building, with
a large, high-walled court at the back. This wall was also of adobe,
some ten feet high and three feet thick, without an opening, and
crowned with a luxuriant growth of prickly-pear cactus. At certain
hours of the day the prisoners were allowed the freedom of this court,
while a guard kept on them an occasional eye. Behind the court, and
coming up to its very walls, was a small tract of land planted with
vegetables, flowers and fruit trees and worked by an old Mexican who
lived alone in a tiny hut at the farther end of the enclosure.

For two days after the night of Emerson Mead's arrest his friends
tried every device known to the law to get him free of the prison
walls. But each attempt was cleverly met and defeated by the opposing
party, and he was still behind the bars. Then Nick Ellhorn and Thomson
Tuttle held a conference, and agreed that Mead must get back to his
ranch at once in order to save his affairs from further injury.

"That's what they are doin' this thing for," said Nick, "so they
can get a good chance to steal all his cattle. And what they don't
steal they'll scatter over the plains till it will be more than
they're worth to get 'em together again. They think they can just
everlastingly do him up by keepin' him in jail for a month."

Tuttle broke out with an indignant oath. "It's the meanest,
low-downest, dirtiest, measliest trick they've ever tried to do, and
that's sayin' a whole heap! But they'll find out they've got more to
buck against than they're a-lookin' for now!"

"You bet they will! They've got to travel mighty fast if they keep up
with this procession! Talk about measly tricks! Tom, that Fillmore
outfit's the biggest cattle thief in the southwest. It's just plum'
ridiculous to hear them talk about Emerson stealin' their cattle! Why,
if he'd stayed up nights to steal from them he couldn't have got even
for what they've taken from him."

They talked over the plan Ellhorn had proposed and when it was all
arranged Tuttle asked, "Shall we tell the judge?"

"Tell nothin' to nobody!" Nick exclaimed. "The judge will find it out
soon enough, and if we don't tell him he won't bother us with advice
to give it up. We've got some horse sense, Tommy, and I reckon we-all
can run this here excursion without help from any darn fool lawyer in
the territory. If they'd left it to us in the first place, we'd have
had Emerson at home long before this."

"I guess we-all can play our part of