ed for water, lying against the fence.

"Yes," someone unexpectedly answered my first question at last, "someone
could just naturally pot him easy enough. But I got a hunch that he
couldn't get fur enough away to feel safe afterward. The fellow with a
hankering for a good _useful_ kind of suicide could get it right there.
Any candidates? You-all been looking kinda mournful lately, Windy;
s'pose you be the human benefactor and rid the world of this yere
reptile."

"Me?" said Windy with vast surprise, "me mournful? Why, I sing at my
work like a little dicky bird. I'm so plumb cheerful bull frogs ain't
in it. You ain't talking to me!"

But I wanted one more point of information before the conversation
veered.

"Does his daughter ever ride out?" I asked.

"Daughter?" they echoed in surprise.

"Or niece, or whoever she is," I supplemented impatiently.

"There's no woman there; not even a Mex," said one, and "Did you see any
sign of any woman?" keenly from Windy Bill.

But I was not minded to be drawn.

"Somebody told me about a daughter, or niece, or something," I said,
vaguely.

CHAPTER VI

I lay in my bunk and cast things up in my mind. The patch of moonlight
from the window moved slowly across the floor. One of the men was
snoring, but with regularity, so he did not annoy me. The outside
silence was softly musical with all the little voices that at Hooper's
had so disconcertingly lacked. There were crickets--I had forgotten
about them--and frogs, and a hoot owl, and various such matters, beneath
whose influence customarily my consciousness merged into sleep so
sweetly that I never knew when I had lost them. But I was never wider
awake than now, and never had I done more concentrated thinking.

For the moment, and for the moment, only, I was safe. Old Man Hooper
thought he had put me out of the way. How long would he continue to
think so? How long before his men would bring true word of the mistake
that had been made? Perhaps the following day would inform him that Jim
Starr and not myself had been reached by his killer's bullet. Then, I
had no doubt, a second attempt would be made on my life. Therefore,
whatever I was going to do must be done quickly.

I had the choice of war or retreat. Would it do me any good to retreat?
There was the Jew drummer who was killed in San Francisco; and others
whose fates I have not detailed. But why should he particularly desire
my extinction? What had I done or wh