. Was talking mines."

"See anything of Galloway hereabouts of late?"

"No. Haven't seen him for a month or two."

Norton asked a few other questions, kept his own thoughts to himself,
and rode away. Less than a mile from the camp he met Jim Galloway
riding a sweat-wet horse. The two men reined in sharply, each man's
eyes matching the other's for hardness. Galloway's face was red, the
fiery red of anger.

"Going back for what you forgot, Jim?" asked Norton.

For a moment Galloway, staring back at him, seemed utterly speechless
in the grip of his wrath. Norton did not remember ever having seen
such blazing anger in the prominent eyes.

"Between you and me, Rod Norton," muttered Galloway at last, "I have
turned a trick or two in my time. But this job is none of my doing and
if I wise up as to who put it over he'll go under the sand or into the
pen, and I'll put him there."

Norton laughed.

"In other words, some free-lance has made a bid to break your corner on
the crime market, eh?" he jeered. "Put one over on you without your
knowledge and consent? And without splitting two ways? That what you
mean?"

"I mean that I'd pay five hundred dollars out of my own pocket right
now for the dead-wood on the man who robbed Kemble."

"Kid Rickard is around once more; sure he didn't do it?"

"Yes, I am. Kid Rickard didn't do it."

Norton eased himself in the saddle, thoughtfully regarding Galloway.
And then, very abruptly:

"How about your friend, del Rio?"

It was the third time that he had mentioned del Rio's name in this
connection and to the third man. And now, but slightly different in
degree only, he saw the same look in Galloway's eyes which he had
brought into Cutter's and Kemble's.

"Del Rio?" repeated Galloway frowningly. "What makes you say that?"

"I'll collect your five hundred later," was Norton's laughing response.
Swerving out a little as he passed, he rode on.

CHAPTER XVII

A STACK OF GOLD PIECES

John Engle rapidly came to assume the nature and proportions of a
stubborn bulwark standing sturdily between Roderick Norton and the
fires of criticism, which, springing from little, scattered flames were
now a wide-spread blaze amply fed with the dry fuel of many fields.
Again there had been a general excitement over a crime committed, much
talk, various suspicions, and, in the end, no arrest made. Men who had
stood by the sheriff until now began to lose faith in him. They
r