Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 72/Number 3/The Desert Trap

by Gilbert Patten

 

The
Desert Trap
By
Burt L. Standish

(A COMPLETE NOVEL)

CHAPTER I.

Written in Sand

SOMETHING was wrong in the Rey Niño stamp mill; as a matter of fact, something had been wrong for all of fifteen minutes before “Dad” Billings, out in the engine room, laid aside the book he was reading and began using his ears.

Dad liked his romances, and he liked 'em red hot. He had one now that was fairly curdling the fringe of hair around his bald spot. All a-quiver with thrills, he had been for a quarter of an hour a stranger to his immediate environment.

At last, finishing a chapter, he came back to earth with a happy sigh like the exploding exhaust of a locomotive. Before he could turn the page, his fogged wits awoke to the realization that something unusual had taken place in the body of the mill.

Ten stamps, each pitched to a tempo of ninety-eight drops to the minute, kick up a mighty roar with their iron shoes. The volume of sound is consistent and steady, when all goes well; but let one of the dancing stems fail of its function and there is a break, a hiatus in the deafening monotone which trained ears may easily detect.

Dad finally became aware of the lost note, and he lowered the chair he had tilted back against the shaking board wall of the engine room. He got to his feet under the kerosene lamp that had shed a smoky glow on his romance.

“One of them stamps is missin' fire,” he muttered; “blame queer Rufus is so long hangin' up the battery.”

The boilers needed fuel. Dad opened the firebox and flung in a grist of crooked ironwood and paloverde. After closing the hot iron doors, he reached for his paper-covered book. But he did not pick it up. The crippled battery was continuing to limp along and Rufus was not doing a thing to stop it. Dad took a look through the doorless opening between the engine room and the body of the mill.

Two big lamps swung over the mill plates. Their dancing flare illuminated the thin flow of muddy water across the plates, but failed to pick the shadowy form of Rufus out of the half dark.

Dad cocked an eye at the mill loft. The ore-crusher, the self-feeding hoppers and the ten bounding stamp stems could be seen in dim silhouette under the loft light. But there was no trace of Rufus.

The mysteries of Dad's paper-covered romance rushed in on the realities of the moment. He got another thrill. Where in Sam Hill was Rufus, the night amalgamator?

Moving toward the box of battery No. 1, Dad discovered that a bosshead had broken off one of the stems. Although he was the engineer and fireman, nevertheless he had been knocking around stamp mills all his life and he knew how to take care of a battery in a pinch. Rushing up the steep stairs to the loft, he grabbed a board and proceeded to put the battery out of commission. He couldn't do the job as deftly or as quickly as Rufus was able to turn the trick, but nevertheless he managed it.

With only one battery pounding away the roar was diminished by half. “Hey, Rufus!” Dad yelled.

There was no answer. Rufus was missing; or, if he wasn't missing, then something had happened to him. Dad pulled a grimy sleeve over his moist brows. There had been deviltry in the Rey Niño mill for a long time now. Possibly the amalgamator had met the deviltry company front, somewhere in the clamorous shadows of the mill, and this may have been the reason he could not hear his shiftmate, or answer the call.

Dad, with a lantern, was investigating the pitch-dark regions behind the battery boxes, dreading what he might find, when a voice smote on his ears:

“Where's McGowan, Billings?”

Dad, in a shiver, lifted his light and peered into the face of Jud Frawley, the super.

“I'm lookin' for him, Jud,” Dad answered. “One of the batteries went wrong and I hung it up. Rufus don't seem to be on deck.”

“That's the second time to-night that No. 1 has been out of commission.”

Dad nodded. “The other time, about an hour ago,” he returned, “Rufus was cleanin' the plates and dressin' down. This last time, though, a bosshead snapped offn the stem. Rufus ain't here to attend to things, and I'm jest nosin' around to see if I can diskiver why.”

“We'll both nose around,” said the super.

After an hour's search of the mill, the adjacent tailings piles and the cyanide tanks, the mystery of the disappearance of Rufus McGowan was deeper than ever.

In the little laboratory were half a dozen balls of amalgam, the chamois skin through which the quicksilver had been squeezed out of them, and a container with the “quick.” The place was just as McGowan had left it, evidently in something of a hurry.

Frawley got the day amalgamator and the crusherman from the bunk house and set them to repairing the crippled battery. The night watchman from the cyanide tanks, and half a dozen from the night-shift in the mine, were sent with lanterns to make a wider search for McGowan.

It was dawn before the missing amalgamator was located. Boldero Cliffs, a hundred rods from the stamp mill, had a sheer drop of two hundred feet to a level of sand and shale. And it was at the foot of the cliffs that the crumpled, lifeless form of McGowan was found.

Why had he come to the cliffs? That was a question no one could answer.

Near the crushed and broken body lay damning evidence: A canvas sack spilling its balls of amalgam over the sand. The mill had been looted of treasure again and again during the preceding weeks, systematically and mysteriously looted. McGowan, now: Had he been up to the eyes in that secret deviltry? Had he been on his way to turn the bag of amalgam over to a confederate? And had he missed his footing in the dark and tumbled over the cliff?

Dad could not believe it, but the evidence was black in Frawley's mind. McGowan had been the thief, and he had lost his life in the very act of treachery.

“What's that, there?” puzzled Frawley, kneeling at the foot of the cliffs.

With a splinter of shale, the last thing McGowan had done was to scrape some letters in the sand. His rigid fingers, gripping the splinter of stone, lay on the last letter—a message begun but never finished.

“Traill,” was the one word; “Traill,” and nothing more.

“Trail who, or what?” growled the super.

“I'm by!” murmured Dad, in a quiver, “but it's purty turrible, ain't it, Jud? Poor old Rufus!”

CHAPTER II.

Red Versus Red.

ALTO! Alto ohi, you there! And make it snappy!”

Two guns looked over the top of a rock, leveled downward at the mounted traveler below. The order to halt was instantly obeyed, and the man in the trail peered upward at the threatening gun muzzles. Back of the guns were two eyes, baleful and determined. Under the eyes was a folded red bandanna; and, over them, was a dingy and battered Stetson, its brim pushed well back on a mop of shaggy red hair.

“What's the trouble?” inquired the man on the horse, making conversation when it was manifestly uncalled for.

“Trouble's all yourn if y'u don't dance to my music, stranger. Me, now, I got to have that hoss.”

The voice was unpleasant, and the bad little eyes blinked dangerously.

“Well, shucks!” muttered the rider. “You see, it just happens that I'm needing this caballo myself.”

He removed his dusty sombrero and ran his fingers thoughtfully through hair as red as that of the two-gun man above him.

The boulder, as large as a small house, was one of many giant rocks that formed a spur of the Pima Hills. The trail, at that point, followed the base of the spur, making the situation ideal for just such a surprise as this one.

“Trail them reins!” ordered the redhead on the boulder. Promptly the man below put on his hat and released the reins. “'Light, and back off!” was the next command, as the gun muzzles punched the air suggestively.

“This don't seem right to me,” complained the traveler as he kicked his feet clear of the stirrups and slid to the ground. “All bricktops ought to hang together and not take these little advantages of one another.”

“Red or black's all one to me when I'm set on a play,” came raucously from the man overhead. “Shell out what plunder y'u happen to have—guns first. Cash goes, and any trinkets like a watch, et cetery. Make a pile right there in front o' y'u. Pronto's the word, stranger.”

The traveler had a solitary six-gun. As he slipped it clear of a shoulder hoister, he executed a half-move that might have been preliminary to an offensive. A weapon barked, and a bullet bit into the sand of the trail dangerously close to the man below.

“I warned y'u!” stormed the man on the boulder. “Any more funny work and the lead won't fly so wide.”

“Don't get nervous,” said the other; “I'm doing my little best to accommodate you.”

He took a gold watch with a carved leather fob from a vest pocket and laid the timepiece beside the gun. Next, he produced a fat wallet, opened it and regretfully considered a thick packet of bank notes. The bad eyes over the bandanna gleamed at the sight of so much unexpected treasure.

“I'm sure playin' in luck this mornin',” exulted the hard voice from behind the handkerchief. “Drop it down there with the gun and the ticker. That all?”

“Isn't it a-plenty?”

“Well, I reckon. Move on, stranger. Leave the canteen—it'll come handy for me.”

“Where'll I move?” inquired the unfortunate traveler.

“For'ard! Step lively—I ain't got no time to throw at the birds.”

“This is the worst deal one redhead ever put over on another!” deplored the traveler, apparently greatly dispirited.

He moved around the base of the boulder, his feet crunching the sand until the sound of his passing faded to silence in the ears of the man on the boulder. But the traveler, halting at a distance, turned back, dropped to his knees and crawled swiftly toward the scene of the holdup.

The bandit pulled the handkerchief from his face, tucked the guns in his belt and flung his feet over the boulder's crest. He leaped downward, and was in so much of a hurry that he missed his footing when he landed and toppled to his knees.

In a split second a flying form had descended upon his neck and shoulders. There was a grunt of surprise, a sputtered oath, and then a flurry of sand as “Red” and “Red” came to handgrips and rolled around in the dusty trail.

The two were of the same height and build, evenly matched as to avoirdupois although the traveler quickly demonstrated that most of the skill was on his side. The traveler came uppermost, and the horse snorted and reared backward to give a clear space for the set-to.

The bandit strove hard to get at one of his guns, but the holsters were pushed forward and the traveler's knees pressed down on the weapons and made their removal an impossibility. Two hands encircled the bandit's throat, and the compression of the steellike fingers smothered the man underneath. His eyes were popping and his face growing purple. His lips moved voicelessly, and he kicked out feebly with his booted feet.

The traveler removed a hand from the hairy throat, lifted his knees and snatched the two guns from their holsters. He tossed the weapons aside, reached toward the little heap comprising his own property and picked the weapon out of it. Then he stood up, a grim smile on his face.

“Well, Red, you picked the wrong man for this little performance,” was his comment. “Who are you, and what's this all about?”

“Go on,” fluttered the baffled bandit, sitting up in the sand and caressing his throat tenderly; “go on, stranger. I reckon I don't want yore hoss, after all.”

“My name's Traill, Gordon Traill; Traill, of Trinidad, or Red Traill as it used to be, in the old days.” The traveler bent down, keeping his six-gun in readiness for use. “What's yours?”

“I ain't sayin' a word,” returned the other.

“Then you shell out,” continued Traill; “empty your pockets and we'll see what we can discover.”

The bandit began piling his own personal property on the ground. A knife, a tobacco pouch, a pipe, a small amount of silver and, finally, a letter.

It was the letter that caught and held Traill's attention. He picked it up. The envelope was addressed to “Mr. Judson Frawley, superintendent Rey Niño Mine,” and was not sealed. Traill removed the folded sheet and his eyes widened exultantly as he read.

“'Siwash' Brezee, eh?” remarked Traill. “So that's your label. This is right interesting, Siwash. I can use this letter in my business.”

“What about me?” quavered Brezee.

“I'm considering that right now,” said Traill, of Trinidad, thoughtfully.

CHAPTER III.

Introducing Mr. Early.

TRAILL repossessed himself of the watch and the wallet. He used both hands in transferring the personal property to his pockets and, for the moment, tucked his Colt .45 under his arm. Apparently he was in a brown study, an abstraction which invited renewed hostilities from Siwash Brezee.

The bandit had won a horse, a watch and a fat wallet, only to lose them again by a lack of wariness and judgment. His spirit rankled and grew reckless. A sudden jump carried him to his guns; but, as he stooped to retrieve them from the trampled sand, a bullet singed his red hair.

“As you were!” ordered Traill; “if you think I'm asleep on the job, you'll have to guess again.”

Brezee drew away from the guns, with more respect for his captor and a certain amount of resignation for himself. Loping hoofs could be heard, at that instant, the dull thud rising in a swift crescendo. Another rider was approaching along the base of the spur, masked from view as yet by the rocks. Traill had hopes that it might be an old compadre who had agreed to meet him in Sandy Bar, and had failed. His hopes proved to be well-founded.

A sorrel nosed its way into sight. A human splinter, a sort of collapsible hat-rack of a man humped over the saddle, rode up with the sorrel and pulled quick rein.

“Gordon!” he bleated, straightening erect and beaming at Traill; “by gorry if it ain't! Why didn't y'u wait in town for yours truly?”

“P. T. Early, 'Poco Tiempo' Early,” called Traill with a laugh, putting out his hand. “Late as usual, eh, Pete? Well, I was in a good deal of a rush and couldn't wait. Got to make Buenas Noches by sundown.”

“Who's the disapp'inted gent in the checkered shirt?” inquired the curious Early, tipping a nod at Brezee. “Was it you or him fired a shot a minute ago?”

“I had to put a shot across his brows to hold him steady,” explained Traill. “He laid for me here at this boulder and tried to annex my horse and personal belongings. Luck went against him. Do you know the hombre?”

Early gave Brezee a sharp sizing. “Never seen him afore, Gordon,” was his answer. “He's another of the new stickups who have been makin' things onpleasant for the new sher'ff at Sandy Bar. I'll take him back to the town calabozo while you mosey on to my shack.

“Y'u'll have plenty uh time to make Noches for supper—that is, if y'u ain't got time to linger a spell with an old pard. Say,” he added, beaming again, “You're the same old 'Red the Sudden,' ain't y'u? A mite heavier than in them days around Cochise, but jest as pronto—judgin' from the fix Mr. Holdup finds himself in. What's your rush, Gordon? Can't y'u never learn to put off till mañana the things that don't have to be done to-day?”

“Some things have got to be done to-day, Pete,” said Traill, “and I don't want to linger in this hot sun palavering about them. This man”—he indicated his captive—“is Siwash Brezee. He's a mercenary; a thug, if I have the right dope, who sells his outlaw services to the highest bidder. Right now he is on his way to the Rey Niño Mine with a letter for Judson Frawley, the superintendent.”

“What does Frawley want of him?”

“That's what I can't understand, Pete, but I'm going to find out. How far is your claim from here?”

