"Yep. Like a scared rabbit. Crawford's trying to hold the mouth of the
cañon. He's got a man's job down there. Can't spare a soul to keep it
from scootin' over the hills."

Dave rose. "I'll gather a bunch of men and ride right out. On what side
of the cañon is the fire running?"

"East side. Stop at the wells and get tools. I got to rustle dynamite and
men. Be out soon as I can."

They spoke quietly, quickly, decisively, as men of action do in a crisis.

Joyce guessed the situation was a desperate one. "Is Dad in danger?" she
asked.

Hart answered. "No--not now, anyhow."

"What can I do to help?"

"We'll have hundreds of men in the field probably, if this fire has a
real start," Dave told her. "We'll need food and coffee--lots of it.
Organize the women. Make meat sandwiches--hundreds of them. And send
out to the Jackpot dozens of coffee-pots. Your job is to keep the workers
well fed. Better send out bandages and salve, in case some get burnt."

Her eyes were shining. "I'll see to all that. Don't worry, boys. You
fight this fire, and we women will 'tend to feeding you."

Dave nodded and strode out of the room. During the fierce and dreadful
days that followed one memory more than once came to him in the fury of
the battle. It was a slim, straight girl looking at him, the call to
service stamped on her brave, uplifted face.

Sanders was on the road inside of twenty minutes, a group of horsemen
galloping at his heels. At the Jackpot locations the fire-fighters
equipped themselves with shovels, sacks, axes, and brush-hooks. The
party, still on horseback, rode up to the mouth of Bear Cañon. Through
the smoke the sun was blood-red. The air was heavy and heated.

From the fire line Crawford came to meet these new allies. "We're holdin'
her here. It's been nip an' tuck. Once I thought sure she'd break
through, but we beat out the blaze. I hadn't time to go look, but I
expect she's just a-r'arin' over the hills. I've had some teams and
scrapers taken up there, Dave. It's yore job. Go to it."

The old cattleman showed that he had been through a fight. His eyes were
red and inflamed, his face streaked with black, one arm of his shirt half
torn from the shoulder. But he wore the grim look of a man who has just
begun to set himself for a struggle.

The horsemen swung to the east and rode up to the mesa which lies between
Bear and Cattle Cañons. It was impossible to get near Bear, since the
imprisoned fury had burst from its walls and was sweeping the chaparral.
The line of fire was running along the level in an irregular, ragged
front, red tongues leaping ahead with short, furious rushes.

Even before he could spend time to determine the extent of the fire, Dave
selected his line of defense, a ridge of rocky, higher ground cutting
across from one gulch to the other. Here he set teams to work scraping
a fire-break, while men assisted with shovels and brush-hooks to clear
a wide path.

Dave swung still farther east and rode along the edge of Cattle Cañon.
Narrow and rock-lined, the gorge was like a boiler flue to suck the
flames down it. From where he sat he saw it caging with inconceivable
fury. The earth rift seemed to be roofed with flame. Great billows
of black smoke poured out laden with sparks and live coals carried by the
wind. It was plain at the first glance that the fire was bound to leap
from the cañon to the brush-covered hills beyond. His business now was
to hold the ridge he had chosen and fight back the flames to keep them
from pouring down upon the Jackpot property. Later the battle would have
to be fought to hold the line at San Jacinto Cañon and the hills running
down from it to the plains.

The surface fire on the hills licked up the brush, mesquite, and young
cedars with amazing rapidity. If his trail-break was built in time, Dave
meant to back-fire above it. Steve Russell was one of his party. Sanders
appointed him lieutenant and went over the ground with him to decide
exactly where the clearing should run, after which he galloped back to
the mouth of Bear.

"She's running wild on the hills and in Cattle Cañon," Dave told
Crawford. "She'll sure jump Cattle and reach San Jacinto. We've got to
hold the mouth of Cattle, build a trail between Bear and Cattle, another
between Cattle and San Jacinto, cork her up in San Jacinto, and keep her
from jumping to the hills beyond."

"Can we back-fire, do you reckon?"

"Not with the wind there is above, unless we have check-trails built
first. We need several hundred more men, and we need them right away. I
never saw such a fire before."

