together when Ford's Station
had only been an adobe hut. Their affection for each other was of the
stern, silent kind, which seldom betrayed itself directly in words,
and they could ride together for hours in an understanding silence and
never weary of the companionship; and when need was, deeds spoke for
them. The Cross Bar-8 would have had more than Ford's Station to fight if
it had declared war on the sheriff, which the Cross Bar-8 knew. The
three cleverest manipulators of weapons in that section, in the order of
their merit, were The Orphan, Shields and Blake, which also the Cross
Bar-8 knew.

The foreman of the Star C rode at a walk toward a distant point of his
dominions and cogitated as to whether he could ride over to Ford's
Station that night to see the sheriff. It was a matter of sixty miles for
the round trip, but it might have been sixty blocks, so far as the
distance troubled him. He had just decided to make the trip and to
spend a pleasant hour with his friend, and drink some of the delicious
coffee which Mrs. Shields always made for him and eat one of her prize
pies, or some of her light ginger bread, when he descried a horseman
coming toward him at a lope.

[Illustration: The Orphan gives Blake Shields' note. (_See page_
213.)]

The newcomer was a stranger to Blake and appeared to be a young man, which
was of no consequence. But the thing which attracted more than a casual
glance from the foreman was a certain jaunty, reckless air about the man
which spoke well for the condition of his nerves and liver.

The stranger approached to within a rod of Blake before he spoke, and then
he slowed down and nodded, but with wide-eyed alertness.

"Howdy," he said. "Are you the foreman of the Star C?"

"Howdy. I am," replied the foreman.

"Then I reckon this is yours," said the stranger, holding out a bit of
straw-colored paper.

The foreman took it and slowly read it. When he had finished reading he
turned it over to see if there was anything on the back, and then stuck
it in his pocket and looked up casually.

"Are you The Orphan?" he asked, with no more interest than he would have
displayed if he had asked about the weather.

"Yes," replied The Orphan, nonchalantly rolling another cigarette.

"How is the sheriff?" Blake asked.

"Shore well enough, but a little mad about the Cross Bar-8," answered the
other as he inhaled deeply and with much satisfaction. "He said there was
some good coffee waiting f