had been riding for some time when I saw something through an opening
in the chaparrals to the east of me, and it moved. I swung my glasses
on it, and I'm blamed if it wasn't an Apache war party bound north.
They were about a mile to the east of me, and if they kept on going
straight ahead they would run across my trail in about three hours,
for it gradually worked their way. I ducked right then and there and
struck west for a time, turning south again until I hit the Cimarron
Trail, which I followed east. Well, as I went around one side of the
chaparral six mad Apaches went around the other, and they hit my trail
too soon to suit me. I heard a hair-raising yell and lit out in the
direction of Chattanooga as hard as I could go, with a hungry chorus a
mile behind me.

"I had just passed that freak bowlder on the Apache Trail when the man I
was looking for turned up, and with the drop, of course. We reckoned that
two was needed to stop the war-paints, which we did, him running the game
and doing most of the playing. I felt like I was his honored guest whom
he had invited to share in the festivities. He had plenty of chances to
nail me if he wanted to, and he had chipped in on a game that he didn't
have to take cards in; and to help me out. He could have let them get
me and they would have thought that I had done all the injury and that
there wasn't another man on the desert. But he didn't, and I began to
think he wasn't as bad as he was painted."

Then he told of the trouble between The Orphan and Jimmy of the Cross
Bar-8, and of the rage which blossomed out on the ranch.

"That shore settled it for the Cross Bar-8. They wanted lots of gore, and
they got it, all right, when he played five of their punchers against
the very war party he had sent north to meet me, while I was chasing him.
That war party must have found something to their liking, wandering about
the country all that time."

Blake interrupted him: "War party that he sent north to meet you?" he
asked in surprise. "How could he do that?"

"That's just what I said," replied Shields, and then he explained about
the arrow. "Any man who could stack a deck like that and use one danger to
wipe out another ain't going to get caught by an outfit of lunkheads--by
George! if he didn't work nearly the same trick on the Cross Bar-8 crowd!
Oh, it's great, simply great!"

The foreman slapped his knee enthusiastically: "Fine! Fine!" he exulted.
"That fellow has got br