"Well, get yore trail built. Bob oughtta be out soon. I'll put him over
between Cattle and San Jacinto. Three-four men can hold her here now.
I'll move my outfit over to the mouth of Cattle."

The cattleman spoke crisply and decisively. He had been fighting fire for
six hours without a moment's rest, swallowing smoke-filled air, enduring
the blistering heat that poured steadily at them down the gorge. At least
two of his men were lying down completely exhausted, but he contemplated
another such desperate battle without turning a hair. All his days he had
been a good fighter, and it never occurred to him to quit now.

Sanders rode up as close to the west edge of Bear Cañon as he could
endure. In two or three places the flames had jumped the wall and were
trying to make headway in the scant underbrush of the rocky slope
that led to a hogback surmounted by a bare rimrock running to the summit.
This natural barrier would block the fire on the west, just as the
burnt-over area would protect the north. For the present at least the
fire-fighters could confine their efforts to the south and east, where
the spread of the blaze would involve the Jackpot. A shift in the wind
would change the situation, and if it came in time would probably save
the oil property.

Dave put his horse to a lope and rode back to the trench and trail his
men were building. He found a shovel and joined them.

From out of Cattle Cañon billows of smoke rolled across the hill and
settled into a black blanket above the men. This was acrid from the
resinous pitch of the pines. The wind caught the dark pall, drove it low,
and held it there till the workers could hardly breathe. The sun was
under entire eclipse behind the smoke screen.

The heat of the flames tortured Dave's face and hands, just as the
smoke-filled air inflamed his nostrils and throat. Coals of fire pelted
him from the river of flame, carried by the strong breeze blowing down.
From the cañons on either side of the workers came a steady roar of a
world afire. Occasionally, at some slight shift of the wind, the smoke
lifted and they could see the moving wall of fire bearing down upon them,
wedges of it far ahead of the main line.

The movements of the workers became automatic. The teams had to be
removed because the horses had become unmanageable under the torture of
the heat. When any one spoke it was in a hoarse whisper because of a
swollen larynx. Mechanically they dug, shoveled, grubbed, handkerchiefs
over their faces to protect from the furnace glow.

A deer with two fawns emerged from the smoke and flew past on the way to
safety. Mice, snakes, rabbits, birds, and other desert denizens appeared
in mad flight. They paid no attention whatever to their natural foe, man.
The terror of the red monster at their heels wholly obsessed them.

The fire-break was from fifteen to twenty feet wide. The men retreated
back of it, driven by the heat, and fought with wet sacks to hold the
enemy. A flash of lightning was hurled against Dave. It was a red-hot
limb of a pine, tossed out of the gorge by the stiff wind. He flung it
from him and tore the burning shirt from his chest. An agony of pain shot
through his shoulder, seared for half a foot by the blazing branch.

He had no time to attend to the burn then. The fire had leaped the
check-trail at a dozen points. With his men he tried to smother the
flames in the grass by using saddle blankets and gunnysacks, as well
as by shoveling sand upon it. Sometimes they cut down the smouldering
brush and flung it back across the break into the inferno on the other
side. Blinded and strangling from the smoke, the fire-fighters would make
short rushes into the clearer air, swallow a breath or two of it, and
plunge once more into the line to do battle with the foe.

For hours the desperate battle went on. Dave lost count of time. One
after another of his men retreated to rest. After a time they drifted
back to help make the defense good against the plunging fire devil.
Sanders alone refused to retire. His parched eyebrows were half gone.
His clothes hung about him in shredded rags. He was so exhausted that he
could hardly wield a flail. His legs dragged and his arms hung heavy. But
he would not give up even for an hour. Through the confused, shifting
darkness of the night he led his band, silhouetted on the ridge like
gnomes of the nether world, to attack after attack on the tireless,
creeping, plunging flames that leaped the trench in a hundred desperate
assaults, that howled and hissed and roared like ravenous beasts of prey.

Before the light of day broke he knew that he had won. His men had made
good the check-trail that held back the fire in the terrain between Bear
and Cattle Cañons. The fire, worn out and beaten, fell back for lack of
fuel upon which to feed.

Reinforcements came from town. Dave left the trail in charge of a deputy
and staggered down with his men to the camp that had been improvised
below. He sat down with them and swallowed coffee and ate sandwiches.
Steve Russell dressed his burn with salve and bandages sent out by Joyce.

