were without knowing it
so warm that one of the bandits lay with his rifle on a rock rim not
a stone's throw above them as they wound through a little ravine. But
Collins got no glimpse of the robbers. At last he reluctantly gave the
word to turn back. Probably the men he wanted had already slipped down
to the plains and across to Mexico. If not, they might play hide and
seek with him a month in the recesses of these unknown mountains.

Next morning the sheriff struck a telephone wire, tapped it, got Sabin
on the line, told him of his failure and that he was returning to
Tucson. About the middle of the afternoon the dispirited posse reached
its sidetracked special.

A young man lay stretched full length on the loading board, with a
broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes. He wore a gray flannel shirt and
corduroy trousers thrust into half-leg laced boots. At the sound of
voices he turned lazily on his side and watched the members of the posse
swing wearily from their saddles. An amiable smile, not wholly free of
friendly derision, lit his good-looking face.

"Oh, you sheriff," he drawled.

Collins swung round, as if he had been pricked with a knife point. He
stared an instant before he let out a shout of welcome and fell upon the
youth.

"Bucky, by thunder!"

The latter got up nimbly in time to be hospitably thumped and punched.
He was a lithe, slender young fellow, of medium height, and he carried
himself lightly with that manner of sunburned competency given only by
the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoors West.

While the men reloaded the car he and the sheriff stood apart and talked
in low tones. Collins told what he knew, both what he had seen and
inferred, and Bucky heard him to the end.

"Yes, it ce'tainly looks like one of Wolf Leroy's jobs," he agreed.
"Nobody else but Leroy would have had the nerve to follow you right up
to the depot and put the kibosh on sending those wires. He's surely game
from the toes up. Think of him sittin' there reading the newspaper half
an hour after he held up the Limited!"

"Did he do that, Bucky?" The sheriff's tone conceded admiration.

"He did. He's the only train robber ever in the business that could have
done it. Oh, the Wolf's tracks are all over this job."

"No doubt about that. I told you I recognized York Neil by him being shy
that trigger finger I fanned off down at Tombstone. Well, they say he's
one of the Wolf's standbys."

"Yes. I warned him two months a