ager.

"Yes," said Rathburn shortly, tossing away his cigarette.

Sautee held out his hand. "Go to the hotel and engage a room," he
instructed. "Be in your room at nine o'clock to-night. Do not tell any
one of our deal. I'll get your room number from the register. I'll
bring the package of money to you between nine o'clock and midnight.
Now, Rathburn, maybe I'm mistaken in you; but I go a whole lot by what
I see in a man's eyes. You may have a hard record, but I'm staking my
faith in men on you!"

"I'll be there," Rathburn promised.

He left Sautee at the entrance to the restaurant and strolled around
the hotel barn to see that his horse was being taken care of properly.
He found that the barn man was indeed looking after the dun in
excellent shape. Rathburn spent a short time with his mount, petting
him and rubbing his glossy coat with his hands. Then he took his
slicker pack and started for the hotel.

As he reached the street he saw a girl on a horse talking with a man
on the sidewalk. The girl was leaning over, and the man evidently was
delivering a harangue. He was gesticulating wildly, and Rathburn could
see that the girl was cowering. He paused on the hotel porch as the
man stepped away from the horse and looked his way. He recognized
Carlisle.

Then the girl rode down the street and Rathburn started with surprise
as he saw she was the girl from the cabin up the road who had directed
him to town the day before. He remembered the two objects he had
picked up in the road after the holdup and felt in his pocket to make
sure they were there. Then he entered the hotel.

"Have you a room?" he asked the clerk pleasantly.

"Yes. More rooms than anything else to-day since the Sunday crowd's
gone."

Rathburn wrote his name upon the register.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE NIGHT

Rathburn avoided the Red Feather resort during the morning. Instead of
walking about the streets or sitting in the hotel lobby or his room,
he cultivated the acquaintance of the barn man, and because he knew
horses--_all_ about horses--he soon had the man's attention and
respect.

Although Rathburn suspected that he already had a reputation in the
town, he did not know that Carlisle was steadily adding to that
reputation through the medium of veiled hints dropped here and there
until a majority of the population was convinced that a desperate man
was in their midst, and that Mannix had permitted him to go free for
certain secret