"Me for the hay, Dave," the cowpuncher said when he had finished. He
stretched himself in a long, tired, luxurious yawn. "I've rid out a
blizzard and I've gathered cattle after a stampede till I 'most thought
I'd drop outa the saddle. But I give it to this here li'l' fire. It's
sure enough a stemwinder. I'm beat. So long, pardner."

Russell went off to roll himself up in his blanket.

Dave envied him, but he could not do the same. His responsibilities were
not ended yet. He found his horse in the remuda, saddled, and rode over
to the entrance to Cattle Cañon.

Emerson Crawford was holding his ground, though barely holding it. He too
was grimy, fire-blackened, exhausted, but he was still fighting to throw
back the fire that swept down the cañon at him.

"How are things up above?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Good. We held the check-line."

"Same here so far. It's been hell. Several of my boys fainted."

"I'll take charge awhile. You go and get some sleep," urged Sanders.

The cattleman shook his head. "No. See it through. Say, son, look who's
here!" His thumb hitched toward his right shoulder.

Dave looked down the line of blackened, grimy fire-fighters and his eye
fell on Shorty. He was still wearing chaps, but his Chihuahua hat had
succumbed long ago. Manifestly the man had been on the fighting line for
some hours.

"Doesn't he know about the reward?"

"Yes. He was hidin' in Malapi when the call came for men. Says he's no
quitter, whatever else he is. You bet he ain't. He's worth two of most
men at this work. Soon as we get through he'll be on the dodge again, I
reckon, unless Applegate gets him first. He's a good sport, anyhow. I'll
say that for him."

"I reckon I'm a bad citizen, sir, but I hope he makes his getaway before
Applegate shows up."

"Well, he's one tough scalawag, but I don't aim to give him away right
now. Shorty is a whole lot better proposition than Dug Doble."

Dave came back to the order of the day. "What do you want me to do now?"

The cattleman looked him over. "You damaged much?"

"No."

"Burnt in the shoulder, I see."

"Won't keep me from swinging a sack and bossing a gang."

"Wore out, I reckon?"

"I feel fine since breakfast--took two cups of strong coffee."

Again Crawford's eyes traveled over his ally. They saw a ragged, red-eyed
tramp, face and hands and arms blackened with char and grimed with smoke.
Outside, he was such a specimen of humanity as the police would have
arrested promptly on suspicion. But the shrewd eyes of the cattleman saw
more--a spirit indomitable that would drive the weary, tormented body
till it dropped in its tracks, a quality of leadership that was a trumpet
call to the men who served with him, a soul master of its infirmities.
His heart went out to the young fellow. Wherefore he grinned and gave him
another job. Strong men to-day were at a premium with Emerson Crawford.

"Ride over and see how Bob's comin' out. We'll make it here."

Sanders swung to the saddle and moved forward to the next fire front,
the one between Cattle and San Jacinto Cañons. Hart himself was not here.
There had come a call for help from the man in charge of the gang trying
to hold the fire in San Jacinto. He had answered that summons long before
daybreak and had not yet returned.

The situation on the Cattle-San Jacinto front was not encouraging. The
distance to be protected was nearly a mile. Part of the way was along a
ridge fairly easy to defend, but a good deal of it lay in lower land of
timber and heavy brush.

Dave rode along the front, studying the contour of the country and the
chance of defending it. His judgment was that it could not be done with
the men on hand. He was not sure that the line could be held even with
reinforcements. But there was nothing for it but to try. He sent a man to
Crawford, urging him to get help to him as soon as possible.

Then he took command of the crew already in the field, rearranged the men
so as to put the larger part of his force in the most dangerous locality,
and in default of a sack seized a spreading branch as a flail to beat out
fire in the high grass close to San Jacinto.

An hour later half a dozen straggling men reported for duty. Shorty was
one of them.

"The ol' man cayn't spare any more," the rustler explained. "He had to
hustle Steve and his gang outa their blankets to go help Bob Hart. They
say Hart's in a heluva bad way. The fire's jumped the trail-check and
is spreadin' over the country. He's runnin' another trail farther back."

