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 company as far as horse society went. The homesteader eyed him with curious suspicion when Tom put off his questions concerning his mission abroad so early in the day and so close on the heels of the thieves. He appeared to suspect for a while that Simpson was one of the gang who had been left behind through some evil dallying of his own, and was now riding hard to overtake his fellows of the road.

But he revised his opinion after looking Tom over narrowly, from spurs to sombrero. He saw that he sat his saddle with an air of authority and the light of honest confidence in his eyes. The night dampness had made the brim of the old sombrero stiff; Tom had pressed it back from his forehead, which shape it held, and would hold until sun and wind dried it to its usual floppy state. It gave him a headlong, hard-riding, shoot-up-and-go look that moved the homesteader's admiration.

"By heavens! you're goin' after 'em!" he said. "That's where you're a goin'—you're a goin' after 'em! Yes, and by heavens! if I had a good horse and a gun and a saddle, I'd go with you. I'm an old soldier—I'd go with you. I was with Grant at Appomattox. By heavens! I were there!"

"I don't doubt it," Tom said.

"I'll give you an old soldier's blessin' if you bring them two horses back."

Tom assured the vehement veteran that such a reward was to be valued above money, and he would do his best. He rode on, his contempt of Wade Harrison's horsethieves considerably increased by this news running out to him as he followed their trail, broad as if a troop of cavalry had passed that way.

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 The gang probably had rounded up everything that could travel, cleaning out the entire settlement, hitting a hard blow in retaliation for the loss of their eminent leader, or the damage he had suffered if he came off with his pestiferous life. The Ellisons could survive it, as they had not been left entirely without legs. But the case of that old soldier, of his lanky flat, starved, work-worn neighbor, was desperate in the extreme.

It was hard enough to fight the tough sod, the grasshoppers, the hot winds, in heroic effort to establish independence and get a living out of the land, off there forty miles from a railroad, a doctor or a store. Add to all that the misery of being stripped by a gang of brutal thieves of the means of travel, of every beast of burden, and it amounted to cutting off their legs in truth.

Tom's own case was little better. He had ridden back to the ranch in a glow of enthusiasm over the business outlook open before him and his partners. Now this band of sneaking night-riders had slammed the door to that prospect in his face. He was riding that morning on a foray for his very existence.

They had come up on that expedition to get him. Failing in that, their vindictive spite had spent itself on the entire neighborhood. They never had raided in that vicinity before, Mrs. Ellison and the sheriff had said. They probably never would have come but for the chase after Sid Coburn's silly old handbag that unlucky night. He had lured them there; he had brought this curse on the community. It was his solemn duty to adjust the wrong, even to the limit of his life.

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When night overtook him Tom did not know whether he had crossed the border, there being no mark to indicate where Kansas left off and the Indian Territory began. He was of the opinion that he must have crossed, as the change in the driven herd of horses indicated that the thieves had slowed their gait. For an hour or more, six or seven miles, the trail had shown this slacking up in the flight. Once over the line, where a Kansas officer would look no more formidable than the next man, the thieves' concern was at rest.

Weary from his long ride to Drumwell and back, and this day's chase, Tom made camp when it grew too dark to follow the trail with certainty. It appeared likely the thieves had not split the herd, confident in the security of their refuge. The old cattle trail continued on toward the southwest, approaching the crossing of a stream which he took to be the Salt Fork of the Arkansas, there being no other considerable river near the border. This was still several miles ahead of him; before dark he had seen its wooded course from high ground.

Here at his camping-place the country had changed from treeless prairie to a park-like plain set with crabapple, red-haw and other small trees, with an elm here and there, dark and tent-like, the thick foliage still green and untouched by frost. The country had the appearance

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 of timber border; his caution must increase with his danger from that point onward.

Tom withdrew from the trail a safe distance along a little branch, seeking a brush-clump to screen his fire. He found a suitable spot without much seeking, picketed his horse, kindled a fire and prepared a generous supper. He felt he had it coming to him, being his first meal in considerably more than twenty-four hours. He had not felt the need of breakfast before leaving the ranch; Mrs. Ellison had been so disturbed she had not thought of it.

He had brought only one blanket, and that from Waco's bunk, aiming to keep his packet down to the very lowest weight and dimensions. That, the saddle blanket and Waco's slicker, made ample protection for a man whose bed had been the ground many an uncounted night in a land not half so kind as this. In spite of his bone-weariness he broke his sleep to get up and move his picketed horse to give it room to satisfy its appetite.

Morning broke with a threat of rain. An hour's ride beyond his camp Tom came to the river. Here the thieves had stopped for supper and to graze the horses. He judged there were at least five men in the party and, as they had not slept there, he concluded they could not have been a great distance from the end of their journey. At this point they had left the old cattle trail, taking one that followed the course of the river in an easterly direction.

This was a wagon road, an old one; its former course, brush-grown, rutted, could be traced in places where trees had blown down and blocked it, a new one made simply by driving through the brush in the line of least

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 resistance. It was worm-crooked and muddy from recent rain, no wider than the tread of a wagon, hub-marks and axle-grease on the bushes along the edges.

Here a considerable forest of elm, hackberry, maple, walnut and other deciduous trees common to that latitude, skirted the river, grapevines and greenbrier clambering among them. It was a dank, nettle-grown, brush-choked piece of woods, parts of it impenetrable as a tropical jungle. Here and there came a break, where pawpaw bushes dropped their pale yellow leaves. The ground under them was covered with their insipid fruit, upon which raccoons and oppossums had fed, the souring remnants setting up a smell like a brewery.

This way the thieves had gone, sometime the evening past. Simpson followed the muddy road with caution that made his gait slow. He did not care to run headlong into the band, or anybody at all in that stretch of depressing woods, where it was so still and deserted not even a bluejay hopped from branch to branch ahead of him to herald his passing.

He had not encountered a habitation since early yesterday afternoon. That was the little sod hut of some misanthrope, Simpson thought, who had withdrawn himself as far from the interference of his kind as he could and yet not quite cut the line of communication which the most ardent hermit usually finds indispensable.

Here in the Nation he knew he was riding through the leased lands. He had seen many cattle, spread wide over the beautiful grazing lands, as cattle feed when left to themselves. Sometimes he passed a cow and calf, apparently alone in an expanse of pasture that would have

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 sustained ten thousand; often a lone grazer, which lifted its head with a start, trotted away and stopped to stare again. But not a man; not a rider galloping over those flattened, grass-topped hills. Which, he thought, was just as well.

Simpson followed this road until noon before coming to the river crossing toward which it had been leading all the way. More than once he had ridden aside into the thick brush on a false alarm of somebody coming, somebody following; twice he had drawn aside at the unmistakable approach of wagons, both coming from the east. One of these was driven by a negro, his Indian wife on the seat beside him, a green-bordered red blanket over her greasy head; the other by a slinking white man who carried two live hogs as passengers. Where he could have got them, where he might be taking them in that empty country, was a thing to speculate upon but not to answer.

After crossing the river the country rose abruptly, the woods thinned out to straggling small trees which in turn blended down to bushes and open prairie. The road continued its easterly course over this grassy plateau, the tracks of the stolen horses still plainly marked in it, although it was hard and dry here, and the animals had spread to the bordering sod.

About two miles beyond the ford, on the bank of a little stream such as is called a spring branch in that country, Simpson came upon a house. The hoofprints which he had been following so hotly told him it was the end of his trail.

There were trees in the dip which made the nook for this homestead, and a line of them following the brook in

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 its course to the river. The house stood back from the road a matter of three hundred yards, open prairie on all sides of it except the west, where the brook ran through a grove of walnut trees, its little valley broadening as it extended toward the river. Where the stream crossed the road which Simpson had followed to that unexpected, peaceful appearing end, there was quite a strip of timber and brush. Tom rode into that shelter, where he stopped and studied the ranch-house and its surroundings.

He had approached undiscovered, apparently. From his screen of brushwood he could see a dog walking lazily about the yard, and a file of ducks marching down to the stream. There was nobody about; not a sound disturbed the air of desertion that surrounded the place. There was not even a horse in sight, although the tracks of the stolen band, which must have numbered twenty, swerved from the road at the brookside and entered the premises.

A spacious corral near the house, with hay-covered sheds along its farther end, made it plain that animals in considerable number were kept there. Naturally the horses would be grazing at that time of day under a herder's care. They would be returned to the corral at evening.

The house was a two-part structure, built of logs, roofed with clapboards rived from native timber. It was built in the style common to the mountain districts of Arkansas, Missouri and other parts of the south, the kitchen on one end, living quarters on the other, a roofed passage, called a dog-run, between.

Back of the corral there was a larger log building, evi-

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 dently a barn. There was considerable hay in stacks, and stalks of corn littering the corral, the first evidence of cultivation Simpson had seen since leaving the Kansas homesteads, although there were no fields in sight. It was a shiftless, crude, comfortless place, not even what Simpson had expected of Wade Harrison, wide-famed as he was.

But that was the place; there was no doubt of it. The horses had been driven straight to that corral; their tracks could be followed plainly to the bars. They must have put them right through, with perhaps a few hours' rest and grazing at the place where Simpson had come across their cold fire and coffee grounds. The rascals probably were asleep in the house that minute.

Hogs were feeding on the nuts and pawpaws in the strip of woods where Simpson was concealed. He could hear them mouthing and grunting, and felt apprehensive of a stampede among the wild creatures which might betray his presence. Cautiously he withdrew farther from the road, assured as he proceeded that the wood was not frequented by anything but the livestock of the place and that no habitation was concealed among the trees. Here he might wait undiscovered, rest his horse and himself after the trying ride through the timber, and set himself for the business ahead of him.

