ley Saunders
entreated.

"Maybe he's one of these mind-readers and can read it through the
envelope," Bert Lilly volunteered.

"Aw, shut up and give him a chance!"

Trembling, Old Heck tore open the envelope and silently read the
message.

"My Gawd!" he groaned again. "The worst has come to the worst!"

"That ought to make it middlin' bad," Charley remarked soberly.

"Ought to," Bert added sententiously.

Parker crowded forward on sympathy bent.

"Tell us what's in it," he said; "if it's sorrowful we'll be plumb glad
to condole!"

"It's worse than sorrowful--"

"Melancholical?" Skinny inquired.

"My Gawd!" Old Heck said again, his weatherworn features working
convulsively, "it's more than a mortal man can endure and stand!"

"Bet somebody's dead!" Bert whispered to the Ramblin' Kid.

"Probably. Most everybody gets to be sooner or later," was the answer
without emotion.

Sing Pete, Chinese cook for the outfit, dish-rag over his shoulder,
edged out of the kitchen door and shuffled around to the group.
Glimpsing the yellow slip of paper held in the shaking hand of Old Heck
and the awed interest of the cowboys gathered about the boss, he
queried:

"Teleglam?"

No answer.

"Teleglam? Maybe alle samee somebody sickee?" he continued, cheerfully
confident that questions enough would ultimately bring a reply. He was
rewarded:

"What do you know about 'teleglams'? You slant-eyed burner of
beef-steaks!"

"Who's it from?" Charley asked. "Anybody we know--"

"My Gawd," Old Heck mourned once more, "she's comin'!"

"Who's she?" Parker coaxed.

"A female," Old Heck replied, "she's a female!"

"The darned old cuss has had a wife sometime and run off from her and
deserted her and she's pursuing him and trailing him down to earth!"
Chuck Slithers, doubting Thomas of the outfit and student of Sherlock
Holmes, cunningly suggested. "I always imagined he was a varmint with a
past--a' ex-heart breaker of innocent women or a train-robber or--"

"Aw, hell," the Ramblin' Kid rebuked, "him have a wife? Don't insult th'
female population!"

"_Carramba!_" exclaimed Pedro Valencia, Mexican line-rider for the
Quarter Circle KT, "perhaps she will stick him with the dagger, or shoot
him with the gun when she arrive! The ladies with love kill quick when
the love is--what you call him?--the jilt?"

"And I'd almost forgot I ever had one!" Old Heck continued talking as if
to himself.

"What'd I tell you?" Chuck exulted