sters. In the end
it flashed back to Bucky great news. Dave Henderson, arrested for the
murder of the Rurales policeman, was still serving time in a Mexican
prison for another man's crime. There in Chihuahua for fifteen years he
had been lost to the world in that underground hole, blotted out from
life so effectually that few now remembered there had been such a
person. It was horrible, unthinkable, but none the less true.

CHAPTER 6. BUCKY MAKES A DISCOVERY

For a week Bucky had been in the little border town of Noches, called
there by threats of a race war between the whites and the Mexicans.
Having put the quietus on this, he was returning to Epitaph by way of
the Huachuca Mountains. There are still places in Arizona where rapid
transit can be achieved more expeditiously on the back of a bronco than
by means of the railroad, even when the latter is available. So now
Bucky was taking a short cut across country instead of making the two
train changes, with the consequent inevitable delays that would have
been necessary to travel by rail.

He traveled at night and in the early morning, to avoid the heat of the
midday sun, and it was in the evening of the second and last day that
the skirts of happy chance led him to an adventure that was to affect
his whole future life. He knew a waterhole on the Del Oro, where cows
were wont to frequent even in the summer drought, and toward this he was
making in the fag-end of the sultry day. While still some hundred yards
distant he observed a spiral of smoke rising from a camp-fire at the
spring, and he at once made a more circumspect approach. For it might be
any one of a score of border ruffians who owed him a grudge and would be
glad to pay it in the silent desert that tells no tales and betrays no
secrets to the inquisitive.

He flung the bridle-rein over his pony's neck and crept forward on foot,
warily and noiselessly. While still some little way from the water-hole
he was arrested by a sound that startled him. He could make out a
raucous voice in anger and a pianissimo accompaniment of womanish sobs.

"You're mine to do with as I like. I'm your uncle. I've raised you
from a kid, and, by the great mogul! you can't sneak off with the first
good-for nothing scoundrel that makes eyes at you. Thought you had
slipped away from me, you white-faced, sniveling little idiot, but I'll
show you who is master."

The lash of a whip rose and fell twice on quivering flesh before Bu