arfully they wheeled and gave their horses
the spur. Flatray could hear them crashing through the brush.

He listened while the rapid hoofbeats died away, until even the echoes
fell silent. "We'll be moving," he announced to his prisoner.

For a couple of hours they followed substantially the same way that Jack
had taken, descending gradually toward the foothills and the plains. The
stars went out, and the moon slid behind banked clouds, so that the
darkness grew with the passing hours. At length Flatray had to call a
halt.

"We'll camp here till morning," he announced when they reached a grassy
park.

The horses were hobbled, and the men sat down opposite each other in the
darkness. Presently the prisoner relaxed and fell asleep. But there was no
sleep for his captor. The cattleman leaned against the trunk of a
cottonwood and smoked his pipe. The night grew chill, but he dared not
light a fire. At last the first streaks of gray dawn lightened the sky. A
quarter of an hour later he shook his captive from slumber.

"Time to hit the trail."

The outlaw murmured sleepily, "How's that, Dunc? Twenty-five thousand
apiece!"

"Wake up! We've got to vamose out of here."

Slowly the fellow shook the sleep from his brain. He looked at Flatray
sullenly, without answering. But he climbed into the saddle which Jack had
cinched for him. Dogged and wolfish as he was, the man knew his master,
and was cowed.

CHAPTER III

THE TABLES TURNED

From the local eastbound a man swung to the station platform at Mesa. He
was a dark, slim, little man, wiry and supple, with restless black eyes
which pierced one like bullets.

The depot loungers made him a focus of inquiring looks. But, in spite of
his careless ease, a shrewd observer would have read anxiety in his
bearing. It was as if behind the veil of his indifference there rested a
perpetual vigilance. The wariness of a beast of prey lay close to the
surface.

"Mornin', gentlemen," he drawled, sweeping the group with his eyes.

"Mornin'," responded one of the loafers.

"I presume some of you gentlemen can direct me to the house of Mayor
Lee."

"The mayor ain't to home," volunteered a lank, unshaven native in
butternut jeans and boots.

"I think it was his house I inquired for," suggested the stranger.

"Fust house off the square on the yon side of the postoffice--a big
two-story brick, with a gallery and po'ches all round it."

Having thanked his informant, the