tner."

Red shifted his cud and spat unerringly on the crest of a loco weed in
the trail. "D'yuh 'spose we'll meet up with Matlock there? Reckon
'tain't likely though." Through the labored indifference of his speech,
Douglass detected a certain restrained hopefulness and his face grew
serious.

"I want to talk to you about that, Red. We've got nothing that we can
fasten on him securely as yet, and we've got to go slow. Of course, if
we get him to rights, or if he makes any bad breaks"--the pause was
ominous. "But we don't want to raise any hell that we can't lay again.
I'm going to give him all the rope that the game will stand; I think,
however, that he has quit."

"Them kind nevah quits," said McVey sententiously, "an' yuh don't want
to take any fool chances, Ken. I seen a feller oncet thet was monkeying
with a rattler an' ketched 'im by thu tail. He got bit! Thu best way
with a pizen reptyle is to blow his damn haid off, 'specially one thet
yuh've pulled thu rattles offen."

They both grinned reminiscently at the reference to the Alcazar
incident, but Douglass winced at the thought that although he had
stopped Matlock's rattling for the time being, he had not neutralized
the venom of his silent bite. And it is hard to side-step an unheralded
stroke from behind.

"Well," he said unemotionally, "it's his first move."

"Hes last, yuh mean," muttered Red sotto voce, "fer I am to be first if
he bats hes eye." But aloud he merely said, "That's what," and took a
fresh chew of plug.

Douglass's perplexity as how his coup was to be executed increased with
every passing hour. He carefully formulated and as regretfully discarded
at least a hundred schemes, each of which appealed less and less to his
practical judgment as he critically reviewed them. Never in his
experience had he faced anything so intangible as the problem which now
confronted him. He was at a loss for a precedent, and what was still
worse, was in total ignorance of the laws governing the unique
conditions. Not that he cared a rap for the laws so far as they might
affect him personally, and he had an inborn contempt for conditions; but
he wanted that transfer of the brand to be legally absolute and without
recourse, and he did not want to involve Mr. Carter in the slightest
degree.

When they eventually reached Gunnison he went straight to the office of
the best lawyer in the town, a life-long friend of old Bob Carter, and
succinctly and forcibly lai