“Over the ridge yander, and bear off to the left—a matter o' three mile. You go on, Gordon, and make yourself to home. The new sher'ff'll be mighty glad to get this hombre.”

“The new sheriff is not going to get Brezee,” said Traill, “at least not for a while. I have other plans.”

He took a rope from Early's saddle and began lashing Brezee's hands at his back.

“That's his plunder on the ground, Pete,” he went on as he worked. “You might gather it in and return to him everything but the guns.”

Five minutes later, the old friends were on their way to the ridge, Traill with the captured bandit tramping beside his stirrup, one end of the riata hitched to his saddle horn.

“I'm mighty nigh tuckered,” Brezee puffed. “Lost my caballo in a sand storm and I've been afoot ever since.”

“Must 'a' been the same blow that delayed me,” commented Early. “I reckoned sure yVd wait in Sandy Bar, Gordon. Y'u might 'a' knowed I'd come.”

“Wait!” exclaimed Traill, “with Rufus McGowan's affairs in the shape they're in? No, Pete, every minute counts. I'd have gone to Noches in a car, but there wasn't one to be had in the town. Back number, that Sandy Bar. Anything new about Rufus?”

Early's long face went longer, at that. “Not about Rufus,” he answered, “but somethin' has turned up about you, Gordon.”

“No one knows me in this part of the country. How do I figure?”

“Well, jest afore Rufus hit the Big Divide, about the last thing he done was to scratch a word in the sand. One word. An' that was 'Traill.' Along at first, they was reckonin' Rufus had tried to tell them he left behind to trail somebody or other. But there was two 'l's' in what Rufus wrote. He had learnin', Rufus had, and some says what he wrote at his last gasp didn't mean trail nobody, but that it was the name of the man who had knocked him over the cliff and bumped him off——”

Anger flamed in Traill's face. “Rufus and I were sworn friends!” he exclaimed; “and what he tried to write was a call for me.”

“Don't I know?” flashed Early; “but y'u couldn't expect them others to know. And then ag'in,” he went on, “some says that, goin' fast as Rufus was, he couldn't be expected to mind his 'l's' and that he was really tryin' to leave a message for the super to trail a party or parties unknown. But when you show up at the mine and give the name Traill, y'u'll find yourself in hot water.”

Traill fell silent, at that.

“What I want you to do, Pete,” he went on presently, “is to hold this fellow Brezee incommunicado at your claim.”

“Sure I can hold him; but what's the idee?”

“If I go to the Rey Niño as Traill,” proceeded the man from Trinidad, “my activities will be interfered with.”

“I'll tell the world!” murmured Early.

“But if I go as Siwash Brezee, and carry Brezee's letter of introduction to Judson Frawley, I'll have the edge on the whole business.”

Early let out another bleat, halfway between admiration and dismay. “Ain't that plumb like y'u, now? Like the old Red Traill of the Cochise days. But do y'u reckon it'll work?”

CHAPTER IV.

Brezee's Understudy.

BEFORE Gordon Traill transferred his activities to Trinidad and the smelter business, he had roamed through the Southwestern cattle country with Early, and had traveled far and wide as a gold hunter in company with Rufus McGowan.

“Partner” means one thing, but “pardner” means quite another. One term goes just so far, but the other goes the whole way in friendship as well as business. As a case in point, the mystery attending the passing of McGowan had brought Traill posthaste to the rescue of McGowan's reputation which, he had heard, was involved in the Rey Niño affair. A mere “partner” might, or might not have dropped pressing commercial interests to take up the task of character rehabilitation for an old and valued friend. Such sacrifice was not demanded of a partner, but the call to a “pardner” was insistent and imperative.

Traill had called on Early to help him in the unhappy affairs of McGowan. Early and McGowan were strangers to each other; each, of course, knew some thing of the other through Traill, and Early had been following developments in the tragic case of the amalgamator with more than ordinary interest. He had all the latest details, information that had not found its way into the Sandy Bar Chronicle or the Buenas Noches News-Bulletin, stored away for the use of Traill.

Periodically, Early, the cowboy, had the habit of “taking a whirl” at gold mining. For a year he had been holding down a claim, hoping it would develop into a “strike” that would enable him to own his own ranch and become a cattle baron. That was the dream he had tried several times to realize, only to have his ore veins turn out to be “stringers” of no value. But here he was at it again, perennially hopeful in spite of his many reverses.

He was down fifty feet at the Cowboy's Pride on something that “looked good.” His blasting was through the hardest kind of rock; and his discovery shaft, with the walls sheer and smooth, formed an excellent place for the detention of Siwash Brezee. With the ladders removed, the captured bandit was as helpless in the pit as he might have been in a dungeon.

Brezee was let down by the windlass, with blankets and a water supply. Food was to be lowered by Early at stated intervals. The prisoner's checkered shirt, battered Stetson, belt and artillery were stripped from him, and Early supplied cast-off garments to take the place of shirt and hat.

There was nothing attractive in this situation for Brezee. He complained wildly, but soft-pedaled his protests when offered a choice between the shaft and the Sandy Bar calabozo.

“He's bein' treated a heap better'n he has a right to expect,” grumbled Early; “we'll keep him there till y'u run in your little play, Gordon, and then we'll pass him on to the new sher'ff. But do y'u reckon this here move is sagacious, compadre?” he asked earnestly. “I got a lot of personal doubts.”

“You don't doubt what would happen if I went to the Rey Niño as Traill, do you?” fenced the Trinidad man.

“Not for a blamed minute!” Pete quickly replied.

“Then this chance was made to order. No one knows me in this country, and no one knows Brezee. With that letter of introduction, I've got a stand-in that looks mighty promising.”

“But it's been some sort of a while, Gordon, since us two was together around old Cochise. You have been in ca'm waters, and I'm worried a lot that y'u are out o' touch with desert conditions.”

Traill grinned. “Does the way I handled Brezee suggest that I have lost my initiative?” he wanted to know. “I can still 'bust' an outlaw bronc, dress down a battery or plant a charge of giant powder in likely rock. What you learn in your youthful years in the open you never forget.”

“Mebbe not,” agreed Early, “but livin' on the fat of the land sort of takes the tough fiber out of a hombre.”

“Why, you old wet blanket,” laughed Traill, “I'm only thirty. And I'm hard as nails.” He lifted his right arm and clenched his big, capable fist. “Grab hold of the biceps, Pete,” he requested.

Early felt of the bunch of swelling muscles and his face cleared a little.

“It's the same arm that put 'Cochise Charley' down for the count!” he had to admit. “'Member that, Gordon? 'Member how y'u——”

“We'll indulge in reminiscences when I get back from the Rey Niño, pard,” Traill cut in.

“That's you,” grunted Early; “never no time but for what y'u got on hand. Well, go to it. I'm aimin' to rustle a hot snack to speed y'u on your fool way.”

He set about the preparation of dinner, and when he again gave attention to his friend, Traill had put himself into the checkered shirt, tied a red bandanna around his throat, belted the guns at his middle and was swaggering around the one room in the battered Stetson.

“Yip-ee!” he yelled. “I'm the bad-medicine kid from the wilds of the Picketwire! When y'u hear me rattle, y'u can gamble a blue stack I'm a-goin' to strike! Walk up, hombres, an' sample my sand!”

Early dropped into a chair and laughed till his blue eyes watered. He doubled up in a wild contortion and stamped his shack floor with his number twelves.

“I'd sure like to be at the Rey Niño and see the fun!” he gasped.

“Listen, Pete,” said Traill earnestly, “you've got to stay right here and look after Brezee. I'd sure have both hands full if you ever let that hard case get away from you. Be on the job every minute, old-timer. None of this poco tiempo business while I'm over south working for Rufus. Am I making that plain?”

“Y'u act like y'u didn't trust me?” returned Early, full of gloom.

“I'm banking on you, Pete, from the drop of the hat. Everything depends on your keeping Brezee right where we've put him. I'm only trying to impress on you the importance of that one thing.”

“Well, jest consider it impressed,” said Early, “an' don't r'ile me with no pesterin' doubts. Grub pile, Siwash; come on an' set in.”

They ate, they gossiped a little until the heat of the day had passed, and then Traill went out to the little corral and put the gear on the horse he had bought in Sandy Bar.

“If y'u need me,” began Early, “I'll be——”

“Here's where I need you, Pete. You handle this end of the deal all right, and I'll get along at the Rey Niño. Adios, pard!”

“Hasta la vista, compadre!”

“Hasta luego, Pete!”

And thereupon, with a rattle of spurs, Red the Sudden was away on the trail to Noches.

CHAPTER V.

In the Nick of Time.

FOR some reason Rufus McGowan had never married. Shortly after Traill had given up prospecting and followed his fortunes to Trinidad, McGowan lost his desire to roam the deserts and decided to settle down. He selected the desert-locked town of Buenas Noches for his home, bought a little house, furnished it, and had the girl whom he always referred to as his “kid sister” come out from Santa Ana, California, and take care of the domestic establishment for him.

Although Traill had heard much of Kitty McGowan he had never seen her. The tear-stained letter she had sent to Trinidad was the only communication he had ever received from her. It went to his heart.

You were the friend of my brother Rufus and he loved you as a brother.

Mr. Traill, Rufus is—gone. I am inclosing a clipping from the local paper which will give you a few of the details. But there are details—gossip that has not found its way into print—that hurt and humiliate me because they reflect upon the integrity of my brother, the best man that ever lived.

Oh, I do need a friend in this black hour, and scarcely know which way to turn! Rufus thought so much of you—talked so much of you to me that I cannot feel that we are strangers.

I know you are a man of affairs and more than busy, but if you will let me write to you of all these things that touch my heart and pride concerning Rufus, and will take the time to write me and advise me what to do, the spirit of the man who called you his “pard,” his sworn friend, will bless you for the help you give his distracted sister,

Kitty McGowan.

To this Traill had replied by telegraph:

Coming first train. Gordon.

Here, then, was the cause of his hurry, of his desire to reach Buenas Noches in the shortest possible time.

The sun was low in the west as he spurred into the little town of Good Night, base of supplies for that mining district. Springs of mountain water, their overflow merging into a creek clear as crystal, formed the first and main excuse for starting a town in that part of the hills.

Later, the discovery of rich lodes in the surrounding country justified the site and contributed to the population. A bank, a weekly paper, general stores, real estate and assay offices all contrived to give the little town a metropolitan air in spite of the fact that it was off the railroad and surrounded by miles of desert.

Traill left his horse, Maverick, at the hotel corral, and then went into the hotel with his war bags to scrawl the name of Banford Brezee on the register and to rinse the dust from his face and shake it out of his clothes. Hangers-on regarded him with frank curiosity, and the general wonder deepened and took an unpleasant turn when he inquired the way to McGowan's shack.

“Friend of McGowan's?” quizzed the proprietor, leaning his shirt-sleeved elbows on his six-foot desk.

“What's it to y'u?” snapped Traill, in his best bad-man manner.

He resented the looks that passed from loafer to loafer, and the hint of suspicion in the landlord's query. All this indicated the general feeling with regard to Rufus, dead and gone, and trampled hard on Traill's temper. In his assumed character he was at a disadvantage, for it was not possible for him to parry the subtle thrusts at his friend's reputation without betraying more than was wise.

The sharp retort, and the size of Traill and his ready truculence, won instant respect. The landlord was genial and apologetic in telling him the way to McGowan's, then stared after him with puzzled eyes as he swaggered out and off down the street.

“There's a hard pill, gents,” the landlord remarked; “ready for a ruction any old time, I'll bet, and purty tollable able to give a good account of himself.”

At the edge of town Traill turned in at a white cottage, the home of his friend for years, and now the desolate home of his friend's kid sister. Trumpet vines festooned the small porch, and old-fashioned flowers bloomed in the irrigated garden. Traill considered it all with a swelling heart, and the neatness and order everywhere apparent suggested loving care. That had been really a home for Rufus.

But halfway to the porch Traill paused. An angry voice struck on his ears, a man's voice wafting itself through an open door.

“What's he done with the money he's been stealin' from the mill? He sure turned the amalgam into cash, or someb'dy in cahoots with him did. I reckon you can get your hands on enough dinero to settle this bill—I sure have been carryin' it as long as I'm goin' to. Come across!”

Then a girlish voice, trembling pathetically:

“Mr. Rackley, you are unjust! My brother never stole from the Rey Niño mill—it is all a lie. Please give me a little time and all bills will be paid in full. Can't you have just a little consideration for me?”

“You're holdin' out on me!” blustered the man; “and I believe y'u know all about that amalgam stealin' and are jest waitin' to skip out o' Noches between two days. I won't——”

In three jumps Traill landed on the porch. The next moment the screen door slammed behind him and he stood in a small living room, facing a hulk of a man in shirt sleeves and a badly frightened young woman. Kitty McGowan and Rackley stared in amazement at the newcomer in the checkered shirt and battered Stetson.

“My name's Brezee,” Traill whooped, “and I'm as hard as they make 'em, but I won't stand fer no moharrie bein' tromped on by a cimiroon o' yore stripe.”

He laid rough hands on the astonished Rackley and heaved him through the doorway without bothering about the screen. Rackley landed in a demoralized heap, and the girl stifled a scream.

“Oh, please, please!” she begged of Traill; then, at the screen door, she went on tremulously; “I am sorry, Mr. Rackley; indeed——”

“I got the number of that desperado!” fumed Rackley, hoisting himself to his feet and arranging his disordered clothing; “and, what's more, I'll have the law on him—and on you, too, for harborin' such a character. This ain't the last of this!”

He moved away rapidly, warily looking backward as he went. The girl, flaxen-haired and brown-eyed, turned on Traill.

“You should not have done such a thing!” she cried; “whatever possessed you to come into my house and interfere in such a way?”

“I'll not have the sister of Rufus McGowan bullyragged by a bill collector,” answered Traill, mildly. He dropped his voice. “Weren't you expecting me?” he asked; “didn't you get my telegram?”