It occurred to Dave that if the wind changed suddenly and heightened, it
would sweep a back-fire round him and cut off the retreat of his crew. He
sent a weary lad back to keep watch on it and report any change of
direction in that vicinity.

After which he forgot all about chances of danger from the rear. His
hands and mind were more than busy trying to drive back the snarling,
ravenous beast in front of him. He might have found time to take other
precautions if he had known that the exhausted boy sent to watch against
a back-fire had, with the coming of night, fallen asleep in a draw.

CHAPTER XXXVII

SHORTY ASKS A QUESTION

When Shorty separated from Doble in Frio Cañon he rode inconspicuously to
a tendejon where he could be snugly hidden from the public gaze and yet
meet a few "pals" whom he could trust at least as long as he could keep
his eyes on them. His intention was to have a good time in the only way
he knew how. Another purpose was coupled with this; he was not going to
drink enough to interfere with reasonable caution.

Shorty's dissipated pleasures were interfered with shortly after
midnight. A Mexican came in to the drinking-place with news. The world
was on fire, at least that part of it which interested the cattlemen of
the Malapi district. The blaze had started back of Bear Cañon and had
been swept by the wind across to Cattle and San Jacinto. The oil field
adjacent had been licked up and every reservoir and sump was in flames.
The whole range would probably be wiped out before the fire spent itself
for lack of fuel. Crawford had posted a rider to town calling for more
man power to build trails and wield flails. This was the sum of the news.
It was not strictly accurate, but it served to rouse Shorty at once.

He rose and touched the Mexican on the arm. "Where you say that fire
started, Pedro?"

"Bear Cañon, señor."

"And it's crossed San Jacinto?"

"Like wildfire." The slim vaquero made a gesture all-inclusive. "It runs,
señor, like a frightened jackrabbit. Nothing will stop it--nothing. It
iss sent by heaven for a punishment."

"Hmp!" Shorty grunted.

The rustler fell into a somber silence. He drank no more. The dark-lashed
eyes of the Mexican girls slanted his way in vain. He stared sullenly at
the table in front of him. A problem had pushed itself into his
consciousness, one he could not brush aside or ignore.

If the fire had started back of Bear Cañon, what agency had set it going?
He and Doble had camped last night at that very spot. If there had been a
fire there during the night he must have known it. Then when had the fire
started? And how? They had seen the faint smoke of it as they rode away,
the filmy smoke of a young fire not yet under much headway. Was it
reasonable to suppose that some one else had been camping close to them?
This was possible, but not likely. For they would probably have seen
signs of the other evening camp-fire.

Eliminating this possibility, there remained--Dug Doble. Had Dug fired
the brush while his companion was saddling for the start? The more Shorty
considered this possibility, the greater force it acquired in his mind.
Dug's hatred of Crawford, Hart, and especially Sanders would be satiated
in part at least if he could wipe their oil bonanza from the map. The
wind had been right. Doble was no fool. He knew that if the fire ran wild
in the chaparral only a miracle could save the Jackpot reservoirs and
plant from destruction.

Other evidence accumulated. Cryptic remarks of Doble made during the
day. His anxiety to see Steelman immediately. A certain manner of
ill-repressed triumph whenever he mentioned Sanders or Crawford. These
bolstered Shorty's growing opinion that the man had deliberately fired
the chaparral from a spirit of revenge.

Shorty was an outlaw and a bad man. He had killed, and might at any time
kill again. To save the Jackpot from destruction he would not have made a
turn of the hand. But Shorty was a cattleman. He had been brought up in
the saddle and had known the whine of the lariat and the dust of the drag
drive all his days. Every man has his code. Three things stood out in
that of Shorty. He was loyal to the hand that paid him, he stood by his
pals, and he believed in and after his own fashion loved cattle and the
life of which they were the central fact. To destroy the range feed
wantonly was a crime so nefarious that he could not believe Doble guilty
of it. And yet--

He could not let the matter lie in doubt. He left the tendejon and rode
to Steelman's house. Before entering he examined carefully both of his
long-barreled forty-fives. He made sure that the six-shooters were in
perfect order and that they rested free in the holsters. That sixth sense
acquired by "bad men," by means of which they sniff danger when it is
close, was telling him that smoke would rise before he left the house.

