controlled himself.

"I apologize, Mr. Lingford, I most heartily apologize. I fear I was
slightly carried away by my feelings."

Consul Lingford gulped and sawed the air speechlessly with his arms.

"Slightly, sir? Slightly?" he managed to articulate.

"Boyd," Minnie called softly from the doorway.

He turned and looked.

"You ARE a joy," she said.

"And now, Mr. Lingford, I am done with him," Duncan said. "I turn over
what is left to you and the law."

"That?" Consul Lingford queried, in accent of horror.

"That," Boyd Duncan replied, looking ruefully at his battered knuckles.

WAR

HE was a young man, not more than twenty-four or five, and he might have
sat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not been
so catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching the
movements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped, questing ever
onward through the changing vistas of trees and brush, and returning
always to the clumps of undergrowth on either side. And as he watched,
so did he listen, though he rode on in silence, save for the boom of
heavy guns from far to the west. This had been sounding monotonously
in his ears for hours, and only its cessation could have aroused his
notice. For he had business closer to hand. Across his saddle-bow was
balanced a carbine.

So tensely was he strung, that a bunch of quail, exploding into flight
from under his horse's nose, startled him to such an extent that
automatically, instantly, he had reined in and fetched the carbine
halfway to his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly, recovered himself, and
rode on. So tense was he, so bent upon the work he had to do, that the
sweat stung his eyes unwiped, and unheeded rolled down his nose and
spattered his saddle pommel. The band of his cavalryman's hat was
fresh-stained with sweat. The roan horse under him was likewise wet. It
was high noon of a breathless day of heat. Even the birds and squirrels
did not dare the sun, but sheltered in shady hiding places among the
trees.

Man and horse were littered with leaves and dusted with yellow pollen,
for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They kept to the
brush and trees, and invariably the man halted and peered out before
crossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland pasturage. He worked
always to the north, though his way was devious, and it was from the
north that he seemed most to apprehend that for which he was looking.
He was no c