ticipatory
gleam in his heavy eyes.

"Hey, Jim! I got your message and I come a-hummin'!" he announced.
"What is it? Vigilance Committee?"

"Sort of!" Jim Baggott fairly pranced from behind the bar, his round
face shining with excitement. "Here's a gentleman from New York, old
friend of yours."

Ben Hallock turned to find himself facing an elderly personage with an
impressively pointed gray beard and keen eyes behind gold-rimmed
pince-nez.

"Jumping Jehosaphet! If it ain't Perry Larkin!" Ben pumped the
stranger's hand energetically. "Mighty glad to see you, Sir! Your
engineer, Kearn Thode, called on me last fall; fine young feller he is,
too! You heard about what he did when El Negrito came?"

"Yes, Hallock, but I'm even more proud of him to-day!" The keen eyes
sparkled. "I want you to meet a--er--a confrere of mine, Mr.
Morrissey."

Honest Dan, late taxi'-driver and amateur detective, purpled with
embarrassment as he rose and shook hands, but his eyes, too, were
dancing.

Ben nodded to Henry Bailey, his ranch neighbor and the only other
occupant of the bar, and then turned again to Jim Baggott.

"Now perhaps you'll tell me what in thunder the racket is about! I'd
have come to meet Mr. Larkin without you hinting at a lynchin' party!"

"Just you say what you'll have and hold your horses!" Jim chuckled.
"I'm acting under instructions, the same that brought Mr. Larkin and
this-here young man down from New York, and Hen Bailey in from his
hacienda; the orders of Gentleman Geoff's Billie, by God!"

"Billie! She ain't--you don't mean she's comin' back?" Ben cried
joyfully. "I told you she wasn't the kind to forget her old friends in
spite of the grand life she's walked into! I knew she'd come back to
see us----"

"It is business which brings her now, Hallock, and grim business, too,"
Mr. Larkin interposed. "She wanted you and Henry here as her friends
and witnesses, and there's apt to be a rather ugly scene."

"Do you mean she's coming right now, that she's here?" Ben Hallock
touched his hip significantly. "I've come heeled for any kind of a
little party that's liable to be sprung, but I little thought Billie'd
be mixed up in it. What's the matter? Anybody been tryin' to stack
the cards on her?"

"The dirtiest, crookedest game that was ever pulled!" Jim smote the
bar a blow which made the glasses tinkle. "But she'll beat 'em to it
yet, or she wouldn't be Gentleman Geoff's girl! She ai