Fire being out of the question, he made his midday meal on a can of beans, while his horse browsed, in a little glade where bluegrass grew, with only the bridle removed. Simpson kept within jump of the horse, ready for any emergency.

As he regaled himself on the cold comfort of beans,

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 Simpson began to be troubled by the doubts which always attend a blind situation. Perhaps the horses were not at that place; maybe they had only been driven there for a feed and a few hours' rest, and were far along the road by this time. There was no good skulking about in the brush waiting for night to confirm this probability. An immediate investigation was the thing in order, unless he was to trifle away his indefinite chance of doing anything at all.

He considered riding up to the house, boldly, putting the notion aside for lack of any plausible excuse or inquiry except the honest one, which it would be foolish and fatal to reveal. If he was to accomplish anything single-handed, far away from any possibility of help, it must be done by stealth and strategy, fortified by such foolhardiness—he would not dignify it as courage, something he would have been the last to admit was his—as he could muster in a pinch. Luck would be a big factor in his program, even to getting out of that country with his life.

He returned to the road, leading the horse, hitched the animal to a sapling where it would be out of sight but near enough to reach if needed in a hurry, pushed through the fringing thicket of hazel bushes, studying the premises again. If he could be certain the horses were at pasture somewhere near, he could proceed to lay some rough sort of plans.

The rain that had been threatening all morning was beginning to fall in a melancholy drizzle. A mistiness was in the air, making distances obscure. It was a poor day for scouting, yet it had its advantages. A man could creep through the bushes, the fallen leaves and twigs damp and

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 noiseless under foot. Unwise as it was to go very far from his horse, perilous as it might turn out to be to go poking his nose into the mysteries of that place, he decided to risk an investigation up the little stream for a look at that big log stable, or whatever it was, behind the corral.

He darted across the road from fringe to fringe of hazel brush. The rain was making a somnolent soft little patter on the leaves, so comfortable to hear when one is under shelter, no neglected duty to disturb his conscience. Not so comfortable when a man goes bent among the bushes, the drippings from broad hickory and pawpaw leaves spilling down his neck.

Less than half way to the stable the brush ended. Here were walnut trees, slim and tall, and a few bur oaks, thick-boled, broad-spreading, the ground under them trampled by hogs and strewn with the acorn shells from their feasting.

Simpson stopped, hesitating in the edge of the bushes. From where he had advanced he could not see as much as from the road. The same sleepy quietude prevailed around the place. Up the stream a distance he heard the friendly chatter of the ducks. That was all. He determined to risk it. After all, he might be spying on a fairly innocent place, with no more mystery or danger about it than the ordinary homestead. Only the horses had gone in there. What he wanted to know was, had they come out?

He could not believe Wade Harrison had made this place headquarters for his stolen horses when alive, granted that he was dead, or that his successors in the

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 business would do so now. It probably was the homestead of some Indian of a little more consequence than the general run of them, who was in with the thieves. On reflection it seemed absurd to entertain the thought of finding the stolen horses there. This place was within too easy reach of the Kansas officers and cowmen to offer refuge for a gang of horsethieves.

This revised view of it emboldened Simpson to proceed with his investigation of the place. If he should meet anybody he would say he was looking for the spring, not caring to drink out of the brook which was a succession of hog wallows. For all that he did not proceed carelessly. The trees were thick enough to partly screen his movements from anybody in the house. He cut nimbly from one to the other of the largest, pausing frequently to listen for the dog, or a movement of any kind that would tell he had been discovered.

Nothing happened; all remained as sleepily silent as before. Assured, he went openly to the fence surrounding the stable and looked over. It was a long building, higher than it appeared from the road, built so for stor ing hay in the loft, its gables of warped sawmill planks. Along the side of the building were several openings about two feet square for pitching out refuse. This lay banked along the logs as it had been thrown out, steaming in the cool moist air.

There were horses inside; Simpson could hear them champing hay and stamping to dislodge the flies, which always are excessively pertinacious in that country during rainy autumn weather, taking their last banquets before the frost knocks them stiff. Since he had come so far, he

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 would mount the last barrier for a look at the animals.

It was then late afternoon, the day obscure as early evening. Simpson mounted the high rail fence, which was overrun by Virginia creeper, rich autumnal tints enlivening here and there its dark-green leaves. Just in front of him one of the square windows stood open, its wooden shutter fastened back by a leather ear. He stood on the heap of steaming offal along the stable wall and peered within.

The stable, spacious beyond even its outward indica tion, was gloomy and dark. A row of stalls ran down each side, a wide aisle in the center. No fewer than twenty horses were stabled there, and the one nearest the window through which Simpson peered bore on its left shoulder the Block E brand.

So this was the place; he was looking at the stolen horses, left there by those audacious rascals to eat their hay and recuperate after the hard drive without even a guard. But the thieves must be surrounded by many vigilant friends to carry them the alarm of every suspicious stranger's approach. Simpson marvelled how he had passed through that long stretch of woods without being seen. That he had accomplished it he was certain, otherwise he never could have come in sight of that place unchallenged.

Now he was there, and the question was, what next? Before he could answer that there was the sudden break of running horses toward the front of the place. More horses were arriving, and Simpson found himself in a very likely situation for being caught. He looked around for a place to hide, the nearest thing offering conceal-

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 ment being a haystack at the corner of the corral, to reach which he would have to climb the fence and run two or three rods across the open.

That was a long chance; the first of the driven horses were entering the corral. Simpson had a glimpse of someone riding after them as he squeezed tight against the wall. To get back meant certain discovery; to go through that hole into the stable presented complications which he might never be resourceful enough to overcome. But it is the common inclination of humanity to grasp the unseen hope rather than face the present disaster. Simpson, being in no particular a superman, elected to risk the hole.

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There was a pole manger running along the front of the stalls, a feed-box for grain in each horse's compartment, a partition of poles the height of the manger separating stall from stall. Simpson recognized in the occupant of the stall into which he had lowered himself from the window, the horse he had been trying to break to harness on the morning of Waco Johnson's advent. It yanked back on its neck-rope desperately as if it meant to hang itself when he plumped through the hole at its head.

Tom attempted to assure the horse, which didn't appear to have any recollection of him, or at least any friendly remembrance. It eased off on the rope, but stood squatting as if to make a jump for the hole in the wall, its eyes bulging, blowing wild whoofs of alarm through its distended nostrils. Tom felt there never could be any lasting friendship between himself and that animal. He gave it a dig in the floating ribs, jolting a grunt out of it that cut off its frightened blowing, which he could not help believing was all a vindictive pretense. He believed that cuss was better pleased to be stolen than left at home.

While he didn't want to get very far away from that hole, Simpson knew the fool horse would surely betray his presence to anybody who might come into the stable. That fellow driving the horses into the corral might bring

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 his saddle in, or come rummaging around after something. In addition to the danger of betrayal by the traitorous horse—he gave it another dig with knuckle and thumb at the thought of its treason—it was too light in that stall.

He crouched to see if the shadow of the manger would hide him, discovering that it was possible to slip from stall to stall between the bottom of the sloping manger and the stall divisions. Accordingly, he wormed through into the adjoining stall, where it was darker. The occupant was another Block E horse. It gave him a sidelong look of curiosity and turned indifferently to nosing its hay.

Unfriendly outfit, those Block E horses, Simpson thought; apparently not a particle concerned whether they ever saw the old home place again. But business, not sentiment, was the motive for rescuing stolen horses, as well as being the actuating factor in their thieves' design. Whether those indifferent, hostile animals wanted to be taken home or not, he was there to return them if the desperate contrivance of one man could acomplish it.

It looked like a cloudy venture to Tom Simpson as he stood in the gloom of that big stable running his eye over the horses. How many of them belonged to the Block E, how many to the homesteaders in the neighborhood, he did not know. Those near enough to be seen distinctly were splashed to the withers with mud. They had been on the road, a long road and a heavy one. If there were any more of the Ellison horses among them he could not see the brand.

Simpson waited developments with nerves drawn as

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 tight as fiddle strings, all set for a fight or a break for the hole in the wall. It was not the time for attempting to cut out the Block E horses and heading them back to Kansas. His daylight business was to locate them, which he had done. Night must bring the solution or the failure of the problem ahead of him, if luck held for him and that horse wrangler didn't come in there, discover him and bring the whole thing to a premature break.

The fellow was banging around at the end of the stable as if hanging his saddle in the shed. There was no talking going on; Simpson concluded that he must be alone. Now the door in the corral end of the stable opened. Simpson dropped back against the manger, to avoid discovery in the sudden flood of light, gun out, all set for something to pop.

"Noahy! Dan! Noahy—Noahy!" the person at the door called. "You lunkheads up there goin' to sleep all day? Git out o' there, I tell you! Noahy, Noahy!"

Simpson, crouching so low he could neither see nor be seen, was more troubled than surprised to discover the horse wrangler to be a woman. It was a rough, jarring, unlovely voice, contemptuous and commanding, but unmistakably a woman's. It would be dev'lish awkward for a chap if she came prowling around and discovered him. Tom Simpson lacked any precedent in his varied experience for the manner of procedure in such a pinch.

She shouted again, repeating her formula except for a slight trimming of profanity, bumping the ladder against the hayloft to increase her awakening summons. Simpson could see the top of the ladder in the dark hole with hay spilling over its edges.

