you been here, Pat?"

"Eight-nine-twelve years; ever since that friend of yours, Mr. Owen,
paid me $10,000 for getting rid of a certain--what he called a
certain obstacle."

"Which you didn't get rid of?"

"No, he made the mistake of paying me in advance, and it didn't seem
necessary to harm anybody."

"Got any of the money left?"

The lean gunman held his head back and guffawed.

"It's near here, I guess, but it ain't mine. It dropped between this
bar and that table."

"Do you want a little job?" asked Hicks. "But let's go in the back
room."

They strolled into an empty wine room and ordered drinks.

"What kind of a job?" asked Patten.

Hicks leaned across the table and whispered rapidly. His old
acquaintance drew back, with a sudden suspicion.

"But no foolin' this time," warned Hicks. "Only part money in
advance."

He produced $5,000 in bills from his trousers pocket, but secreted it
again quickly as the waiter appeared.

Patten got up and sauntered out into the barroom, returning presently
with three men of his own brand--broad-built, grim-eyed ruffians of
the far north country--three of Case Egan's cattlemen.

In the meantime Mrs. Haines was flustered not only by the prospect of
meeting her distinguished friend, but by the tumultuous staging of the
great hold-up scene that was to mark Pauline's welcome. Hal had been
up at three o'clock in the morning rehearsing the boys in their parts.
He had set off at five o'clock for the station.

As Pauline, trim in her traveling suit of gray and blithe in the clear
Western air, tripped from the express, all Rockvale was there to meet
her. Hal Haines, mighty man that he was in the region, was red with
pride as the girl who could stop the express at Rockvale gave him her
hand in happy greeting.

As he helped her into the two-seated buckboard, no one in the crowd
noticed the man who had arrived the night before standing on the
platform and pointing out the girl to Tom Patten who was seen to mount
and ride rapidly away.

"I hope you saved some of that lovely Wild West for me, Mr. Haines,"
said Pauline, as the finest pair of horses in the Double Cross stable
whisked them along the road to the ranch.

"Very little left, Miss Marvin--very little left; still--whoa,
there! What's this?"

At a bend in the road five masked and mounted men had dashed from cover
and quickly surrounded the buckboard with a small circle of leveled
gun-barrels.

Pauline had