low had
looked at him out of hard, unfriendly eyes; he, himself, had shot
Barlow out of a cattle raider's saddle.--Suddenly, startling Rios,
Kendric's fist came smashing down on his table.

"Here I've just been deciding the whole game is simple enough," he
cried, "and along you come messing it all up again! Clear out. I'm
going to sleep."

"And my answer?"

"Talk to me tomorrow, if you've a mind to. Most likely I'll tell you
to go to blazes, but that can be said as well after breakfast as now."

Rios accepted his dismissal equably.

"For me there is gold at stake," he said, going out without protest.
"For you there is your life and Miss Betty's. I can afford to wait as
well as you. _Buenos noches, senor_."

"Go to the devil," retorted Kendric, and banged the door shut after him.

Though he had not intimated his intention to his visitor, Kendric,
holding to his determination to simplify matters, had made up his mind
to have a talk with Barlow first of all. Since that could not come
until tomorrow, the thing now was to go to bed. He undressed and put
out his light. Then he flipped up his window shade. Only when he was
about to thrust his head out of the open window to inhale the fragrant
night air and have his little "look around," did he discover the bars
to any possible escape there; a heavy iron grill had been fastened
across the opening. Just how it was secured he could not tell since it
had been set in place from outside and though he thrust his hand
through the bars he could not reach far enough to locate the staples or
hooks which held it in place. He shook it tentatively; it was amply
solid.

But the door was open from his room to the bath. He groped his way
across the smaller room and found the knob of the door which led to the
room Barlow had occupied last night. That door was locked. As he
fumbled with it he heard someone stir in Barlow's room.

"Who's there?" he called out. "That you, Twisty?"

There was no answer. He rapped on the door and called again. Then he
heard quick steps across the room and a door closed; whoever had been
there, listening without doubt to his talk with Rios, had gone.

He came back and passing through his own little sitting-room tried the
door to the hall, that through which Rios had departed. Fastened by
heavy iron hooks on the other side; he could hear them grate in their
staples as he shook the door.

"A man had better be in bed this time of night