ert where the flat-leafed prickly pear and the occasional
pudgy creosote were the chief forms of vegetable life. Now and again a
swift might be seen basking on a rock or a Gila monster motionless on
the hillside. The ominous buzz of a rattler more than once made the pony
sidestep. Mesa and flat and wash succeeded each other monotonously.

It was after sunset when they drew up at a feed corral in Arixico. Steve
looked after his horse and sauntered down the little adobe street to a
Chinese restaurant which ostentatiously announced itself as the "New
York Cafe." This side of the business street was in the territory of
Uncle Sam, the other half floated the Mexican flag. After he had eaten,
the young man drifted across to one of the gambling-houses that invited
the patronage of Americans and natives alike.

He found within the heterogeneous gathering usually to be observed in
such a place. Vaqueros brushed shoulders with Chinese laundrymen,
cowpunchers with soldiers, peons with cattlemen from Arizona and Texas.
Here were miners and soldiers of fortune and plain tramps. More than one
of the shining-eyed gamblers had a price upon his head. Several were
outlaws. A score or more had taken part in the rapine and the pillage of
the guerrilla warfare that has of late years been the curse of the
country. It would have been hard in a day's travel to find an assembly
where human life was held at less value.

Among these lawless, turbulent siftings of the continent Yeager was
very much at home. He merged inconspicuously into the picture, a quiet,
brown-faced man with cool, alert eyes. Nobody paid the least attention
to him. He might be a horse-thief or an honest cowpuncher. It was a
matter of supreme indifference to those present. Experience in that
outdoor frontier school which always keeps open session had taught them
that a man lived longer here when he minded his own business.

Steve stood close to the bar. A prospector leaned against it and talked
to an acquaintance while they drank their beer.

"This here's how I figure it," he was saying. "I had a little dough when
I begun digging gopher holes in these here hills. Not much--say fifteen
hundred, mebbe. I sure ain't got it now. Lost it in a hole in the
ground. Well; I reckon I'll go on looking for it where I lost it."

Casually Yeager sauntered over to the roulette table. A fat man in duck
trousers--he was the agent for a firm of rifle manufacturers, Steve
learned later--was