He stepped to the porch and knocked. There came a moment's silence, a
low-pitched murmur of whispering voices carried through an open window,
the shuffling of feet. The door was opened by Brad Steelman. He was alone
in the room.

"Where's Dug?" asked Shorty bluntly.

"Why, Dug--why, he's here, Shorty. Didn't know it was you. 'Lowed it
might be some one else. So he stepped into another room."

The short cowpuncher walked in and closed the door behind him. He stood
with his back to it, facing the other door of the room.

"Did you hire Dug to fire the chaparral?" he asked, his voice ominously
quiet.

A flicker of fear shot to the eyes of the oil promoter. He recognized
signs of peril and his heart was drenched with an icy chill. Shorty was
going to turn on him, had become a menace.

"I--I dunno what you mean," he quavered. "I'll call Dug if you wanta see
him." He began to shuffle toward the inner room.

"Hold yore hawsses, Brad. I asked you a question." The cold eyes of the
gunman bored into those of the other man. "Howcome you to hire Dug to
burn the range?"

"You know I wouldn't do that," the older man whined. "I got sheep, ain't
I? Wouldn't be reasonable I'd destroy their feed. No, you got a wrong
notion about--"

"Yore sheep ain't on the south slope range." Shorty's mind had moved
forward one notch toward certainty. Steelman's manner was that of a man
dodging the issue. It carried no conviction of innocence. "How much you
payin' him?"

The door of the inner room opened. Dug Doble's big frame filled the
entrance. The eyes of the two gunmen searched each other. Those of Doble
asked a question. Had it come to a showdown? Steelman sidled over to
the desk where he worked and sat down in front of it. His right hand
dropped into an open drawer, apparently carelessly and without intent.

Shorty knew at once that Doble had been drinking heavily. The man was
morose and sullen. His color was high. Plainly he was primed for a
killing if trouble came.

"Lookin' for me, Shorty?" he asked.

"You fired Bear Cañon," charged the cowpuncher.

"So?"

"When I went to saddle."

Doble's eyes narrowed. "You aimin' to run my business, Shorty?"

Neither man lifted his gaze from the other. Each knew that the test had
come once more. They were both men who had "gone bad," in the current
phrase of the community. Both had killed. Both searched now for an
advantage in that steady duel of the eyes. Neither had any fear. The
emotions that dominated were cold rage and caution. Every sense and nerve
in each focalized to one purpose--to kill without being killed.

"When yore's is mine, Dug."

"Is this yore's?"

"Sure is. I've stood for a heap from you. I've let yore ugly temper ride
me. When you killed Tim Harrigan you got me in bad. Not the first time
either. But I'm damned if I'll ride with a coyote low-down enough to burn
the range."

"No?"

"No."

From the desk came the sharp angry bark of a revolver. Shorty felt his
hat lift as a bullet tore through the rim. His eyes swept to Steelman,
who had been a negligible factor in his calculations. The man fired again
and blew out the light. In the darkness Shorty swept out both guns and
fired. His first two shots were directed toward the man behind the desk,
the next two at the spot where Doble had been standing. Another gun was
booming in the room, perhaps two. Yellow fire flashes ripped the
blackness.

Shorty whipped open the door at his back, slid through it, and kicked it
shut with his foot as he leaped from the porch. At the same moment he
thought he heard a groan.

Swiftly he ran to the cottonwood where he had left his horse tied. He
jerked loose the knot, swung to the saddle, and galloped out of town.

The drumming of hoofs came down the wind to a young fellow returning from
a late call on his sweetheart. He wondered who was in such a hurry.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

DUG DOBLE RIDES INTO THE HILLS

The booming of the guns died down. The acrid smoke that filled the room
lifted to shredded strata. A man's deep breathing was the only sound in
the heavy darkness.

Presently came a soft footfall of some one moving cautiously. A match
flared. A hand cupped the flame for an instant to steady it before the
match moved toward the wick of a kerosene lamp.

Dug Doble's first thought was for his own safety. The house door was
closed, the window blinds were down. He had heard the beat of hoofs die
away on the road. But he did not intend to be caught by a trick. He
stepped forward, locked the door, and made sure the blinds were offering
no cracks of light. Satisfied that all was well, he turned to the figure
sprawled on the floor with outflung arms.

