ck and provisions? He could
camp in the fastness of the mountain country and explore it alone. He
would run less risk of capture. Winthrop was not strong. The Easterner
meant well enough, but this was the desert.

The blue of the eastern horizon grew shallower, changing to a cold thin
gray which warmed slowly to the straw color of tempering steel. The
tramp, watching the sky, shook his clenched fist at the dawn. "You, up
there!" he growled. "You didn't give me a square deal when I was down
and out that time--in Sonora. I had to crawl to it alone. But I'll show
you that I'm bigger than you. I'm goin' back to the tenderfoot and see
him through if I swing pole-high for it."

It was light when the tramp had arrived at the water-hole. He crept
behind a sharp dip in the hummocks. The crest of his hiding-place was
covered with brush. It was a natural rifle-pit affording him seclusion
and shelter.

With the sun came the faint thud of hoofs as two riders came warily up
to the water-hole. One dismounted and stooped over Winthrop. The other
sat his horse, silent, vigilant, saturnine.

"Say, where's your pal, that there Overland Red guy?" asked the
constable, shaking Winthrop awake and glaring at him with a bleared and
baleful eye.

The man on the horse frowned, considering, in the light of his
experience as a successful and still living two-gun man, that such
tactics were rather crude.

The Easterner sat up, coughed and blinked in the dawn. "Where is what?
Why, good-morning! You're up early." And his eye swept the empty camp.
So Overland Red had deserted him, after all. He might have expected as
much. "I haven't any 'pal,' as you can see. I'm out here studying insect
life, as I told you I would be, yesterday. You needn't shake me any
more. I'm awake. I can't say that I'm exactly pleased with my first
specimen."

"Oh! I'm a specimen, am I? I'm a insect, hey? Well, you're crooked, and
you just talk up quick or the calaboose for yours!"

"No. I beg your pardon--but, no. You are in no condition, this morning,
to talk with a gentleman. However, you are my guest. Have a cigar?"

The horseman's eyes twinkled. He admired the young Easterner's
coolness. Not so the constable.

"See here, you swindlin' tin-horn shell-shover, you cough up where
Overland Red is or there'll be somethin' doin'. You doped that booze
yesterday, but you can't throw no bluff like that to-day."

"I did what? Please talk slowly."

"You doped that booze