not so?"

The prizefighter sputtered with wounded vanity. "Him! The boob's nothing
but a lucky guy. You'd ought to 'a' seen him after I fixed his map that
first day. Down and out he was, take my word for it."

"If Senor Harrison says so," assented Culvera with polite mockery. "But
as you say, he laughs best who laughs last. And that reminds me. He
left a note to be forwarded a friend. Pasquale was too crazy mad to see
it, so I put it in my pocket."

He handed to the other man the note Steve had written for Threewit. The
prizefighter read it in the dim light laboriously.

"It was written, you perceive, before Pasquale shoved his big head into
a trap and gave him a chance to escape," explained the insurgent
officer.

As Harrison read, certain phases of the situation arranged themselves
before his dull mind. He was acutely disappointed at the escape of his
enemy, since it was not likely the man would ever be caught again so
neatly. But now he forced himself to look beyond this to the
consequences. Yeager would tell all he knew when he reached Los Robles.
With the troopers warned against him Harrison knew he could no longer
move to and fro as freely on the American side. The very fact that he
was a suspect would greatly hamper his dealings. The Seymours would
probably turn against him for betraying the man who had risked his life
to save Phil from the effects of his folly. And what about Ruth? He knew
he held her by fear of trouble to Phil and by means of a sort of
magnetic clamp he had always imposed upon her will. Would she throw him
over now after she heard the story of the cowpuncher?

His eyes were still fastened sulkily on the note while he was slowly
realizing these things. One line seemed to stand out from the rest.

_Bust up that marriage if you can._

Harrison ground his teeth with impotent rage. This range-rider always
had interfered with his affairs from the first moment he had met him. If
ever he got the chance again to stamp him out--! The strong fingers of
the man worked with the nervous longing to tighten on the throat of the
gay youth who had worsted him in the duel the prizefighter had forced
upon him. The cowpuncher had introduced himself by knocking him down. A
few hours later he had turned a bruised and bleeding face up to him and
laughed without fear as if it were of no consequence.

Yeager had stolen from him his reputation as a daring rider and a good
shot. He had driven him from the Lunar