"Dead as a stuck shote," he said callously after he had turned the body
over. "Got him plumb through the forehead--in the dark, too. Some
shootin', Shorty."

He stood looking down at the face of the man whose brain had spun so
many cobwebs of deceit and treachery. Even in death it had none of that
dignity which sometimes is lent to those whose lives have been full of
meanness and guile. But though Doble looked at his late ally, he was not
thinking about him. He was mapping out his future course of action.

If any one had heard the shots and he were found here now, no jury on
earth could be convinced that he had not killed Steelman. His six-shooter
still gave forth a faint trickle of smoke. An examination would show that
three shots had been fired from it.

He must get away from the place at once.

Doble poured himself half a tumbler of whiskey and drank it neat. Yes, he
must go, but he might as well take with him any money Steelman had in the
safe. The dead man owed him a thousand dollars he would never be able to
collect in any other way.

He stooped and examined the pockets of the still figure. A bunch of keys
rewarded him. An old-fashioned safe stood in the corner back of the desk.
Doble stooped in front of it, then waited for an instant to make sure
nobody was coming. He fell to work, trying the keys one after another.

A key fitted. He turned it and swung open the door. The killer drew out
bundles of papers and glanced through them hurriedly. Deeds, mortgages,
oil stocks, old receipts: he wanted none of these, and tossed them to the
floor as soon as he discovered there were no banknotes among them.
Compartment after compartment he rifled. Behind a package of abstracts he
found a bunch of greenbacks tied together by a rubber band at each end.
The first bill showed that the denomination was fifty dollars. Doble
investigated no farther. He thrust the bulky package into his inside coat
pocket and rose.

Again he listened. No sound broke the stillness of the night. The silence
got on his nerves. He took another big drink and decided it was time to
go.

He blew out the light and once more listened. The lifeless body of his
ally lying within touch of his foot did not disturb the outlaw. He had
not killed him, and if he had it would have made no difference. Very
softly for a large man, he passed to the inner room and toward the back
door. He deflected his course to a cupboard where he knew Steelman kept
liquor and from a shelf helped himself to an unbroken quart bottle of
bourbon. He knew himself well enough to know that during the next
twenty-four hours he would want whiskey badly.

Slowly he unlocked and opened the back door. His eyes searched the yard
and the open beyond to make sure that neither his enemy nor a sheriff's
posse was lurking in the brush for him. He crept out to the stable,
revolver in hand. Here he saddled in the dark, deftly and rapidly,
thrusting the bottle of whiskey into one of the pockets of the
saddlebags. Leading the horse out into the mesquite, he swung to the
saddle and rode away.

He was still in the saddle when the peaks above caught the morning sun
glow in a shaft of golden light. Far up in the gulches the new fallen
snow reflected the dawn's pink.

In a pocket of the hills Doble unsaddled. He hobbled his horse and turned
it loose to graze while he lay down under a pine with the bottle for a
companion.

The man had always had a difficult temper. This had grown on him and been
responsible largely for his decline in life. It had been no part of his
plan to "go bad." There had been a time when he had been headed for
success in the community. He had held men's respect, even though they had
not liked him. Then, somehow, he had turned the wrong corner and been
unable to retrace his steps.

He could even put a finger on the time he had commenced to slip. It had
begun when he had quarreled with Emerson Crawford about his daughter
Joyce. Shorty and he had done some brand-burning through a wet blanket.
But he had not gone so far that a return to respectability was
impossible. A little rustling on the quiet, with no evidence to fasten
it on one, was nothing to bar a man from society. He had gone more
definitely wrong after Sanders came back to Malapi. The young ex-convict,
he chose to think, was responsible for the circumstances that made of him
an outlaw. Crawford and Sanders together had exposed him and driven him
from the haunts of men to the hills. He hated them both with a bitter,
morose virulence his soul could not escape.

Throughout the day he continued to drink. This gave him no refuge from
himself. He still brooded in the inferno of his own thought-circle. It is
possible that a touch of madness had begun to affect his brain. Certainly
his subsequent actions would seem to bear out this theory.

