size of
a small silver piece. Somehow Kid Wolf did not like the looks of it.
What it could be, he could hardly guess. The Texan had learned not to
take chances. Slowly, and with his eyes still on the official's
smiling face, he edged his chair away from it, an inch at a time. His
progress was slow enough not to attract Quiroz's attention.

"Then," asked the governor slowly, "you refuse, senor?"

"Yo'-all are a fine guessah, sah!" snapped the Texan, alert as a steel
spring.

The governor moved his knee. There was a sharp report, and a streak of
flame leaped from the desk front, followed by a puff of blue smoke.
The bullet, however, knocked a slab of plaster from the opposite wall.
Just in time, Kid Wolf had moved his chair from the range of the trap
gun.

Quiroz's death-dealing apparatus had failed. The Texan's cleverness
had matched his own. Concealed in the desk had been a pistol, the
trigger of which had been pressed by the weight of the official's knee
on a secret panel. Quick as a flash, Kid Wolf was on his feet, hands
flashing down toward his two .45s!

The governor, however, was not in the habit of playing a lone hand
against any antagonist. Behind Kid Wolf rang out a command in curt
Spanish:

"Hands up!"

Kid Wolf's sixth sense warned him that he was covered with a dead drop.
His mind worked rapidly. He could have drawn and taken the governor of
Santa Fe with him to death, perhaps cutting down some of the men behind
him, as well. But in that case, what would become of the wagon train,
with no one to save them from The Terror? A vision of the little
golden-haired child crossed his mind. No, while there was life, there
was hope. Slowly he took his hands away from his gun handles and
raised them aloft.

Turning, he saw six soldiers, each with a rifle aimed at his breast.
In all probability they had had their eyes on him during his audience
with the governor. Quiroz snarled an order to them.

"Take away his guns!" he cried. Then, while the Texan was being
disarmed, he took a long black cigarette from a drawer and lighted it
with trembling fingers.

"You are clever, senor," said the governor, recovering his composure.
"I am exceedingly sorry, but I will have to deal with you in a way you
will not like--the adobe wall." Quiroz bowed. "I bid you adios." He
turned to his soldiers. "Take him to the _calabozo_!" he ordered
sharply.

The building that was then being used as Santa Fe's p