anded and carry off the damsel in distress. On the
evidence I possessed I could not even get together a storming party. The
cowboy is chivalrous enough, but human. He would not uprise
spontaneously to the point of war on the mere statement of incarcerated
beauty--especially as ill-treatment was not apparent. I would hardly
last long enough to carry out the necessary proselyting campaign. It
never occurred to me to doubt that Hooper would fulfill his threat of
having me killed, or his ability to do so.

So when the men drifted in two by two at dusk, I said nothing of my real
adventures, and answered their chaff in kind.

"He played the piano for me," I told them the literal truth, "and had me
in to the parlour and dining room. He gave me a room to myself with a
bed and sheets; and he rode out to his pasture gate with me to say
good-bye," and thereby I was branded a delicious liar.

"They took me into the bunk house and fed me, all right," said Windy
Bill, "and fed my horse. And next morning that old Mexican Joe of his
just nat'rally up and kicked me off the premises."

"Wonder you didn't shoot him," I exclaimed.

"Oh, he didn't use his foot. But he sort of let me know that the place
was unhealthy to visit more'n once. And somehow I seen he meant it; and
I ain't never had no call to go back."

I mulled over the situation all day, and then could stand it no longer.
On the dark of the evening I rode to within a couple of miles of
Hooper's ranch, tied my horse, and scouted carefully forward afoot. For
one thing I wanted to find out whether the system of high transoms
extended to all the rooms, including that in the left wing: for another
I wanted to determine the "lay of the land" on that blank side of the
house. I found my surmise correct as to the transoms. As to the blank
side of the house, that looked down on a wide, green, moist patch and
the irrigating ditch with its stunted willows. Then painstakingly I went
over every inch of the terrain about the ranch; and might just as well
have investigated the external economy of a mud turtle. Realizing that
nothing was to be gained in this manner, I withdrew to my strategic base
where I rolled down and slept until daylight. Then I saddled and
returned toward the ranch.

I had not ridden two miles, however, before in the boulder-strewn wash
of Arroyo Seco I met Jim Starr, one of our men.

"Look here," he said to me. "Jed sent me up to look at the Elder
Springs, but my h