busy hands. "It isn't anything. Just some machinery. Let it go."
But already she had pulled away the excelsior. Underneath, in temporary
racks, were two dozen Winchester repeating rifles.

"Why--what--what--" murmured Hilma blankly.

"Well, I told you not to mind," said Annixter. "It isn't anything. Let's
look through the rooms."

"But you said you knew what it was," she protested, bewildered. "You
wanted to make believe it was machinery. Are you keeping anything from
me? Tell me what it all means. Oh, why are you getting--these?"

She caught his arm, looking with intense eagerness into his face. She
half understood already. Annixter saw that.

"Well," he said, lamely, "YOU know--it may not come to anything at all,
but you know--well, this League of ours--suppose the Railroad tries to
jump Quien Sabe or Los Muertos or any of the other ranches--we made up
our minds--the Leaguers have--that we wouldn't let it. That's all."

"And I thought," cried Hilma, drawing back fearfully from the case of
rifles, "and I thought it was a wedding present."

And that was their home-coming, the end of their bridal trip. Through
the terror of the night, echoing with pistol shots, through that scene
of robbery and murder, into this atmosphere of alarms, a man-hunt
organising, armed horsemen silhouetted against the horizons, cases of
rifles where wedding presents should have been, Annixter brought his
young wife to be mistress of a home he might at any moment be called
upon to defend with his life.

The days passed. Soon a week had gone by. Magnus Derrick and Osterman
returned from the city without any definite idea as to the Corporation's
plans. Lyman had been reticent. He knew nothing as to the progress of
the land cases in Washington. There was no news. The Executive Committee
of the League held a perfunctory meeting at Los Muertos at which nothing
but routine business was transacted. A scheme put forward by Osterman
for a conference with the railroad managers fell through because of the
refusal of the company to treat with the ranchers upon any other basis
than that of the new grading. It was impossible to learn whether or not
the company considered Los Muertos, Quien Sabe, and the ranches around
Bonneville covered by the test cases then on appeal.

Meanwhile there was no decrease in the excitement that Dyke's hold-up
had set loose over all the county. Day after day it was the one topic of
conversation, at street corners, at cro