took
the horses to the stables and the three friends stood up against the
wall in the sunshine, stretching themselves. Mead took out his
pocket-knife and began cutting the cactus spines from his swollen
hands.

"I'm glad to have a chance to get rid of these things," he said.
"They've been stinging like hornets all night."

CHAPTER VII

Emerson Mead's ranch house was a small, white, flat-roofed adobe
building, with cottonwood trees growing all about it, and the water
from a spring on the hillside beyond, flowing in a little rill past
the kitchen door. Inside, on the whitewashed walls, hung the skins of
rattlesnakes, coyotes, wild cats, the feet, head and spread wings of
an eagle, and some deer heads and horns. There were also some colored
posters and prints from weekly papers. A banjo stood in one corner of
the dining room, while guns and revolvers of various kinds and
patterns and belts heavy with cartridges hung against the walls or
sprawled in corners.

The cook and housekeeper was a stockily built, round-faced Englishman,
whom Mead had found stranded in Las Plumas. He had been put off the
overland train at that place because the conductor had discovered that
he was riding on a scalper's ticket. Mead had taken a liking to the
man's jovial manner, and, being in need of a cook, had offered him the
place. The Englishman, who said his name was Bill Haney, had accepted
it gladly and had since earned his wage twice over by the care he took
of the house and by the entertainment he afforded his employer. For
he told many tales of his life in many lands, enough, had they all
been true, to have filled the years of a Methuselah to overflowing.
Mead did not believe any of his stories, and, indeed, strongly
suspected that they were told for the purpose of throwing doubt upon
any clue to his past life which he might inadvertently give.
Good-natured and jovial though he was in face and talk and manner,
there was a look at times in his small, keen, dark eyes which Mead did
not like.

As Haney bustled about getting a fresh breakfast for the three men he
said to Mead, "It's mighty lucky you've come 'ome, sir. There's been
merry 'ell 'erself between our boys and the Fillmore boys, and they're
likely to be killin' each other off at Alamo Springs to-day. They 'ad
shots over a maverick yesterday, and the swearin' they've been doin'
'ad enough fire and brimstone in it to swamp 'ell 'erself."

Haney's conversation contained