. I tell you I know
Sinclair carried a map!"

"If he had, we'll get it. And we can sleep good of nights!"

"You're a fool, Clen, with your 'sleep good of nights!' I sleep good
of nights, and I've--" he halted abruptly, and when he spoke again his
words grated harsh. "I tell you this is a fang and claw existence--all
life is fang and claw. The strong rip the flesh from the bones of the
weak. And the rich rip their wealth from the clutch of a thousand
poor. What a man has is his only so long as he can hold it. One man's
gain is another man's loss, and that is life. And it makes no
difference in the end whether it was got at the point of the pistol
in defiance of law, or whether it was got within the law under the
guise of business. And I don't need you to preach to me about what is
wrong, either."

The Englishman laughed. "I'm not preaching, Monk. Anyone engaged in
the business we're in has got no call to preach."

"We're no worse than most of the preachers. They peddle out, for
money, what they don't believe."

"Heigh-ho! What a good old world you've painted it! I hope you're
right, and I'm not as bad as I think I am."

Bethune interrupted, speaking rapidly in the outlining of a plan of
procedure, and it was well toward the middle of the afternoon when the
two saddled up and struck off into the hills in the direction of their
camp.

* * * * *

Twilight had deepened to dusk as Patty Sinclair pulled her team to a
standstill upon the rim of the bench and looked down upon the
twinkling lights of the little town that straggled uncertainly along
the sandy bank of the shallow river.

"Hain't it grand lookin'?" breathed Microby Dandeline who sat
decorously booted and stockinged upon the very edge of the board seat.
"You wouldn't think they wus so many folks, less'n you seen 'em
yers'f. Wisht I lived to town, an' I wisht they'd be a circust."

Patty guided the horses down the trail that slanted into the valley
and crossed the half-mile of "flats" whose wire fences and long,
clean-cut irrigation ditches marked the passing of the cattle country.
A billion mosquitoes filled the air with an unceasing low-pitched
drone, and settled upon the horses in a close-fitting blanket of gray.
The girls tried to fight off the stinging pests that attacked their
faces and necks in whirring clouds. But they fought in vain and in
vain they endeavored to urge the horses to a quickening of their pace,
for i