was
awakened by the sound of a raucous curse, he testified later, and in the
bright moonlight saw the young cattleman beating his horse. Evidently
the young animal had been startled at sight of his white-topped wagon.

An angry sentence or two passed between the men before the cattleman
moved over the hill-brow. As the trader rolled up again in his _sugun_,
there came to him faintly the sound of another horse. He was not able to
explain later why this struck him as ominous, beyond the strangeness of
the fact that two men, not in each other's company, should be traveling
so close together in the desert. At any rate, he rose, crept forward to
a clump of Spanish bayonet, and from behind it saw a young Mexican pass
along the swale. He was close enough almost to have touched him, and in
the rich moonlight saw the boyish face clearly.

By the time Wadley reached the rough country of the cap-rock, the young
day was beginning to awaken. A quail piped its morning greeting from the
brush. A gleam of blue in the dun sky flashed warning of a sun soon to
rise. He had struck the rim-rock a little too far to the right, and
deflected from his course to find the pocket he was seeking. For half a
mile he traveled parallel to the ridge, then turned into a break in the
wall. At the summit of a little rise he gave a whistle.

Presently, from above a big boulder, a head appeared cautiously.

"Hello, out there! Who is it?"

"Ford."

The rider swung to the ground stiffly and led his horse forward down a
sharply descending path to a little draw. A lank, sallow man with a
rifle joined him. With his back to a flat rock, a heavy-set,
broad-shouldered fellow was lounging.

"'Lo, Ford. Didn't expect you to-night," he grumbled.

"Drifted over from the dance at Tomichi Creek. Beat up a young Mexican
and had to get out."

"You're such a sullen brute! Why can't you let folks alone?" Pete
Dinsmore wanted to know.

He was annoyed. Rutherford Wadley was not a partner in the business on
hand to-night, and he would rather the man had been a hundred miles
away.

"He got jealous and tried to knife me," explained the heir of the A T O
sulkily.

"You durn fool! Won't you ever learn sense? Who was it this time?"

"Tony Alviro. His girl's crazy about me."

The keen, hard eyes of Dinsmore took in the smug complacency of the
handsome young cad. He knew that this particular brand of fool would go
its own way, but he wasted a word of advice.

"I d