w him?" asked Joe Stockton softly.

The bright black eyes of the fat man glittered and flickered from face
to face. He seemed to be gauging them and deciding how much he could
say--or how little.

"Sure, I drifted up to this country one season and rode there. I heard
a pile about this Sinclair and seen him a couple of times."

"How good a man d'you figure him to be with a gun?" asked the sheriff
without apparent interest.

"Good enough," sighed Arizona. "Good enough, partner!"

Presently the sheriff showed that he was a man capable of taking good
advice, even though he could not stamp it as his own original device.

"Boys," he said, "I figure that what Arizona has said is tolerable
sound. Arizona, what d'you advise next?"

"That we go to Sour Creek pronto--and sit down and wait!"

A chorus of exclamations arose.

Arizona grew impatient with such stupidity. "Sinclair come to Sour
Creek to do something. I dunno what he wants, but what he wants he
ain't got yet, and he's the sort that'll stay till he does his work."

"I've got in touch with the authorities higher up, boys," declared
Kern. "Sinclair and Gaspar is both outlawed, with a price on their
heads. Won't that change Sinclair's mind and make him move on?"

"You don't know Sinclair," persisted Arizona. "You don't know him at
all, sheriff."

"Grab your hosses, boys. I'm following Arizona's lead."

Pouring out of the door in silence, the omniscience of Arizona lay
heavily upon their minds. Inside, the sheriff lingered with the wise
man from the southland.

"If I was to get in touch with Colma, Fatty, what d'you think they'd be
able to tell me about your record up there?"

The olive skin of Arizona became a bleached drab.

"I dunno," he said rather thickly, and all the while his little black
eyes were glittering and shifting. "Nothing much, Kern."

His glance steadied. "By the way, when you had your glove off a while
ago I seen something on your wrist that looked like a rope gall, Kern.
If I was to tell the boys that, what d'you figure they'd think about
their sheriff?"

It was Kern's turn to change color. For a moment he hesitated, and then
he dropped a hand lightly on Arizona's shoulder.

"Look here, Arizona," he muttered in the ear of the fat man, "what you
been before you hit Woodville I dunno, and I don't care. I figure we
come to a place where we'd both best keep our mouths shut. Eh?"

"Shake," said Arizona, and they went out the door, almos