m now, waiting their turn to go. Sheep are
polite in deep water; they never rush ahead."

"They swim well, too, especially if they happen to fall into the water
just before shearing time when their wool is long," Asher said
ironically.

"What did you say Gretchen Gimpke had in that tin can?" Jacobs inquired
blandly.

"Oil of sassafras, I think," Asher responded, as he tied the horses and
helped to mend the weakened fence.

"Nobody prospers long after such tricks. I'll not lose sleep over lost
sheep," John Jacobs declared. "Let's hunt up the cattle and forget this,
and the woman and the scary little twist in the creek trail."

[Illustration: "It's a friendly act on somebody's part." he said grimly]

"Why scary?" Asher asked. "Are you so afraid of women? No wonder you are a
bachelor."

Jacobs did not smile as he said:

"Once when I was a child I read a story of a man being killed at just such
an out-of-the-way place. Every time I go up that crooked, lonesome hill
road, I remember the picture in the book. It always makes me think of that
story."

When the fence was made secure, the two rode away to look after the
cattle. And if a Shadow rode beside them, it was mercifully unseen, and in
nowise dimming to the clear light of the spring day.

It was high noon when they reached Wykerton, where Hans Wyker still fed
the traveling public, although the flourishing hotel where Virginia
Aydelot first met John Jacobs had disappeared. The eating-place behind the
general store room was divided into two parts, a blind partition wall
cutting off a narrow section across the farther end. Ordinary diners went
through the store into the dining room and were supplied from the long
kitchen running parallel with this room.

There were some guests, however, who entered the farther room by a rear
door and were likewise supplied from the kitchen on the side. But as there
was no opening between the two rooms, many who ate at Wyker's never knew
of the narrow room beyond their own eating-place and of the two entrances
into the kitchen covering the side of each room. Of course, the prime
reason for such an arrangement lay in Wyker's willingness to evade the law
and supply customers with contraband drinks. But the infraction of one law
is a breach in the wall through which many lawless elements may crowd. The
place became, by natural selection, the council chamber of the lawless,
and many an evil deed was plotted therein.

"How would you