a range war that grew out of
the killing, and some kind of a business deal just about broke them.
That's the way this fellow had it; said a trail-boss told him at
Ogalalla that spring. I didn't take much stock in the yarn at the time,
but I'm beginning to think he had it straight. You didn't hear anything
about it?"

"Not a word; it's news to me," I said. "When I left that country I kept
moving north all the time. The last three years I've been in the Judith
Basin, and southern outfits haven't begun to come in there yet. So I
haven't had much chance to hear from that part of the world. But I'm
framing up my think-works so I won't be surprised at anything I see or
hear after to-night. How long since you left that country, Mac?"

"Next spring after you did," he answered. "If they did go broke, I can
_sabe_ their being here. Rutter said, you know, that they'd made a stake
on the Peace--Peace River, I suppose he meant. There's been a lot of
placer mining in that north country the last three or four years. They
might have been up there and struck it good and plenty. They made their
start in the cow business off a placer in California, you know."

I knew that, for Rowan often spoke of it. And granting that we had
surmised rightly, it required no vivid imagination to picture what
might happen to men crossing those wide prairies with a fortune in
yellow dust. But my imagination was hardly equal to the task of
reconciling the fact that the evil pair had been busy at other deviltry
and yet knew I carried a large sum of money and where it was concealed
about my person. That brought me back to something else Rutter had told
us; something that I knew--or thought I knew--touched MacRae very
closely.

"Hans said Lyn was at Walsh," I remarked. "I don't think she was there,
this morning. But she might be due to arrive there. Hang it all, Mac,
what the dickens chased you away from the Canadian?"

"Looking back, I can't just say what it was," he presently replied, in a
hard, matter-of-fact tone. "You see, one's feelings can change, Sarge.
It looks different to me now than it did then. I reckon I could have
written essays on the futility of sentiment, and the damned silliness of
a man who thinks he cares for a woman. But I'm past that stage. And so
I can't say for sure just how it was or why. Something came up between
me and Lyn--and I drifted, and kept drifting. Went through Colorado,
Wyoming, Montana; finally rambled here, and went