om where Waring lay. He centered on the leading rural, allowed
for a chance of overshooting, and pressed the trigger. The carbine
snarled. An echo ripped the shimmering heat. A horse reared and plunged
up the valley, the saddle empty.

Waring rose, and plodded up the slope.

"Three would have trailed us. Two will ride back to the railroad and
report. I wonder how many of them are bushed along the trail between
here and Nogales?"

In the American custom-house at Nogales sat a lean, lank man gazing out
of a window facing the south. His chair was tilted back, and his large
feet were crossed on the desk in front of him. He was in his
shirt-sleeves, and he puffed indolently at a cigar and blew smoke-rings
toward the ceiling. Incidentally his name was known throughout the
country and beyond its southern borders. But if this distinction
affected him in any way it was not evident. He seemed submerged in a
lassitude which he neither invited nor struggled against.

A group of riders appeared down the road. The lean man brushed a cloud
of smoke away and gazed at them with indifference. They drew nearer. He
saw that they were Mexicans--rurales. Without turning his head, he
called to an invisible somebody in the next room.

"Jack, drift over to the cantina and get a drink."

A chair clumped to the floor, and a stocky, dark-faced man appeared,
rubbing his eyes. "On who?" he queried, grinning.

"On old man Diaz," replied the lean man.

"All right, Pat. But mebby his credit ain't good on our side of the
line."

The lean man said nothing. He continued to gaze out of the window. The
white road ran south and south into the very haze of the beyond. His
assistant picked up a hat and strolled out. A few doors down the street
stood several excellent saddle animals tied to the hitching-rail in
front of the cantina. He didn't need to be told that they were the
picked horses of the rurales, and that for some strange reason his
superior had sent him to find out just why these same rurales were in
town.

He entered the cantina and called for a drink. The lithe, dark riders of
the south, grouped round a table in one corner of the room, glanced up,
answered his general nod of salutation indifferently, and turned to talk
among themselves. Catering to authority, the Mexican proprietor
proffered a second drink to the Americano. The assistant collector toyed
with his glass, and began a lazy conversation about the weather. The
proprietor, hi