son?"

"Breifogle."

"That's the man," answered Warden. "Ross says he's one of the leaders
of the move. Most of his money has been made by freezing out other
men."

And just at that moment, moving leisurely along in the rear of the
train-load of belated passengers, they reached the exit gate, and the
instant they came under the broad, blue-white glare of the electric
globe overhead there was a sudden stir in the little gathering along
the iron fence. A burly young man darted swiftly away, and in his haste
tripped backward over an empty baby carriage. In a second he was
floundering on the floor, his bowler hat rolling one way, his stick
flying another. A shrill voice began to berate him as he struggled to
his feet, but he paused neither to explain nor listen. He swooped for
his hat and shot for a dark passage, but not before Geordie had caught
a glimpse of his face.

"That was young Breifogle," said he.

CHAPTER IV

"I'M READY NOW"

There was no other train over the Transcontinental, westward, before
7.30 A.M. They had reached Denver by the Pacific express, and in five
minutes the sleeper in which the two had journeyed from Chicago would
be whirling swiftly away for "The Springs" before beginning the long,
tortuous climb over the huge bulwark between them and the watershed of
the great Colorado beyond. There had really been no reason why Graham
should stop over at Denver. He knew none of the officials of the Silver
Shield there resident. He did not wish to know them. They had doubtless
conspired with their associates at Argenta to "squeeze out" his father
and friends. They hoped and expected to buy in for a song the valuable
stock held by this scattered band of soldiers and some twenty or
thirty prospective victims in the distant East. This would give them a
controlling interest in the property. It would make them virtual owners
of a valuable mine. It would make them richer by far than they were
beforehand. This would impoverish, and it might ruin, many of the
absent who had furnished the means by which Silver Shield was
developed. It was robbery outright, but robbery of a kind so common in
our country that people have become callous to it. It was by just such
means and methods that many of the great fortunes of America have been
won, and the winners ride to-day on the topmost wave of prosperity and
popular acclaim, when, if the people but realized the truth, many an
object of their adulation would be