his last road
ran past Gully's ranch, which lay some three miles distant. As they
neared their objective the sergeant slackened his team down to a walking
pace.

Suddenly Redmond tongue-clucked to himself in absent fashion. The sound
of it roused Yorke out of the sombre reverie into which he had fallen.

"What's up, Red?" queried he waggishly, in a low voice, "dreaming you're
taking that dive again, or what?"

"No!" muttered George abstractly in the same key. "I was thinking what a
rum, unfathomable old beggar Slavin is. Fancy him springing that comical
old yarn at such a time as this?"

"Ah!" murmured his comrade reflectively. "When you come to know Burke as
well as I do you'll find he's generally got some motive for these little
things--blarney and all. You laughed, didn't you? Guess we all of us
gave the giddy 'ha! ha'.' Felt quite chipper after it, too, the bunch of
us . . . well then?"

"Sh-sh!" came the sergeant's back-flung, guarded growl, "quit your gab
there! We're gettin' nigh, bhoys--here's th' brush forninst his
place . . . must go mighty quiet an' careful now."

Looming up dark and forbidding ahead of them they beheld the all-familiar
sight of the huge, shadowy thicket of pine and Balm o' Gilead clumps that
fringed the west end of Gully's ranch. Entering its gloomy depths, they
felt their way slowly and cautiously along the stump-dotted trail. At
intervals, from somewhere overhead, came the weird, depressing hoot of a
long-eared owl, and, seemingly close at hand, the shrill, mocking
"ki-yip-yapping" of coyotes echoed sharply in the stillness of the night.
Stray patches of moonlight began to filter upon the party once more as
they gradually neared the end of the rough-hewn avenue; the thick growth
of pine giving place to scattered cotton-wood clumps.

Arriving at the verge of the timber the party halted. There, some two
hundred yards distant, upon a patch of open ground partially encircled by
dense, willow-scrub, lay a ghostly-shadowed cluster of ranch buildings.
The living habitation itself stood upon a slightly raised knoll, hard
upon the river-bank. To their nostrils the night air brought the strong,
not unpleasant scent of cattle, drifting up from the numerous recumbent
bovine forms which dotted the ground all around the ranch.

Awhile the party gazed speculatively at the habitation of him--the
undoubted perpetrator of the deadly deeds--for whom they had sought so
long. The peacefu