Revenge! The thought of it spurred him every waking hour, roweling his
wounded pride cruelly. There was a way within reach of his hand, one
suggested by Steelman's whisperings, though never openly advocated by
the sheepman. The jealousy of the man urged him to it, and his consuming
vanity persuaded him that out of evil might come good. He could make the
girl love him. So her punishment would bring her joy in the end. As for
Crawford and Sanders, his success would be such bitter medicine to them
that time would never wear away the taste of it.

At dusk he rose and resaddled. Under the stars he rode back to Malapi. He
knew exactly what he meant to do and how he meant to do it.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE TUNNEL

Dave knew no rest that night. He patrolled his line from San Jacinto to
Cattle and back again, stopping always to lend a hand where the attack
was most furious. The men of his crew were weary to exhaustion, but the
pressure of the fire was so great that they dared not leave the front.
As soon as one blaze was beaten out, another started. A shower of sparks
close to Cattle Cañon swept over the ridge and set the thick grass afire.
This was smothered with saddle blankets and with sand and dirt thrown
from shovels.

Nearer to San Jacinto Cañon the danger was more acute. Dave did not dare
back-fire on account of the wind. He dynamited the timber to make a
trail-break against the howling, roaring wall of fire plunging forward.

As soon as the flames seized the timber the heat grew more intense. The
sound of falling trees as they crashed down marked the progress of the
fire. The men retreated, staggering with exhaustion, hands and faces
flayed, eyes inflamed and blinded by the black smoke that rolled over
them.

A stiff wind was blowing, but it was no longer a steady one. Sometimes it
bore from the northeast; again in a cross-current almost directly from
the east. The smoke poured in, swirling round them till they scarce knew
one direction from another.

The dense cloud lifted for a moment, swept away by an air current. To the
fire-fighters that glimpse of the landscape told an appalling fact. The
demon had escaped below from San Jacinto Cañon and been swept westward by
a slant of wind with the speed of an express train. They were trapped by
the back-fire in a labyrinth from which there appeared no escape. Every
path of exit was blocked. The flames had leaped from hilltop to hilltop.

The men gathered together to consult. Many of them were on the verge of
panic.

Dave spoke quietly. "We've got a chance if we keep our heads. There's an
old mining tunnel hereabouts. Follow me, and stay together."

He plunged into the heavy smoke that had fallen about them again, working
his way by instinct rather than by sight. Twice he stopped, to make sure
that his men were all at heel. Several times he left them, diving into
the smoke to determine which way they must go.

The dry, salt crackle of a dead pine close at hand would have told him,
even if the oppressive heat had not, that the fire would presently sweep
over the ground where they stood. He drew the men steadily toward Cattle
Cañon.

In that furious, murk-filled world he could not be sure he was moving in
the right direction, though the slope of the ground led him to think so.
Falling trees crashed about them. The men staggered on in the uncanny
light which tinged even the smoke.

Dave stopped and gave sharp, crisp orders. His voice was even and steady.
"Must be close to it now. Lie back of these down trees with your faces
close to the ground. I'll be back in a minute. Shorty, you're boss of the
crew while I'm away."

"You're gonna leave us to roast," a man accused, in a voice that was half
a scream.

Sanders did not stop to answer him, but Shorty took the hysterical man in
hand. "Git down by that log pronto or I'll bore a hole in you. Ain't you
got sense enough to see he'll save us if there's a chance?"

The man fell trembling to the ground.

"Two men behind each log," ordered Shorty. "If yore clothes git afire,
help each other put it out."

They lay down and waited while the fire swept above and around them.
Fortunately the woods here were not dense. Men prayed or cursed or wept,
according to their natures. The logs in front of some of them caught
fire and spread to their clothing. Shorty's voice encouraged them.

"Stick it out, boys. He'll be back if he's alive."

It could have been only minutes, but it seemed hours before the voice of
Sanders rang out above the fury of the blast.

"All up! I've found the tunnel! Step lively now!"

They staggered after their leader, Shorty bringing up the rear to see
that none collapsed by the way. The line moved drunkenly forward. Now and
again a man went down, overcome by the smoke and heat. With brutal kicks
Shorty drove him to his feet again.

The tunnel was a shallow one in a hillside. Dave stood aside and counted
the men as they passed in. Two were missing. He ran along the back trail,
dense with smoke from the approaching flames, and stumbled into a man. It