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 "All right, Jinny," a yawning voice answered. "What time's it gittin' to be?"

"Nearly four," Jinny replied.

"It's a rainin', ain't it?"

"Yes, it's a rainin',"—mockingly imitative of the gaping, stretching question. A laugh above rewarded her mimicry. "I brung the horses up—pile out and git something to eat, you two."

"Al-l-l right, Jinny," another voice drawled.

Jinny banged the door shut and went away. Simpson could hear the two men in the loft talking as they moved about, stamping and swearing over their damp boots, but they were too far away for him to get anything out of their conversation. That it was pleasant to them, and reminiscent of their recent foray, their frequent laughter indicated.

Simpson did some fast thinking while the two horsethieves were kicking around overhead. It seemed as if the big chance he had hoped for had come. If they were the only men around the place, if he could be sure of that, his business was to pick them off as they came down the ladder, cut the horses loose and light out. If he could be certain they were the only men around the place! It all hung on that. If they were not, starting things prematurely would be a disastrous blunder; if they were

He crept to the back of the stall, close against the partition, ready to knock them off as they came down from the loft. Let both of them get on the ladder, and then—if he could be certain there were no more men around! There was a jangling of tin pails outside as somebody went by with them on his arm bound for the spring at

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 the head of the ravine. One of the men in the loft roared a hail.

"That you, Henry?"

"Yea-a, that's me Henry. Come on out o' there, you two bums!"

Henry replied with the cheerful bandiage of a man who had risen thriftily before his mates, and Simpson thought that was rather a humorous bunch to be engaged in such sordid business. Anyway, there was at least another man on the place, and that plan for picking them off the ladder would not do. There were three of them, at least, and that woman, who sounded as if she might be the best man among them, as well as boss of the ranch. The one thing to do was trust to luck, wait till they went to the house to eat, then go back to his horse.

Noah and Dan came down the ladder presently, Simpson scarcely breathing as he watched them, his heart beating low. He already had identified Noah by his name and voice as one of the gang who had followed him to the ranch; now he also recognized the one called Dan as a member of the same distinguished company. While it would not have been exactly the sportsmanly thing to do from cover, Simpson thought, he had no reservations of conscience which held him from putting an end to their activities where they stood. Only policy restrained him. It would not be the wise thing to do.

Simpson was near the center of the stable, thirty or forty feet from where the ladder ran up to the loft. He backed into the stall, crouching under the horse's neck, hoping the two men would not precipitate a crisis by coming down the line to inspect their stolen goods.

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 "It's beginnin' to rain like hell," said Dan, the two of them standing at the foot of the ladder, looking around the gloomy stable, now quite dusky in the lowering evening.

"Open the door a minute—le's take a look at 'em," Noah directed.

The open door lighted up fairly well the immediate vicinity of the two, even relieving the gloom in the stall where Simpson crouched.

"Purty damn fine bunch of 'em this time," Dan said.

They came slowly down the aisle between the rows of stalls, looking the horses over critically.

"Yeah, but some of them homesteader plugs won't bring more 'n thirty dollars. I thought two of 'em'd peter out before we got 'em here."

"Them Block E horses 'll fetch sixty to sixty-five—two of 'em down there 'll shave nearer seventy-five apiece," Dan said. "That bay mare and the geldin' next to her—damn his old eyes! he's a wild devil—he's the feller that made all them breaks to turn back. He's the hardest horse to drive I ever drove in a bunch of horses."

"I'll cool him; I'll slap a saddle on him after I eat and ride over to the ranch and let the old lady know we're here. We can take the bunch of 'em over in the morning—give 'em time to blow a little. That was a damn hard drive we made, pardner."

"You know it!" said Dan. "This is the cuss that wanted to go back to Kansas."

They came loafing along, stopping at the stall into which Simpson had dropped through the window, next to

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 the one where he now crouched under the mare's neck. His back was wedged into the slope of the manger, for he was trying to make himself smaller than a medium-size, healthy man can be reduced without some process of desiccation that even the strain of suspense cannot equal.

The men entered the stall, joking on the attachment of the horse for his home state, a quality that Simpson would not have given him credit for if the evidence had not been so direct and disinterested. They ran their hands over the horse, admiring his points, Dan declaring he was good for seventy-five dollars of any man's money. Noah grunted a horse-wise assent. Then they turned their attention to the mare.

Simpson felt his hair crinkle with apprehension. He was gripping his gun as tight as if he had been frozen to it, elbow against his side, all on edge to pump lead if they came prowling into that stall and found him.

"She's a good 'n," Dan said. "I wouldn't mind keepin' them two myself if I could afford it. How old do you take her to be?"

"About five, or goin' on," Noah replied. "I'll take a look at the hollers of her eyes; I can tell you in three months of her age."

Simpson felt a cold prickling run over the skin of his back and up to the edge of his hair. It was like a draft of wind on a sweating skin, vestigial sensation of bristles rising, inheritance of horror, anger and defiance from the arboreal days. He pressed his back against the slanting vertical poles of the manger—the tops were nailed to a horizontal timber, the bottoms to the wall, the manger

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 being about two feet wide at the top, at the bottom a point—at a desperate disadvantage, in a cramped, mean place for quick work.

Both men were armed, something Simpson had not been certain of before they entered the mare's stall. They went lazily to the animal's head, luckily on the side of her opposite Simpson, Noah taking her by the nose-hold common to horsemen, turning her head for a look at her eye. The mare resented the treatment; she began to squirm and back away. Noah, cursing her lights and livers, ducked under her neck to get the light on her face and, head below the top of the manger, dived into Tom Simpson crouching in the shadow.

Before Noah could squawk, Simpson laid him a blow across the flat of the head with his heavy gun, plunging it with a quick jab into Dan's belly as he leaned to inquire if that double-damned mare had struck Noah with her foot. Noah was flat on the ground, and Simpson was up as quick as a bent sapling.

"Keep still!" he growled, boring the gun hard into Dan's vitals.

Dan had his hands aloft, not knowing any more than the next man what was coming, or what had happened even then. That was the safe posture for a gentleman of Dan's profession; it was habitual with him from long practice. Simpson jerked the gun from Dan's holster and stuck it under his own belly-band.

"I don't want to kill you—but one squeal!" he warned.

It had come, and there was nothing for it but to go the limit, work fast and make the best of it. Noah appeared to be out for the moment; he was lying limber

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 under foot and still. Simpson wanted to reach down for the fellow's gun, but dared not take his attention from the conscious, active rascal standing on his feet before him, backed up against the manger. Dan was staring at him in surprised malevolence. The mare had backed the length of her rope, where she stood snorting, the line stretched tight between the two standing men.

Seconds were precious to Tom Simpson; he had not even the small change of one to gamble away. While the surprise of the situation numbed Dan's faculties for the moment, Simpson ducked under the taut rope, gun pressed into the horsethief's belly, and, employing foot and hand in a sudden and astonishing maneuver, tipped the surprised man backwards into the manger.

Dan plumped down into the wedge of the manger as if he had been measured and cut out for it, back against the wall, legs doubled up until his knees were at his chin. Simpson wedged him farther down, quieting his struggles and curses with the cold smell of the gun-barrel against his nose. Dan was wedged there in a ludricrousludicrous [sic] situation that held him secure for the moment, heave and struggle as he might.

Simpson told him his life hung on absolute silence, and the horsethief had lived long enough to believe him. Dan didn't give vent to a peep while Tom slipped his gun into the holster, pulled out his knife and cut the mare loose. Working swiftly and deftly with part of the mare's rope, Simpson tied Dan's hands to the pole of the manger, one on either side of his feet, in spread-eagle fashion to take the slack out of his long arms.

Before this was accomplished Noah began to stir under

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 foot. Simpson drew the last slip-knot on Dan's wrist tight with no gentle hand, gave him a dig in the chest with the gun and a caution to keep his mouth shut. The mare had dashed out of the stall when Simpson cut the rope; as he bent over Noah he saw her making for the corral through the open door, ears forward, head up, as if she saw the road home open before her.

Simpson stripped Noah of belt and gun, picked him up and slammed him into the manger, doubling his limp body into the V-shaped receptacle in undignified but effective wedge. Noah's feet were considerably higher than his head as he reposed in the manger, his jolted senses slowly reassembling.

There was the sound of a death warrant in Simpson's low voice as he admonished silence. He groped among the corncobs in the bottom of the manger until he found two pieces long enough for his purpose. One of these he bound into Dan's open jaws with the thief's own gaudy silk handkerchief, gagging him effectually. Noah he treated in like manner, stripping the vilely perfumed adornment from his neck to twist around the cob.

Noah was just getting enough sense back to understand that something had happened; Simpson was obliged to pry his mouth open with his knife. He stared at Tom with confusion in his eyes, face against his boot tops, wedged down in the manger so hard it must almost have unhinged his joints. Tom had something to pay that man, and this was the day it came due.

To make sure of Noah, Simpson used the remainder of the hitching-rope to bind him as Dan was tied, all of which required not above five minutes, if so long, Simpson

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 worked in such a pitch of haste, accurate in every movement, deft with long practice in trussing up wilder creatures than these. With the last knot drawn on Noah's bonds, Simpson ran to the door in search of the saddle he had heard the woman hanging there. Several hung under the shed beside the door. He grabbed the nearest, returned to the stable and saddled: the horse that had given Dan so much trouble to drive away from his native pastures.