“Why, why——” The girl was bewildered. “Your name isn't——”

“Yes, it is—Traill, Gordon Traill, here to see that my friend and my friend's sister get a square deal. Traill is the name, Miss McGowan, but you are to forget that for a while and call me Siwash Brezee.”

This, then, was the first meeting of Red the Sudden with the kid sister. Perhaps it was well enough, all things considered.

CHAPTER VI.

Shadows of Suspicion.

AT the low ebb of her fortunes, Kitty McGowan had found a friend. Tears brimmed her brown eyes as the realization came home to her. Sitting face to face with Traill in the little living room, she opened the floodgates of her heart with a story of injustice that made his blood fairly boil.

Rufus was being called a thief on the evidence of the bag of amalgam found beside him at the foot of the Boldero Cliffs. Jud Frawley and a deputy sheriff had searched the cottage, and had found another small bag of amalgam in Rufus' room.

“It was in a dresser drawer,” the girl said. “Rufe came home every morning—he was on the night shift—and left for the mine after an early supper in the afternoon. I took care of his room work in the evening; and on that last night when I cleaned up his room and put away some of his clothes, there was no amalgam in any of the dresser drawers!”

She struck her hands together convulsively and insisted with tearful earnestness: “Oh, Mr. Traill, I don't know! How was it that the amalgam came to be in the dresser? Rufe hadn't been back to the house—he didn't come back until they carried him here for the funeral.”

“A plant,” commented Traill, with a scowl. “Did he have any enemies?”

“He never made enemies. Everybody was his friend. After the amalgam was found in this house, though, the whole town seemed to turn against him—and me. I was teaching school, and the school board discharged me at once. We owed some bills, and all our creditors began demanding payment.

“There's a mortgage on this house. You see, Rufus had to go in debt for it, and was paying for the place on a contract. Payments were overdue. Brother bought that piano for me on installments, and Mr. Rackley has been coming here every day to get the balance due on it. If they hadn't taken the school away from me I could have paid everything in time; but I had very little consideration from anybody.”

“Didn't any of them stop to think,” flared Traill, “that if Rufe had been stealing steadily from the mill he would have had money to pay his debts?”

“They think, or say that they think, he was hoarding his dishonest returns and that he and I were planning, when the right time came, to steal away and leave our creditors in the lurch. I can't begin to tell you what terrible things have been said about us, Mr. Traill!” the girl finished, with a half sob.

“That will all be ironed out before I leave here,” he told her encouragingly; “that's my job, Kitty, and I'm going to see it through.”

“But you can't!” she murmured, as by a sudden thought. “I didn't want you to come here. I wrote that letter to learn whether you were still in Trinidad, and get your permission to write another letter telling you everything, so that I might have a friend's advice as to what I should do. Why, you are under suspicion yourself!”

“Because of that one word Rufus wrote in the sand?” queried Traill.

“Yes. Rufus had told others about his friend, Traill; and pretty soon Mr. Frawley began to consider you as a confederate in the stealings.” The girl was worried, and kept peering anxiously toward the street. “Mr. Rackley may send an officer here at any minute; and when they learn that you are Gordon Traill, it won't be possible for you to do a thing to help Rufus or me. Oh, I am sorry you came! It is going to mean a lot of trouble for you!”

“Just a minute, Kitty,” Traill interposed. “Nobody knows me in this part of the country. I am registered at the Plaza Hotel as Banford Brezee. Don't call me by my real name any more—let's keep that in the background. I'm Brezee, Siwash Brezee.”

“Frawley will discover the trick——”

“I don't think so. As Siwash Brezee I have a letter of recommendation to him from a friend of his in Albuquerque. It is a bona-fide letter, too.”

He showed the letter to her and explained the circumstances under which he had secured it. Also, he told the gir1 how Early was holding Brezee a prisoner in his shaft at the Cowboy's Pride.

“Everything,” he added, “is all set for my advent at the Rey Niño Mine. I'm at a big advantage in starting my work there for Rufus.”

“But Frawley will learn of your visit here,” insisted Kitty, “and of the way you treated Rackley. You have proved yourself a friend of mine—and that will count against you. I am afraid for you, Mr. Tr—Mr. Brezee! I——” She broke off abruptly and started to her feet in wild alarm. “They're coming!” she whispered; “Mr. Rackley with Mr. Jessup, the deputy sheriff!”

Through the open door Traill could see the two men advancing along the walk, the flushed and furious Rackley piloting the officer of the law.

“Don't you be scared, Kitty,” Traill told the girl soothingly; “I'll pull out of this in a way to surprise you. Just sit tight and leave it to me.”

There was that in Traill's voice and manner which the girl found reassuring. With an effort, she controlled herself and stepped to the door.

“I'm back ag'in, young woman,” said Rackley belligerently, “and I've got some one along who'll take care of that tough hombre that made the assault on me. I'll show him that no stranger can pull a rough house in this town and get away with it.”

“Is the man here yet, Miss McGowan?” Jessup inquired.

“Yes,” was the answer. “Come in.”

Traill, in a rocking chair, was calmly lighting a cigar. He looked up as the deputy sheriff and Rackley faced him.

“Who are you,” demanded Jessup curtly, “and where are you from?”

“I reckon y'u can call me Siwash Brezee,” said Traill; “and, if y'u want, y'u can put my hailin' place in Albuquerque.”

“What business you got layin' hands on Mr. Rackley here?” went on Jessup.

“That coyote was bullyraggin' Miss McGowan over a bill; and I reckoned Miss McGowan's uncle would be right pleased if I stepped in and manhandled this Rackley. That's all I done.”

“Miss McGowan's uncle?” echoed Jessup.

“Sure; her uncle in Albuquerque. He couldn't get away, so he sent me down here with money to settle her bills. How much is yourn, Rackley?”

“Eighty dollars,” said Rackley promptly.

Traill pulled the fat wallet from his pocket and extracted eighty dollars from it.

“Y'u can give Miss McGowan a receipt,” Traill remarked, “and then ditch yerself. If Miss McGowan buys any more pianners she won't get 'em from you.”

The girl fluttered her hands helplessly and sank into a chair.

“Why didn't you tell me this before?” queried Rackley, busy with a pencil and a notebook.

CHAPTER VII.

The Matter of Credentials.

MONEY talks in all languages; and it talked louder and more compellingly to Rackley than to any other man in Buenas Noches. His fishy eyes glimmered at the sight of the treasure in the wallet, and he clamped his fingers on his eighty dollars and gave up the receipt.

“Mebby I was a little rough in talkin' with Miss McGowan,” he said grudgingly, “but I was afeared I wasn't ever going to collect this bill.”

“Well,” returned Traill sarcastically, “y'u won't have to lose any more sleep arter this. Clear out!”

“I ain't done with you yet,” clamored Rackley. “Jessup, I've got an assault and battery charge ag'inst this Brezee. I'm goin' to push it.”

“Afore y'u fall in with that tinhorn's idees, Jessup,” said Traill, “y'u might cast yore peepers on these here credentials o' mine.”

He handed the letter of introduction to the deputy sheriff. The latter studied the address on the envelope, and was visibly impressed; he read the inclosed letter, and was still more impressed. Possibly Frawley was a friend of his; at any rate, the superintendent was a man of considerable importance in the community, and interfering in Frawley's affairs was, for Jessup, a proceeding of doubtful policy.

Thoughtfully he returned the letter to Traill.

“I don't reckon, Rackley,” said he, “that we want to bother Mr. Brezee any.”

“He threw me out of that door,” fussed Rackley, “and it wasn't any way for one white man to treat another.”

“Y'u wasn't actin' white with the lady,” asserted Traill.

“We'll let it go at that,” decided Jessup.

The two callers left, and Traill turned with a smile to Kitty McGowan.

“That's one debt off your hands, anyhow,” said he.

“Not off my hands,” she answered; “it is merely transferred. I have no uncle in Albuquerque.”

“What I said was perhaps a trifle unethical,” reasoned Traill, “but before I leave Buenas Noches I'll correct that little statement. It's evident that we're dealing with crooks, at the Rey Niño, who are shielding themselves at the expense of Rufus. I am going to smash that combination, but I can't be so open and above-board for the present as I should like. You understand that, don't you?”

The girl considered, and finally agreed with him.

“I suppose,” she said, “that a certain amount of deceit is warranted. My brother's name must be cleared, and your way is probably the only one that will serve. Certainly, if you had come here as Gordon Traill you would have found yourself in difficulties. Just by this call on me you have added to your danger. Mr. Frawley will know all about your acting for that mythical uncle; and, before your letter of recommendation will be of much help to you, that is something you will be called on to explain.”

“I am good at explaining,” returned Traill, with a laugh. “Was Frawley a friend of Rufe's?”

“We thought so, until the—the terrible thing that happened at the mine. Now he seems to be thoroughly convinced that Rufus was one of the thieves who have been raiding the mill. Probably he intended using Brezee in an attempt to discover who the real thieves are—my brother's supposed confederates, I mean.”

“That is my hope!” declared Traill; “and it should be your hope as well as mine.”

“But the danger—the danger to you!”

Traill shrugged and gave a careless gesture. “Don't magnify that side of it, Kitty,” he requested. “I know these deserts, and the ways of the men, good, bad, and indifferent, who come and go in them. I can take care of myself, believe me, while I'm working for my old pard.”

He got to his feet and put out his hand. In the hand he held most of the bank notes that had remained in the wallet.

“I'm going back to the hotel, to swagger and play the game,” he went on; “meanwhile, there is a thousand in cold cash. It is not a loan, and it is not a gift. Some time ago Rufe wrote me that he had filed on a mining claim in your name. I'm buying an interest in it; and, if you like, you can quit claim the interest to me. There's no hurry about that.”

“Rufe never thought that claim amounted to much,” protested the girl; “you're doing this merely to help me, and not because you——”

“I can afford it,” cut in Traill. “Are you going to deny me the right to help Rufus in this little matter of helping his sister? I really want an interest in that claim.”

Again there were tears in Kitty McGowan's eyes. She clasped Traill's hand in both her own.

“I'll not refuse,” she murmured; “I can't. I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“You'll hear from me later,” said Traill, huskily, and turned abruptly and left the house.

The troubles of the kid sister were twisting themselves in his heartstrings.

“For Rufus and for her,” he muttered; “that is the work I have ahead of me.”

As he drew close to the hotel, he saw a dusty automobile parked in front. A man in a panama hat was in the driver's seat talking with another man who stood beside the car. Jessup was the man on the ground.

The deputy sheriff caught sight of Traill, said something to the man in the car, and the latter turned a pair of sharp eyes in Traill's direction.

“Just a minute!” he called to Traill. Jumping down from the machine, he crossed the walk to Traill's side. “I've just been talking with Jessup,” he remarked. “I hear you've been shaking the plum tree for the McGowan girl. Is that right?”

“It's my own plum tree,” growled Traill, “and I shake it whenever I blame' please. And that's my business.”

“It happens to be mine, too. My name's Frawley, and I'm superintendent at the Rey Niño Mine. You've got a letter for me, I'm told. You've been showing it around. Didn't Coggswell tell you it was personal?”

“Sure,” answered Traill; “but it's my credentials and I had to give Jessup a look at it. Now y'u can give it the onceover fer yerself.”

He put the letter in the super's hands, and waited while he stood reading it. Frawley was uneasy and apprehensive.

“Well,” he went on, “I reckon I can give you a job at the Rey Niño, especially since you come so well recommended by my old friend, Coggswell. After you have your supper, come to this car and wait for me. I'll give you a lift to the mine.”

Traill watched him cross the street and enter a music store. “D. W. Rackley” was the name over the door of the establishment.

“He's pumped Jessup about me,” thought Traill, “and now he's going to pump Rackley. All right; here's where the war begins.”

CHAPTER VIII.

The Super Hides His Hand.

THE letter of recommendation, given originally by Coggswell to Brezee, had so intrigued Traill's interest at the first reading that instantly the plan of understudying Brezee had become a fixed idea:

Well, Jud, this letter will be delivered to you by Banford, otherwise “Siwash” Brezee, who is just the man you have asked me to send you.

Your specifications require that the man shall be unknown in your part of the country. Check that. He must know how to handle a gun and use his fists. Check. Plenty of sand. Check. Ready to carry out any orders without question and to hold his tongue—providing he is well paid for it. Check again.

Brezee has handled some delicate undertakings for me, so I am in a position to vouch for him. You will like his work.

Yours as ever,

Mack Coggswell.

According to this, it will be seen that Brezee was an applicant for a job at the Rey Niño Mine; but not an applicant in the sense that Frawley sought to make it appear by his statement that he “could give him a job.” This business of the super's was special and particular, and he was passing it off in a general manner.

He had given his specifications and requested Coggswell to send on a man who would fill them; and now he was subtly making it appear that Coggswell was taking the initiative and trying to get a man in at the Rey Niño. Traill guessed that this impression was for the general public.

Jessup, however, had seen the letter, and he knew that Frawley had sent out of town for a stranger with nerve. Hence Frawley's irritation in discovering that a very personal matter had been aired for the deputy sheriff's information. He seemed to have squared that with Jessup, if Traill was any judge.

Traill was half through his supper when Frawley walked into the hotel dining room. He sat down beside Traill, and they were the only ones at that table.

“What's the name of the girl's uncle in Albuquerque?” inquired the super.

“Morton J. Quigley,” said Traill, meeting the sudden emergency with his usual resourcefulness.

Frawley wrote down the name. “Is he a friend of Coggswell's?” he wanted to know.

“I reckon they must know each other, both bein' prominent.”

Traill pushed back from the table, noisily smacking his lips over the last of his pie.

“Put your dunnage in the car, Brezee,” instructed Frawley, “and wait there for me.”

“I rode over from Sandy Bar and I got a caballo in the corral,” said Traill.

“I'll have the horse sent out to the mine to-morrow,” was the super's response, “but I'll expect you to ride with me.”

“C'rect.”

