y.

"Unless you mussed up the trail coming back," said Ellis to the
stage-driver.

"We didn't. I thought of that, and I had Jose drive clear round the place.
Jack will find it all right unless there's too much travel before he gets
here," said Alan.

Farnum laughed malevolently. "Mebbe he'll get him and mebbe he won't.
Jack's human, like the rest of us, if he is the best sheriff in Arizona.
Here's hoping he don't get him. Any man that waltzes out of the cactus and
appropriates twenty thousand dollars belonging to Mr. Morse is welcome to
it for all of me. I don't care if he is one of MacQueen's bad men. I wish
it had been forty thousand."

Farnum did not need to explain the reasons for his sentiments. Everybody
present knew that he was the leader of that bunch of cattlemen who had
bunched themselves together to resist the encroachments of sheep upon the
range. Among these the feeling against Morse was explosively dangerous. It
had found expression in more than one raid upon his sheep. Many of them
had been destroyed by one means or another, but Morse, with the obstinacy
characteristic of him, had replaced them with others and continually
increased his herds. There had been threats against his life, and one of
his herders had been wounded. But the mine-owner went his way with quiet
fearlessness and paid no attention to the animosity he had stirred up. The
general feeling was that the trouble must soon come to a head. Nobody
expected the rough and ready vaqueros, reckless and impulsive as they
were, to submit to the loss of the range, which meant too the wiping out
of their means of livelihood, without a bitter struggle that would be both
lawless and bloody.

Wherefore there was silence after Farnum had spoken, broken at length by
the amiable voice of the fat ranchman, Baker.

"Well, we'll see what we'll see," he wheezed complacently. "And anyways I
got to have some horseshoe plug, Melissy."

The girl laughed nervously as she reached for what he wanted. "You're a
safe prophet, Mr. Baker," she said.

"He'd be a safe one if he'd prophesy that Jack Flatray would have Mr.
Hold-up in the calaboose inside of three days," put in a half-grown lad in
leathers.

"I ain't so sure about that. You'll have to show me, and so will Mr.
Deputy Sheriff Flatray," retorted Farnum.

A shadow darkened the doorway.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen all--and Miss Lee," a pleasant voice drawled.

The circle of eyes focused on the new-come