at thought until after the finding of the letters
in William Bransford's pockets; and then, staring down at the man's
face, he had realized that he had been deluding himself, and, that he
was journeying northeastward merely because he was curious to see the
girl whom the Drifter had so vividly described.

Away back in his mind, too, there might have been a chivalrous desire
to help her in the fight that was to come with Alva Dale. He had felt
his blood surge hotly at the prospect of a fight, with Mary Bransford
as the storm center; a passion to defend her had got into his soul; and
a hatred for Alva Dale had gripped him.

Whatever the motive, he had come, and since he had looked down into
William Bransford's face, he had become conscious of a mighty
satisfaction. The two men who had trailed Bransford had been
cold-blooded murderers, and he had avenged Bransford completely. That
could not have happened if he had not yielded to the impulse to go to
the Double A.

He was glad he had decided to go. He was now the bearer of ill news,
but he was convinced that the girl would want to know about her
brother--and he must tell her. And now, too, he was convinced that his
journey to the Double A had been previously arranged--by Fate, or
whatever Providence controls the destinies of humans.

And that conviction helped him to fight down the sense of guilty
embarrassment that had afflicted him until now--the knowledge that he
was deliberately and unwarrantedly going to the Double A to interfere,
to throw himself into a fight with persons with whom he had no previous
acquaintance, for no other reason than that his chivalrous instincts
had prompted him.

And yet his thoughts were not entirely serious as he rode. The
situation had its humorous side.

"Mostly nothin' turns out as folks figure in the beginnin'," he told
himself. "Otherwise everything would be cut an' dried, an' there
wouldn't be a heap of fun in the world--for butters-in. An' folks
which scheme an' plot, tryin' to get things that belong to other folks,
would have it too easy. There's got to be folks that wander around,
nosin' into places that they shouldn't. Eh, Streak?"

Streak did not answer, and Sanderson rode on, smiling gravely.

He made a dry camp that night in a sea of mesquite at the edge of a
sand plain, although, he knew he could not now be far from the Double A
range. And in the early light of the morning he found his judgment
vindicated, f