demanded sharply.

"'Bout an hour ago," returned the Circle Y man. "I was rustlin' up these
strays down in the basin an' headin' them toward the crick when I runs
plum into a man from the Three Bar outfit. He was plum excited over it.
Said they'd ketched Greasy down by the Narrows sometime after noon
an'----"

But the Circle Y man finished to the empty air for Hollis's pony had
leaped forward into a cloud of dust, running desperately.

The Circle Y man sat erect, startled. "Well, I'll be----" he began,
speaking to Potter. But the printer was following his chief and was
already out of hearing. "Now what do you suppose----" again began the
Circle Y man, and then fell silent, suddenly smitten with the
uselessness of speech. He yelled at his gaunt steers and shifted the
calf in front of him to a more comfortable position. Then he proceeded
on his way. But as he rode his lips curled, his eyes narrowed, and
speech again returned to him. "Now why in hell would a man get so damned
excited over hearin' that someone was goin' to string up a measly
rustler?"

The interrogation remained unanswered. The Circle Y man continued on his
way, watching the fast disappearing dust clouds on the Circle Bar trail.

When Hollis reached the Circle Bar ranchhouse there was no one about. He
rode up to the front gallery and dismounted, thinking that perhaps
Norton would be in the house. But before he had crossed the gallery Mrs.
Norton came to the door. She was pale and laboring under great
excitement, but instantly divined Hollis's errand.

"They've taken him down to the cottonwood" she told Hollis, pointing
toward the grove in which Hollis had tried the six-shooter that Norton
had given him the first day after his arrival at the ranch. "They are
going to hang him! Hurry!"

Hollis was back in the saddle in an instant and racing his pony down
past the bunk house at break-neck speed. He urged the little animal
across an intervening stretch of plain, up a slight rise, down into a
shallow valley, and into the cottonwood, riding recklessly through the
trees and urging the pony at a headlong pace through the
underbrush--crashing it down, scaring the rattlers from their
concealment, and startling the birds from their lofty retreats.

For ten minutes he rode as he had never ridden before. And then he came
upon them. They stood at the base of a fir-balsam, whose gnarled limbs
spread flatly outward--three Circle Bar men, a half dozen from the
var