Not knowing how many horses belonged to the Ellisons, how many to the neighbors, Simpson went down the line and cut every animal in the stable loose. There was a general bolt for the door, Simpson urging them along. When the last animal was out of the stable he followed to the corral, shut the stable door and threw down the corral bars.

There were between twenty-five and thirty horses in the corral, including those the woman had driven in a little while before. Simpson, mounted and ready to go, waited beside the bars as the horses rushed out led by the Block E mare whose rope he had used to tie her thieves.

At that moment, doubtless having heard the rush of freed horses and puzzled to know what the two men in the barn were about, a man came bolting out of the front door of the house, in shirt sleeves, bareheaded. He stopped short at sight of Simpson herding the horses out of the corral, momentarily paralyzed by astonishment at seeing a stranger where he had expected to see his friends. He let out a wild yell and jumped for the door.

As the man disappeared on the jump for his gun, Simp-

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 son rode out of the corral after the last horse. He looked back, calculating his chance of getting down toward the road a little way before the fellow, with perhaps others, began to throw lead. At that moment a woman appeared in the dog-run and began to peg away at Simpson with a rifle.

He was then about half way between corral and the road, a matter of a hundred yards from the house. By the wild way the woman was shooting Simpson knew she was mad clear through. Anger and indignation at his bold move made her judgment poor; she didn't come near enough to even hit a horse. But she was doing some tall yelling and screaming, her voice splitting in high, wavering shrieks.

The man was cutting loose now, doing somewhat better work. He brought down a horse that ran beside Simpson. It stumbled headlong, and rolled over, its back broken by the shot.

Bullets were almost singeing his hair as Simpson galloped after the herd to the road, not troubling to do any shooting of his own, the distance being too great for any certainty with a revolver, and he had no ammunition to throw away. When she struck the road the Block E mare turned in the direction of home, as Simpson had confidently expected her to do, most of the others in the band trooping after her.

A number of the animals appeared to have a preference for the opposite direction, however, and a break in the ranks began, which Simpson had some trouble to stop before it drained away the bigger part of the herd. He got them going in the right direction with the loss of six,

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 which went galloping southward as if they belonged down that way.

Simpson rode into the timber, snatched his rifle from the saddle of the horse he had left tied there, cut the animal loose and started it on the jump after the others. Then on, toward home, with little hope in him of ever getting there.

The Kansas line must be thirty-five or forty miles away, he knew. He had taken every horse on the place, but there doubtless were others available near at hand for the thieves to mount and pursue him. He could not expect to go far without a fight. When it came, he could do no less than give them the best he had, and trust to the luck that had been kind to him this day.

He had his revolver and rifle, and Dan's gun was uncomfortably evident between his trousers waistband and his tank. Noah's gun and belt hung over the saddle-horn, where it swung with a chance of being lost in that hard riding. Tom put the belt over his shoulder in the fashion of a bandolier, the gun under his arm.

So he galloped after the band, early dusk and thickening mists making the road ahead obscure, the Block E mare leading the bunch in a race as desperate as a man ever rode on the Cherokee trails.

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Day seemed to drag between dusk and nightfall a long time, a kind of gray twilight which had not thickened perceptibly when Simpson reached the ford of the Salt Fork and plunged into the woods. Here the gloom deepened, yet night seemed a long way ahead to a man who felt that its cover would bring him a measure of security.

It could not have been much past five o'clock, Simpson believed, although a guess was certain to be wide of the hour in weather like that, when a man's day had been stacked with events which seemed to make it long. He had no watch, that being a luxury sacrificed to honor along with his other possessions. It would have been useful on this journey to estimate distances by, a man knowing about how far he travelled in an hour with a band of horses as big as that.

There was no commotion of pursuit. The horses which had escaped must have belonged to the ranch, however, and headed for their grazing ground. The thieves would recover them with little trouble or delay, and soon would be hot after him, even though they had no others nearer at hand.

Simpson's scheme was to leave that muddy trail through the woods if he was not overtaken before dark, and cut for the open prairie. Unless they trailed him with lanterns, which he did not believe they would do, they

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 would continue on in the belief that he had followed the road. In a country of shallow streams, there could be no great barriers between him and the Kansas line, even though he might strike rough going in cutting across.

Doubtless the road was the shortest way and the best, or the thieves would not have taken it. His chance reposed in the unusual, the unexpected. At the first break in the tangled woods that presented about dark, he would head that lead mare for the prairie, which he believed could not be many miles away.

The horses had worked off their exuberance of being freed from the close stable, something they were unused to and did not like. They had settled down to a trot which they could hold for hours. Simpson felt that he would be more than half way to the Kansas line, his danger diminished by just that much, if he could keep them at it that way until midnight, when he might stop for a few hours, even until daylight, then make a spurt for the finish.

Of course the line would not be any barrier against his pursuers, but there would be some chance of running across a cow-camp or a ranch where he might take refuge and find help. Down here in the Nation there was no likelihood 'of help from the cowboys handling the cattle on the leased lands. They would consider him a horsethief, very likely, and throw their lead at him rather than for him, according to what the sheriff had told him of the animosities and prejudices existing between ranchers and cowpunchers on the two sides of the line.

It would be a bad place, that timber, for a man's pursuers to overtake him, night or day. In the shooting that

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 would have to come off in that event the horses might be stampeded, scattered and lost. In the open a man would have a chance. There he could run and see his way.

Simpson was strained as tight as a wet rope as he rode. It was raining hard, and promised to come harder; the slicker around his sack of grub would be of more use on his back, but he could not stop to get it now. It was going to be a long night if he ever lived to the end of it, and a cold one, but the sun might be shining in Kansas tomorrow.

The thought picked him up with a new hope. Then as the slow accumulation of gloom settled over the dripping land, fold on fold, blending the tree trunks in the dark, leaving only their tops outlined here and there dimly against the gray clouds, Simpson glimpsed an opening in the woods leading off in the direction he wanted to go. A trail, he took it to be, probably used by wood-haulers, perhaps leading off to some sequestered ranch.

He rode around the plodding band of steaming horses and turned the lead mare back. He had some difficulty in doing so, as she was stubbornly set on following that road. She had come that way; she knew it was the trail back home. The suspicious creature did not like the deflection from the beaten trail. She shied and bolted, starting back to the old road. Simpson was almost on the point of yielding to her instinct when she suddenly took a notion to do as he wanted her to, and trotted off up the unknown trail, the rest of the band trailing confidently after her, Simpson bringing up the rear.

It was only then, jogging along after the horses seen dimly through the thickening darkness, that Simpson be-

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 gan to marvel on his escape from the ranch with a whole skin. He did not know how long that man and woman continued shooting at him, but he recalled now a good deal of yelling out of the man and siren shrieking from the woman as they ran after him toward the road. He had made a quick departure, the only break in its smoothrunning success being the split in the band and his pause to cut his own horse loose.

Luck surely had been with him that day. He had not fired a shot, although he had jerked the rifle out of the scabbard when that raging, cursing fellow came tearing after him, throwing lead so close it seemed a miracle he missed. Simpson's loss had been one horse, and he was not certain it was his loss, strictly speaking. He could not say it was one of the Block E brand; just as likely an animal belonging to the rascals themselves, as nearly as they ever had honest title to a horse. From the way that cuss raged, Tom inclined to the opinion that it was one of his horses. The thought brought out a grin, which Simpson felt that he had coming. That surely had been his lucky day.

Doubly fortunate that he had not been obliged to hurt anybody. Of course he applied the range definition to the word. To hurt a man, in the parlance familiar to Simpson these past several years, meant to put him out of business for good. It was a delicate way of saying that subject had become a coroner's case. The charge of killing would not stand against him in that foray; at least, not yet. He hoped night, and endurance and luck, would put him beyond the possibility of that necessity.

Before long Simpson had reason to regret leaving the

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 trail. It grew so dark he could not see the leader of his band; the trail was narrow, bordered by brush and brier; branches of trees hung low over it. He rode with one hand up, to encounter these barriers in time to duck and dodge. Nothing big enough to drag him from the saddle, pendent branches which had grown since the road was last used, the forest closing up the gap in its inevitable way, but always the uncertainty of a thick limb. And there were dangling greenbrier vines which scratched like catamounts, their venomous thorns leaving burning wounds. It was a worrying, perilous, tiring ride.

After what seemed to Simpson a long while—but could not have been more than an hour, if so long—he emerged in a little break, like the clearing of an old field. This seemed to be several acres in extent, as marked by the confining walls of trees, brush-grown and abandoned. It was light enough here to see that the horses still followed the lead mare in good order, few of them, if any, having parted from the band in the woods.

Simpson was satisfied now the horses would hold together unless something gave them a sudden scare. Even then they would reassemble if possible, according to horse nature, for that is an animal which likes the company of its kind above all others.

Tom considered seriously making a halt in this old clearing until daylight. It was unlikely those trailing him—and they must be out hot and in force by now—would be able to see where he had left the road. They would take it for granted he would hold a straight course, and a swift one, for the border along the plainest, surest, easiest way. When daylight revealed their mistake they

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 would turn back until they picked up his trail. So he reasoned, feeling more secure than his short distance from the horsethieves' lair warranted.

A little reflection on this phase of the situation set up that feeling of rising bristles along his back as he rode through the old clearing. He could not have been more than two hours on the road; at the outside he had not made more than seven or eight miles. And perhaps a good deal of that was thrown away in this divergence, which he questioned the wisdom of now. It would not do to stop. He must crowd on clear of that infernal, dripping forest, get out to the prairie where he could see a few rods at least, and draw an unhampered breath again.

