t the rider had no intention of
going by without speech. As he mounted the crest of the hill above the
flock, he swung straight for the spot where Mackenzie stood.

The stranger drew up with a short grunt of greeting, turning his gaze
over the range as if in search of strayed stock. He was a short, spare
man, a frowning cast in his eyes, a face darkly handsome, but
unsympathetic as a cougar's. He looked down at Mackenzie presently, as
if he had put aside the recognition of his presence as a secondary
matter, a cold insolence in his challenging, sneering eyes.

"What are you doing over here east of Horsethief?" he inquired,
bending his black brows in a frown, his small mustache twitching in
catlike threat of a snarl.

"I'm grazing that little band of sheep you see down yonder," Mackenzie
returned, evenly, running his eyes over the fellow's gear.

This was rather remarkable for a land out of which strife and
contention, murder and sudden death were believed to have passed long
ago. The man wore two revolvers, slung about his slender frame on a
broad belt looped around for cartridges. These loops were empty, but
the weight of the weapons themselves sagged the belt far down on the
wearer's hips. His leather cuffs were garnitured with silver stars in
the Mexican style; he wore a red stone in his black necktie, which was
tied with care, the flowing ends of it tucked into the bosom of his
dark-gray flannel shirt.

"If you're tryin' to be funny, cut it out; I'm not a funny man," he
said. "I asked you what you're doing over here east of Horsethief
Canyon?"

"I don't know that it's any of your business where I run my sheep,"
Mackenzie told him, resentful of the man's insolence.

"Tim Sullivan knows this is our winter grazing land, and this grass is
in reserve. If he didn't tell you it was because he wanted to run you
into trouble, I guess. You'll have to get them sheep out of here, and
do it right now."

The stranger left it to Mackenzie's imagination to fix his identity,
not bending to reveal his name. Hector Hall, Mackenzie knew him to be,
on account of his pistols, on account of the cold meanness of his eyes
which Dad Frazer had described as holding such a throat-cutting look.
But armed as he was, severe and flash-tempered as he seemed, Mackenzie
was not in any sort of a flurry to give ground before him. He looked
up at him coolly, felt in his pocket for his pipe, filled it with
deliberation, and smoked.

"Have you