ous hero of Nickel Library fame. "I'll sure get you horses all right."

"I'll make arrangements to have the horses sent back. Bring 'em round
just as it begins to get dark an' whistle a bar of 'Yankee Doodle' when
you get here. Now cut your stick, Bud. Don't be seen near me any more."

The boy decamped. His face, unable to conceal his excitement at this
blessed adventure which had fallen from heaven upon him, was trying to
say "Golly!" without the use of words.

During the next hour or two Bud was a pest. Twenty times he asked
different men mysteriously what o'clock it was. When he was sent to the
store for pickles he brought back canned tomatoes. Set to weeding onions,
he pulled up weeds and vegetables impartially. A hundred times he cast a
longing glance at the westering sun.

So impatient was he that he could not quite wait till dusk. He slipped
around to the Elephant Corral by a back way and picked out two horses
that suited him. Then he went boldly to the owner of the stable.

"Mr. Sanders sent me to bring to him that sorrel and the white-foot bay.
Said you'd know his saddle. It doesn't matter which of the other saddles
you use."

Ten minutes later Bud was walking through the back yard of the hotel
whistling shrilly "Yankee Doodle." It happened that his father was an
ex-Confederate and "Dixie" was more to the boy's taste, but he enjoyed
the flavor of the camouflage he was employing. It fitted into his new
role of Bud Proctor, Scout of the Pecos.

The fugitives slipped down the back stairway of the Proctor House and
into the garden. In another moment they were astride and moving out to
the sparsely settled suburbs of town.

"Did you notice the brand on the horse you're ridin', Jim?" asked Prince
with a grin.

"Same brand's on your bay, Billie--the Lazy S M. Did you tell that kid to
steal us two horses?"

"No, but you've said it. I'm on the bronc Sanders rides, and you an' I
are horse-thieves now as well as killers. This certainly gets us in bad."

"I've a notion to turn back yet," said Jim, with the irritability of a
sick man. "How in Mexico did he happen to light on Snaith-McRobert stock?
Looks like he might have found somethin' else for us."

"Bud has too much imagination," admitted Prince ruefully. "I'd bet a
stack of blues he picked these hawsses on purpose--probably thought it
would be a great joke on Sanders an' his crew."

"Well, I don't like it. They've got us where they want us now."

Billie