There was a creek at the farther edge of this clearing, the road pitching down into it sharply. Simpson had no warning of it until he heard the horses splashing through it and the noise of the increasing waters from the downpour of rain among the stones. The stream was swift at the ford, but shallow. Lucky for him he had not come an hour later, Simpson knew, when it would have grown into an unfordable torrent. His horse lurched up the bank tight after the rest of the bunch, and there on his right was the light of some woods-dweller's cabin winking through the dripping trees.

The sight of that gleam gave Simpson an alarming start. The house stood near the creek; he was upon it before he knew it was there. It was not more than a hundred feet from the road; which was better here and gave evidence of more frequent use. Simpson had little hope of getting by without being heard. He cut in between the horses and the fence, riding forward to speed them up

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 a little, thinking of the fool propensity some horses had for entering every open gate or bars they ran across.

At that juncture several hounds began to whoop from their shelter under the house, and came pouring out with their mouthy clamor. The door opened as Simpson rode by, revealing for an instant a man. This householder, taking no chances, shut the door after him quickly as he stepped outside. From the glimpse Simpson caught of him he knew the man was an Indian.

"Who's that?" the man inquired, his hail a challenge.

Simpson made no reply. The dogs were at the heels of his horse, setting up a savage yowling. Simpson heard the man, this time much nearer the road, demanding who he was and where he was going. He rode on in silence. All the information he could give that man would not enlighten him, and any he might get from the Indian certainly would not do him any good. Here the road was clear, the landscape open, and it was fairly light in comparison with the hampering blackness of the woods.

On past the place the horses galloped, splashing through puddles, setting up a racket that would give an experienced ear a very good estimate of the number in that outfit. The dogs followed, giving their tongues full liberty and, altogether, it was rather a lively event for a rainy night on that forest-smothered road. Simpson knew he was leaving a suspicious, unsatisfied Indian standing beside the rail fence in front of his little log hut, and one who was not likely to remain in passive speculation on the meaning of that troop of horses, urged on by a silent driver, passing his door along that unfrequented way.

The noisy charge of the hounds had thrown the horses

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 into a panic. They went galloping headlong into the dark, Simpson tight after them, thankful the animals had some other sense than sight—which experience had proved to him was little, if any, superior in the dark to man's—to keep them on the trail and hold them together. The dogs dropped behind, too indolent to follow far, although the horses held their excited gait for a mile or two. They gradually settled down to a swinging trot, and Simpson's heart lifted when he noted he was riding clear of the woods.

Directions were all one without the gleam of a familiar star or constellation to mark the way, but Simpson was not greatly concerned over that. He relied on the sense of the mare to lead her home. The trees blended down to the prairie border of shrubs; in a little while he rode clear of them, relieved to feel the prairie sod under his horse's feet. Here was elbow room; here a man could give them a run for their money, let them come when they might. Simpson was drenched to the skin; the roadside bushes had sopped his legs and poured several pints of water into his boots. But that was a condition he had been broken to long ago; it gave him no more concern nor discomfort than it would have given the average cowboy. A man learned early in that life to take a bootful of rainwater and ride on, letting it seep out and dry out as it would. It was one of the things which romancers did not stress when they discussed the wild free life of the range.

Just beyond the edge of the woods there was another cabin, dark, silent. The occupants were either in bed or the place was abandoned, but the sight of the house gave Simpson a mighty jump, and almost fixed him in the

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 belief that he was fast relapsing to the primitive and growing a fine crop of bristles on his back. On and on, for hours; saddle-galled from the rain, chilled to the bone, hungry, longing for a smoke. On and on, until the horses began to lag, dropping from a trot to a drooping walk, some of them now and then stopping to snip a bunch of grass, the spirit of adventure gone out of them, the long hard drive they lately had been put to telling on them all too soon for the desperate chance of the man who herded them over this trail that led he knew not where.

Simpson knew he would only be crippling his luck to push them on, tired as they were. It might come to the pinch when they'd have to travel for all that was in them. He decided to stop, let them graze and rest, and go on again with daybreak.

Here the landscape was open. Dark as the night pressed down on the prairie, there was a little lightness in the clouds, a little horizon, just about at arm's length, it seemed. Immediately he stopped the march the horses began to graze. He could hear their soft muzzling, the crisp snapping of rain-freshened grass which was both food and drink to the winded beasts.

Simpson rode around and around the little band of horses, keeping them together, listening for the sound of pursuit, unable to get out of his imagination the picture of that shaggy-haired Indian saddling and mounting, dashing away in hot lather to carry the news of this challenged and unanswering marauder passing his door. He had felt the suspicion of that man vibrating in his voice; the Indian had suspected, from the first unanswered hail,

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 that a horsethief, as Simpson realized he would be classed in that country, was passing. That band of horses was going in the wrong direction for any honest purpose, as honest purpose was defined on the Cherokee trails.

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That was a long watch, and a weary one. It could not have been past midnight when Simpson stopped; the rain that was falling then continued for hours. As the horses settled down to their grazing Tom dismounted, slipped the bridle off his horse, yet sticking close beside it holding the neck-rope, ready to mount at the first alarm. There was nothing he could do to warm his blood a bit but stamp up and down the length of the hitching-rope, and flap his arms like a wet rooster. It helped a little, but was not too wildly exhilarating.

There was no finding the horse that carried his grub and blanket among the shadowy, shifting animals of his little band, much as he would have appreciated the slicker that watch. But uncertainty was equal to a coat, anxiety was a fire that kept him alert and keen. And not even a wolf came to disturb the wet tranquillity of the night.

At length Tom became conscious that the rain had stopped. A breeze was springing, breaks were showing in the clouds. Then a whiff of wind, and the east was like an open door. The sky was swept clear; there was the dawn.

He could hardly believe it had come so quickly; he thought he must have been asleep on his feet. Yet daylight had only been pent beneath the clouds; it was an hour past its time. He caught the horse that carried his

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 grub, took off the bridle it had worn since he hitched it to the sapling before going out on that spying expedition which had turned things loose like the stove-in head of a barrel. Some of the horses were lying down, others standing in little groups, heads over each other's backs in the companionable way of horses, take them where found, world without end.

The fast-broadening day discovered to Simpson that he was out of sight of the timber, in a country where laminated ledges of limestone cropped from the ribs of lean hills, with little swales where grass grew abundantly. It was in one of these that he had stopped. Brier clumps and stunted sumac bushes grew along the hillside, suggesting fuel, fire and hot coffee.

The time he would lose getting breakfast would not put him very far along the road, and if Wade Harrison's men were on his trail they'd overtake him before he could get out of there, hungry or fed. A hungry man will argue down almost any kind of danger, and Simpson was a hungry man.

He splintered some dead sumac, which is a wood that blazes quickly, and comes nearer to burning without smoke than any wood that grows, kindling a fire without much difficulty. He was so reckless and defiant of danger in his famished state that he stirred up a mess of biscuits, there being no trouble finding water for mixing his dough or filling his coffee pot, for every wash was a little torrent after the rain, some of them running as clear as if they had their founts in springs, which is the way of prairie run-off water, as every Kansas pioneer well knows.

Not more than three-quarters of an hour later Simpson,

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 a full man and a warm one, his spirits away up to the top of the tube, got his herd under way. The sun was rising; there would be no lack of a guide the rest of the journey, let it be long or short. There was no trail here, no faintest trace that there ever had been. That mare had followed her nose when the road gave out. Tom hoped she had gone in the right direction.

How far he was from the Kansas line he could not even guess, but the horses were fresh now, if not so frisky or keen for the march, able for it without another stop if it could be crossed before night. And so he was off, the sun at his right hand, as sustaining and helpful in his necessity as a friend encountered in a strange and hostile land.

There was not a habitation in sight anywhere in the sweep of country that presented as Simpson mounted the successive hills, not a cow-camp, although many cattle grazed in those abundant pastures. These moved indifferently out of the way as the horses approached, some of the younger animals bucking and cavorting playfully along as if to show their independence, and perhaps a little mocking contempt, of riderless horses running in a captive drove. Tom hoped luck would continue to favor him, allowing him to cross the line without meeting anybody, as curious questioning might lead to dangerous ground.

The country broke rougher as he proceeded, much limestone outcropping on the hills and slopes, a considerable growth of scrub oak here and there. The land was furrowed by deep ravines, with the perpendicular banks common to prairie washes, making long detours necessary. Simpson understood now why no trail led directly

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 north from the crossing of the Salt Fork. Progress was vexatiously slow here; these twistings and wormings among the hills were eating up his chance.

Simpson had been on the way about two hours when he struck an impassable wash, wider and deeper than any he had encountered. It came down from a generally northwestern direction, and appeared to be miles in length, from what he could trace of its windings. The run-off of last night's rain rushed through in a flood; crossing would have been impossible, even if a break in the banks could have been found.

It was tough luck, for this creek, a dry hollow in rainless periods as the lack of water-nourished shrubs along its banks disclosed, turned him from his direct route. Probably an hour or two would be lost getting around it, or finding a fordable place, and in an hour somebody riding after him could cover the distance he had made since leaving camp. But there was nothing to be done except skirt the wash and push ahead as fast as possible. He had elbow room, anyhow; the sun was shining, luck was with him still.

So he reflected as he started up the gulch. It was pretty good going along there; he could put them through for a while. He had not gone half a mile when he got the first sight of his pursuers. It was only a glimpse, he could not tell how many were in the party, but he saw there were plenty to keep one man busy, let him have every advantage on his side, which Simpson feared would not be his case.

