ey _Holman_!" she shrieked, "why, you limb of Satan, you said
your name was Wiley!"

"It is," returned Wiley with one eye on the door, "the rest of my name
is Holman."

"But you signed it on this paper--you wrote it right there! Oh, I'll
have the law on you for this!"

She clutched at the paper and as Virginia gave it to her mother she
turned an accusing glance upon Wiley.

"Yes, that's just like you, Mr. M. R. Wiley," she observed with
scathing sarcasm. "You were just that way when you were a kid here in
Keno--always trying to get the advantage of somebody. But if I'd
thought you had the nerve----" She glanced at the paper and gasped and
Wiley showed his teeth in a grin.

"Well, she crowded me to it," he answered with a swagger. "I'm strictly
business--I'll sign up anybody. You can just keep that paper," he nodded
to the Widow, "and send it to me by mail."

He winked at Virginia and slipped swiftly out the door as the Widow
made a rush for her gun. She came out after him, brandishing a
double-barreled shotgun, just as he cranked up his machine to start.

"I'll show you!" she yelled, jerking her gun to her shoulder. "I'll
learn you to get funny with _me_!"

She pulled the trigger, but Wiley was watching her and he ducked down
behind the radiator.

_Clank_, went the hammer and with a wail of rage the Widow snapped
the other barrel.

"You, Virginia!" she cried in a terrible voice, "have you been monkeying
with my shotgun?"

The answer was lost in a series of explosions that awoke every echo in
Keno, and Wiley Holman leapt into his machine. He jerked off his brake
and stepped on the foot throttle but as he roared off up the street he
waved a grimy hand at Virginia.

CHAPTER III

THE SHADOW

The old, settled quiet returned to sleepy Keno--the quiet of the desert
and of empty, noiseless houses stretching in long, sunburned rows down
the canyon. The black lava patch, laid across the gray rhyolite flank of
Shadow Mountain like the shade of an angry cloud, still frowned down
upon the town like a portent of storms to come. But the sky was hot and
gleaming and no storms came; nor did Wiley Holman return, though the
Widow waited for him patiently. After all his boldness, his unbelievable
effrontery in trying to steal her Paymaster stock, he had gone on
laughing to seek other adventures and left her with the mine on her
hands. But he would come back, she knew it; and with her gun loaded with
buckshot she