,
dismounted, and searched about for a glade with a little grass. Here he
staked his horse on a long lariat; and, using his saddle for a pillow,
his saddle-blanket for covering, he went to sleep.

Next morning he was off again, working south. During the next few days
he paid brief visits to several villages that lay in his path. And in
each some one particular friend had a piece of news to impart that made
Duane profoundly thoughtful. A ranger had made a quiet, unobtrusive call
upon these friends and left this message, "Tell Buck Duane to ride into
Captain MacNelly's camp some time after night."

Duane concluded, and his friends all agreed with him, that the new
ranger's main purpose in the Nueces country was to capture or kill Buck
Duane, and that this message was simply an original and striking ruse,
the daring of which might appeal to certain outlaws.

But it did not appeal to Duane. His curiosity was aroused; it did not,
however, tempt him to any foolhardy act. He turned southwest and rode a
hundred miles until he again reached the sparsely settled country. Here
he heard no more of rangers. It was a barren region he had never but
once ridden through, and that ride had cost him dear. He had been
compelled to shoot his way out. Outlaws were not in accord with the
few ranchers and their cowboys who ranged there. He learned that both
outlaws and Mexican raiders had long been at bitter enmity with these
ranchers. Being unfamiliar with roads and trails, Duane had pushed on
into the heart of this district, when all the time he really believed he
was traveling around it. A rifle-shot from a ranch-house, a deliberate
attempt to kill him because he was an unknown rider in those parts,
discovered to Duane his mistake; and a hard ride to get away persuaded
him to return to his old methods of hiding by day and traveling by
night.

He got into rough country, rode for three days without covering much
ground, but believed that he was getting on safer territory. Twice he
came to a wide bottom-land green with willow and cottonwood and thick as
chaparral, somewhere through the middle of which ran a river he decided
must be the lower Nueces.

One evening, as he stole out from a covert where he had camped, he saw
the lights of a village. He tried to pass it on the left, but was unable
to because the brakes of this bottom-land extended in almost to the
outskirts of the village, and he had to retrace his steps and go round
to the ri