tung like hail. Arthur was thin-skinned; he wanted
the good opinion of all those with whom he came in contact, and
especially that of this man. Like a whipped cur he crept away and hid
himself in the barn loft, alone with his soul-wounds.

From its window he watched the swift bustle of preparation for the
pursuit. Wadley himself, big and vigorous to the last masculine inch of
him, was the dominant figure. He gave curt orders to the members of the
posse, arranged for supplies to be forwarded to a given point, and
outlined plans of action. In the late afternoon the boy in the loft saw
them ride away, a dozen lean, long-bodied men armed to the limit. With
all his heart the watcher wished he could be like one of them, ready for
any emergency that the rough-and-tumble life of the frontier might
develop.

In every fiber of his jarred being he was sore. He despised himself for
his failure to measure up to the standard of manhood demanded of him by
his environment. Twice now he had failed. The memory of his first
failure still scorched his soul. During ghastly hours of many nights he
had lived over that moment when he had shown the white feather before
Ramona Wadley. He had run for his life and left her alone to face a
charging bull. It was no excuse to plead with himself that he could have
done nothing for her if he had stayed. At least he could have pushed her
to one side and put himself in the path of the enraged animal. The loss
of the money was different. It had been due not wholly to lack of nerve,
but in part at least to bad judgment. Surely there was something to be
said for his inexperience. Wadley ought not to have sent him alone on
such an errand, though of course he had sent him because he was the last
man anybody was likely to suspect of carrying treasure....

Late that night Ridley crept out, bought supplies, saddled his horse,
and slipped into the wilderness. He was still writhing with self-
contempt. There was a futile longing in his soul for oblivion to blot
out his misery.

[Footnote 2: In western Texas when one speaks of Mexico he means New
Mexico. If he refers to the country Mexico, he says Old Mexico.]

CHAPTER XI

ONE TO FOUR

Through the great gray desert with its freakish effects of erosion a
rider had moved steadily in the hours of star-strewn darkness. He had
crossed the boundary of that No Man's Land which ran as a neutral strip
between Texas and its neighbor and was claimed by each. S