naturally, were to be looked upon with suspicion. It listed
the depredations committed during four weeks with a result that was
startling. It told of the theft of a herd of steers from Kemble's place;
the shooting of Bert Stone and the looting of Hap Smith's mail bags; the
robbery of Seth Powers who left the poker table at Gold Run at two
o'clock one morning with seven hundred dollars in his overalls and was
found at eight o'clock beaten into unconsciousness and with his pockets
turned wrong-side out; the stage robbery in which Bill Varney of Twin
Dry Diggings had been killed; the robbery of Jed Macintosh in Dry Town.
A hundred and fifty miles lay between the most widely removed of the
places where these things had happened, but no two of them had occurred
within a time too short for a man to ride from one to the other.

And now came the list of the bold crimes committed since the day, four
weeks ago, when Buck Thornton had ridden into Dry Town with the five
thousand dollars. Kemble, to the westward of the Poison Hole, told of
again losing cattle, seven big steers run off in a single night, nothing
left of them but their tracks and the tracks of a horse which
disappeared in the rocky mountain soil; Joe Lee, of the Figure Seven
Bar, to the north of the Poison Hole, reported the loss of nine cows and
two horses, all picked stock; Old Man King of the Bar X grew almost
speechless with trembling wrath at the loss of at least a score of
cattle. And Ben Broderick, the mining man who was working his claim to
the eastward of the Poison Hole, admitted quietly that a man, a big man
wearing a bandana handkerchief as a mask, had slipped into his camp one
night, covered him with a heavy calibre Colt, and had taken away with
him a six hundred dollar can of dust.

As yet no single loss had been noted by the Poison Hole outfit. But
Thornton believed that he saw the reason: now, there were few nights
that found him at the range cabin or his cowboys in the bunk house. His
cattle had been brought down from the mountains, herded into the open
meadow lands, and the night riders kept what watch they could upon the
big herds. Many a night he lay in his blankets close to the border of
his range upon the south, knowing that here and there upon other
borders, watching over his cattle, guarding the mouths of canons down
which a rustler might choose his way, his men lay. He began to wish that
his property might be attacked, feeling secure in his a