and arrow weed that serve for a house for
the renter on the Mexican side. The setting moon was at its back, and
the open doorway showed only as a darker splotch. He lifted the fiddle
again. "Chinaboy, Jap, Hindu, Poor Man, Rich Man, Beggar Man or
Mexican--I'll give you a serenade all the samee."

The gleeful melody had scarcely jigged its way into the desert night
when, in the black splotch of the doorway, a figure appeared--a woman
in a white nightdress. Swiftly Bob changed the jig tune into a real
serenade, a clear, haunting, calling melody. The figure stood straight
and motionless in the dark doorway as long as he could see. Someway he
knew it was a white woman and that she was young.

He put the fiddle back in the bag and turned in his saddle to mark the
location of the hut in his mind--there was a clump of eucalyptus trees
just north of it. Yes, he would know the place, and he would learn
tomorrow who lived there. That listening figure had caught his
imagination.

But again he grinned into the night, ruefully this time as he
remembered the disaster that had followed his last two experiences with
this diabolical instrument of glee and grief.

"Oh, well," he shook his head determinedly and threw his leg across the
saddle, "the first time was with a preacher; the second with a gun; now
we'll give the lady a chance."

The fiddle and the figure in the doorway had stirred in Bob a lot of
reflections. At twenty he had given up his music and most of the
careless fun that went with it, because a sudden jolt had made him see
that to win through he must fight and not fiddle. For eight years he
had worked tremendously hard at half a dozen jobs across half a dozen
states; and there had been plenty of fighting. But what had he won?--a
job as a hardware clerk at twenty dollars a week.

"Oh, well"--he had learned to give the Mexican shrug of the
shoulder--"twenty dollars in a land of opportunity is better than fifty
where everything is already fixed."

That must be the Red Butte Ranch across yonder. He turned into the
left-hand fork of the road.

"Hello, there!" A tall, rambling fellow rose up from the side of the
road. "Are you the good Samaritan or merely one of the thieves?"

"Neither," replied Bob, guessing this was a messenger from the Red
Butte, "but I work for both. Where is your balky tractor?"

"This way." The rambling fellow turned to the right and started down
the road, talking over his left