fifty yards from the latter. A dozen men had
spoken to him in the distance of a block. But he had not been seen to
reach his hotel. He had not called for his room key. Somehow he had
vanished, and none could tell how or where.

To Bolt his disappearance was as good as a confession of guilt. He
searched Luck's room at the hotel. Among other things, he found an old
envelope with interesting data penciled on it.

Before nightfall the word was whispered all over Saguache that Luck
Cullison, pioneer cattleman and former sheriff, was suspected of the
W. & S. Express robbery and had fled to save himself from arrest. At first
men marveled that one so well known and so popular, one who had been so
prominent in affairs, could be suspected of such a crime, but as they
listened to the evidence and saw it fall like blocks of a building into
place, the conviction grew that he was the masked bandit wanted by the
sheriff.

CHAPTER IV

KATE USES HER QUIRT

Red-headed Bob Cullison finished making the diamond hitch and proudly
called his cousin Kate to inspect the packhorse.

"You never saw the hitch thrown better, sis," he bragged, boy-like. "Uncle
Luck says I do it well as he can."

"It's fine, Bob," his cousin agreed, with the proper enthusiasm in her
dark eyes. "You'll have to teach me how to do it one of these days."

She was in a khaki riding skirt, and she pulled herself to the saddle of
her own horse. From this position she gave him final instructions before
leaving. "Stay around the house, Bob. Dad will call the ranch up this
morning probably, and I want you to be where you can hear the 'phone ring.
Tell him about that white-faced heifer, and to be sure to match the goods
I gave him. You'll find dinner set out for you on the dining-room table."

It had been on Wednesday morning that Luck Cullison disappeared from the
face of the earth. Before twenty-four hours the gossip was being whispered
in the most distant canyons of Papago County. The riders of the Circle C
knew it, but none of them had yet told either Bob or Kate.

Now it was Friday morning and Kate was beginning to wonder why her father
did not call her up. Could it be that Soapy Stone was pulling off his
train robbery at Tin Cup and her father so busy that he could not take
time to ride to a telephone station? She did not like to leave the ranch
just now, even for a few hours, but other business called her away.
Sweeney was holding down the fort at the