I--it wasn't the money. I was afraid to stick with my game any
longer."

The long rider had already turned towards the door, making no effort
to keep his face to the agent. The latter, flushing again, moved his
hand towards his hip, but stopped the movement. The last threat of
Silent carried a deep conviction with it. He knew that the faith of
lone riders to each other was an inviolable bond. Accordingly he
followed at the heels of the other man into the outside room.

"So long, old timer," he called, slapping Silent on the shoulder,
"I'll be seein' you agin before long."

Calder's men looked up with curious eyes. Hardy watched Silent swing
onto his horse and gallop down the street. Then he went hurriedly
back to his office. Once inside he dropped into the big swivel-chair,
buried his face in his arms, and wept like a child.

CHAPTER XII

PARTNERS

Dust powdered his hat and clothes as Tex Calder trotted his horse
north across the hills. His face was a sickly grey, and his black
hair might have been an eighteenth century wig, so thoroughly was it
disguised. It had been a long ride. Many a long mile wound back behind
him, and still the cattle pony, with hanging head, stuck to its task.
Now he was drawing out on a highland, and below him stretched the
light yellow-green of the willows of the bottom land. He halted his
pony and swung a leg over the horn of his saddle. Then he rolled a
cigarette, and while he inhaled it in long puffs he scanned the trees
narrowly. Miles across, and stretching east and west farther than his
eye could reach, extended the willows. Somewhere in that wilderness
was the gang of Jim Silent. An army corps might have been easily
concealed there.

If he was not utterly discouraged in the beginning of his search, it
was merely because the rangers of the hills and plains are taught
patience almost as soon as they learn to ride a horse. He surveyed the
yellow-green forest calmly. In the west the low hanging sun turned
crimson and bulged at the sides into a clumsy elipse. He started down
the slope at the same dog-trot which the pony had kept up all day.
Just before he reached the skirts of the trees he brought his horse to
a sudden halt and threw back his head. It seemed to him that he heard
a faint whistling.

He could not be sure. It was so far off and unlike any whistling he
had ever heard before, that he half guessed it to be the movement of a
breeze through the willows, but the win