woman was rouged and painted to the ears. Never in
its palmiest days had the 'Dobe Dollar's mirrors reflected a costume
more gaudy than the one she was wearing. The men too were painted and
dolled up extravagantly in vaqueros' costumes that were the limit of
absurdity. Had they all escaped from a madhouse? Or was he, Steve
Yeager, in a pipe-dream?

From a near grove of cottonwoods half a dozen men in chaps came running.
Assured of their proximity, the fat little fellow pawed the air with
rage.

"Ever see such rotten luck? Spoiled the whole scene. Say, you Rip Van
Winkle, think we came out here for the ozone?"

One of the men joined the young woman, who was assisting the villain
Yeager had knocked out. The others crowded around him in excitement, all
expostulating at once. They were dressed wonderfully and amazingly as
cowpunchers, but they were painted frauds in spite of the careful
ostentation of their costumes. Steve's shiny leathers and dusty hat
missed the picturesque, but he looked indigenous and they did not. He
was at his restful ease, this slender, brown man, negligent, careless,
eyes twinkling but alert. The brand of the West was stamped indelibly on
him.

"I ce'tainly must 'a' spilled the beans. Looks like I done barked up
the wrong tree," he drawled amiably.

A man who had been standing on a box behind some kind of a masked
battery jumped down and joined the group.

"Gee! I've got a bully picture of our anxious friend laying out
Harrison. Nothing phony about that, Threewit. Won't go in this reel, but
she'll make a humdinger in some other. Say, didn't Harrison hit the dust
fine! Funny you lads can't ever pull off a fall like that."

An annoyed voice, both raucous and sneering, interrupted his enthusiasm.
"Just stick around, Mr. Camera Man, and you'll get a chance to do
another bit of real life that ain't faked. I'm goin' to hammer the head
off Buttinski presently."

The camera man, an alert, boyish fellow as thin as a lath, turned and
grinned. Harrison was sitting up a little unsteadily. Burning black
eyes, set in sockets of extraordinary depths, blazed from a face
sinister enough to justify Steve's impression of him as a villain. The
shoulders of the man were very broad and set with the gorilla hunch; he
was deep-chested and lean-loined. His eyes shifted with a quick, furtive
menace. His companions might be imitation cowpunchers, but if Yeager was
any judge this was no imitation bad man.

"Going