ay." Bob
sat down on the bank of the water ditch and kept the digger covered.
"Make it seven feet long," he ordered, coldly.

Slowly Madrigal dug and shovelled, and slowly but surely as the thing
took shape, he saw what it was--a grave. His grave!

He glared wildly about as he paused for a breath.

"Hurry," came the insistent command.

Another shovelful, and he glanced up at the light. But the muzzle of
the gun was level with the light! A wrong move and he knew the thing
would be over even before the grave was done.

For an hour he worked. Off there at the edge of the desert, this grave
levelled as a part of the cotton field--and no one would ever find it.
His very bones seemed to sweat with horror. Was the American going to
bury him alive? Or would he shoot him first?

All the stealth and cruelty he had ever felt toward others now turned
in on himself, and a horror that filled him with blind, wild terror of
that hollow grave shook him until he could no longer dig. He stood
there in front of the flashlight blanched and shaking.

"That will do," said Rogeen. "Madrigal," he put into that word all the
still terror of a cool courage, "that is your grave."

For a full moment he paused. "You will stay out of it just as long as
you stay off my land--out of reach of my gun. Don't ever even pass the
road by my place.

"Your boss has had his warning. This is yours. That grave will stay
open, day and night, waiting for you.

"Good-night, Senor Madrigal. Go fast and don't look back."

The last injunction was entirely superfluous.

After the night had swallowed up the fleeing figure Bob rolled on the
bank and laughed until his ribs ached.

"No more oat sacks for Senor Madrigal! I wonder who the other one
was--and what became of him?"

CHAPTER XV

It was October. The bolls had opened beautifully. The cotton was
ready to pick. As Bob and Noah walked down the rows the stalks came up
to their shoulders. It was the finest crop of cotton either of them
had ever seen.

"As dad used to say," remarked Noah Ezekiel, "the fields are white for
the harvest, but where are the reapers?" There was no one in the
fields at work.

Bob shook his head gloomily. "I have no money for the pickers. I owe
you, Noah, for the last two months."

"Yes, I remember it," said the hill billy, plucking an extra large boll
of lint. "I've tried to forget it, but somehow those things sort of
stick in a fellow's mind."