"

"I've got to take that kid in the next room out to my ranch first. I
won't stand for that knife thrower making a slave of him."

"What's the matter with me taking the boy out to the Rocking Chair with
me? My wife and I will see he's looked after till you return."

"That would be the best plan, if it won't trouble you too much. We'd
better keep his whereabouts quiet till this fellow Hardman is out of the
country."

"Yes, though I hardly think he'd be fool enough to show up at the
Rocking Chair. If my vaqueros met up with him prowling around they might
show him as warm a welcome as you did half an hour ago."

"A chapping would sure do him a heap of good," grinned Bucky, and so
dismissed the Champion of the World from his mind.

CHAPTER 5. BUCKY ENTERTAINS

Bucky began at once to tap the underground wires his official position
made accessible to him. These ran over Southern Arizona, Sonora, and
Chihuahua. All the places to which criminals or frontiersmen with money
were wont to resort were reported upon. For the ranger's experience had
taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to
burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of
the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb
disport themselves together.

The photograph from Webb Mackenzie of the cook Anderson reached him at
Tucson the third day after his interview with that gentleman, at the
same time that Collins dropped in on him to inquire what progress he was
making.

O'Connor told him of the Aravaipa episode, and tossed across the table
to him the photograph he had just received.

"If we could discover the gent that sat for this photo it might help us.
You don't by any chance know him, do you, Val?"

The sheriff shook his head. "Not in my rogues' gallery, Bucky."

The ranger again examined the faded picture. A resemblance in it to
somebody he had met recently haunted vaguely his memory. As he looked
the indefinite suggestion grew sharp and clear. It was a photograph
of the showman who had called himself Hardman. All the trimmings were
lacking, to be sure--the fierce mustache, the long hair, the buckskin
trappings, none of them were here. But beyond a doubt it was the same
shifty-eyed villain. Nor did it shake Bucky's confidence that Mackenzie
had seen him and failed to recognize the man as his old cook. The fellow
was thoroughly disguised, but the camera had happened to catch th