t a sharp gallop. Strangers do not pass ungreeted in the mountain
desert. There was a wave of the arm to Riley, and he responded by
bringing his horse to a trot, then reining in close to the big man. At
close hand he seemed even larger than from a distance, a burly figure
with ludicrously inadequate support from the narrow-heeled riding
boots. He looked sharply at Riley Sinclair, but his first speech was
for the hard-ridden pony.

"You been putting your hoss through a grind, I see, stranger."

The mustang had slumped into a position of rest, his sides heaving.

"Most generally," said Riley Sinclair, "when I climb into a saddle it
ain't for pleasure--it's to get somewhere."

His voice was surprisingly pleasant. He spoke very deliberately, so
that one felt occasionally that he was pausing to find the right words.
And, in addition to the quality of that deep voice, he had an
impersonal way of looking his interlocutor squarely in the eye, a habit
that pleased the men of the mountain desert. On this occasion his
companion responded at once with a grin. He was a younger man than
Riley Sinclair, but he gave an impression of as much hardness as Riley
himself.

"Maybe you'll be sliding out of the saddle for a minute?" he asked.
"Got some pretty fair hooch in the house."

"Thanks, partner, but I'm due over to Sour Creek by night. I guess
that's Sour Creek over the hill?"

"Yep. New to these parts?"

"Sort of new."

Riley's noncommittal attitude was by no means displeasing to the larger
man. His rather brutally handsome face continued to light, as if he
were recognizing in Riley Sinclair a man of his own caliber.

"You're from yonder?"

"Across the mountains."

"You travel light."

His eyes were running over Riley's meager equipment. Sinclair had been
known to strike across the desert loaded with nothing more than a
rifle, ammunition, and water. Other things were nonessentials to him,
and it was hardly likely that he would put much extra weight on a
horse. The only concession to animal comfort, in fact, was the slicker
rolled snugly behind the saddle. He was one of those rare Westerners to
whom coffee on the trail is not the staff of life. As long as he had a
gun he could get meat, and as long as he could get meat, he cared
little about other niceties of diet. On a long trip his "extras" were
usually confined to a couple of bags of strength-giving grain for his
horse.

"Maybe you'd know the gent I'm down here lo