t was exactly the sort of thing I
expected him to say. The probability of death is a much more amusing
prospect to some men, Joe, than the perplexity of living."

Fat Joe flashed a swift, half-puzzled glance at his chief's face; he
started to ask a question, then scowled and checked himself and turned
instead to kindle a fire in the stove of the lean-to kitchen of the
cabin. But a half-hour later he was still murmuring the last phrase over
to himself, perplexedly, when Steve came leading the horse Ragtime up to
the open door. Saddled and with reins a-trail, the animal had been
wandering throughout the night about the upper end of the construction
camp clearing. At the sound of hoofbeats outside Fat Joe left the stove
and the half-cooked breakfast he had set himself to prepare. From the
doorway he stared through narrowed lids.

For the moment Joe had half forgotten those night birds whose mournful
hooting along the trail, a few hours back, had first stirred him to alert
suspicion. While he was struggling with Garry Devereau's faltering heart
he had had scant leisure to devote to the problem of the other man's
identity--that shadowy figure which had come plunging out of the cabin
door and gone crashing off into the brush, a noisy but invisible target
for his revolver. Now recognition and a light of partial understanding
rose and intermingled in his eyes.

"So that's the way one of 'em come," he murmured. "I was wondering some.
Last night I didn't notice the horse, being a mite too hurried to give
ample attention to details, as it were. But ain't--ain't this one of
Allison's horses?"

Steve straightened from an examination of a deep scratch in one of
Ragtime's knees and stood, back to the door, slowly stroking the soft
black nose. Just as well as though it had been voiced he caught the
unphrased inference in the plump one's query. After a time he shook his
head, absently, in negation.

"No, Joe," he answered heavily. "He is from Allison's stables, but we
have him to thank, just the same, along with Garry, for our blue-prints
and estimates. It was Mr. Devereau whom he brought up here last night,
and in fairly good time I should judge, too, from the pace at which they
set out. Garry turned him into the hill-road, and he must have stuck to
it blindly until he struck our fork." And, after a longer pause: "The
horse is Miss Allison's own property," he added quietly.

Joe pursed his lips. Instantly, at the