Traill settled his bill, put his war bags in the car, lighted a long “stogie” and moved down the street. He found the place he wanted—the telegraph office; and he went in and sent this message.

Morton J. Quigley,
Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Saw your niece, Miss Kitty McGowan, and handed over dinero you sent. She's plumb grateful. Red.

Back in the car in front of the hotel, Traill sat in the front seat imagining Quigley's surprise when he received that message. Quigley was another old friend of Traill; and, to Quigley, Traill was always Red.

“Quig will know that comes from me,” thought Traill, “and if Frawley starts any investigation through Coggswell, Quig will follow my tip and protect that gap in my fence. If the super finds I've been telegraphing, and persuades the operator to show him my telegram, all he'll make out of it is just a plain report.”

When Frawley emerged from the hotel he walked up the street. Traill saw him turn in at the telegraph office.

“He's wiring Coggswell,” theorized Traill, “and asking him to find out if there's such a man as Quigley in Albuquerque; and, if there is, if Quigley has a niece in Buenas Noches.” He chuckled. “If Coggswell gets too inquisitive,” he was well assured, “Quig will kick him out of his office.”

In due course, Frawley returned to the car, climbed into the driver's seat, manipulated the switches and bore down on the self-starter. He had a poker face and, whatever his feelings, he did not betray them. Nothing was said about telegrams.

“Coggswell knows the sort of man I want,” the super remarked, as the car left town and sped along the desert trail, “and he says you're just the hombre to fill the bill. I've got a lot of respect for Coggswell's judgment, but the business I've got on hand is mighty important, and it is necessary for me to make sure of your abilities. Until I'm personally satisfied, you'll loaf around the camp, taking things as they come and waiting to hear from me. Above all, keep your trap closed. The way you showed that letter around hasn't made any sort of a hit with me.”

“The way I had to bump Rackley,” explained Traill, “got me in wrong with that deperty sher'ff. I figgered that if Jessup knowed I was comin' to see you, he'd leave me alone.”

“That's the only reason he did leave you alone. Rackley's a friend of mine, and from now on he's no friend of yours. It's unfortunate, Brezee. I've got to figure out whether you're here to get a job with me, or to help Quigley help his niece. It doesn't look fifty-fifty from where we stand. How in blazes did you happen to load up with work for Quigley at a time Coggswell was sending you to me?”

“Happenchance,” said Traill.

“We'll let it go at that—for now,” remarked the super.

If it had been possible for Traill to feel uneasy, he might have shied a little at the prospect ahead of him. In calling on Kitty McGowan and in giving her his help, he had piled up difficulties for himself in his assumed rôle. Traill would have been dense indeed not to realize that Frawley held him under suspicion. Nevertheless, he made little of that.

The one thing that counted with him was this: He was to be on the scene of his friend Rufus McGowan's tragic troubles. Suspected or otherwise, he was to occupy a favored position with regard to the mystery of the stamp mill.

Ten miles out of Buenas Noches, the car mounted a rise and rolled down a slope into a valley.

“There's our camp, Brezee,” announced Frawley; “loyalty is rewarded in this hangout, but underhand schemers abandon hope when they drop into this valley.”

This was undoubtedly intended to be significant. Traill laughed.

“Sure, super,” was his comment; “I reckon I get you. Where do I hang up my hat in this hangout and begin to loaf?”

CHAPTER IX.

Strenuous Loafing.

THE valley was shallow, except well to the rear of the mill where Boldero Cliffs broke away in a sheer two-hundred-foot drop. Traill had a glimpse of the precipitous walls from the rimrock as Frawley drove the car on into the camp. The thought of Rufus, crumpled at the foot of the cliffs, crossed his mind. If his purpose had needed hardening, that one thought would have turned the trick.

Rufus, with the last of his failing strength, writing that call for his old pard in the shifting sand! Traill turned his narrowing eyes from the cliffs and surveyed the camp itself.

There was the drab mill in the background, roaring and muttering as its iron teeth crunched the ore in the hoppers. There were the shaft houses, one or two “whips” on ground that was being developed, country rock lying around in grotesque heaps. The cyanide tanks were perched in three steps like a gigantic stair, chuck shanty, bunk house and all the other surface conditions complementing the underground workings. It was not a new scene to Traill, and merely refreshed his old memories.

The clear ring of hammer on anvil came from the blacksmith shop, penetrating the deep diapason of the mill in shrill notes. It was seven in the evening, night-shift men were on the job and day-shift crews were doing their after-supper smoking and loitering in the vicinity of the bunk house.

The sun, just dipping behind the western hills, flung its golden shafts across the scarred valley and gave Traill his first clear perspective of the Rey Niño camp. At the close of the long day he could see nothing novel or unusual in the environment—unless he excepted the Boldero Cliffs.

“Get down here, Brezee,” instructed Frawley, halting the car at the bunk house. “Hey, Craddock!” he called.

A short man got up from a bench and moved toward the car.

“This man, Craddock,” said the super, “is Siwash Brezee. He'll be around here for a while till I get a chance to place him. Show him a bunk. Craddock,” Frawley added to Traill, “is one of the foremen.”

Traill and Craddock looked each other over. They nodded.

“Bring your truck,” ordered the foreman shortly.

The newcomer had a size and a tough swagger that impressed a few of the day-shift crowd, but aroused the ire of others.

“That's where you'll pound your ear, Brezee,” announced Craddock, indicating a cot. “I allow,” he added speculatively, “it'll be long enough, and wide enough. Make yourself at home.”

“It'll be hard enough, too, from the looks,” grunted Traill.

“What do you want in a minin' camp—a four-poster and a mattress?”

“Anythin' goes, old-timer,” said Traill, “purvidin' it goes my way.”

No doubt he was disagreeable; that was part of his scheme in sampling the temper of the men among whom his lot had been cast. Craddock reported negatively to the crowd outside while Traill hung his war bags on a peg. He emerged from the bunk house smoking another of his stogies.

No one welcomed him. Dad Billings, recently transferred from the night to the day shift, looked up from the romance he was reading, studied Traill mildly, and then went on with his story.

There was a gap among the tier of miners perched on the long bench. It was not wide enough for Traill, but he shoved into it with a humorous remark about there always being “room for one more.” Dad, on the end of the bench, was crowded off.

“Where was you brought up—in a saw mill?” demanded a husky miner who was being badly crowded.

“Nary,” said Traill; “I was brought up in a bunk house where the benches was a mite longer, and a new hand was given glad greetings. I cut my eye teeth on a six-gun, compadres, and walloped my way through life with my fists. That's me, Siwash Brezee, and don't y'u fergit it!”

“I've seen Siwashes,” went on the husky miner in a tone that meant trouble, “and I'm free to say you stack up purty fair with the tribe. Hyas tyee mika—but you're not big enough to crowd me!”

He heaved Traill off the bench; and Dad Billings put away his romance and cackled delightedly.

“Masatche nika tum tum copa mika!” Traill yelped. “Step out here, kamooks, and let's see who owns that bench?”

The invitation was promptly accepted; and, in less than a minute, a ring of delighted day-shift men were watching “Chuck” Turley, their big, two-fisted heavyweight, stage an impromptu bout with the new hand. The sun was down, by that time, but the afterglow filled the zenith and afforded plenty of light. Frawley strolled over from the boiler-plate garage where he kept the camp car, and became an interested observer.

“Want it stopped, Jud?” asked Craddock.

The super shook his head. “Let's see whether he's the real goods,” he answered, “or only a pretender.”

It had been a long time since Traill had indulged in such rough work, but he had a game to play and a reputation to establish. He found, in the preliminary sparring, that his footwork was as good as ever and his skill in the “manly art” as clever as in the old Cochise days.

He played with Turley, and gave him a sample of feints, guards and passes that was altogether new to him. Finally, catching a glimpse of the rising interest in the super's eyes, Traill laid Turley on his back—and then stood over him waiting for him to recover and resume hostilities.

Turley recovered, but he did not “resume.” “You can have the whole bench, amigo,” he said, nursing his chin. “You got a punch like the kick of a mule, and a bag o' tricks I never seen before. Kopet! I'm through. Mebbe some of the others would like to take you on where I leave off.”

None of the others, however, were in the mood. If their champion had toppled under the prowess of this new hand, what chance would any of the rest of them have?

Traill had proved that he was no pretender, at least with his fists. The general respect for him had been heightened immeasurably: and he walked over to the deserted bench, recovered the stogie he had left on a window sill, and fell calmly to puffing smoke into the growing dusk.

“By gorry,” breathed Dad Billings, “he's got the goods! If he bosses Turley, he bosses this camp. I better stand in with him. Howdy, Siwash?” he said, moving over to the bench and extending his hand amicably.

Frawley, a thoughtful look on his face, went on toward the mill.

CHAPTER X.

The Super Opens His Play.

IT was evident to Traill that the Rey Niño camp was a tough one. “Jail bird” was written large in the faces of most of the men. The law's ragtag and bobtail seemed to have taken refuge there as though drawn by some prospect of immunity for past misdeeds. This was Traill's first impression and, little by little, his experiences brought firm conviction.

An iron hand alone could keep such a crowd of undesirables in proper working order. That hand, of course, was Frawley's. Traill's estimate of the super's capabilities rose higher with his growing acquaintance with the super's environment. Undoubtedly Frawley had a character of force and decision, and a strong arm that was greatly feared.

Not all the miners and mill men, however, were of the border riffraff. There had been men in the camp like Rufus McGowan, and there were other men on the pay roll like Dad Billings—square as a die. That they risked much in such evil surroundings all must have known; but the lure of a job at good wages has plunged many an honest man into similar conditions, and held him there. McGowan had paid the penalty.

Traill had bested Chuck Turley. This proof of prowess did not make him popular, but, coupled with the swagger of a bully and a bravo, it made him feared. This, considering the character of the camp, was the reputation he considered necessary. He was working, against difficulties, for the confidence of Jud Frawley. Next morning, after breakfast, he had proof that his efforts were carrying him in the right direction.

A man drove into camp in a dusty flivver. “Another telegraft message from Ole Boliver, at Los Angeles,” was the talk that reached Traill's ears.

“Who is Boliver?” he wanted to know.

“The hombre that owns this hull valley,” came the answer. “Every day or two he sends a wire to the super, seein' as how he's worried about the mill clean-ups.”

Shortly after the flivver left camp, Traill was summoned to the super's office, a headquarters adobe that overlooked the entire layout of surface equipment at the Rey Niño.

Frawley, in his shirt sleeves, was smoking a pipe and leaning back comfortably in a desk chair. He indicated a seat in his close vicinity, and Traill dropped into it. A telegram lay on the desk in front of the super.

“Coggswell wires me that Morton J. Quigley is a real person, Brezee, and that he has a niece in Buenas Noches. You win on that count.” Frawley picked up the telegram, looked it over again, and dropped it. “Your acting as agent for Quigley, and being a go-between with McGowan's sister, was unfortunate, but no harm has been done. That is, if you carry out my orders. You are willing to do that without question?”

“If I get what it's worth,” said Traill with an assumption of canniness.

“You will be well repaid—if you are successful. We'll consider that point later when I see how you react to the proposition.

“This mine,” Frawley proceeded, “is owned by Homer Q. Boliver, of Los Angeles. Ordinarily it is just an average producer; but now and then we run into an ore chamber that is phenomenally rich. During the last two months, and for the first time in a couple of years, the mill has been working on bonanza rock. We're close to the end of the rich ore—and Boliver has failed to receive his honest share of it. Brezee, a gang of crooks has been systematically looting the property.”

“High-gradin'?” questioned Traill.

Frawley shook his head. “The trouble,” he explained, “is not in the mine but in the mill. I'm a fox at running down that sort of trouble, but this bunch of calamity has got me buffaloed—or, it did have until McGowan, the night amalgamator, fell over the cliffs. McGowan gave me my first clew. When we found amalgam at his home in Noches, the case became a cinch.”

“How did y'u figger out the mill was bein' looted?” Traill queried.

“By sampling the ore that went into the hoppers, and by assaying the tailings that came off the plates. The difference would be the amount of amalgam, retorted and run into bars of bullion. But there was a discrepancy, a big discrepancy. In fact, this thieving gang has been getting rich at Boliver's expense. And not until McGowan crashed did I get a line on the underhand operations.

“I figure that the night amalgamator had an attack of conscience, as he lay broken and dying at the foot of the cliffs. I trusted McGowan; he had always seemed to me like a square man; but he stepped off the cliffs in the dark, while taking a bag of stolen amalgam to a confederate. That point is plain enough.”

Traill dissembled his real feelings, and nodded seeming agreement to a conclusion which he knew to be unjust.

Frawley continued: “The last thing McGowan did was to scratch a word in the sand. Undoubtedly it was the beginning of a message, a message that he did not live to finish. But I am as sure of that message as though he had written it out in full. The word was 'Traill.'”

“Huh!” exploded Traill; “he wanted y'u to trail some'un. I get y'u.”

“No,” corrected the super patiently, “you don't get me. The sort of a trail you refer to is spelled with a single 'l.' This one had two 'l's.'”

“What did it stand for?”

“A man's name, Brezee. Traill was a friend of McGowan's, an old pard, according to McGowan's sister. By that word in the sand, McGowan revealed the name of the man who was his confederate in the thieving.”

This was far-fetched, and Traill could see it even if the super couldn't.

“Was McGowan the sort of hombre who'd squeal on an old pard?” he asked.

“Why not? When a man is only a breath or two from Kingdom Come, he feels like wiping the slate clean. McGowan was that sort. He wanted to hit the Long Trail with an easier conscience.”

“So he slammed the other Traill, his old pardner. Looks to me, super, as how y'u was barkin' up the wrong tree.”

“Your reasoning is crude,” countered Frawley testily. “I'm doing the reasoning, and you're here to follow orders. Traill lives in Trinidad and is connected with a smelter. The stolen amalgam was taken to him and he was the fence who ran it into bars and disposed of it. I have information to the effect that Traill left Trinidad mysteriously; and undoubtedly the troubles of McGowan are bringing him to Buenas Noches to cover up his own tracks and dodge responsibility. Your job, Brezee, is to lay for Traill—and get him.”

