me here. Good-by."

Asher did not look like a disappointed man when he reached the Sunflower
Inn.

"Best news in the world," he declared when Virginia related what had
happened in the cabin that afternoon. "A man who goes prospecting around
the Kansas prairies doesn't discourage the poor cuss he pities; he tries
to encourage the wretch to hold on to land he wouldn't have himself.
Listen to me, Virgie. That man has his eye on Grass River right now. I
know his breed."

Meanwhile the early dusk found Champers and Smith approaching Shirley's
premises.

"I don't know about Aydelot," Champers declared as they lariated their
ponies beyond the corral. "He's one of the clear-eyed fellows who sees a
good thing about as soon as you sight it yourself, and then he turns clam
and leach and you won't move him nor get nothin' out of him, and that's
all there is to it."

"Yes, I know that. I mean, you say he does?" Smith seemed too preoccupied
to follow his own words, but Champers followed Smith shrewdly enough.

They made a hasty but careful examination of the premises, keeping wide of
the cabin where the sick man lay.

"He's got three horses in there. He's well fixed," Champers declared,
peering into the stable, where it was too dark to discover that the third
horse was Dr. Carey's. "Let's hike off for some deserted shack for the
night and get an early start for the Crossing in the morning. Easy trick,
this, gettin' in and out of here unseen. And it's one of the best claims
on Grass River."

"Couldn't we slip into the cabin?" Smith asked in a half whisper. "If he's
too sick"--Something in the man's face made it look diabolical in the
fading twilight, and he seemed about to start toward the house.

"Now, see here, Mr. Smith," Champers said with slow sternness. "What'd I
say back there about women? Neither we ain't man-slaughterers out here,
though your _Police Gazette_ and your dime novels paint us that way.
There's more murderers per capiter to a single street in New York than in
the whole state of Kansas, right now. If it's land and money, we're after
it, tooth an' toenail, but forget the thing in your mind this minute or
you an' me parts company right here, an' you can hoof it back to Carey's
Crossing or Wilmington, Delaware."

Smith made no reply and they mounted their ponies and galloped away.

And all the while Dr. Horace Carey, inside the unlighted cabin, had
watched their movements with grim curiosity, even to the