258
XVII. When Reason Swings 271
XVIII. The Bully Meets His Master 288
XIX. The Quest Supreme 303

THE PLUNDERER

CHAPTER I

BULLY PRESBY

Plainly the rambling log structure was a road house and the stopping
place for a mountain stage. It had the watering trough in front, the
bundle of iron pails cluttered around the rusted iron pump, and the
trampled muddy hollow created by many tired hoofs striking vigorously
to drive away the flies. It was in a tiny flat beside the road, and
mountains were everywhere; hard-cut, relentless giants, whose stern
faces portrayed a perpetual constancy. At the trough two burros, with
their packs deftly lashed, thrust soft gray muzzles deep into the
water, and held rigid their long gray ears, casting now and then a
wise look at the young man in worn mining clothes who stood patiently
beside them.

Another man, almost a giant in size, but with a litheness of movement
that told of marvelous physical strength, emerged from the door of the
road house, and the babel of sound that had been stilled when he
entered, but a few minutes before, rose again. He crossed to the well,
and smiled from half-humorous eyes at the younger man standing beside
the animals, and said: "Bumped into a hornet's nest. Butted into an
indignation meetin'. A Blackfoot war powwow when the trader had
furnished free booze would have been a peace party put up against
it."

The younger man, who had turned to pump more water, following the
polite mountain custom of replenishing for what you have used, stopped
with a hand on the handle, and looked at him inquiringly.

"It seems it's a bunch of fellers that's been workin' some placer
ground off back here somewheres"--and he waved a tanned hand
indefinitely in a wide arc--"and some man got the double hitch on 'em
with the law, provin' that the ground was his'n, and the sheriff run
'em off! Now they're sore. But it seems they cain't help 'emselves, so
they're movin' over to some other place across the divide."

"But what has that to do with us?"

"Nothin', except that it took me five minutes to get the barkeep' to
tell me about the road. He says we've come all right this far, and
this is the place where we hit the trail over the hills. Says we save
a day and a half, with pack burros, by takin' the cut-off. Says it's
seven or eight hours good