To “get” a man is a phrase that may run the whole gamut between mere incrimination and a cold-blooded finale. Traill, as Brezee, found himself in a novel situation.

“Let's you and me get down to brass tacks, Frawley,” he suggested; “what d'y'u mean by get?”

CHAPTER XI.

A Tough Proposition.

VERY coolly the super leaned forward to knock the ash out of his pipe. Slowly he refilled it and trailed a lighted match over the bowl. Through the smoke he peered steadily at Traill.

“You're a bit thick, Brezee,” he remarked. “I mean you are to get the goods on Traill, even if you have to get him in the usual Western manner. The crooked game has to be called; one life already has paid the forfeit for lawlessness, and the stolen gold has not been located. Boliver offers five thousand dollars for the discovery and arrest of the thieves, and twenty-five per cent of all the gold recovered. That will be the stake for which you will work.”

“H'm!” mused Traill, reaching for another of his stogies. His novel situation did not have the attractive possibilities he had desired. Trailing Traill would take him away from the mine, the scene of McGowan's undoing, and the one spot where his reputation could be cleared.

“Don't y'u reckon, Frawley, ye're plumb wide of the mark?” he suggested. “I ain't looked over yore night shift much, but in the day crowd I'll gamble there ain't half of 'em above a job of gold stealin'.”

“Look here!” snapped the super, showing temper; “are you prejudiced in favor of McGowan? Has that sister of his been telling you things?”

“I ain't got no prejudice one way or t'other; I'm jest surmisin', and——”

“I made it plain to you that I'd do the surmising.”

“It's a job for Jessup, seems like.”

“He's too well known. The gang is on to him, and he can't make a move that this crooked outfit isn't next to. That's why I want a stranger of the right sort to go after Traill and bring him to time. That's the job. Take it if you want it; or quit here, and go back to town. I'm going to get to the bottom of this deviltry. If you're not the man to help, I'll get somebody else.”

“What sort of a cimiroon is this man Traill?” inquired the man with the smoking stogie.

“Hard as nails—or used to be. Formerly he was over around Cochise, where he had the reputation of being a quick thinker and a tough man to handle. You are both of the red-haired breed,” the super said, with a chuckle, “and the clash between you ought to have its interesting moments.”

“I don't take a back seat fer no hombre that walks!” flared Traill.

“Then you're in on this?”

“Right from the jump.”

Frawley sat back in his chair, seemingly satisfied. “Glad you're coming through,” was his comment; “I didn't really think Coggswell could be wrong in picking his man. Your next move is to go back to the hotel in Noches and watch for Traill. When you find him, follow him. What you do after that is up to you—and no one else. If you need help, communicate with Jessup.

“My first intention was to let Traill come to this mine, then land on him and jail him. On second thought, it struck me that such direct methods wouldn't get us anywhere. It is necessary to work more secretly, and to give Traill plenty of rope. When he comes, he'll get in touch with other members of the gang. How many there are, I don't know.

“By watching Traill you should be able to get a line on them; and, through them, we can get him. Shadow the girl. You ought to have a stand-in there, and it's possible she's communicating with some of her brother's old crowd. If you can get the low-down on this through the girl, the incident of your acting as go-between for Quigley won't be so unfortunate, after all.”

Of all the unpleasant circumstances connected with understudying Siwash Brezee, this suggestion of Frawley's was the hardest to bear. Traill, however, had elected to follow that particular course and it was too late to turn back. He had to see it through.

“I reckon you'll take me back to town?” he asked.

“Your horse is in the camp corral, and it's best for me not to be seen with you any more, Brezee,” said Frawley. “I've decided I don't want you to work in this camp. That will be your excuse for returning to Noches.”

“C'rect. I'm one o' these fast workers, and I reckon I'll be movin'.”

He got up from his chair with a seeming alacrity he was far from feeling, and went back to the bunk house. The night-shift men were snoring in their cots. He took down his war bags, left the building and stood for a space surveying the mill.

“It's a tough proposition,” he thought. “The easiest way to clear up this matter for Rufus is to hang on here and spot the real thieves somewhere in this ornery crowd of mine and mill men. It's an inside job, no mistake about that. By trying to understudy Brezee, I've cut myself loose from the one place where I ought to be.”

On his way to the corral, he met Craddock making for the blacksmith shop with a bunch of drills that needed repointing.

“Pullin' out?” queried the foreman.

“The super allows he can't use me here in the camp,” growled Traill. “He ain't lookin' fer real men but has-beens.”

Craddock grinned. “You're probably short on minin' experience, Brezee,” he hazarded. “No room here for anybody that can't handle a pick, load a hole or dress down the mill plates. You've got a way with your fists, though, that's right compellin'.”

The foreman was pleased with the ditching of Traill, so pleased that he showed it. He went on to the blacksmith shop, and Traill turned to a watering trough and filled his canteen from an iron pipe that brought water from a distant reservoir.

Maverick, just as the super had said, was fraternizing with other horses in the camp corral. Traill found his riding gear in a hay shed, saddled up, mounted and set out on the back trail. It was one of the few times in his life when he was thoroughly disappointed with himself.

And the hard luck did not stop there. Halfway to town he sighted a dust cloud moving rapidly in his direction. The cloud was whipped aside and revealed a surprise. Early, owner of the Cowboy's Pride, was riding south at a speed that was trying the endurance of the horse he bestrode. He bleated wildly, and a bit joyously, at sight of Traill.

“Gordon, if it ain't!” He pulled his dusty mount to a halt alongside his friend. “I didn't reckon on no such luck as this. I got bad news, old-timer!”

“I can guess what it is, Pete,” said Traill. “Brezee gave you the slip.”

“How'n blazes did y'u know?” gasped Early.

“When Johnny Hardluck strikes out, he always lands on me three times. This is No. 2. How did it happen?”

CHAPTER XII.

Up in the Air.

THE little sister of Old Man Mañana, Poco Tiempo, had been flirting with Early as usual. In spite of Traill's warning, Early's temperamental weakness had given Siwash Brezee his chance. The angular Early was badly collapsed and abjectedly regretful as he pointed his horse townward, rode stirrup to stirrup with Traill and frankly described his undoing.

“It was that blamed windlass, rope, Gordy. Y'u told me to strip it off'n the windlass, so'st it couldn't slip back into the shaft and drop into Brezee's mitts. I allowed I'd do that, but I had a busted bridle to mend, and one thing another kept comin' up all arternoon so'st I didn't get around to take off the windlass rope. When I went to bed that night, she was still on the drum.

“Way I figger it, the oxhide bucket at the end o' the rope was settin' a leetle over the platform openin'. Brezee must 'a' shied rocks at it, although heavin' stones up a fifty-foot shaft ain't no easy matter. Still an' all, that's the only method he had o' coaxin' the heavy bucket to spill itself into the shaft and drop down, draggin' the cable with it.

“I was sleepin' good, when I heerd the creakin' o' the windlass. It hadn't been greased very recent and it sure complained somethin' fierce. Mebby if I'd got up right there I'd 'a' been in time to put a crimp into that get-away. But I didn't. I jest reckoned I was havin' a dream so I chided myself for bein' nervous, turned over and dropped off ag'in.

“Next, I heered gallopin' hoofs. They drummed away into the dark—and I give up thinkin' it was a dream. I rushed for the dump and, when I seen the rope hangin' in the shaft—well, I ain't got no words for tellin' y'u how plumb discouraged I was. Y'u see, Gordon, I knowed what it meant to you. Worst of it all was, Brezee had taken my bronc.

“I set off afoot on the trail, movin' in the general direction of Noches. I never was much good at hikin', but that was all I could do, and the way these bowlegs o' mine dusted along that trail would 'a' been a sight for sore eyes. It was night, and nobody travelin' that could gi'me a lift. It was five a.m. when I made Hamp Little's claim, the Hornet, eight miles from the Cowboy's Pride. Hamp's hoss, Flareback, happened to be a mule; and me and the mule went on to'rds town. That is, some o' the time we went on, but there was long spells when Flareback run true to name and balked on me. I wasted more cusswords on that mule, Gordon, than any mule skinner ever did on a gov'ment six in a mudhole.

“It was seven o'clock when Flareback made up his mind to land me in Buenas Noches. I didn't stop for no breakfast, not me. I was worryin' my old head off about you, out at the Rey Niño, playin' the part of Brezee with Brezee himself stormin' in on y'u and scramblin' yer game. I got a bronc at the hotel corral—this un—and sure kicked up the dust. Then, lo an' behold y'u, I find y'u makin' fer town.”

Early wiped the dust and sweat from his brows.

“It was some relief, I'll tell the world! How'd y'u get out of that pinch, Gordon? When the real Brezee blowed in on y'u, how'd y'u manage to get into the clear?”

Traill had listened patiently and, to his credit, tolerantly, to his old friend's tale of woe. Knowing Early as he did, and being fully aware of all his merits and demerits, he was blaming himself for trusting his friend in the important matter of guarding Brezee. Pete Early meant well, always, but he was constitutionally unable to measure up to his high ideals of service.

“Don't worry about it, Pete,” said Traill. “Brezee didn't show up in the mining camp last night. I put my play over with Frawley, and he has sent me to town to get a man named Traill.” The man from Trinidad grinned. “I'm to land on myself and put myself out of business. Do you get the joke?”

The long, lanky cowboy, after receiving more enlightening details, doubled over his saddle horn and shook with mirth. But his laughter died abruptly and he turned an anxious face to his friend.

“Listen, though,” he cried; “Gordon, what in blazes has become o' that Brezee person? He had plenty o' time to reach the Rey Niño by sunup. If he didn't get to the mine, where d'y'u reckon he's gone?”

Traill was already considering that point.

“It's anybody's guess, Pete,” he reasoned. “He laid for me in the trail and tried to make off with my horse and personal property. I called that play; but he may be afraid to show himself, thinking I'll proceed to put him in the Noches jail. It's possible he's legging it out of the country as fast as your horse can travel. If that is what happened, I'll still be Brezee to Frawley; and, apart from the loss of your bronc, no great harm has been done.”

Early was greatly cheered by this.

“Hang the caballo!” he exclaimed; “that sorrel Starface was sure a good cow hoss, but I'm willin' to give him up if he's only totin' Brezee into places unknown, where he can't bother.”

“On the other hand,” continued Traill, “Brezee knows the law will be after him and he may keep away from it by hiding out and avoiding travelers on the way to the Rey Niño camp.”

“D'y'u reckon he'll go there anyway?”

“He may—avoiding Noches and keeping out of sight as much as he can. If that's what he's up to, it would account for the slow time he's making in getting to Frawley at the Rey Niño.”

“I don't reckon he'll try that,” decided Early. “He wouldn't want to put himself in Frawley's hands, even to call that bluff o' yorn, knowin' the law will be on his trail. No, Gordon, I'll gamble a blue stack that the stick-up boy has left these parts for good.”

“You know the sort of camp the Rey Niño is, don't you?” inquired Traill. “Two-thirds of the gang out there have had the law on their trail, at some time or other; in fact, a lot of them may be wanted now. The camp, it strikes me, is a sort of refuge for some of the hard cases at large in these deserts. If Brezee understands that, he may take a chance on Frawley.”

Early's serenity was badly ruffled again.

“That's so,” he agreed. “How y'u goin' to know if Brezee got to Frawley?”

“I'll wait in Noches according to the super's instructions,” said Traill. “If Jessup shows up and invites me over to the cooler, I'll know he's had a talk with Brezee.”

“And what'll y'u do in that case?”

“Pete,” returned Traill easily, “I never cross these trouble bridges until I get to them. If worse comes to worst, I'll take care of myself somehow.”

“That was allers yer way in the Cochise days,” speculated Early, “but I'm wonderin' if y'u can do it now!”

CHAPTER XIII.

Possibly a Trap.

IT seemed best that Traill, still posing as Siwash Brezee, should not be seen riding into Buenas Noches with Early. Brezee was a stranger, and hardly the type of man with whom the cowboy-miner would fraternize. Traill argued that he and Early should not appear in the town as friends, or even as acquaintances. It might even be well for Early to show a pronounced dislike for the supposed Brezee.

Acting such a part was not easy for Early; nevertheless, he was won over by the logic of his friend's remarks and agreed to be guided by his suggestion.

Early was first to arrive at the hotel, turn in his horse and take a chair in the lobby. He was there when Traill arrived, put his name on the book and asked for a room.

“Who's that redhead?” Early asked of “Lafe” Carter, the proprietor, when a Jap boy had conducted Traill up the stairs to the second floor.

“Stranger, Pete,” said Carter; “calls himself Brezee. His hair is red and he's got a temper that seems to match it. He went out to the Rey Niño looking for a job, but from the looks of things Frawley wouldn't take him on. Another thing he done when he landed here yesterday—he went to see the McGowan girl.”

Early dropped his voice. “Reckon he's one of that amalgam-stealing gang?” he asked.

“Jessup would be after him if he and Frawley thought that. No, this Brezee brought a wad of dinero for the girl—from an uncle in Albuquerque—and she's been payin' bills. Nobody knows much about this guy, but he sure don't look on the square.”

“I was trimmed by a redhead about his looks and size, oncet,” growled Early; “but that other hombre's name wasn't Brezee.”

“Names are easy come by,” hinted Carter.

“Y'u might gi'me a room next to his, Lafe,” Early requested, with a black scowl, “and if I can find out he's the hombre that hornswoggled me, years ago, the two of us are goin' to lock horns.”

“Glad to oblige you, Pete,” said Carter, “but I won't have any row in this hotel—mind that!”

“I'll trail him outside some'rs,” Early promised, “if he turns out to be the tinhorn that robbed me of a sixty-dollar saddle and the thirty-dollar hoss that was under it.”

