the valley wondering what would be
his reception.

The valley was much larger than it had appeared from the high elevation.
Well watered, green with grass and tree, and farmed evidently by good
hands, it gave Duane a considerable surprise. Horses and cattle were
everywhere. Every clump of cottonwoods surrounded a small adobe house.
Duane saw Mexicans working in the fields and horsemen going to and
fro. Presently he passed a house bigger than the others with a porch
attached. A woman, young and pretty he thought, watched him from a door.
No one else appeared to notice him.

Presently the trail widened into a road, and that into a kind of square
lined by a number of adobe and log buildings of rudest structure.
Within sight were horses, dogs, a couple of steers, Mexican women with
children, and white men, all of whom appeared to be doing nothing. His
advent created no interest until he rode up to the white men, who were
lolling in the shade of a house. This place evidently was a store and
saloon, and from the inside came a lazy hum of voices.

As Duane reined to a halt one of the loungers in the shade rose with a
loud exclamation:

"Bust me if thet ain't Luke's hoss!"

The others accorded their interest, if not assent, by rising to advance
toward Duane.

"How about it, Euchre? Ain't thet Luke's bay?" queried the first man.

"Plain as your nose," replied the fellow called Euchre.

"There ain't no doubt about thet, then," laughed another, "fer Bosomer's
nose is shore plain on the landscape."

These men lined up before Duane, and as he coolly regarded them he
thought they could have been recognized anywhere as desperadoes. The
man called Bosomer, who had stepped forward, had a forbidding face which
showed yellow eyes, an enormous nose, and a skin the color of dust, with
a thatch of sandy hair.

"Stranger, who are you an' where in the hell did you git thet bay hoss?"
he demanded. His yellow eyes took in Stevens's horse, then the weapons
hung on the saddle, and finally turned their glinting, hard light upward
to Duane.

Duane did not like the tone in which he had been addressed, and he
remained silent. At least half his mind seemed busy with curious
interest in regard to something that leaped inside him and made his
breast feel tight. He recognized it as that strange emotion which had
shot through him often of late, and which had decided him to go out to
the meeting with Bain. Only now it was different, more power