heard of at all for a spell. These lulls are pretty surely indicative of
a big storm sooner or later. And Cheseldine's deals, as they grow fewer
and farther between, certainly get bigger, more daring. There are some
people who think Cheseldine had nothing to do with the bank-robberies
and train-holdups during the last few years in this country. But that's
poor reasoning. The jobs have been too well done, too surely covered, to
be the work of greasers or ordinary outlaws."

"What's your view of the outlook? How's all this going to wind up? Will
the outlaw ever be driven out?" asked Duane.

"Never. There will always be outlaws along the Rio Grande. All the
armies in the world couldn't comb the wild brakes of that fifteen
hundred miles of river. But the sway of the outlaw, such as is enjoyed
by these great leaders, will sooner or later be past. The criminal
element flock to the Southwest. But not so thick and fast as the
pioneers. Besides, the outlaws kill themselves, and the ranchers are
slowly rising in wrath, if not in action. That will come soon. If they
only had a leader to start the fight! But that will come. There's talk
of Vigilantes, the same hat were organized in California and are now in
force in Idaho. So far it's only talk. But the time will come. And the
days of Cheseldine and Poggin are numbered."

Duane went to bed that night exceedingly thoughtful. The long trail was
growing hot. This voluble colonel had given him new ideas. It came
to Duane in surprise that he was famous along the upper Rio Grande.
Assuredly he would not long be able to conceal his identity. He had
no doubt that he would soon meet the chiefs of this clever and bold
rustling gang. He could not decide whether he would be safer unknown or
known. In the latter case his one chance lay in the fatality connected
with his name, in his power to look it and act it. Duane had never
dreamed of any sleuth-hound tendency in his nature, but now he felt
something like one. Above all others his mind fixed on Poggin--Poggin
the brute, the executor of Cheseldine's will, but mostly upon Poggin the
gunman. This in itself was a warning to Duane. He felt terrible forces
at work within him. There was the stern and indomitable resolve to
make MacNelly's boast good to the governor of the state--to break up
Cheseldine's gang. Yet this was not in Duane's mind before a strange
grim and deadly instinct--which he had to drive away for fear he would
find in it a pas