Early considered this clever; and no doubt it was, in a way. He had offered a plausible excuse for dark designs against the redhead, and was shown to a room next to Traill's. Climbing on a chair, he removed a tin “thimble” from a stovepipe hole in the partition separating the two rooms, and exultantly regaled his friend with the cleverness he had displayed.

“So far, good,” whispered Traill, “but don't overdo it, Pete.”

“Bank on me, Gordon,” Early answered. “Whenever y'u want a private word with me, rap on the wall and I'll pull out this thing-a-ma-jig and take yer orders on the q. t.”

After a time, Traill went down into the lobby again. “Any one stoppin' here by the name o' Traill?” he asked of Carter.

The proprietor shook his head. “Nary, Mr. Brezee. You expectin' some one of that name?”

“Mebby yes, and mebby no,” said Traill; “but you tip me off if a cimiroon with that label rides in on the stage from Sandy Bar and puts up here.”

“Glad to oblige, Mr. Brezee.”

The rest of that forenoon passed uneventfully. Traill would have liked to while away the time by calling on Kitty McGowan. So far as Frawley was concerned, he was expected to make such a call; but, in the present state of affairs, he felt that it would not be wise.

He and Early had their noonday dinner at the same time, but at different tables. When Traill finished, he halted at Early's chair on his way out of the dining room.

“You ever seen me before, pilgrim?” he demanded, a note of hostility in his voice.”

“That's somethin' I'm tryin' to figger out,” Early answered.

“Well, when ye're done figgerin', gi'me the result. Mebby it'll mean an eye opener for y'u.”

Traill swaggered on.

“He means an eye closer,” commented a diner across from Early. “He knocked out Chuck Turley, at the Rey Niño, last night. Bad egg!”

“I'll use cold lead on 'im if he makes any pass at me,” threatened Early.

It was two in the afternoon when no less a person than Turley, the defeated champion, drove up to the hotel in the dusty camp flivver. He made his way into the lobby and looked around at the various people in the armchairs. One man was smoking a stogie and watching a game of checkers. Turley walked over to him, took his arm and drew him aside.

“The Boss has changed his mind about you, Siwash,” said Turley. “He wants you back.”

“I reckoned he'd come to his oats,” returned Traill, in the large and confident manner he was using as Brezee. “I'll travel back with y'u in the flivver.”

“No, that ain't the way of it. This here is a saddle job, Jud says, and you're to ride out on that bronc of yours and meet him at the p'int where the trail twists through Pima Pass.”

Turley dropped his voice.

“Bring two canteens and a bag o' grub,” he went on; “also, your guns. Better start as soon as the heat o' the day has slackened a bit—say at four o'clock.”

“I'll be there,” said Traill heartily.

But the heartiness was assumed. He watched Turley leave the hotel, climb into the car and roll away down the street. Then he walked upstairs to his room, and rapped on the partition.

“What's new, compadre?” whispered Early, through the stovepipe hole.

Traill told of the summons from Frawley.

“Trap!” muttered Early; “Brezee has got to Frawley, and instead o' turnin' y'u over to Jessup as a suspect, the super's got another trick up his sleeve.”

“Possibly,” assented Traill; “possibly, too, everything is O. K., and I'll get my chance to do something for Rufus.”

“Don't y'u go, Gordon!” breathed the other earnestly.

“Oh, I'm going, Pete, but I'm going prepared. You're to give me some real help this time—if I need it. Cut out the poco tiempo business, pard, and see if you can be on the job. Here's what I want you to do.”

CHAPTER XIV.

The Water Hole.

IT was nearly seven o'clock in the afternoon when Traill came loping easily to the north end of Pima Pass. A man on a big buckskin horse spurred clear of the entrance to the pass and faced him in the trail. It was Frawley.

Traill was already admiring Frawley for the way he held that tough camp of his together, commanded discipline and forced the lawless to honest effort. The erect, capable figure on the buckskin now filled his eye and still further aroused his enthusiasm.

The super's sphinxlike face was as clear and calm as a day in June. Traill searched it in vain for any telltale evidence of a recent meeting with Siwash Brezee. The manner of Jud Frawley, however, indicated a growing regard for the supposed stranger from Albuquerque.

“Shake, Siwash!” he said, extending his hand. “We're away from that mob of camp roughnecks, by ourselves out here in the desert, and there is a real job ahead of us. Judging from the way you use your fists, you are a man of parts, a real captain, and we're to be a pair of pards in running out this desperate trail.”

Traill was a trifle unsettled by this unexpected show of friendliness, it was so utterly unlike the coldly calculating Frawley of Rey Niño. Nevertheless, he shook hands with the super in assumed heartiness.

“You and me, Jud, are cert'nly a pair to draw to! I knowed y'u was my kind the minute I set eyes on y'u! But what's doin'? Nary a sign o' this amalgam thief in Buenas Noches.”

“He's out in the Jornada,” returned the super, “and we're going out there after him—just the two of us. We'll make the last water hole for a night camp and then make our dash into the Jornada in the morning. You're well heeled, I suppose? And you have two canteens and a bag of grub?”

“Sure—that's what Turley said y'u wanted.”

“Fine! I brought an extra blanket for you from the camp.”

Side by side they turned from the trail, struck into the heart of the low, bleak hills and headed southward for the water hole. Frawley explained as they rode.

“Not many hours after you left camp, Siwash, a prospector called 'Sonora Slim' dropped in at Rey Niño. He pitched camp, last night, at the water hole we're making for now; and while there, he met up with a stranger on a sorrel horse. This stranger had hair as red as yours; and he asked Slim about Mexico—how far it was to the border, what water there was on the way, and so on. Slim says the red-haired stranger acted nervous and suspicious, and it was his guess that he was hustling out of the country to dodge the law.”

Traill turned that over in his mind. This stranger, he reasoned, must be the real Siwash Brezee, fearful of his liberty and fleeing to save it. Early's sorrel horse, and the red hair, seemed to be conclusive on that point.

“This Jornada ain't no pleasant place to run away in,” remarked Traill. “It's right sizable, too, and lookin' for an amalgam thief in the Jornada is a heap like lookin' for a needle in a haystack.”

“In this case our job is not so hopeless,” said Frawley. “Miles to the south of the Jornada's northern rim, there's a hole which occasionally holds a little water. Slim told the red-haired stranger about that, and advised him how to go to reach it. There's not one chance in a hundred that the man will find water there, but he'll take the chance. That is to be our port of call, Siwash. We'll make a dash for it to-morrow. With any luck at all, we'll get there, get Traill, and get back.”

Rolled up in his blanket at the water hole, that night, Traill wondered at the intrepedity of this mine superintendent. He was risking his life to overhaul the supposed gold thief, the confederate of Rufus McGowan. He talked of the dash into the Jornada as he might have talked of a trip from the Rey Niño camp to Buenas Noches.

“He has plenty of nerve, all right,” Traill told himself.

This dash, if successful, brought up another important point. The capture of Brezee would result in the exposure of Traill as Brezee's understudy. This matter, vital though it was, did not shake Traill's confidence in his own resourcefulness.

“I'll take that jump when I get to it,” he decided with easy assurance, and dropped off to sleep.

The bright stars looked coldly down on the water hole, creeping things rustled through the bedraggled mesquite, and the coyotes yelped in the distance. The picketed horses stirred restlessly. The chill of the desert night was the very extreme of the blistering heat by day, and the thoughtfulness of the super in providing a blanket for Traill was greatly appreciated.

Traill was a light sleeper, and he had his belt and holstered guns at his side and within quick and easy reach. Any unusual movement, he knew, would arouse him. A few feet away, in the dusk of the chaparral, Frawley lay in his own blanket as motionless as a log. So the night passed.

The super was astir in the first gray of the morning.

“With an early start, Siwash,” he said to Traill, “we should be out and back by shortly after noon—unless the horses fail us. That animal of yours, now, has he plenty of endurance? He looks to be desert bred.”

“He'll stay with your buckskin, Jud,” asserted Traill, “and when Maverick peters out, we'll both be afoot.”

“Buckskin is a camel,” remarked Frawley; “he'll travel farther on one good drink than any other horse I ever saw.”

The two men gave hasty attention to their cold rations. The buckled belts with their swinging holsters were hung at the saddle horns since wearing the belts as the heat of the day advanced would have been an added discomfort. Blankets were left at the water hole. If another night should find them in the Jornada, with no water at the place described by Sonora Slim, the horses, good as they might be, would be useless; and blankets, for Frawley and Traill, would be of little aid in their extremity.

As the two riders took off, on their left the sun shot up out of the east like a red ball. Ahead of them stretched the Jornada, shadeless, waterless, a plateau a hundred miles across, bleak as the steppes of northern Asia. Soap weed and bony cactus writhed in the lavalike shale, pallid as skeletons. It was a place of lizards and horned toads, with no other living thing in the deathly waste except these riders and their mounts—and possibly the supposed gold thief somewhere in the hazy distance.

“Without water at that place Slim mentioned,” observed Frawley, “we'll find Traill and his sorrel done for—Traill beyond talking.”

“More'n likely,” agreed Traill.

If he could take comfort at another's misfortunes, such a fate for Siwash Brezee would diminish his own difficulties—he could still be Siwash, and Siwash could still be Traill. But to what end? Clearing the name of Rufus seemed further away than ever.

CHAPTER XV.

Jornada del Muerto.

THERE was a threat in the still air and growing heat of the forenoon; a sullen foreboding that came to the two in the Jornada like a grim challenge. Traill and Frawley were both weatherwise and could read the “signs.” Every mile from the water hole might easily be a mile nearer destruction for, with that hint of calamity in the sky, the dangers of the super's dash southward had multiplied incredibly.

“She's fixin' for a blow, Jud,” suggested Traill.

The sun was a mere splotch of red, a brazen shield set in a growing haze. Frawley flashed a look skyward and gave a reckless laugh.

“Let 'er blow,” he answered; “let all the dust of the Jornada shake itself loose and blow with it. What does it all matter if I get Traill?”

There was a depth of animosity, a rabid ferocity in those final words that seemed incongruous to Traill. For once, at least, the super had betrayed his swirling emotions.

“Y'u don't reckon he'll wait for y'u at that old water hole if there ain't no water there, do y'u?”

“Lacking water, he'll have to wait. The sorrel was nearly knocked out when Sonora Slim saw the brute.”

“Why'n blazes is he makin' for Mexico?” puzzled Traill; “seems like he'd have equal chances this side o' the border.”

“We don't know all he's putting behind him, Siwash,” countered Frawley; “that amalgam stealing may be the least of it.”

Once more silence fell between the two; silence broken only by the hard breathing of the horses, a pad of hoofs, a creaking of leather well dusted with flying sand. The haze thickened; but, although the sun became an indistinct blur just short of the zenith, the haze seemed to intensify rather than diminish its heat.

It was becoming increasingly hard to follow the landmarks described by Sonora Slim; but Frawley, by a sort of sixth sense, seemed to pick them out and to keep the course. He showed a familiarity with the Jornada that surprised Traill.

“The old Spaniards,” said the super, wiping the alkali from his eyes and lips, “called this the Desert of Death.”

“I reckon they knowed a thing or two,” commented Traill.

“Scared, Siwash? Do you think we're getting into something we can't get out of?”

Traill laughed. The dust was in his throat and nostrils, and the laugh was more an ill-omened croak than a suggestion of mirth.

“Ye're takin' a long chance to come up with Traill, strikes me; but y'u'll notice I'm standin' by.”

“That's you, Siwash. I'll have to hand Coggswell a vote of thanks for sending me a two-fisted dare-devil. See that notched 'rise' straight ahead?”

Traill saw it dimly, a low hill cleft in twain, its two steep edges falling wide apart.

“Well, that's where Slim's unreliable water hole ought to be,” Frawley continued. “If we find agua it will be a fine things for the broncs.”

“Supposin', jest supposin', the man we want ain't there?”

“But the man I want will be there—I know it! How far are we from the Jornada northern edge?”

“Miles, more miles than it's pleasant to think about, Jud.”

They came to the notched rise, but in the gap between the broken halves of the blistered hill there may have been water some time. However, there was none now. A little, semi-circular area as dusty and dry as any other part of the Jornada met the eyes of the two riders. The surrounding walls were a dozen feet high, and sheer up and down. Frawley rode into the flat basin, forced his horse to the farthest wall and then drew rein.

“Can't see a sign of any hombre or caballo, Jud,” said Traill huskily.

Frawley dropped his reins. “We'll get down and look,” he announced. “They may be holed away in some of the angles or overhangs of the bluffs. You take the left, Siwash, and I'll bushwhack on the right. Don't forget your guns. Traill, they say, is quick on the draw and a big handful anyway you take him.”

Traill's belt buckle was hot to his fingers as he pulled up the strap and settled it about his waist. Leaving Maverick, he moved to the steep wall on his left. It was weathered and broken, and he peered into niches which centuries of flying sand had gophered from the soft rock.

“Nary a sign of any livin' thing, Jud!” he called.

“Very well,” came to him from the distance; “mosey this way, Siwash. I've got a surprise for you.”

Traill faced the center of the basin, retraced his steps and then came to an abrupt halt. Frawley was in his saddle. He had picked up the trailing reins of Maverick and was clutching them in his left hand. In his right hand he held a six-gun, and the point was leveled at Traill.

“Stand!” yelled the super; “right where you are! Another inch in my direction and I'll drop you in your tracks.”

“What's the idee, Jud?” inquired Traill.

“The idea is, Siwash, that this little play has gone the limit. I'm leaving you here afoot, and your horse, canteens and grub go back with me to the water hole at the edge of the Jornada.”

Traill's hand flashed downward; it lifted with one of his own guns.

“Meanin',” he said, “that you and me are to shoot it out?”

“Break that gun, you poor sap, and take a look at the cylinder.”

Traill peered into the cylinder along the barrel. He revolved the cylinder with a finger. There was no need of breaking the piece to discover that there was not a single cartridge in the cylinder.

“T'other 'un the same as this?” he inquired, calmly.

