Dick out to the Stivers place. We'll come a-running."
He had lowered his voice so that Bud could not hear what was to happen
before the landlord sent Dick, but he decided he would not pry into the
matter and try to fill that gap in the conversation.

He sat where he was until the three had ridden back down the sandy road
which served as a street. Then he slipped behind the court-house and
smoked his cigarette, and went and borrowed hay from the cow and the
horse in the corral and made himself some sort of bed with his saddle
blanket to help out, and slept until morning.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE CATROCK GANG

A woman with a checkered apron and a motherly look came to let her
chickens out and milk the cow, and woke Bud so that she could tell him
she believed he had been on a "toot", or he never would have taken such
a liberty with her corral. Bud agreed to the toot, and apologized, and
asked for breakfast. And the woman, after one good look at him, handed
him the milk bucket and asked him how he liked his eggs.

"All the way from barn to breakfast," Bud grinned, and the woman
chuckled and called him Smarty, and told him to come in as soon as the
cow was milked.

Bud had a great breakfast with the widow Hanson. She talked, and Bud
learned a good deal about Crater and its surroundings, and when he spoke
of holdup gangs she seemed to know immediately what he meant, and
told him a great deal more about the Catrockers than Marian had done.
Everything from murdering and robbing a peddler to looting the banks at
Crater and Lava was laid to the Catrockers. They were the human buzzards
that watched over the country and swooped down wherever there was money.
The sheriff couldn't do anything with them, and no one expected him to,
so far as Bud could discover.

He hesitated a long time before he asked about Marian Morris. Mrs.
Hanson wept while she related Marian's history, which in substance was
exactly what Marian herself had told Bud. Mrs. Hanson, however, told how
Marian had fought to save her father and Ed, and how she had married Lew
Morris as a part of her campaign for honesty and goodness. Now she was
down at Little Lost cooking for a gang of men, said Mrs. Hanson, when
she ought to be out in the world singing for thousands and her in silks
and diamonds instead of gingham dresses and not enough of them.

"Marian Collier is the sweetest thing that ever grew up in this
country," the old lady sniffled. "She's one in a t