have failed at
ranching. And your father has been wonderfully successful. The ranger
has dropped poison, and it'll spread."

CHAPTER XVIII

Strangers rode into Fairdale; and other hard-looking customers, new
to Duane if not to Fairdale, helped to create a charged and waiting
atmosphere. The saloons did unusual business and were never closed.
Respectable citizens of the town were awakened in the early dawn by
rowdies carousing in the streets.

Duane kept pretty close under cover during the day. He did not entertain
the opinion that the first time he walked down-street he would be a
target for guns. Things seldom happened that way; and when they did
happen so, it was more accident than design. But at night he was not
idle. He met Laramie, Morton, Zimmer, and others of like character; a
secret club had been formed; and all the members were ready for action.
Duane spent hours at night watching the house where Floyd Lawson stayed
when he was not up at Longstreth's. At night he was visited, or at least
the house was, by strange men who were swift, stealthy, mysterious--all
that kindly disposed friends or neighbors would not have been. Duane had
not been able to recognize any of these night visitors; and he did
not think the time was ripe for a bold holding-up of one of them.
Nevertheless, he was sure such an event would discover Lawson, or some
one in that house, to be in touch with crooked men.

Laramie was right. Not twenty-four hours after his last talk with Duane,
in which he advised quick action, he was found behind the little bar of
his restaurant with a bullet-hole in his breast, dead. No one could be
found who had heard a shot. It had been deliberate murder, for upon the
bar had been left a piece of paper rudely scrawled with a pencil: "All
friends of rangers look for the same."

This roused Duane. His first move, however, was to bury Laramie. None
of Laramie's neighbors evinced any interest in the dead man or the
unfortunate family he had left. Duane saw that these neighbors were held
in check by fear. Mrs. Laramie was ill; the shock of her husband's
death was hard on her; and she had been left almost destitute with five
children. Duane rented a small adobe house on the outskirts of town and
moved the family into it. Then he played the part of provider and nurse
and friend.

After several days Duane went boldly into town and showed that he meant
business. It was his opinion that there were men in Fairdale