on San Juan, rob
the bank, shooting down just as many men as happen to be in the way,
rush in automobiles to Pozo and Kepple's Town, stick up the banks
there, levy on the Las Palmas mines, and then steer straight to the
border. And, if all worked according to schedule, the papers across
the country would record the most daring raid across the border yet,
blaming the whole affair on a detachment of Gringo-hating Mexican
bandits and revolutionists."

Virginia stared at him, half incredulously. But the look in Norton's
eyes, the same look in Brocky Lane's, assured her.

"Why do you wait then?" she asked sharply. "If you know all this, why
don't you arrest the man and his accomplices now? Before it is too
late?"

"And have the whole country laugh at me? Where's my evidence? Just
the word of a dead Indian, repeated by another Indian, and a few rifles
hid in the mountains? Even if we proved the rifles were Galloway's,
and I don't believe we could, how would we set about proving his
intention? No; I've talked it all over with the district attorney and
we can't move yet. We've got our chance at last; the chance to watch
and get Jim Galloway with the goods on. But we've got to wait until he
is just ready to strike. And then we are going to put a stop to
lawlessness in San Juan once and for all."

"But," she objected breathlessly, "if he should strike before you are
ready?"

"It is our one business in life that he doesn't do it. We know what he
is up to; we have found this hiding-place; we shall keep an eye on it
night and day. He doesn't know that we have been here; no one knows
but ourselves. You see now, Miss Page, why I couldn't bring Patten
here? Patten talks too much and Galloway knows every thought in
Patten's mind. And you understand how important it is for you to
forget that you have been here?"

She sat silent, staring into the embers of the dying fire.

"The thing which I can't understand," she said presently, "is that if
Jim Galloway is the 'big man' that you say he is he should do as much
talking as he must have done; that he should have told his plans to
such a man as the Indian who told them to Ignacio Chavez."

"But he didn't tell all of this," Norton informed her. "The Indian
died without guessing what I have told you. He merely knew that the
rifles were here because Galloway had employed him to bring them and
because he was the man who told Galloway of this hiding-place. He
believe