her of a too-far
wandering steer, both blanched white as the alkali-crusted boulders. It
was nearly level going and the car pounded along, all the occupants
looking for trail sign. The mesa corridor, nowhere more than thirty feet
wide, twisted and snaked, three hundred feet of sheer wall on either
side topped by sloping cliffs mounting far higher toward the actual top
of the mesa.

"Keep an eye peeled for rain, Phil," said Jordan, "I'd sure hate to get
caught in here with a cloud-burst."

"Right," answered Phil. "I c'ud see better if I had a drink. Plimsoll,
you got somethin' on the hip, ain't you?"

Plimsoll produced a bottle and the four of them drank the fiery
unrectified, unstamped liquor. Ahead was an abrupt turn. Jordan slowed.
Making the curve, a fence stretched across the gorge, reaching from wall
to wall, a four-strand barrier of barbed-wire, strung on patent steel
posts. Jordan braked with emergency. The sight of such a fence in such a
place was as unexpected as the sun-dried carcass of a steer would be on
Broadway. Plimsoll and Jordan cursed, the former in pure anger, the
latter with some appreciation of the stratagem for delay.

"We can tear it down quicker'n they fixed it," he said. "I've got a pair
of nippers in the tool kit. They can't have driven in those posts deep.
Come on."

A voice floated down to them.

"You leave that fence alone, gents. _If_ you please. I went to a heap of
trouble puttin' up that fence. It's _my_ fence."

They looked up, to see Mormon seated on the top of a great boulder that
had land-slipped from the cliff into the gorge. From thirty feet above
them he looked down, amiably enough, though there was a glint of blued
metal in his right hand.

"Hello, Jim Plimsoll," he went on. "I ain't seen you-all fo' quite a
while. You fellers out fo' a picnic?"

Jordan advanced to the foot of the rock, producing his papers.

"I have a bench warrant here to bring into court for the appointment of
a proper guardian, the child Molly Casey, she being a minor and without
natural or legal protectors. I've got yore name on these papers, Mormon
Peters, as one of the three parties with whom the girl is now domiciled.
I warn you that you are obstructing the process of the law by yore
actions. You put up that gun an' come down here an' help to pull down
this fence, illegally erected on property not yore own. Otherwise you're
subject to arrest."

"That is sure an awful long speech fo' a hot day