“Of course! Do you think I'd miss a bet like that?”

“However did y'u do it, Jud?” inquired Traill, slipping the useless gun back into its holster.

“Last night,” explained Frawley. “I angled for your belt with an ocotilla pole and emptied your guns.”

Traill looked around him at the bluffs of the dry well.

“I told you Traill would be here,” went on the super, “and here he is and here he's going to stay. You walked into this little trap, Red, without making me any trouble at all. Remember me to your friend, McGowan. So you really thought you could put something over on me, eh? For once, Traill was wide of his trail.”

CHAPTER XVI.

His Last Chance.

A BLAST of hot wind assailed the Jornada. Dust arose from it like smoke, whirling high and far, and eddying in thickening clouds downward and into the scoriated basin. Traill lifted the knotted handkerchief at his throat to protect his nose and lips.

His thoughts were circling about this capable super from the Rey Niño Mine, analyzing his motives and paying tribute to his ability as an actor.

“Siwash Brezee made for the mine, after all, eh?” he inquired.

“He blew in shortly after I sent you to Noches,” returned Frawley. “It was a remarkable yarn he had for me, Traill. Pete Early failed to coöperate with you properly. Turley reports that Pete was in town. He told you about Brezee, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And when I told you that fiction about Sonora Slim, you imagined that Red Brezee was hiking for Mexico, right through the heart of the Jornada. Didn't you?”

“You've nicked it, Frawley.”

“That's what I thought you'd do. Do you want to tell me who was in with you on this steal at the Rey Niño? You and McGowan must have had help.”

Even in that tragic moment Traill found something humorous in Frawley's attempt to secure information about the mill thieves.

“I'm not saying a word, Frawley,” Traill told him.

With a roar, the blast hurled a dense cloud of dust into the basin—the back-wash of air from the tumultuous swirl over the bluffs. Everything in the basin was blotted out for the moment; and then, when the thick blanket suddenly lifted, Traill was not to be seen. He had vanished from the spot where he had been standing under the menace of the super's gun.

Where had he gone? Frawley did not know, and he was taking no chances with a man of Traill's reputation. He turned his horse toward the notched opening in the bluff. Both Buckskin and Maverick were restless, and gave the super some trouble; but he tamed Buckskin with the spurs, clung to the led horse, and forced his way back toward the roaring Jornada.

Traill, appraising the bluffs a moment before, had realized that he had one chance, one last chance to turn the tables on Frawley. Under cover of the blanket of sand, he rushed blindly at the wall on the left, groped his way up its steep side by availing himself of the niches he had previously noted, and came to the crest of a ledge. While the dust was settling in the basin, he crawled along the ledge until he reached a point above Frawley and between him and the way to the open desert.

His one hope now was that the super, with his festive horses, would pass close to the left wall. This, precisely, is what happened. At the moment the super came under the ledge, Traill leaped.

The distance from the ledge to the man on the horse was not much of a fall in itself, but the shock was sufficient to tumble Frawley out of his saddle. With frenzied snorts the horses raced on and away, leaving Traill and the super rolling at handgrips in the basin's bed.

Both men were partly stunned, and it was only by luck that they were spared by the flying hoofs.

“Here's something else again, Frawley,” puffed Traill, reaching for the gun that the super had dropped. “The boot's on the other foot.”

A savage oath leaped from Frawley's lips. He fought like a madman, and was brought to reason only when the muzzle of his own gun touched his chest.

“Steady!” ordered Traill. “You know whether or not this gun of yours is in working order. Here we are, Frawley, in the middle of the Jornada—and both of us are afoot.”

Traill took possession of the other revolver at the super's belt.

“Under the lee of the bluffs,” he went on, “we can weather this sandstorm. You had your nerve to try for a get-away in the face of it. Try and be sensible, can't you?”

Traill drew himself to the foot of the left-hand wall, and sat there, watching Frawley over his lifted knees. At that instant he saw something else—a canteen on the ground, evidently dropped from one of the saddles when the horses had plunged away. He reached out for the strap and hauled the canteen close.

“Give me that!” gasped Frawley.

“No,” said Traill; “I'm going to use this canteen of water to gamble with, Frawley. Get over here, close to the foot of the bluff. We're going to be pretty thirsty, you and I, and hungry too before we're out of this.”

Frawley crawled to the base of the wall and settled himself within arm's reach of Traill. Removing his coat, he bundled his head in it and bowed in the teeth of the eddying sand.

Overhead, the sky was obscured as by a whirling gray curtain. The smashing dirge of the wind was like a requiem. How long the uproar lasted the two in the basin could not know. In their stifling discomfort, the minutes dragged like so many hours.

But, by degrees, the storm lessened, the sky cleared and the dust in the basin settled. Frawley cast aside his coat, and the two men stared at each other with bloodshot eyes, their faces streaked with a grime of sand and sweat.

“How are you planning to gamble with that canteen of water?” demanded Frawley huskily.

“You know that old saying, Frawley, that 'truth, crushed to earth, will rise again?'” answered Traill. “When you make a few revelations regarding the thefts at the Rey Niño mill you're going to have water—and not before.”

“Why, you fool,” cried the super, “what chance have we got of getting clear of the Jornada, with our horses gone? That supply of water wouldn't see us halfway to the water hole we stopped at last night. We're done for, both of us.”

“Possibly,” agreed Traill calmly, “and possibly not. Do you see that big Sahuara cactus on the crest of the right-hand bluff?”

“What's that got to do with it?” croaked the super.

“When I touch a match to the bark of that cactus,” explained Traill, “there'll be a rescue.”

“You've framed something on me?” demanded the super.

“I made preparations, that's all. When you called me to Pima Pass I had already talked with Pete Early. Of course, I didn't know what you had up your sleeve, but it seemed wise to me to throw an anchor to windward. But don't make any mistake, Frawley,” he finished sternly; “there'll be no smoke signals until you come across with what I want to know—no water, no rescue. Get that straight.”

“Then,” answered Frawley, with a scowl, “we'll sit here till crack of doom. What revelations do you think I have to make?”

“That's up to you,” said Traill; “I'm only guessing, and you know the facts.”

CHAPTER XVII.

A Test of Endurance.

THE sun went down, that afternoon, in a fiery blaze. Traill and Frawley, still crouched at the foot of the wall, kept close watch of each other. The advantage was all with Traill, since he had the loaded guns and the canteen of water.

In its age-old history, the deadly waterless Jornada had been the scene of innumerable struggles for life. The bleak plateau is peopled with the specters of men and animals who fought the desert's thirst, pursued its mirages, and finally dropped in their tracks and died.

The Apache, in old times, harried the waste in his scalp hunting. For him the Jornada was a great torture chamber, lending to his fiendish ingenuity the thumb-screws of thirst and the rack of pitiless heat. Yet never, in all its history, had that stretch of desert witnessed a stranger drama than the one now being enacted.

The fate Frawley had planned for Traill he was now confronting himself. The unforeseen sandstorm had worked its will with both men, helping Traill and baffling the murderously scheming super. In the end, the storm had trapped them both.

Traill had possession of the canteen. He could have assuaged his own thirst, but in his fight for justice he chose to place himself on a common ground with Frawley. Perhaps he wished to make a test of his own endurance, to decide whether the hardihood of his old Cochise days had been lost in the creature comforts of Trinidad. He would match hardship for hardship with Frawley, and allow the better man to win.

He had wondered at the superintendent's vindictiveness in the matter of the unknown Traill. It was so deep, so relentless that the mere hunt for a supposed amalgam thief did not explain it. The underlying cause must have been something else, something vital to Frawley himself.

Ever since the start from the water hole at the edge of the desert Traill had been puzzling over this fact. Frawley's treachery had yielded a theory of guilt, and with that theory and the canteen of water Traill was now gambling with death for the good name of Rufus McGowan.

Frawley was rolling a hot pebble under his tongue as a relief to the maddening thirst that racked his body. He spat out the pebble and turned on his captor.

“When you fire the Sahuara,” he demanded, “who on earth is to come to the rescue?”

“Pete Early,” said Traill. “My last word to him was to trail me, and then to stand by until he saw the smoke signal. Not under any circumstances was he to come until he saw it; but, when he did see it, he was to lose no time.”

“Pete, 'Mañana Pete!'” jeered the croaking voice of Frawley. “Ten to one, Traill, he'll serve you no better now than he did with Siwash Brezee. Ten to one the dangers of the Jornada held him back.”

“If that is true, then so much the worse for us.”

“Why torture ourselves when the finish is as certain as fate? I'll draw straws with you. I'll fight with you hand to hand, for a pull at that canteen.”

“My price for a drink is a confession from you,” Traill answered with finality. “Pay the price, Frawley, or go thirsty and die. You——”

With a yell of fury, the superintendent hurled himself at Traill. He was met with a blow that staggered him, and he resumed his place raving.

The night came on, but there could be no sleep for either of the two. Chilled to the marrow, they crouched at the foot of the wall watching each other with alert and baleful eyes.

Frawley got to his feet and walked back and forth to keep his blood circulating. His beat carried him farther and farther from Traill, and presently he broke away and ran toward the notch and the level desert.

Traill made no attempt to interfere with him, but remained where he was and patiently waited. A rock tumbled from the ledge overhead, missing Traill by inches. He picked up the canteen and moved away from the wall.

“Any more of that,” he called to the shadow of the ledge, “and I'll open fire. You've had your chance at me, Frawley, and it was your last one. I am now having my last chance at you.”

The canteen was the lure that brought the superintendent back to his captor. He could be heard scrambling down the wall, and could be seen in the half-dark staggering into the basin.

“Turley gave me my first line on you,” muttered the super. “You have tricks at rough and tumble which they still talk about in Cochise.”

“But you couldn't believe Turley, eh?” said Traill. “In spite of what he said, you sent me to Noches to get Traill.”

“I thought the fool was manufacturing an alibi for himself. It was only when Brezee arrived, that I saw this thing as it was.”

Frawley straightened himself on the hard rocks and slept, or pretended to sleep. There was no drowsiness in Traill. He continued as he was, wide-eyed and vigilant, a gun in each fist and the canteen under his knees.

So the night passed and another dawn came on. With blurred eyes, captor and captive watched the sun shake out the banners of day and climb into the eastern sky. Frawley, with a struggle, lifted himself from the rocks. One look into the drawn, relentless face of Traill and his head slumped down between his shoulders.

“Once,” said Traill, “I had a pard, as square a man as ever trod the turf. We prospected all over the southern country. He pried me clear of a rockfall in Topolobampo Canyon; and I saved him during a cloudburst in Cimiroon Gulch. Do you suppose, for one moment, I could believe Rufe McGowan dropped over a cliff while robbing your mill? I came on here to prove that slander a lie.”

“He had a bag of amalgam there at the foot of the cliff,” shouted the super in a frenzy; “and there was more in his house in Noches!”

“That's the evidence, Frawley; it does not prove him a thief, but the victim of the real thieves. It was not an attack of conscience that caused him to write my name in the sand; it was not a revelation of his confederate in the thieving; it was a silent call for me, his old pard, to come on here and see that he received justice. You said, the other day, that when a man is close to Kingdom Come his conscience gets to work. Aren't you near enough to the Long Trail to come across with the truth? If not, we'll continue to wait.”

Frawley flung out his arms wildly, helplessly, and babbled a torrent of oaths. No longer was he the sphinx, the self-contained, coolly calculating man of the tough mining camp. The demon of thirst was getting the better of him.

“We'll wait,” continued Traill. “The water is here, and some of it is yours whenever you pay the price.”

Once more the heat began. Slowly the basin began to bake in the sun's rays.

“Oh, I can't stand this!” moaned Frawley. “You devil, you! What is it you want to know?”

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Super “Comes Through.”

AN exultant gleam flashed in Traill's eyes. From his pockets he produced an old letter and a fountain pen; and then he prepared to write, using the flat side of the canteen for a writing pad. In his left hand he continued to hold one of Frawley's six-guns.

“Who threw McGowan over the Boldero Cliffs, Frawley?” Thus Traill, turning the blank side of the old letter and holding the pen poised, began his cross-examination.

The super moistened his dry, cracked lips with his tongue. His hungry eyes were on the canteen, glued to it as by a hypnotic spell.

“No one.” His voice was strained, unnatural; now it was throaty and full, and now it broke in a weird falsetto. “He wasn't thrown over the cliff—he fell.”

“How? Give me the details—everything you know and failed to tell at the inquest.”

Frawley swallowed hard. “'Buck' Jadwin, the day amalgamator, had to dress down the plates every hour while the mill was running on the bonanza ore; the rest of the time he had to stand over them constantly with a bottle of 'quick,' the gold was coming so fast through the sieves. The amalgam from the day run he divided in half, sacked one half and turned the other half over to Sampson, the assayer.”

Traill's pen was traveling rapidly over the paper. In his physical condition he found writing strangely difficult, but nerved himself to the work. The overheated pen spilled its ink too rapidly, blotting the paper here and there and staining his fingers.

“What did Buck Jadwin do with the half of the amalgam he did not turn over to the assayer?”

“He hid it back of the mill, under the sump tank of the cyanide plant.”

“What became of it after that?”

“I stole down to the sump tank at dead of night, carried the bag to Boldero Cliffs and dropped it down to Dan Rackley.”

“D. W. Rackley, who owns the music store in Buenas Noches?”

“Yes. Traill” broke off Frawley, “I can't talk without a drink; my throat is raw and inflamed, and every word is torture. Just a swallow of that water! I'll talk, I'll come through, but——”

“Not a drop, Frawley,” was the relentless answer, “until you're done. Why was Rackley in on this?”

“He has a played-out claim at Ojo Caliente; when we went into this together, he gave out that he had struck good ore on the claim. He bought a second-hand, five-stamp mill and run it on country rock. The amalgam from Rey Niño he retorted and ran into bars, passing it off as Ojo Caliente bullion.”

This was crafty, good scheming, just the sort of work a capable man would turn his hand to in covering bare-faced theft.

