"Prairie toughs don't smoke _made_ cigarettes around here. It's a
Caporal. Get it? That's bought in a town."

"Ay," said McBain quickly. "Rocky Springs, I'd say. It's the Rocky
Springs gang, sure as hell. It's the foulest hole of crime in the
northwest. Come on, boys. We need to get busy."

Two minutes later a moving cloud of dust marked their progress down
the trail in the direction of Rocky Springs. Presently, however, the
dust subsided. The astute riders of the plains were giving no chances
away; they had left the tell-tale trail and rode on over the grass at
its edge.

* * * * *

The westering sun was low on the horizon. The air was still. Not a
cloud was visible anywhere in the sky. The world was silent. The
drowsing birds, even, had finished their evensong.

Low bush-grown hills lined the trail where it entered the wide valley
of Leaping Creek, which, six miles further on, ran through the heart
of the hamlet of Rocky Springs.

It was a beauty spot of no mean order. The smaller hills were broken
and profuse, with dark woodland gorges splitting them in every
direction, crowded with such a density of foliage as to be almost
impassable. Farther on, as the valley widened and deepened, its aspect
became more rugged. The land rose to greater heights, the lighter
vegetation gave way to heavier growths of spruce and blue gum and
maple. These too, in turn, became sprinkled with the darker and
taller pines. Then, as the distance gained, a still further change met
the eye. Vast patches of virgin pine woods, with their mournful,
tattered crowns, toned the brighter greens to the somber grandeur of
more mountainous regions.

The breathless hush of evening lay upon the valley. There was even a
sense of awe in the silence. It was peace, a wonderful natural peace,
when all nature seems at rest, nor could the chastened atmosphere of a
cloister have conveyed more perfectly the sense of repose.

But the human contradiction lay in the heart of the valley. It was the
abiding place of the hamlet of Rocky Springs, and Rocky Springs was
accredited with being the very breeding ground of prairie crime.

Just now, however, the chastened atmosphere was perfect. Rocky
Springs, so far away, was powerless to affect it. Even the song of the
tumbling creek, which coursed through the heart of the valley, was
powerless to awaken discordant echoes. Its music was low and soft. It
was like the drone of the stir