nded him.

"Maybe. Well, I'll make a few inquiries." He stood up stretching. "I'd
like mighty well to start for the Shoe-Bar to-night, but I'm afraid I
can't get a posse together soon enough. We'll need some bunch to round up
that gang. You'll be at the United States Hotel, I suppose? Well, I'll get
busy now, and after supper I'll drop around to let you know how things are
going. With what you've told me I'll see if I can't squeeze some
information out of those greasers. It may help."

They left the room together, the sheriff pausing outside to give some
instructions to his assistant. Buck gathered in Jessup, who had been
waiting, and the two left the building and walked toward the hotel, where
they had left their horses.

Perilla was a town of some size, and at this hour the main street was
fairly well crowded with a picturesque throng of cowboys, Mexicans, and
Indians from the near-by reservation, with the usual mingling of more
prosaic-looking business men. Not a few motor-cars mingled with horsemen
and wagons of various sorts in the roadway, but as Buck's glance fell on a
big, shiny, black touring-car standing at the curb, he was struck by a
sudden feeling of familiarity.

Mechanically he noted the license-number. Then his eyes narrowed as he saw
the pudgy, heavily-built figure in the tan dust-coat on the point of
descending from the tonneau.

An instant later they were face to face. For a second the fat man glanced
at him indifferently with that same pouting droop to the small lips which
Stratton knew he never could forget. Then, like a flash, the round eyes
widened and filled with horror, the jaw dropped, the fat face turned to a
pale, sickly green. A choking gurgle burst from the man's lips, and he
seemed on the point of collapse when a hand reached out and dragged him
back into the car, which, at a hasty word from the occupant of the back
seat, shot from the curb and hummed rapidly away.

Thinking to stop them by shooting up the tires. Buck's hand dropped
instinctively to his gun. But he realized in time that such drastic
methods were neither expedient nor necessary. Instead, he turned and
halted a man of about forty who was passing.

"Any idea who that fellow is?" he asked, motioning toward the car, just
whirling around the next corner. "He's short and fat, in a big black
Hammond car."

"Short and fat in a Hammond car?" repeated the man, staring down the
street. "Hum! Must be Paul Draper from Amarillo.