ange-trees. All this when he should get Jim Galloway.

From almost any knoll upon the Rancho de las Flores he could see the
crests of Mt. Temple lifted in clear-cut lines against the sky. If he
rode with Gaucho, his foreman, among the yearlings, he saw Mt. Temple;
if he rode the fifty miles to San Juan he saw the same peaks from the
other side. And a hundred times he looked up at them with eyes which
were at once impatient and stern; he began to grow angry with Galloway
for so long postponing the final issue.

For, though he did not go near the cliff caves, he knew that the rifles
still lay there awaiting Jim Galloway's readiness. A man named Bucky
Walsh was prospecting for gold upon the slopes of Mt. Temple, a silent,
leather-faced little fellow, quick-eyed and resourceful. And, above
the discovery of color, it was the supreme business of Bucky Walsh to
know what happened upon the cliffs above him. If there were anything
to report no man knew better than he how to get out of a horse all
there was of speed in him.

In the end Norton called upon the reserves of his patience, saying to
himself that if Jim Galloway could bide his time in calmness he could
do the same. The easier since he was unshaken in his confidence that
the time was coming when he and Galloway would stand face to face while
guns talked. Never once did he let himself hope for another ending.

Giving what time he had free to ranch matters at Las Flores the sheriff
found other things to occupy him. There was a gamblers' fight one
night at the camp at Las Palmas mines, a man badly hurt, an ill-starred
bystander dead, the careless gunman a fugitive, headed for the border.
Norton went out after him, shifted saddle from jaded beast to fresh
again and again, rode two hundred miles with only the short stops for
hastily taken food and water and got his man willy-nilly a mile below
the border. What was more, he made it his personal business that the
man was convicted and sentenced to a long term; about San Juan there
was no crime less tolerable than that of "shooting wild."

But all this brought him no closer to Jim Galloway; Galloway, meeting
him shortly afterward in San Juan, laughed and thanked him for the job.
It appeared that the man whom Norton had brought back to stand trial
was not only no friend of the proprietor of the Casa Blanca, but an
out-spoken enemy.

"You'll be asking favors of me next, Norton," grinned the big,
thick-bodied man.