rehead stood out like whip-cords, while his face
worked convulsively. He was incapable of coherent speech, his words being
unintelligible growls, a series of snarls, and he could only pace back
and forth, waving his arms and cursing wildly.

Shields glanced about the ranch and gave a few orders, his men executing
them without delay. One man was to keep guard in the bunk house while
Sneed and his woe-begone men slept. The sheriff and Charley rode away
toward the north to begin the search for the outlaw; and there was to
be no quarter asked or given if his deputies had anything to do with it.

The remaining deputy busied himself about the ranch in executing a
plan the sheriff had thought out, and his actions were peculiar. First
selecting a position from which a man could command an extensive view of
the premises, he began to pace off distances in all directions. The
place was about eight hundred yards west of the ranch house and bunk
house, and formed one angle of a triangle with them; and from it it was
possible to look in through the windows of both of them. Anyone passing
within good rifle range of either house would show up against the lights
in the windows; and if a man had been covered over with sand on that
particular outlying angle, he could pick off the intruder without being
seen. The Orphan was due to meet with a surprise if he paid his regular
visit the coming night.

The deputy, after completing his work to his satisfaction found three more
positions where they respectively commanded the corrals, the wagons and
the rear of the bunk house. Then he paced more distances and was careful
that bulky objects interposed in the direct lines between the positions,
this latter precaution being to make it impossible for the deputies to
shoot each other. This done, he went into the house and consulted with
his companion in arms, laughing immoderately about the joke they would
play on the marauder.

While Shields and Charley vainly searched the plain and while the
deputy paced and thought and paced, and while Sneed and his exhausted
cow-punchers slept as if in death, safely under guard, two men were
riding along the Ford's Station Sagetown Trail well to the east of the
Backbone, chatting amicably and smoking the same brand of tobacco. One of
them sat high up in the air on the seat of a stage coach, from where he
overlooked his six-horse team. His face was wreathed in grins and his
expression was one of beatific content