who got those horses."

"The ones Blue Pete stole?" A cloud came to Mahon's face. "Not
exactly the contractors who got them, but there was no doubt where they
went."

"I always regretted we had to hand over the search just there to a
Division that knows little about ranch horses," murmured the Inspector.
"Still--perhaps--" He stopped and shifted the letter he held from one
hand to the other, as if weighing it.

"We'd have made short work of it, sir."

"Even if we'd implicated your halfbreed friend?" The older man was
peering beneath his iron-grey brows.

"I'm afraid nothing more was needed to implicate Blue Pete," sighed
Mahon.

"For a halfbreed rustler he seems to have stamped himself on your
imagination, Boy." They had called Mahon "Boy" almost since he joined
the force seven years before as a young man, packed with youthful
vitality, frankness and ambition, and the nickname was dear to him.

"But he wasn't always a rustler. I remember him only for the two years
he spent unofficially in the Force, the best rustler-buster we ever
had. That was the real Blue Pete. That he died a rustler was due to
crooked 'justice.' Poor old Pete! If only he hadn't had the Indian
strain!"

"He wouldn't have been so useful to us. His uncanny scent on the
trail--By the way, Mahon, strange we never found trace of him--his
grave or something--when you're so certain how and where he died. And
where's that ugly pinto of his? Whiskers, he called her, wasn't it?"

"Mira found the body, sir--that last letter she sent us said as much.
She'd hide him from us--it's exactly the thing she would do. She was a
loyal wife--"

"Not quite a wife."

"A wife as truly as absence of formal ceremony can make one. He's
lying out there somewhere in the heart of the Hills he loved. . . .
They were a sentimental pair."

"Almost too much sentiment in Mira Stanton for you," chuckled the
Inspector. "When I think of how near a thing it was--"

"I was a fool, sir." Mahon's face was red. "But it wasn't because I
was too good for her. We'd never have pulled together; I know that
now. She was born and bred in the wild ways. I respect her as much as
I ever did--perhaps more because she has steadfastly refused even to
let us know where she is--we who sent her down and indirectly killed
the man she loved."

"I suppose you've talked all this over with your wife, young man?"

"Yes, sir. Helen, though reared in such a different atmosph