at a rude bar. Abe went to the door and called out: "Hey, Snap, your dad
wants you. Holderness, here's August Naab."

A man staggered up the few steps leading to the store and swayed in. His
long face had a hawkish cast, and it was gray, not with age, but with
the sage-gray of the desert. His eyes were of the same hue, cold yet
burning with little fiery flecks in their depths. He appeared short
of stature because of a curvature of the spine, but straightened up he
would have been tall. He wore a blue flannel shirt, and blue overalls;
round his lean hips was a belt holding two Colt's revolvers, their
heavy, dark butts projecting outward, and he had on high boots with
long, cruel spurs.

"Howdy, father?" he said.

"I'm packing to-day," returned August Naab. "We ride out to-morrow. I
need your help."

"All-l right. When I get my pinto from Larsen."

"Never mind Larsen. If he got the better of you let the matter drop."

"Jeff got my pinto for a mustang with three legs. If I hadn't been drunk
I'd never have traded. So I'm looking for Jeff."

He bit out the last words with a peculiar snap of his long teeth,
a circumstance which caused Hare instantly to associate the savage
clicking with the name he had heard given this man. August Naab looked
at him with gloomy eyes and stern shut mouth, an expression of righteous
anger, helplessness and grief combined, the look of a man to whom
obstacles had been nothing, at last confronted with crowning defeat.
Hare realized that this son was Naab's first-born, best-loved, a thorn
in his side, a black sheep.

"Say, father, is that the spy you found on the trail?" Snap's pale eyes
gleamed on Hare and the little flames seemed to darken and leap.

"This is John Hare, the young man I found. But he's not a spy."

"You can't make any one believe that. He's down as a spy. Dene's spy!
His name's gone over the ranges as a counter of unbranded stock. Dene
has named him and Dene has marked him. Don't take him home, as you've
taken so many sick and hunted men before. What's the good of it? You
never made a Mormon of one of them yet. Don't take him--unless you want
another grave for your cemetery. Ha! Ha!"

Hare recoiled with a shock. Snap Naab swayed to the door, and stepped
down, all the time with his face over his shoulder, his baleful glance
on Hare; then the blue haze swallowed him.

The several loungers went out; August engaged the storekeeper in
conversation, introducing Hare and