.

* * * * *

Deputy Sheriff Mannix was sitting in his little office alone. It was
nearly sunset. A faint glow of crimson shot across the carpet.

Mannix was scowling thoughtfully. On the desk before him were two
pieces of paper. One of them was a reward notice publishing the fact
that The Coyote was wanted and that five thousand dollars would be
paid by the State of Arizona for his capture, dead or alive.

Mannix picked up the second piece of paper and again read the words
penciled upon it:

I am taking out of this money belonging to the Dixie Queen the
five hundred dollars Sautee promised me for carrying the money to
the mine, and the two thousand dollars reward offered for the
capture of those who had been robbing the Dixie Queen. I expect
that shortly after this gets into the proper hands Sautee will be
in jail, and he will be handy to tell you this is all O. K.

RATHBURN.

Mannix took up the reward notice, put it with the note, and jammed the
two pieces of paper into an obscure pigeonhole in his desk.

"Filed!" he said aloud.

Then he rose with a peculiar smile, went out upon the little porch,
and stared toward the east where the reflection of the sunset cast a
rosy glow over the foothills leading down to the desert.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PRODIGAL

With face upraised to the breath of air which stirred across the bare
black lava hills, Rathburn leaned forward in the saddle eagerly, while
his dun-colored horse stood patiently, seemingly in accord with his
master's mood. A merciless sun beat down from a hot, cloudless sky.

Below, stretching in endless miles was the desert--a sinister,
forbidding land of desolate distances, marked only by slender yucca
palms, mesquite, dusty greasewood, an occasional clump of green palo
verde, the slim fingers of the ocatilla, the high "forks" of the giant
sahuara, and clumps of la cholla cactus, looking like apple orchards
in full bloom.

Yet the man's gaze fell for a moment lovingly on each species of
cactus and desert vegetation; his look was that which dwells in the
homesick eyes of a traveler when he sees his native land from the deck
of an inbound ship.

"Hoss, we're home!" he said aloud, while the animal pricked up its
ears.

Then he looked off to the left, where the blue outlines of a low range
of mountains wavered in the heat like a mirage.

"Imagination Range," he said moodily.

He tickled th