east.

"Now you can take down your hands and go," he said. "But remember that
I'm ridin' behind you, ready to bang a hole through your head if you
make the first motion toward your gun, or anything happens that ain't
straight. I'll put you on the road to Plumas, and then I want you to
make tracks, for we've got no time to waste."

As they rode away, Tuttle could hear the hoof beats of two horses and
knew that both men were following. After a few miles the tall man
called to Tuttle to halt and said, pointing to a road that wound a
white line across the distance:

"That's your road over there, and you can go on, now alone. But I want
you to remember that I'm here watchin' you, with two loads of buckshot
and six of lead, and every one of them is goin' plumb through you if
you ain't square. You've been a gentleman so far, and dead game, and
I'm proud to've met you, Mr. Thomson Tuttle. If it ever comes my way
to treat you whiter than I have this time, I'll be glad to do it.
Good-bye, sir."

As Tuttle rode away, he saw, from the corner of his eye, the tall man,
shot-gun in hand, sitting motionless on his horse, and the other,
watchful, holding a rifle, a little distance behind him. The young man
put spurs to his horse and rode several miles with his eyes steadily
in front of him, discreetly holding curiosity in check. He did not
look back until he reached the highroad, and then he saw his two
captors galloping across the plain toward their camp. He took out his
pistol and examined it carefully. It was just as he had left it the
night before.

"They might have put every bullet into my head," was his mental
comment, "but they didn't, and they might have emptied 'em all out and
left me in a box. But they didn't do that, either. I guess they played
as square as they could."

CHAPTER II

"Me, Tom Tuttle, holding up my hands while a fellow takes my gun! What
will Emerson Mead say to that! Well, I reckon he wouldn't have done
different, for Emerson's got good judgment."

Such was Tuttle's soliloquy as he mounted the gradual ascent of the
range that bounded the plain on the west. Alternately he chuckled and
slapped his thigh in appreciation of the joke on himself, and exploded
an indignant oath as mortified pride asserted itself.

After a time he espied a black dot in a halo of dust coming down the
mountain side. He considered it a moment and then decided, "It's a man
on horseback." He took out his revolver and, h