mething up his sleeve."

"Hope that greaser doesn't give us away to Pasquale or Harrison."

"He won't. Trust Cactus Center. He's bridle-wise, that lad is. I feel a
lot better just to know he has got us on his mind."

"What do you suppose he is planning?"

"Don't know. Of course he has to lie low. But he pulled off his own
getaway and I'll back him to figure out ours." The camera man was
nothing if not a loyal admirer of the range-rider.

They talked in whispers, eager and excited with the possibility of
rescue that had come. Somehow, of all the men they had known, they
banked more on Steve Yeager in such an emergency than any other. It was
not alone his physical vigor, though that counted, since it gave him so
complete a mastery over himself. Farrar had seen him once stripped in a
swimming-pool and been stirred to wonder. Beneath the satiny skin the
muscles moved in ripples. The biceps crawled back and forth like living
things, beautiful in the graceful flow of their movement. Whatever he
had done had been done easily, apparently without effort. This reserve
power was something more than a combination of bone and sinew and flesh.
It was a product of the spirit, a moral force to be reckoned with. It
helped to make impossible things easy of accomplishment.

* * * * *

The panic of Cabenza vanished as soon as he was out of sight of the
guards. As he turned down toward the sandy river-bed a little smile lay
in his eyes.

From the place where it was buried beneath the root of a cottonwood, he
dug out a bandanna handkerchief containing several bottles, little
brushes, and a looking-glass. Sitting there in the moonlight, he worked
busily renewing the tints of his hands and face and also of the
coffee-colored patch of skin that peeped through his torn trouser leg.

This done, he sauntered back to the little town and down the adobe
street. A horseman cantered up to the headquarters of the general just
as Pasquale stepped out with Culvera. The latter snapped his fingers
toward Cabenza and that trooper ran forward.

"Hold the horse," ordered the officer in Mexican.

Cabenza relieved the messenger, who stepped forward and delivered what
had been given him to say. The hearing of the man holding the horse was
acute and he listened intently.

"Senor Harrison sends greeting to the general. He is in touch with the
play-actor Lennox and hopes soon to get the Gringo Yeager. If Lennox
plays fals