They were just dipping down a slope when he saw them; a flitting glimpse of them and they were hidden

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 in the swale. Five or six of them, he thought; certainly not fewer than four. They were not more than half a mile away.

They had not come so tight on his heels undiscovered through any laxity in Simpson's vigilance; he had nearly screwed his head loose looking back that morning. Curiously enough, the discovery that they were coming, and so near, did not give him half the start the sight of that light in the forest cabin had given him last night. He was on edge with expectation of their appearance; there was more the feeling of disappointment, of bitter reproach against the turn of luck, than surprise.

It was a run for the money now, and he saw no reason why he couldn't go about as fast as they could come, pressed by the necessity of doing it, the country fairly open along the bank of the arroyo. He gave a whoop that raised the ears of every horse in the band, and started them with a rush.

No animal associated with man in his domestic economy, not even excepting the dog, will sense and respond to its master's nervous condition as quickly as the horse. It feels the flow of confidence through the reins as readily as it senses the thrill of panic; it will quicken to the calm word of encouragement and quiver at the excited voice of nervous command as no other living creature not endowed with human understanding.

There was not a horse in that band but understood a supreme effort was required of it. They leaped to the race in long strides, bellies close to the ground, necks stretched, chins pointing, running in open order, each picking his own way; leaping rocks, skirting bushes, gath-

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 ering for mighty springs over ravines which they ordinarily would have paused and looked around for breaks in the bank to ease them over. It was like a whirlwind that springs out of the somnolent quiet of a summer day.

Simpson rode tight after the band, throwing many a troubled look behind. Now he saw the pursuers, now lost them, but each fleet glimpse revealed them a little nearer. They were gaining slowly, but closing up the gap as surely as good horses and good riders could do it over a free-running band. They were getting close enough to start shooting; Simpson wondered why they didn't cut loose.

Then he remembered his standing in the eyes of those men. They didn't want to shoot him if they could save him alive for the rope. He was a horsethief, and a horsethief should always be hung if possible. It was not alone the inflexible code of the Cherokee trails, but of the range. Simpson knew it as well as anybody. He was not to be shot, except to incapacitate him from using his gun or to save the lives of those closing in upon him. They would kill his horse, and rush him while he was entangled, if he did not get clear of it as it fell.

It was not long until this hard pace began to tell on the less fleet and vigorous horses in Simpson's band. These began to lag; those in the lead drew away from them, dividing the herd. Simpson did not want to lose this bunch of laggards, there being among them several of the likeliest-looking draft horses of the Block E brand.

The fleet mare which had led the retreat from captivity was still ahead, running free and tireless, going as if certain of her course. Not more than nine or ten were able to

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 follow her pace. It began to look to Simpson as if he must abandon the slower animals to save himself.

While he was considering this course he saw the vanguard of his headlong retreat swerve sharply from the northwesterly course they had been following along the arroyo—which he noted for the first time was now out of sight—and head northeast. He realized in a flash they had struck the old cattle trail which he had followed into the Nation. Whooping to inspire the lagging bunch with new courage and speed, he rode among them, slapping them with his hat, setting up more noise than a man in less urgent extremity would believe possible for one human throat to make.

By the time he had turned this bunch into the trail and headed them after the leaders, the pursuers were almost within pistol-shot of Simpson. He told himself the time to stop running had come.

Sling out the rifle and begin to pump lead down the line! That was the time to stop, and to stop them. The horses were sure to go right on to Kansas, which could not be more than nine or ten miles away. It didn't seem to matter so much to Simpson just then whether he ever got there; the business immediately before him was right there, on that old cattle trail.

Simpson wheeled shooting. The pursuing band pulled up sharp, and got out their guns, slamming lead around him so fast it looked as if he had ridden into a swarm of grasshoppers which went plumping down at the roadside. Some of them came close—so close the horse squatted and jumped, trembling and snorting, apparently fully conscious of his danger.

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 Simpson saw there were five in the crowd that was after him. Two broke from the others, riding to flank him, or draw out of range and follow the horses—he was not certain which. Either move was not as he wanted it. He stopped the one on the right. The horse went on, stirrups dancing as it circled and galloped back toward the three riders who remained in the road where they had halted at the first report of Simpson's rifle.

On his left Tom saw the man riding hard for the foot of a little rise that would cut him off. He threw a shot, his target flashing between intervening bushes, and safely away. The three in the road came on with a whoop, cutting loose with everything they had.

Simpson turned to race them for it, hoping to find a spot where he would not loom so prominently, and there stand for the finish. Off to his right he saw the unhorsed man rise up, tall and gaunt, stand wavering a moment, and fall. A bullet caught Simpson's horse. It grunted with the slap of lead, pitching forward so abruptly, so violently, that Simpson was sent sailing as he had gone out of the wagon the morning he hitched that very animal up to its unaccustomed task.

He struck the ground some distance beyond the horse, the fall confusing him momentarily, giving him a terrific jar. He dropped the rifle, and went clawing after it on hands and knees; recovered it, threw himself in the shelter of the horse's body as a fresh shower of bullets cut over his head.

His revolver was in his holster, the one he had taken from Noah hanging to the saddle-horn. He had put Dan's gun under the rope of the packet behind the saddle,

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 ready to hand if needed. Noah's gun still hung on the saddle, but it was under the horse; the other gun was gone, jolted out on that last tight run. This Simpson saw in a glance as he flattened out behind the horse.

The horse had a broken foreleg, clipped by a rifle bullet. It was lying on the disabled member, and now began to make a heaving, frantic struggle to get up. Tom grabbed the reins and tried to turn the creature's head for a quieting shot. As he tugged, a bullet struck the horse's head not a span from his own, killing it instantly.

There appeared to be more caution than valor in that band of horsethieves. They were not keen to rush Simpson and dislodge him from the shelter of his fallen horse. He lay waiting for them, not risking to show his head, filling up his magazine. For a few moments their firing stopped, then there was a rush of horses and they came tearing past, off a cautious distance, riding like mad one behind the other, pouring in their lead as they went.

Simpson threw a shot at the leader and made a jump for it to change sides of the horse before the other two came directly opposite. As he went over a bullet hit the rifle, the reamed particles of lead, red-hot they felt, striking his hand. He flopped down on the other side. The three of them went tearing past, on their way to help their companion turn the horses back, Tom supposed. They knew he could not get very far away.

He was wrong in that surmise. Horse or no horse, they were not going to leave him there alive. They were circling him, closing in as they came this time, one of them an Indian, surely the very Indian he had seen for a second in that cabin door. Tom squirmed up to face them, dis-

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 covering that the bullet which threw hot lead parings into his hand had jammed the trigger of the rifle. It was out; he dropped it and slung his revolver.

The leader veered off, shooting wildly. It was the Indian, and Simpson knew few of his breed ever became very dangerous with a pistol, especially when shooting on the run. Tom vaulted the horse and dropped down on the other side, banging away with no more effect than his hard-riding enemies.

He knew he couldn't keep up that leap-frog business very long. Soon one of them would get him on the jump or, if not then, their courage would rise with their exasperation, they would rush him and settle their bill. So he was not going to have it that way. They'd have to take him off his feet if they got him, not lying on his belly behind a dead horse like a lizard. And there was no doubt, it appeared now, how that show was going to end.

Tom sprang up as the last man rode by, opening up with such unexpected vigor as to spur him with a spurt that carried him quickly out of range. The other two rode after him, the three of them bunching their horses in a brief conference, one of them suddenly slinging a rifle from under his leg and firing from his vantage of distance and safety.

Simpson was obliged to hunt cover again. Luck had gone off the stage, it seemed. Yet it was remarkable what a quantity of ammunition could be spent by three able-bodied men to so little damage. Beyond the small wounds in his right hand, where the hot spatterings of that bullet had struck, he was unhurt. But luck was out of it.

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 They were suddenly quiet down the road. The man with the rifle had stopped firing. Simpson stole a cautious look, expecting an immediate response. The three were facing the other way, watching the approach of two men who came riding from the south.

Tom's heart sagged lower, low as it had swung before. It seemed, indeed, that it hit the bottom that time. Reënforcements. The three men were waiting for them, little as they were needed. But no! The two men from the south snapped out their guns and began to shoot as they came tearing within range of the three. There was a break among the horsethieves, a wild scattering, a futile popping of their guns, and they were off.

It was useless, and it seemed an act by a man who had crept out of his hole, but Simpson emptied his gun after the three as they cut toward the southwest down the old cattle trail. The two men who had arrived in his extremity rode up to where Simpson was standing between the legs of his dead horse. Tom's hand was covered with blood; his disabled rifle lay at his feet, the trampled ground was sown with empty shells.

"Looks like you'd been havin' a little skirmish," said one of the riders.

He was slipping his gun into the holster, grinning amiably.

Simpson had to look twice before he was sure it was Sheriff Treadwell, but half a glance sufficed to identify his companion, who was nobody on earth but Wallace Ramsey of the Bar-Heart-Bar. The Sheriff was not wearing his derby hat and buttoned shoes. That was his buckboard rig. To-day he was attired like any rider of the

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 Cherokee trails, and he looked as fit and handy to his part as he was welcome.

Simpson did not reply to the sheriff's comment on the appearance of things around there: just stepped out from between the stiffening legs of that good horse and reached up his hand; and turned to Wallace Ramsey and reached up his hand again.

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"Where's the feller that belongs to that horse?" the sheriff asked, indicating the saddled animal, which had retreated discreetly beyond the zone of danger and was grazing calmly.