“Buck Jadwin held out the bullion, hid it under the sump tank, and you removed it secretly by night and dropped it over the cliff into the waiting hands of Rackley,” said Traill; “then he carried it to Ojo Caliente, retorted and ran it into bars and sold the gold for your joint account. I warn you, Frawley, that all you say will be used against you. Is this the truth? And do you want to go on?”

The super caught at his throat with his hands. “I've got to go on,” he mumbled. “My Heaven, I've got to have water! I'm—I'm dying. Go on—hurry.”

“Now” resumed Traill, “about McGowan.”

“He saw me at the sump tank, that last night. He left the mill and followed me to the brink of the cliffs. There he called me a thief—he had the goods on me. Neither of us were armed. We came together in a clinch, we struggled back and forth—McGowan slipped, fell, and went down. The bag of amalgam dropped with him.”

“And Rackley; what about Rackley?”

“He was yellow, and he made a run of it when he saw McGowan and me wrestling above him on the brink. That's all, Traill, and it's straight. Now the water, the water!”

“Presently. The only way you could save yourself was by putting McGowan under suspicion. What about the amalgam in the dresser drawer at McGowan's house?”

“Rackley sneaked that in. He had as much to lose as I had, and he was scared.”

“Has all the stolen amalgam been disposed of?”

“None of it has been disposed of for three weeks. After the McGowan affair, Rackley shut down his five-stamp mill and never went near Ojo Caliente.”

“There's a lot of this Rey Niño amalgam at Ojo Caliente?”

“Yes, a lot of it.”

“Where?”

“Under the plank floor of Rackley's mill, cached by the battery blocks.”

“And this is the whole truth?”

“Isn't it enough?”

“Sign there, Frawley,” instructed Traill, offering him pen and paper.

“Sign? I can't sign. Look at my hands?”

The super raised his hands and they were quivering as with a palsy.

“You'll have to.”

Frawley reached for the pen and paper. “Give me the canteen to write on,” he begged.

“Use a flat stone—the one at your side will do. You haven't paid for the canteen yet.”

Frawley, swaying where he sat, slumped over the flat stone and traced his signature at the bottom of the confession.

The long agony was over. A breath of relief, like a sob was torn from Traill's lips. He uncapped the canteen and took a swallow of the tepid water. It touched his inflamed throat like fire, but the response of his tortured body to the draft was instant. He felt renewed strength in every muscle. Getting to his feet, he stepped to Frawley's side, took the paper and the pen and placed the canteen in his shaking hands. The super threw back his head, the canteen at his lips.

“Not too much—at first!” warned Traill, snatching the canteen away from him. “I'll give you more before long.”

He recapped the canteen, took it over his shoulder and started across the basin toward the opposite wall. Frawley watched his struggle from niche to niche up the sheer slope. If he should fall——

But Traill did not fall. He drew himself over the brink, knelt beside the Sahuara and groped for matches.

Presently a flame flickered at the base of the cactus, fed on the resinous bark and leaped with a roar to the very top of the huge bole. A plume of smoke rose straight upward in the still air.

CHAPTER XIX.

“Poco Tiempo” Becomes “Pronto.”

TOGETHER they waited at the foot of the bluff, Red the Sudden in what he ever afterward called the greatest triumph of his career, and Frawley, the unmasked, the crook, and the traitor; they waited, Traill still in possession of the revolvers but with the canteen as common property between himself and the super.

The water was life to them, for they had both been at the breaking point, at the pass where pleasant mirages would soon have appeared cheating them with false hopes and spelling the end of all things.

The question now resolved itself into one of fidelity on the part of Pete Early. He. had been cast by Traill for no easy rôle. Shadowing two men into the Jornada, weathering a sandstorm in the open, lying low among the sand heaps of that blighted wilderness and waiting for a smoke signal.

Was Mañana Pete equal to it? Had he successfully accomplished his part, almost as difficult as the business Traill had taken upon his own shoulders?

Traill had a way of trusting his pard. Twice he had placed his liberty and life in Early's hands. Once Early had failed him and given Frawley material for that desert trap; now that the trap had been sprung, with both Traill and Frawley caught in it and Traill working out a subtle scheme of justice for McGowan, now was Early to fail his pard a second time, cheat justice and blot Gordon Traill's name from the scroll of life?

There was anxiety in the face of Traill as his gaze shifted from the smoking Sahuara to the open desert. The giant cactus was quickly consumed. It's longitudinal ribs, bared by the fire, lifted themselves ghostlike on the opposite “rise.” Only a trickle of smoke was being wafted upward. As yet no Early, no rescue. Frawley gave a jeering laugh. With returning strength, something of his reckless assurance had also returned to him.

“Mañana Pete is running true to form, Traill,” said he. “You win your gamble, but what good will it do you, or anybody else? When the water is gone we'll die here, just you and I, two more victims of the Jornada. Somebody, some time maybe, will find us at this tricky water hole, two heaps of bleached bones—all that's left of two men who tried, each in his own way and failed.”

“There's the Grand Assize,” returned Traill solemnly, “and I am well content to hold the brief in my own case.”

“After me,” growled Frawley, with a scowl, “the deluge. I don't believe in your Grand Assize. It's the courts here below that concern me most. I played the game well and had Old Boliver completely fooled. If I pass out, it will not be under a cloud. Before we're found, that precious paper of yours will have become the sport of the winds, and have traveled into Sonora, it may be, where little is made of such things. I'm content to——”

“Save your breath,” cut in Traill; “here comes Early.”

There was a dust cloud to the south, rapidly approaching. In due course, Early broke out of the cloud, towing a led horse and riding at speed. And behind him came another rider, also with a led horse. Frawley swore under his breath. A hard destiny was bearing down on him.

“Mañana Pete has your Maverick horse,” muttered the super, “and the other rider has my Buckskin! Luck seems to be breaking well for you, Traill. And that—that second rider,” Frawley broke off wonderingly, “is Jessup!”

“Yes” assented Traill, “I told Pete he'd better bring the deputy. If anything went wrong with me I was sure he'd be needed.”

He got to his feet and waved his hat. Early and Jessup, with their led horses, galloped into the basin and pulled to a halt.

“Once, anyway, old-timer,” whooped Early, “Poco Tiempo was what y'u might call 'Pronto.' How about it? Am I right?”

He tumbled out of his saddle and grabbed his friend with both hands.

“Jessup,” called Frawley, pointing to Traill, “put the handcuffs on that man! He's the ringleader of the amalgam thieves, and I've nearly croaked in getting hands on him.”

The deputy sheriff, dusty but determined, advanced with a pair of steel bracelets.

“Read this, Jessup, before you help Frawley make good on his bluff,” spoke up Traill, passing the confession to the county official.

A derisive bleat escaped Early.

“Why, I've knowed Traill for some sort of a while” he whooped, “and he never stole a thing in his hull life. He told me to bring y'u, Jessup——”

“Never mind,” interrupted Jessup; “is this your signature, Frawley?” he demanded.

“Yes, but——”

“Is this the truth, then?” proceeded Jessup.

“I signed that under duress,” cried Frawley. “Traill had all the guns and our only canteen of water. I'd have signed any old thing to get at that canteen. That's a romance, that paper in your hands, Jessup.”

The deputy sheriff turned his eyes on Traill. “Did you force Frawley to sign this?” he asked.

“Do you think I could get it from him in any other way, Jessup?” said Traill quietly.

“You're a wonder to get it at all. The truth or falsity of the confession can easily be proved. We have Buck Jadwin and Rackley to work on. Rackley's Ojo Caliente claim has turned out a producer lately, so that part is plausible enough. Now if we can find amalgam cached under the floor of his old five-stamp mill, Frawley's talk of duress won't get him anywhere. Put out your hands, Frawley,” he added. “I must admit that you are a surprise to me. I never dreamed that Rey Niño affair would come to this.”

The metallic snap echoed in the still air.

“Well, anyhow,” requested Frawley wearily, “get me out of this infernal Jornada.”

“Y'u can bet we won't linger!” put in Early. “Me, fer instance, I've had plumb sufficient o' this Jornada. While waitin' fer smoke signals, Jessup and me took turns hustlin' back to the water hole fer agua. Honest Gordon, I was about ready to throw up my hands when I seen yer smoke. How'd y'u lose Maverick and the buckskin? I snared 'em last night on one o' my trips to the water hole.”

“This is no place to palaver,” remarked Jessup. “Climb up, Frawley, and we'll hustle back to a more comfortable section.”

“Any grub left in those bags, Jessup?” inquired the super. “I'm starving.”

Traill and Frawley ate as they rode. The Jornada, cheated of its prey, turned more kindly. A breeze from the north arose and fanned the travelers as they galloped.

“Tell me about this, Traill,” said Jessup, still leading the buckskin now with the manacled super in the saddle.

CHAPTER XX.

Sudden As Usual.

EARLY found his sorrel in the corral at Rey Niño. He dropped in on the mining camp unheralded, commissioned by Jessup to lay hands on Siwash Brezee and bring him to Noches. Brezee, however, was not in evidence; he had fled, and by some stroke of luck had left the sorrel behind him. Craddock, in charge since Frawley had left, had no idea what had become of the red-haired bandit.

Traill and Jessup, after secretly conducting Frawley to the county calabozo, waited on Rackley. The miserly seller of pianos had no wind of recent events and was caught at a disadvantage. He was taken in the official flivver to Ojo Caliente, the five-stamp mill was searched, and a barrel of amalgam was found under the floor by the battery blocks.

So perished Rackley's hopes of immunity, and Frawley's story that his confession was a pure romance.

Buck Jadwin, on the occasion of Early's visit to the Rey Niño camp, had taken a lay-off, and was supposed to be in Buenas Noches. But he was not in Noches, and he never returned to the camp. Desert gossip had it that he had joined hands with Brezee, and that both had designs on the amalgam in Rackley's mill. If that theory was correct, then only the quick action of Traill and Jessup saved the gold.

Jessup regretted the escape of Brezee and Jadwin, particularly Jadwin. The testimony of the day amalgamator would have helped the case against Frawley. Not that any more help was really needed, but no law officer cares to see an offender dodge his legal responsibilities.

Boliver, communicated with by telegraph, came personally to Buenas Noches. There was blood in the mine-owner's eye.

“I'll put Frawley through for this if it's the last thing I ever do,” he declared. “The treacherous coyote had me buffaloed, right from the start. He ought to swing for what happened to McGowan.”

However, the super did not “swing.” He and Rackley “went up,” as the saying is, for a long stretch, and Craddock stepped into his shoes at the Rey Niño.

Best of all, every one in Buenas Noches turned to Kitty McGowan as they had previously turned away from her. But that little school-teacher held her head high, and showed an injured dignity coupled with a forgiving disposition that rejoiced the heart of Traill.

The school board waited on her in a body. As the president of the board frankly admitted, they “had come to eat crow,” and they did it handsomely. They wanted her back in the same old schoolroom at an enhanced salary. And Kitty said she would think it over and give her decision later.

“What do you think about it, Gordon?” she asked.

Traill was remaining two weeks in Buenas Noches, after escaping the desert trap, and he was daily at the old home of his friend, Rufus. The girl asked this question on a day when she and Traill had just returned from the forlorn little cemetery where Kitty had dropped tears, and Traill had placed a wreath, on the new mound with its new monument. The monument was Traill's doing, and much of his heart lay under it.

“You can't very well teach the Noches school, Kitty,” said Traill, “if you're not going to stay in the town. Can you?”

Her eyes widened in surprise.

“But I've got to stay here, Gordon,” she answered. “This little home, that claim of mine in which you have become a partner, and this position as teacher are all I have in the world.” She sighed. “Because of your wonderful help, my position now is vastly different than it was. The black suspicions have passed. Brother Rufe is no longer the amalgam thief, but the man who lost his life trying to protect the property with which he was intrusted. Everybody is kind to me.”

“They ought to be,” averred Traill; “they ought never to have been anything else. But you can't keep on burying yourself here.”

“What else is there for me to do?”

“Listen,” said Traill. “Years ago, when Rufe and I were prospecting together, we had a lot of talk about his kid sister. He showed me your photograph, and after I pulled him out of the flood in Cimiroon Gulch he asked me if he had anything that I wanted. 'You have,' I told him; 'Kitty's photograph.'

“I can see him this minute, mujercita, just as I saw him then,” Traill went on. “He turned on me with his face shining, as it always shone when he was pleased, and smiled. 'Gordon,' he said, 'that photo is yours. I can get another for myself. And I'll tell you something else, man to man,' he went on. 'It would be the happiest day of my life if, some day, my red-haired pard could meet Kitty, and know her as I know her. A girl in a million, Gordon. After you meet her, I know what will happen. And it's the one thing I want to happen.'”

Kitty flushed, looked away, then turned her inquiring eyes full on Traill.

“What do you suppose he meant?” she asked.

Traill laughed softly. “Pete Early will tell you, Kitty, that I'm a sudden sort of person,” he said. “That means, I suppose, that I am a man of quick judgment and ready resourcefulness. I hope it stands for that, anyhow. That photograph of yours is in my lonely bachelor quarters in Trinidad, and it has been there ever since I took over that smelter. You know, I fell in love with that photograph from the very first; and now that I have met you, I have transferred my affections from the cabinet photo to its original. No, you can't stay here in Buenas Noches. You see, I want you to go back to Trinidad with me. Will you—as Mrs. Gordon Traill?”

Then it was that Kitty produced, from somewhere about the house, a frontier tin type, a picture of Traill.

“Rufus sent me that, Gordon,” she revealed, “soon after he gave you my picture, I imagine. And—I—I—— Well, you were always my knight, sworn friend of my brother. I told you——”

When Pete Early heard the news, he gave one of his famous bleats, snatched off his hat, and kicked it joyously across the room.

“Sudden, says you?” he whooped; “say, that Red the Sudden has sure outdid himself. Meet her to-day and marry her to-morrow! Can y'u beat it for fast work? Now I got a place to put up when I take a trip to Trinidad!”