the protruding gun. He looked up and studied the
man; he looked down and wrote. The man finally became conscious that
he was the subject of study. Packard observed Frank Vine whisper a
word of explanation.

He finished his letter and decided to take it to the "depot" and ask
the telegraph operator to mail it on the east-bound train that passed
through Little Missouri at three. He opened the door. The night was
black, and a blast of icy wind greeted him. He changed his mind.

The next afternoon he was riding up the river to the Maltese Cross
when he heard hoofs behind him. A minute later the object of his
artistic efforts of the night before joined him and for an hour loped
along at his side. He was not slow in discovering that the man was
pumping him. It occurred to him that turn-about was fair play, and he
told him all the man wanted to know.

"So you're a newspaper feller," remarked the man at length. "That's
damn funny. But I guess it's so if you say so. You see," he added,
"Frank Vine he said you was a deputy-sheriff on the lookout for a
horse-thief."

Packard felt his hair rise under his hat.

"Where was you going last night when you started to go out?"

"To the telegraph-office."

"I made up my mind you was going to telegraph."

"I was just going to mail a letter."

"Well, if you'd gone I'd have killed you."

Packard gasped a little. Frank Vine was a joker with a vengeance. They
rode on, talking of lighter matters.[4]

[Footnote 4: A year later, Packard, as Chief of Police,
officiated at what was euphemistically known as a
"necktie party" at which his companion of that ride was
the guest of honor.]

Packard had come to the Bad Lands with the idea of spending the winter
in the open, hunting, but he was a newspaper man from top to toe and
in the back of his mind there was a notion that it would be a good
deal of a lark, and possibly a not unprofitable venture, to start a
weekly newspaper in the Marquis de Mores's budding metropolis. He had,
at the tender age of thirteen, been managing editor of a country
newspaper, owned by his father, and ever since had been drawn again
and again back into the "game" by that lure which few men who yield to
it are ever after able to resist.

He broached the matter to the Marquis. That gentleman was patronizing,
but agreed that a special organ might prove of value to his Company.
He offered to finance the undert