"Over there," Simpson replied, indicating the direction. "His name's Noah. That's all the particulars I can give you of him, Mr. Sheriff."

The sheriff and Wallace rode over to investigate the condition of Noah, who could be seen lying almost hidden in the tall grass. They approached him cautiously, guns out. Almost immediately the sheriff turned back, Wallace going after the horse, which was shy of his approach, and ran. Wallace was tight after it, swinging his rope, when the sheriff joined Simpson.

"It looks like you shot them horses on up the trail," said the sheriff, his eyes on the signs.

"One of them, a chap named Dan, got by," Simpson explained briefly. "He's after them."

"You and that boy come on when he ketches that horse," the sheriff directed. With the words he was off, hot on the trail of the man who was following the horses.

Wallace was not long in bringing up the horse, which appeared to be a very good animal, but not in the class with the one Simpson had lost. Tom transferred his rifle-scabbard, saddle-roll and captured belt and pistol to the

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 remount, hopped into the saddle and started after the sheriff.

"One of them got by me, the sheriff's gone after him," he explained.

Wallace demurred about rushing off like that.

"Say, Tom," he said in astonishment, "you ain't a-goin' to leave your good saddle on that dead horse, air you?"

"It don't belong to me—I don't want to burden myself with it."

"Well, if it's all the same to you, then," said Wallace, one leg tentatively over the saddle, a polite request for permission in his ingenuous face.

"Help yourself," Tom granted, curbing his impatience to be away after the sheriff.

Wallace had the saddle off in two jerks of a lamb's tail and was up again with it in front of him.

"I hate to see a good saddle throwed away," said he, frugally reflective as if he had seen it done in his time. "This here one's worth sixty dollars, cold money. But that's a Block E horse, Tom,"—quizzically puzzled; "how come your horse and somebody else's saddle?"

"I stole it," Tom explained, directly to the point.

"The hell you did! From that gang down on the Salt Fork?"

"But I'll give you a bill of sale for it if your conscience"

"Conscience hell! I ain't got no conscience. That saddle's worth a million dollars to me now!"

Carrying the saddle didn't appear to encumber Wallace in the least. He loped on beside Simpson, silent quite a little while, so overcome by the flock of thoughts set

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 flying in his head by Simpson's explanation, which was more a confession than a boast, he hadn't words enough to go with them. But that was not a state that endured long with Wallace, who was, above all, a wordy man.

"Me and the sheriff we struck your trail at daylight this morning, away back there at the edge of the woods. We knew you'd got away with them horses, but we couldn't figger how in the hell you done it, Tom."

Wallace turned his sharp eye questioningly, with such an inquisitive look that Simpson could see curiosity was hurting him.

"Blind luck," said Tom. "We'd better hit it up—one of that gang got by me."

"Oh, he'll be all right," Wallace replied with comfortable assurance. "One man ain't goin' to keep Sheriff Treadwell busy more'n a minute or two. That's the speediest little feller with a gun in seven states."

"More speed to him!" Tom said fervently, thinking with a surge of gratitude of that moment when the sheriff galloped up and began to shoot. "How did you two come to be together on this job, Wallace?"

"I was down here scoutin' after some strays. He was headin' hell-bent after you, and I ast him to depytize me and let me go along. It don't do no good to be a dep'ty down here, but if a feller had a conscience, you know it might set easier if he had to fork out his iron and plug somebody. You remember I had a grudge agin that gang myself, Tom."

"You sure had, old feller."

"The sheriff he was skirtin' the timber, aimin' to take a cut through by an old loggin' road he knew, but it got

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 so damn dark he couldn't find it. We camped there, and started on at daylight. A little way along we hit your trail."

"But how in the seven kingdoms did you know it was mine?"

"The sheriff knew by the tracks it was the same bunch of horses them fellers run off, and he knew they wouldn't be headin' 'em north, not all together and right away, anyhow. He said you'd got 'em away from them fellers, and we knew by the tracks made since the rain that they was after your skelp, old feller. Simple as the snoot on your face. So we bucked into 'er and come on hell-bent, I'm here to say!"

"You were damn well welcome!" Tom said fervently.

"Don't mention it," Wallace requested lightly, dismissing all thought of obligation with the words.

They overtook Sheriff Treadwell about five miles from the scene of the skirmish, as he called it. He was waiting for them, holding a riderless horse by the reins. There was nobody else around. Off a little way the horses grazed beside the trail, all of them there, according to Tom's hasty estimate. Sheriff Treadwell said they were still about three miles inside the Nation.

"It's nice to ketch them fellers over the line this way," he said. "It saves the county a lot of expense."

Wallace said they'd hit one of Coburn's cow-camps about nine or thirteen miles north of the line; they could make it there by chuck-time, which would be a handy hour, as far as he was concerned, personal and private, to arrive.

They got the horses under way, the sheriff's weather eye on the saddled one running with them. He asked no

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 questions about the animal, and Wallace, restrained by the delicacy that most men of his calling felt in those perilous days about prying into another's purely personal affairs, held his tongue, although Simpson saw it was bulging in his mouth like a bale of hay.

"That's the horse I rode down," he explained. "It belongs to a man by the name of Waco Johnson. I'd been down to Drumwell on it, so it escaped the raid."

"Oh, that's the one," said the sheriff. "The feller they shot in the leg."

"I was wonderin' if that old cuss rambled down here and you had to take a gun to him," Wallace said. "Is he over at the Block E?"

"I left him there," Tom replied.

"Yes," the sheriff said, "he'll hang up there some time. He hadn't come to when I was past there day before yesterday evening."

Wallace was greatly interested in Waco Johnson's adventures since Coburn fired him, and pleased to learn that he had found a harbor in such kind hands as Mrs. Ellison and her daughter.

"Coburn missed it a mile when he thought that feller was crooked," Wallace declared, although he had not been above suspecting Waco himself not two minutes before. "Some of the boys suspicioned him, but I said hell! if a man's crooked because he goes on a toot and misses the train I ort 'a' been hung ten years ago and severial times since."

Wallace chuckled, but not at the review of these many deserved hangings for his train delinquencies, as it was speedily revealed.

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 "Coburn thought him and you framed it up to rob him of that dang money, Tom. He swore you and Waco was old trail pardners; said you framed it for him to miss the train and you to take his place so you could git away with that fool gripsack. He's kind of huffy yit 'cause it didn't turn out that way."

"Damn fool!" said Sheriff Treadwell, spitting contemptuously as only a sheriff can.

"He turned me a high compliment, thinking I had brains enough to plot out a thing like that," Tom said, but looking so grim and humorless that Wallace thought he saw trouble ahead for Sid Coburn.

"Well, you know it's natural for a man to suspicion a stranger when he hops the wrong horse and rides off with thirty-five thousand dollars," Wallace explained placatively. "I guess it's cowman nature to feel kind of sore, too, when he rides home and finds a feller's beat him there with that money, down to the last bal'-facted dime. Well sir, even Sid's wife had the laugh on him over the way you beat him home with that money, Tom. And I'm here to tell you when you make that woman laugh, you've done somethin', pardner."

"I believe you," Tom agreed solemnly.

"You can make a skinned cow laugh easier 'n you can that woman."

"She's got a streak of Cherokee in her," the sheriff remarked significantly. He said it as he might have disclosed the fact that she was afflicted with epilepsy, or some unfortunate ailment that cast a continual shadow over her days. Knowing it, one must excuse her faults.

"She's got a streak of sompin' a foot wide," Wallace

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 said. "Ever I marry a woman I'll marry me a simple one, but what I git one that can laugh."

"Plenty of 'em to be had," the sheriff said.

"Simple ones, or laughin' ones?" Tom inquired, perking up as keenly all on a sudden as if he might be interested in the market.

"Both," the sheriff replied sententiously. "Take Eddie Kane's wife, down at Drumwell. When that woman opens her mouth to laugh you can see her lights. Her and Coburn's wife they're the limit of their kind, and between 'em—well, I guess there's some sensible ones between. You take Eudora Ellison: she grins, something like a man. I never heard a ha-ha out of that girl as long as I've knew her, and that's just about all her life."

Which would have made that young lady about five years old if it had been true. Sheriff Treadwell measured time by events, instead of years.

"I've never saw her," Wallace said, a little wistfully, a bit regretfully, as for something passed out of his province for good and all.

"You've got my permission to go and call on her," the sheriff bantered.

"She'd burn a brand on my old hide I couldn't git off with lye," Wallace said. "No big cowman's daughter ain't trainin' around with no bobtailed puncher the same as me."

"She was redheaded over the way that gang raided their place,"—the sheriff addressed himself to Tom—"I thought I'd have to hog-tie that girl to keep her from comin' with me. She certainly was redheaded and a rairin'."

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 "Um-m-m," said Simpson, his lips clamped hard around the stem of his empty pipe.

Sheriff Treadwell, seeing how it was, offered a red tobacco box. Doubtless it was not any higher grade than sheriffs usually smoke, but to Tom Simpson's palate and hard-pulled nerves it was equal to the best that ever came from old England with the king's warrant on the can. The grimness of his features relaxed; his eyes beamed so friendly and appreciative of his company that Sheriff Treadwell thought for a little while he was going to grin.

