less and shimmering,
brooding, dipping smoothly down to the horizon and to the long sand-dune
running to northeast and southwest. Skirting this dune, reaching to it
out of the east, then swerving off to the south beyond, lay the almost
unbroken expanse, the desert within the desert, its dead, flat,
monotonous brown relieved here and there with alternating sagebrush and
cactus and _amole_, stretching back a distance of a hundred miles
to the shack.

CHAPTER XV

CHANGE OF MASTERS

The interior of the shack was comparatively bare. On the floor, which
was of adobe, and therefore hard and smooth as cement, were five
three-legged stools and a table, all crude and evidently shaped out of
saplings from the grove. There was but a single window, high up, tiny
and square, containing neither glass nor frame, which looked out upon
the south. Built against the walls were some shelves, upon which lay a
scant supply of tinware, and in the opposite wall was a tier of bunks,
just now littered with soiled blankets. Evidently this place had
sheltered these men frequently, for each moved about it with easy
familiarity, and obviously it was a retreat, a rendezvous, a
hiding-place against the range police.

A game of cards was about to be started. The three men were seated round
the table, and before two of them--the younger man, Jim, and the
heavy-set man, the leader, Johnson--was an even distribution of chips.
The third man, Glover, was smoking a short-stemmed pipe, evidently
having been cut out of the play.

"Jim," said Johnson, showing his perfect teeth with an unpleasant grin,
"we'll hop right to this! I think my little proposition here is fair and
square. Thirty dollars in money against that black horse out there. I
told you where you could get a good horse, and you got one sure enough!
And he's yours! But I've taken a kind of shine to him myself, and why
ain't this a good way to push it over? My little gray and thirty dollars
in money. What's the matter with it?"

The other did not appear greatly pleased, nevertheless. Thoughtfully he
riffled the cards a long moment. Then he looked up into Johnson's black
eyes steadily.

"Poker?" he asked, quietly.

"Draw poker," replied the leader, giving his black mustache a satisfied
twist. He jerked his head in the direction of the chips. "Win all, take
all," he added.

Jim lowered his eyes again. He was not more than a boy, this outlaw, and
he had formed a strong attachment fo