trouble."

The blacksmith accompanied his conversation with considerable elbow
motion and the rattle and clang of shaping horseshoes. Presently Dobe
was new shod and ready for the road. Bartley paid the smith, thanked him
for a good job, and rode south. Evidently Cheyenne's open quarrel with
Sears was the talk of the countryside. It was expected of Cheyenne that
he would "clean the slate and start fresh" some day. And cleaning the
slate meant killing Sears. To Bartley it seemed strange that any one
should be pleased with the idea of one man killing another deliberately.

In speaking of the recent horse-stealings, the blacksmith had mentioned
no names. But Bartley at once drew the conclusion that it had been
Sneed's men who had run off the Senator's horses. Sneed was known to be
a horse-thief. He had never been convicted, although he had been
arrested and tried several times. It was also known that Senator Steve
had openly vowed that he would rid the country of Sneed, sooner or
later.

Several times, during his journey south, Bartley was questioned, but
never interfered with. Thus far he heard of Cheyenne occasionally, but,
nearing Phoenix, he lost track of his erstwhile companion. However, he
took it for granted that Phoenix had been Cheyenne's destination. And
Bartley wanted to see the town for himself, in any event.

* * * * *

Cheyenne, arriving in Phoenix, stabled his horses at the Top-Notch
livery, and took a room for himself directly opposite the
Hole-in-the-Wall gambling-house. He refused to drink with the occasional
acquaintance he met, not because he did not like liquor, but because
Colonel Stevenson, the city marshal, had told him that Panhandle Sears
and his friends were in town.

"Why don't you tell me to go git him?" queried Cheyenne, looking the
marshal in the eye.

"I didn't think it was necessary," said the marshal.

"What? To git him?"

The marshal smiled. Then casually: "I hear that Panhandle and his
friends are drinking heavy and spending considerable money. They must
have made a strike, somewhere."

"I see by the paper somebody run off a bunch of the Box-S hosses,"
remarked Cheyenne, also casually.

Then, without further comment, he left the marshal wondering if
Panhandle's presence in town had any connection with the recent
running-off of the Box-S stock. The sheriff of Antelope had wired
Colonel Stevenson to be on the lookout for Bill Sneed and his gang