nd if there's any talking to be done----"

"You can do it," grunted Elpaso.

"Thank you, Frank. And I will do it. I need not say that Kennedy will
ride ahead with me, Elpaso and Wickwire with Tommie Meggeson."

Leaving Scott in the trees, the little party trotted smartly up the
road, picking their way through the pools and across the brawling
streams that tore over the trail toward Duke Morgan's place. The
condition of the trail broke their formation continually and Lefever,
in the circumstances, was not sorry. His only anxiety was to keep
Elpaso from riding ahead far enough to embroil them in a quarrel
before he himself should come up.

Half-way to Duke's house they found a small bridge had gone out. It
cut off the direct road, and, at Elpaso's suggestion, they crossed
over to follow the ridge up the valley. Swimming their horses through
the backwater that covered the depression to the south, they gained
the elevation and proceeded, unmolested, on their way. As they
approached Sassoon's place, Elpaso, riding ahead, drew up his horse
and sat a moment studying the trail and casting an occasional glance
in the direction of the ranch-house, which lay under the brow of a
hill ahead.

When Lefever rode up to him, he saw the story that Elpaso was reading
in the roadway. It told of a man shot in his tracks as he was running
toward the house--and, in the judgment of these men, fatally
shot--for, while his companions spread like a fan in front of him,
Lefever got off his horse and, bending intently over the sudden page
torn out of a man's life, recast the scene that had taken place, where
he stood, half an hour earlier. Some little time Lefever spent
patiently deciphering the story printed in the rutted road, and marked
by a wide crimson splash in the middle of it. He rose from his study
at length and followed back the trail of the running feet that had
been stricken at the pool. He stopped in front of a fragment of rock
jutting up beside the road, studied it a while and, looking about,
picked up a number of empty cartridge-shells, examined them, and
tossed them away. Then he straightened up and looked searchingly
across the Gap. Only the great, silent face of El Capitan confronted
him. It told no tales.

"If this was Henry de Spain," muttered Elpaso, when Lefever rejoined
his companions, "he won't care whether you join him now, or at ten
o'clock, or never."

"That is not Henry," asserted Lefever with his usual cheer. "