They made Coburn's camp a little after noon, just as the cowboys and the boss were licking their tin plates. Coburn was so surprised to see that big band of horses coming up from the direction of the Nation that his eyes could have been scraped off his face with a shingle. He didn't give Simpson what could have been called a brotherly greeting, not knowing what part he had taken in the enterprise, whatever it was. While the cook was frying a fresh batch of steak in a pot of grease the sheriff enlightened the cowman. Wallace, meantime, was putting the story into the ears of his comrades, Tom Simpson sitting apart on the saddle he had taken from his horse, smoking that delectable plug-cut out of the sheriff's red box.

So up bounced Sid Coburn and came stalking over to where Tom sat smoking, direct as a man who had a crow to pick. He stuck out his hand while yet ten feet away. Tom rose and met him with a demonstration no more reserved.

"Simpson, I take off my hat to you," Coburn said, and he took it off with the declaration, jerking it as if it

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 had long offended him and he was done with the imposition. "I done you wrong—I was as mean as a yeller dog—but, by God!"—looking Tom hard in the eye—"I didn't steal that horse!"

"You couldn't make me believe you did if you swore to it," Tom returned, with earnest and sympathetic expression, although rather equivocal words.

The point of that joke, intended or unintended, hit the spot in that camp at once. The men roared, and Coburn roared, but Tom Simpson stood as solemn and hard-featured through the gust of merriment as if his face had frozen that way, beyond the hope of any warming ray of laughter ever to thaw it out again.

Coburn looked the horses over, the cowboys looked them over, as if they were strange creatures brought from unknown lands. To their questions on how he came to get away with them, right from under that gang's noses, Tom replied that it was a greenhorn's luck, he guessed. They looked at him queerly, letting it go at that.

It was not until after he had been on the road with the sheriff some time, after a good rest at camp, that Simpson told how chance had rushed his plans to a head in the horsethieves' stable and forced his hand. He described the place, and the sheriff said yes, he knew that ranch. It was Henry Werner's place, and Henry Werner was married to a half-breed squaw, sister of Wade Harrison's wife. Harrison's hangout was farther down the river, somewhere back in the hills, just where no peace officer from Kansas ever had been able to find out. But it didn't matter now; that would be the end of the gang. Wade Harrison was dead and in hell; old Noah Hays, his chief

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 lieutenant, was dead and in hell; Dan Vinson, sneaking cut-throat—and he was a literal cut-throat, the sheriff declared—was dead and in hell. Hell was pretty well full of horsethieves that day.

There was an end of it, the way it looked to Sheriff Treadwell, and Tom Simpson said he hoped so, and that he could have peace now to go on hauling bones. They jogged on until evening, and made camp, feeling secure and fairly happy, although Tom was troubled by the thought of old Noah Hays lying down there in the grass unburied. He asked the sheriff if he had sent anybody back to attend to Hays and Vinson, at which inquiry the sheriff appeared to be a little indignant.

"No, that's out of my jurisdiction," he said. "The county wouldn't pay for it, and who in the hell would? Oh well,—" a shade more humanely—"don't worry over them fellers, somebody'll find 'em. I don't care about anybody's carcase but old Wade Harrison's. If we could find that feller's carcase you'd have twenty-five hundred to three thousand dollars reward money comin' to you, Tom. But you never could collect it without the corpus delecti, and them fellers they've made sure nobody'll ever be able to prove that. Without the corpus delecti you couldn't do a thing, Tom—not a damn thing."

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Next morning early, while they were still miles from the Ellison ranch, Sheriff Treadwell parted company with Simpson. There was where he turned off, the sheriff said; it was a short cut to the county seat. Simpson, more disturbed by the prospect of driving that band of horses into the neighborhood alone than he had been concerned over the desperate business of recovering them, protested vehemently at being deserted this way.

"Oh, I say now!" he expostulated, feeling hurt at the sheriff's slipping out of it. "You can't leave me with all this business on my hands this way, Treadwell."

"I didn't recover 'em," the sheriff disclaimed bluntly, as if some taint of disgrace attended the exploit, "and I ain't goin' to go paradin' through that settlement like the credit was even part mine. I didn't have a damn thing to do with it."

"Oh, I say, now!" Tom protested, feeling as weak and abandoned as if the sheriff had closed the door on his very last hope. "I only started something I couldn't finish. You know very well"

"You'd 'a' cleaned 'em out in five minutes more if me and that cowboy had 'a' kep' out of it," the sheriff declared. "You go on home with them horses, Tom. Hand 'em around among the people they belong to, and if you have any left over let me know. I'll advertise for the

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 owners, and if they don't come forward in due time, they're yours."

"Oh, very well," said Tom, with that little toss of the head, that high and indifferent air, as if he accepted the situation only because it could not be evaded without coming down to the contemptible level of a cad.

They shook hands and parted. Before noon Tom was in the home neighborhood, keeping a sharp lookout for the red-eyed veteran, by whom he desired to spread the news among the homesteaders who had lost in the raid. He did not encounter anybody, however, until passing the home of the lanky neighbor who had been the first to report loss the morning Tom was trailing the thieves.

This man was sitting on the tongue of his useless wagon, which was drawn up in the dooryard of his miserable home, when Tom suddenly rounded a bend in the road, coming from behind a little swell of land, with the horses. The homesteader jumped out of his melancholy brooding, standing dumb with amazement for a moment. Then he let out a whoop that seemed to jar his loose-jointed shack open, releasing a vast number of tow-headed children and an anxious, slatternly flat woman, who came pouring out into the yard.

"He's got 'em! he's got 'em!" the settler yelled, starting in a long lope for the road, where Tom was rounding up the horses to a stop.

The homesteader dashed among the horses without a word, wild-eyed and eager, cutting out the animals which belonged to him. He worked about the business as desperately as if his opportunity hung on seconds, and one blunder would cost him all. He was panting and sweating

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 when he got them cut out; his lank body was trembling, his face was white. This great and unexpected fortune had unnerved him completely; in a moment he had been elevated from the depths of despair to a plane of independence. He had no words; he could only stare and gasp, one hand on the shaggy withers of a tall, buckskin-colored mare.

He came slowly over to where Simpson sat on his horse looking as stern as if he had caught the homesteader at some unlawful deed. Only the gleam of a smile that played in the young man's eyes assured the settler. He knew this man read his profound gratitude in the very trembling of his hand.

"God A'mighty!" the homesteader said, breathing the exclamation with gasping relief. "If there's ever anything I can do for you, neighbor, let me know. I'd wade through fire to pay the debt I'm under to you for bringin' back them colts."

Tom assured him there was no obligation, and asked him to let the neighbors know that a number of the stolen horses had been recovered, theirs probably among them. The homesteader pointed out several which he recognized, especially those belonging to his neighbor, who was an old soldier with a pension, and could have made it through the winter without his horses.

"But I ain't got any pension, neighbor," the lank man said, lifting his solemn, hollow, worried eyes. "I was with Jo Shelby."

While Simpson was not acquainted with that particular hero of the late civil war, he gathered from the man's way of confessing his past commander that Jo Shelby had

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 been on the losing side. Tom suggested that the pensioner's colts, as the homesteader called them, be left there. The grateful man was glad to assume the responsibility for their delivery, and cut them out accordingly. The beasts were quite willing, even relieved, to stop, worn down to the last strain of endurance as they were by the longest and hardest drive they ever had experienced in their burdened lives.

Not so the Block E mare which had led the band on the homeward trip. She was off at the word, head up, tail out, stepping high and eagerly. She led the herd in at the open gate, as much pride in her bearing as if fully conscious of the dramatic situation, although there was nobody around to witness the triumphant arrival but the wheezy old dog.

He came bounding off the kitchen porch with a show of hostility not at all complimentary to the mare's pride in her achievement, not knowing his own among so many strange ones. The noise he made, together with the trampling of so many hoofs, brought Eudora out of the house like a bumblebee after a haymaker. Mrs. Ellison was a good second. They stopped in amazement at sight of the parade, Eudora poised like a dove on a bough ready to plunge off into flight.

But she had no hesitancy over her course. She flashed to the gate, where Tom Simpson sat the horse that lately had belonged, at least according to the equity of thieves, to Noah Hays, herding the hesitant animals and the strange ones into the barnyard.

"My-y heavens! it's Tom!" Mrs. Ellison exclaimed.

Then she went flying, not so much like a dove, per-

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 haps, as a trim and motherly hen, her arms outspread to welcome the adventurer whom neither ever had expected to see return from the perilous Cherokee trails.

"Why, Tom Simpson! Where on earth did you get all them horses?" Mrs. Ellison asked, unbounded admiration in her animated face for the prowess of this quiet, solemn-featured young man.

Eudora had not spoken. She was standing by the gatepost staring at Tom, the joy and relief pictured so plainly in her face not sufficient to erase the pallor of long watching and heart-breaking anxiety. Tears were tumbling out of her big dark eyes, and she clenched her lips with that queer little puckering look that came into them when she held them hard against a laugh.

"Sheriff Treadwell and a cowboy named Ramsey—Wallace Ramsey, the chap that had the detective badge, you know—helped me out of it. I couldn't have done a thing without their help. As it was, I lost the best one of your horses, Mrs. Ellison."

"Lost your granny!" said Mrs. Ellison. "As long as you're back safe and sound"

"Tom! Tom!" Eudora sprang forward, the ring of pain in her voice, of reproachful alarm. "You're hurt! Look at his hand—look at his hand!"

Tom started, flushing guiltily, and turned the member that had moved Eudora's pitiful alarm to conceal its wounds.

"Scratched it," he said, lamely insufficent in his explanation, which the honest flinching of his eyes made worse. "Excuse me while I unsaddle these beasts."

But Eudora had hold of the hot, swollen hand, which

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