out this short cut to the money whilst I was drunk. As if she'd look at
money made that way. Why, we'd a-been ready by Christmas if I'd only
waited."

Curly tried to cheer him up, but did not make much of a job at it. The
indisputable facts were that Mac was an outlaw and a horse thief. Very
likely a price was already on his head.

The redheaded boy rolled another cigarette despondently. "Sho! I've cooked
my goose. She'll not look at me--even if they don't send me to the pen."
In a moment he added huskily, staring into the deepening darkness: "And
she's the best ever. Her name's Myra Anderson."

Abruptly Mac got up and disappeared in the night, muttering something
about looking after the horses. His partner understood well enough what
was the matter. The redheaded puncher was in a stress of emotion, and like
the boy he was he did not want Curly to know it.

Flandrau pretended to be asleep when Mac returned half an hour later.

They slept under a live oak with the soundness of healthy youth. For the
time they forgot their troubles. Neither of them knew that as the hours
slipped away red tragedy was galloping closer to them.

CHAPTER II

CAMPING WITH OLD MAN TROUBLE

The sun was shining in his face when Curly wakened. He sat up and rubbed
his eyes. Mac was nowhere in sight. Probably he had gone to get the
horses.

A sound broke the stillness of the desert. It might have been the
explosion of a giant firecracker, but Flandrau knew it was nothing so
harmless. He leaped to his feet, and at the same instant Mac came running
over the brow of the hill. A smoking revolver was in his hand.

From behind the hill a gun cracked--then a second--and a third. Mac
stumbled over his feet and pitched forward full length on the ground. His
friend ran toward him, forgetting the revolver that lay in its holster
under the live oak. Every moment he expected to see Mac jump up, but the
figure stretched beside the cholla never moved. Flandrau felt the muscles
round his heart tighten. He had seen sudden death before, but never had it
come so near home.

A bullet sent up a spurt of dust in front of him, another just on the
left. Riders were making a half circle around the knoll and closing in on
him. In his right mind Curly would have been properly frightened. But now
he thought only of Mac lying there so still in the sand. Right into the
fire zone he ran, knelt beside his partner, and lifted the red-thatched
head. A little ho