take it home. They must be most distracted about it."

So I scratched up to the top where my pony was waitin'. It was a
tur'ble hard climb, and I 'most had to have hooks on my eyebrows

to get up at all. It's easier to slide down than to climb back.
I dropped my gun out of my holster, and she went way to the

bottom, but I wouldn't have gone back for six guns. Larry picked
it up for me.

So we went along, me on the rim-rock and around the barrancas,
and Larry in the bottom carryin' of the kid.

By and by we came to the ranch house, stopped to wait. The
minute Larry hove in sight everybody was out to once, and in two

winks the woman had that baby. Thy didn't see me at all, but I
could hear, plain enough, what they said. Larry told how he had

found her in the cave, and all about the lion tracks, and the
woman cried and held the kid close to her, and thanked him about

forty times. Then when she'd wore the edge off a little, she
took the kid inside to feed it or somethin'.

"Well," says Larry, still laughin', "I must hit the trail."
"You say you found her up the Double R?" asks Hahn. "Was it that

cave near the three cottonwoods?"
"Yes," says Larry.

"Where'd you get into the canyon?"
"Oh, my hoss slipped off into the barranca just above."

"The barranca just above," repeats Hahn, lookin' straight at him.
Larry took one step back.

"You ought to be almighty glad I got into the canyon at all,"
says he.

Hahn stepped up, holdin' out his hand.
"That's right," says he. "You done us a good turn there."

Larry took his hand. At the same time Hahn pulled his gun and
shot him through the middle.

It was all so sudden and unexpected that I stood there paralysed.
Larry fell forward the way a man mostly will when he's hit in the

stomach, but somehow he jerked loose a gun and got it off twice.
He didn't hit nothin', and I reckon he was dead before he hit the

ground. And there he had my gun, and I was about as useless as a
pocket in a shirt!

No, sir, you can talk as much as you please, but the killer is a
low-down ornery scub, and he don't hesitate at no treachery or

ingratitude to keep his carcass safe.
Jed Parker ceased talking. The dusk had fallen in the little

room, and dimly could be seen the recumbent figures lying at
ease on their blankets. The ranch foreman was sitting bolt

upright, cross-legged. A faint glow from his pipe barely
distinguished his features.

"What became of the rustlers?" I asked him.
"Well, sir, that is the queer part. Hahn himself, who had done

the killin', skipped out. We got out warrants, of course, but
they never got served. He was a sort of half outlaw from that

time, and was killed finally in the train hold-up of '97. But
the others we tried for rustling. We didn't have much of a case,

as the law went then, and they'd have gone free if the woman
hadn't turned evidence against them. The killin' was too much

for her. And, as the precedent held good in a lot of other
rustlin' cases, Larry's death was really the beginnin' of law and

order in the cattle business."
We smoked. The last light suddenly showed red against the grimy

window. Windy Bill arose and looked out the door.
"Boys," said he, returning. "She's cleared off. We can get back

to the ranch tomorrow."
CHAPTER FIVE

THE DRIVE
A cry awakened me. It was still deep night. The moon sailed

overhead, the stars shone unwavering like candles, and a chill
breeze wandered in from the open spaces of the desert. I raised

myself on my elbow, throwing aside the blankets and the canvas
tarpaulin. Forty other indistinct, formless bundles on the

ground all about me were sluggishly astir. Four figures passed
and repassed between me and a red fire. I knew them for the two

cooks and the horse wranglers. One of the latter was grumbling.
"Didn't git in till moon-up last night," he growled. "Might as

well trade my bed for a lantern and be done with it."
Even as I stretched my arms and shivered a little, the two

wranglers threw down their tin plates with a clatter, mounted
horses and rode away in the direction of the thousand acres or so

known as the pasture.
I pulled on my clothes hastily, buckled in my buckskin shirt, and

dove for the fire. A dozen others were before me. It was
bitterly cold. In the east the sky had paled the least bit in

the world, but the moon and stars shone on bravely and
undiminished. A band of coyotes was shrieking desperate

blasphemies against the new day, and the stray herd, awakening,
was beginning to bawl and bellow.

Two crater-like dutch ovens, filled with pieces of fried beef,
stood near the fire; two galvanised water buckets, brimming

with soda biscuits, flanked them; two tremendous coffee pots
stood guard at either end. We picked us each a tin cup and a tin

plate from the box at the rear of the chuck wagon; helped
ourselves from a dutch oven, a pail, and a coffee pot, and

squatted on our heels as close to the fire as possible. Men who
came too late borrowed the shovel, scooped up some coals, and so

started little fires of their own about which new groups formed.
While we ate, the eastern sky lightened. The mountains under the

dawn looked like silhouettes cut from slate-coloured paper; those
in the west showed faintlyluminous. Objects about us became

dimly visible. We could make out the windmill, and the adobe of
the ranch houses, and the corrals. The cowboys arose one by one,

dropped their plates into the dishpan, and began to hunt out
their ropes. Everything was obscure and mysterious in the faint

grey light. I watched Windy Bill near his tarpaulin. He stooped
to throw over the canvas. When he bent, it was before daylight;

when he straightened his back, daylight had come. It was just
like that, as though someone had reached out his hand to turn on

the illumination of the world.
The eastern mountains were fragile, the plain was ethereal, like

a sea of liquid gases. From the pasture we heard the shoutings
of the wranglers, and made out a cloud of dust. In a moment the

first of the remuda came into view, trotting forward with the
free grace of the unburdened horse. Others followed in

procession: those near sharp and well defined, those in the
background more or less obscured by the dust, now appearing

plainly, now fading like ghosts. The leader turned
unhesitatingly into the corral. After him poured the stream of

the remuda--two hundred and fifty saddle horses--with an
unceasing thunder of hoofs.

Immediately the cook-camp was deserted. The cowboys entered the
corral. The horses began to circle around the edge of the

enclosure as around the circumference of a circus ring. The men,
grouped at the centre, watched keenly, looking for the mounts

they had already decided on. In no time each had recognised
his choice, and, his loop trailing, was walking toward that part

of the revolving circumference where his pony dodged. Some few
whirled the loop, but most cast it with a quick flip. It was

really marvellous to observe the accuracy with which the noose
would fly, past a dozen tossing heads, and over a dozen backs, to

settle firmly about the neck of an animal perhaps in the very