"I got t' hand it t' the L. A. traffic cops, Mr. Nolan. They shore
learned me a lot about dodgin'. So now yuh got the hull story. If it
was the sheriff behind me an' if he trails me here, they got no
evidence an' you can mebby square it with 'im. You'd know what t' tell
'im--which is more'n what Casey Ryan can say."

Casey fell asleep immediately afterward, but Mack Nolan lay for a long
while with his eyes wide open and his ears alert for strange sounds in
the gulch. He was a new man in this district, working independently of
sheriff's offices. Casey Ryan was the first man he had confided in;
all others were fair game for Nolan to prove honest or dishonest with
the government. The very nature of his business made it so. For when
whisky runners drove openly in broad daylight through the country with
their unlawful loads, somewhere along the line officers of the law were
sharing the profits. Nolan knew none of them,--by sight. If he carried
the records of some safely memorized and pigeonholed for future use,
that was his own business. Mack Nolan's thoughts were his own and he
guarded them jealously and slept with his lips tightly closed. He
wanted no sheriff coming to him for explanation of his movements.
Wherefore he listened long, and when he slept his slumber was light.

At daylight he was up and abroad. Two hours after sunrise Casey awoke
with the smell of breakfast in his nostrils. He rolled over and
blinked at Mack Nolan standing with his hat on the back of his head and
a cigarette between his lips, calmly turning three hot-cakes with a
kitchen knife. Casey grinned condescendingly. He himself turned his
cakes by the simple process of tossing them in the air a certain kind
of flip, and catching them dexterously as they came down. Right there
he decided that Mack Nolan was not after all a real outdoors man.

"Well, the sheriff didn't arrive last night," Nolan observed
cheerfully, when he saw that Casey was awake. "I don't much look for
him, either. Your driving on past the turn to Juniper Wells and coming
up that other old road very likely threw him off the track. You must
have been close to the State line then and he gave you up as a bad job."

"It was a GOOD job!" Casey maintained reaching for his clothes. "I
made 'em think I was headed clean outa the country. If they knowed who
it was at all, they'd know I belong in L. A., and I figured they'd
guess I was headed there. They stopped for someth