two persons
he merely had given the information that he was going West on a bit of
a vacation. He had deliberately chosen to come in his car, so that
there might be every indication, should there be such a thing as a spy
in his rather diminutive office, that he merely intended a jaunt
through a few States, certainly not a journey half across the country.
But just the same, the news had leaked; Thayer had been informed, and
his arrival had been no surprise.

That there had been need for his coming, Barry felt sure. At the
least, there was mismanagement at the mill; contract after contract
lost just when it should have been gained told him this, if nothing
more. But--and he drew a sheet of yellow paper from his pocket and
stared hard at it--there was something else, something which had
aroused his curiosity to an extent of suspicion, something which might
mean an open book of information to him if only he could reach
Tabernacle at the right moment and gain access to the telegraph files
without the interference of the agent.

Then suddenly he ceased his study of the message and returned it to his
pocket. Two persons were approaching the cabin from the opposite
hill,--a girl whom he was glad to see, and a man who walked, or rather
rolled, in the background: Medaine Robinette and a sort of rear guard
who, twenty or thirty feet behind her, followed her every step, trotted
when she ran down the steep side of an embankment, then slowed as she
came to a walk again. A bow-legged creature he was, with ill-fitting
clothing and a broad "two-gallon" hat which evidently had been
bequeathed to him by some cow-puncher, long hair which straggled over
his shoulders, and a beaded vest which shone out beneath the scraggly
outer coat like a candle on a dark night. Instinctively Barry knew him
to be the grunting individual who had waited outside the door the night
before,--Lost Wing, Medaine's Sioux servant: evidently a
self-constituted bodyguard who traveled more as a shadow than as a
human being. Certainly the girl in the foreground gave no indication
that she was aware of his presence; nor did she seem to care.

Closer she came, and Barry watched her, taking a strange sort of
delight in the skipping grace with which she negotiated the stepping
stones of the swollen little stream which intervened between her and
the cabin of Ba'tiste Renaud, then clambered over the straggling pile
of massed logs and dead timber which strewed the s