request.

"I done guessed it," Yesler announced with a grin. "Run a county road
through, and Cass Fendrick can't fence the river off from Luck's cows.
Luck ain't aiming to run any wagon over that road."

The Map of Texas man got up and stamped with delight. "I get you. We'll
learn Cass to take a joke, by gum. Luck sure gets a county road for his
cows to amble over down to the water. Cass can have his darned old
homestead now."

When Fendrick heard that the commissioners had condemned a right of way
for a road through his homestead he unloaded on the desert air a rich
vocabulary. For here would have been a simple way out of his trouble if he
had only thought of it. Instead of which he had melodramatically kidnapped
his enemy and put himself within reach of the law and of Cullison's
vengeance.

Nor did Luck confine his efforts to self-defense. He knew that to convict
Fendrick of the robbery he must first lay hands upon Blackwell.

It was, however, Bucky that caught the convict. The two men met at the top
of a mountain pass. Blackwell, headed south, was slipping down toward
Stone's horse ranch when they came face to face. Before the bad man had
his revolver out, he found himself looking down the barrel of the ranger's
leveled rifle.

"I wouldn't," Bucky murmured genially.

"What you want me for?" Blackwell demanded sulkily.

"For the W. & S. robbery."

"I'm not the man you want. My name's Johnson."

"I'll put up with you till I find the man I do want, Mr. Johnson," Bucky
told him cheerfully. "Climb down from that horse. No, I wouldn't try that.
Keep your hands up."

With his prisoner in front of him, O'Connor turned townward. They jogged
down out of the hills through dark gulches and cactus-clad arroyos. The
sharp catclaw caught at their legs. Tangled mesquite and ironwood made
progress slow. They reached in time Apache Desert, and here Bucky camped.
He hobbled his prisoner's feet and put around his neck a rope, the other
end of which was tied to his own waist. Then he built a small fire of
greasewood and made coffee for them both. The prisoner slept, but his
captor did not. For he could take no chances of an escape.

The outlines of the mountain ranges loomed shadowy and dim on both sides.
The moonlight played strange tricks with the mesquit and the giant cactus,
a grove of which gave to the place an awesome aspect of some ghostly
burial ground of a long vanished tribe.

Next day they reached Saguache. Buc