, eh, Henry?"

"What Morgan was in it?"

"Gale Morgan. A lot of stuff came in on it an hour ago. Was there
anything started when you left?"

"I didn't hear of anything," responded de Spain. But his indifference
to the subject was marked.

"What's the matter?" demanded the operator. "Aren't you well
to-night?"

"Perfectly."

"Sleepy?"

De Spain roused himself. "Dick, have you got a Sleepy Cat wire open?"

"What do you want?"

"Tell Jeffries I'll take that Thief River stage job."

CHAPTER III

THE SPANISH SINKS

From a car window at Sleepy Cat may be seen, stretching far down into
the southwest a chain of towering peaks, usually snow-clad, that
dominate the desert in every direction for almost a hundred miles. In
two extended groups, separated by a narrow but well-defined break,
they constitute a magnificent rampart, named by Spaniards the
Superstition Mountains, and they stretch beyond the horizon to the
south, along the vast depression known locally as the Spanish Sinks.
The break on the eastern side of the chain comes about twenty miles
southwest of Sleepy Cat, and is marked on the north by the most
striking, and in some respects most majestic peak in the range--Music
Mountain; the break itself has taken the name of its earliest white
settlers, and is called Morgan's Gap. No railroad has ever yet
penetrated this southern country, despite the fact that rich mines
have been opened along these mountains, and are still being opened;
but it lies to-day in much of the condition of primitive savagery,
and lawlessness, as the word is conventionally accepted, that obtained
when the first rush was made for the Thief River gold-fields.

It is not to be understood that law is an unknown equation between
Calabasas and Thief River, or even between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat.
But as statute law it suffers so many infractions as to be hardly
recognizable in the ordinary sense. Business is done in this country;
but business must halt everywhere with its means of communication, and
in the Music Mountain country it still rests on the facilities of a
stage line. The stage line is a big and vigorous affair, a perfectly
organized railroad adjunct with the best horses, the best wagons, the
best freighting outfits that money can supply.

But this is by no means, in its civilizing effect, a railroad. A
railroad drives lawlessness before it--the Music Mountain country
still leans on stage-line law. The bullion wagons s