ntolerantly at the coach ends, muttering
guttural anathemas at the necessity for delays. The spirit of battle was
personified in him; it sat on his squared shoulders; it was in the thrust
of his chin, stuck out as though to receive blows, which his rippling
muscles would be eager to return. Two other passengers in the coach
watched him warily, and once, when he got up and walked to the front of
the coach, opening the door and looking out, to let in the roar and whir
and the clatter, one of the passengers remarked to the other: "That guy is
in a temper where murder would come easy to him."

The train left Manti at nine o'clock in the evening. At midnight it pulled
up at the little frame station in Dry Bottom and the young man leaped off
and strode rapidly away into the darkness of the desert town. A little
later, J. Blackstone Graney, attorney at law, and former Judge of the
United States District Court at Dry Bottom, heard a loud hammering on the
door of his residence at the outskirts of town. He got up, with a grunt of
resentment for all heavy-fisted fools abroad on midnight errands, and went
downstairs to admit a grim-faced stranger who looked positively
bloodthirsty to the Judge, under the nervous tension of his midnight
awakening.

"I'm 'Brand' Trevison, owner of the Diamond K ranch, near Manti," said the
stranger, with blunt sharpness that made the Judge blink. "I've a case on
in the Manti court at ten o'clock tomorrow--today," he corrected. "They
are going to try to swindle me out of my land, and I've got to have a
lawyer--a real one. I could have got half a dozen in Manti--such as they
are--but I want somebody who is wise in the law, and with the sort of
honor that money and power can't blast--I want you!"

Judge Graney looked sharply at his visitor, and smiled. "You are evidently
desperately harried. Sit down and tell me about your case." He waved to a
chair and Trevison dropped into it, sitting on its edge. The Judge took
another, and with the kerosene lamp between them on a table, Trevison
related what had occurred during the previous morning in Manti. When he
concluded, the Judge's face was serious.

"If what you say is true, it is a very awkward, not to say suspicious,
situation. Being the only lawyer in Dry Bottom, until the coming of Judge
Lindman, I have had occasion many times to consult the record you speak
of, and if my memory serves me well, I have noted several times--quite
casually, of course, si