geles. Oh, well--forget
Bland!

So there were the three hundred--gee golly, but it had cost, that short
stay in the burg of Bland's dreams. A hundred dollars gone like the
puff of a cigarette! Well, there were the three hundred left--he'd
have been broke, pronto, if he had stayed there much longer. Another
hundred he had spent on the Thunder Bird--golly, but propellers do cost
a lot! And that shotgun he never had had a chance to shoot--Cliff sure
was a queer guy, making him buy all that scenery, and then caching him
away so no one ever got a chance to size him up and see whether he
looked like a duck hunter or not. Well, anyway, let's see. There were
a thousand in big juicy hundreds; and five hundred more in fifties and
twenties--

Out beyond the oak's leafy screen the dogs were barking and growling
and the children were calling shrilly. Johnny hastily put away his
wealth and eased himself up so that he could peer out through the
branches. He had not consciously feared the coming of strangers, yet
now he felt his heart thumping noisily because of the clamor out in the
yard. While he looked, two horsemen rode past and stopped at the cabin.

Now Johnny had been telling himself what a godsend some new face would
be to him, yet he did not rush out to welcome the callers and ask the
news of the outside world which Cliff was so chary of giving. He did
not by any sound or movement declare his presence. He simply craned
and listened.

One of the men he could not see because of a great, overhanging limb
that barred his vision. The other happened to stop just opposite a
very good peephole through the leaves. The kiddies were standing back
shyly, patently interrupted in their pretended play of trundling the
wheelbarrow and dragging the stick horses over the yard. Rosa, the
thin-legged girl, stood shyly back with her finger in her mouth, in
plain sight of Johnny, though she could not see him in the deep shadow
of the leaves.

It was the man that interested Johnny, however. He was a soldier,
probably one of the border patrol. He sat his horse easily, erect in
the saddle, straight-limbed and alert, with lean hard jaw and a gray
eye that kept glancing here, there, everywhere while the other talked.
It was only a profile view that Johnny saw, but he did not need a look
at the rest of his face with the other gray eye to be uncomfortably
convinced that not much would escape him.

"It circled and seemed to come do