spectacle, Ballou told himself. I guess most of the citizens of Powder saw that little scene. Lin Ballou, spumed, scorned, rebuked in plain daylight. Marked, branded, scorched and otherwise labeled as being a cattle thief. He spoke aloud bitterly, wrinkles crowding around his eyes. There was an impotent anger in the way he struck his doubled fist against the saddle leather. "Sure. The story will be all over the country in five hours. Well, I guess I can play the game through now. Man's got to make a living somehow in this cussed country. Gracie, you poor kid. You'll sure have a heart burning when you hear it."
He halted in front of his house and slid from the saddle. Throwing the sack of provisions down, he was on the point of leading' the horse around to the barn when an outline in the sand caught his eye. It was the long narrow print of a cowhand's boot with the sharp heel gouging well into the earth; not a single print, but several, each leading forward and ending at the door. Lin's eye caught a small slit of light between the casing and the door itself. He had closed that door on leaving the house, and now it stood slightly ajar.
In a single move he drew his gun and kicked the portal wide, weaving aside a little to protect himself.
"Come out of there!"
A chair scraped and a voice said gruffly, "Put your thunder wagon down. Hell, can't a man take a rest without being called on it?" And directly after the voice, a strange, uncommonly ugly creature stepped up to the threshold. He was a larger man than Lin Ballou, though his frame carried more fat than Ballou's. He was older, too, with a jaw that shot out beyond the rest of his face and was covered with a metal-blue stubble. He wore black, slouchy clothes and from below his hat came a cowlick that plastered itself closely to his forehead. A toothpick hung from one side of his mouth and gold teeth glittered when he spoke. A gun rested against each hip, and his eyes were themselves almost as piercing as weapons, being a kind of steely black.
"Well, well," Lin said with assumed pleasure, "if it ain't our friend Beauty Chatto. Lost your way, Beauty? Last I knew, your shanty was west about two miles."
"I come on a particular, personal visit," Beauty said. "And I been waiting for quite a spell. Took you a powerful time to negotiate the road between here and Powder and back."
"Watchin' me pretty close, Beauty?"
The steely eyes emitted a flash and the jaw closed vigorously. "Tell a man, Lin. You don't know how close I been a-watching you—me and Nig both."
"Guess it must be a professional interest," Lin murmured.
"Well," Beauty growled, abandoning the toothpick, "I'm getting tired of the watching, so I come to warn you. Make out as if you're prospecting if you want, but that ain't fooling the Chatto family. Nary a bit. A prospector don't go sashaying from hell to breakfast like you do. 'Tween day before yesterday and yesterday night you was all the way from Rooster's Pinnacle to the Punch Bowl. Prospector? Hell, no!"
"Proceed," Lin urged. "What follows?"
Chatto straightened. "This, hombre. You ain't nothing more nor less than a spy, and we ain't gonna have you cluttering the high mesa. Cut it out. Stay away. Vamoose—or get took real sick."
"Moving papers, in short," Lin summed up, watching the man through half-closed eyes. "Your business won't stand inspection, will it, Beauty?"
"Why," Chatto said frankly, "I ain't afraid to admit Nig and me is rustlers—to you, at least. Reckon lots of folks suspect it, but that ain't proof. Point is—you stay away or you'll stumble on us one of these times and get killed."
"Which is bad. But you got me completely wrong, Beauty. I'm a prospector and I'll stick to it. Going into the high mesa tomorrow."
Chatto stretched his ami and stabbed Ballou with a finger. "Take warning, now! I ain't going to look for trouble. You know me. I know you. Just stay away. There's plenty of places to prospect aside from the high mesa."
"Going in tomorrow night," Lin announced. "Much obliged for the warning."
Chatto turned the corner of the house, dived into the barn and reappeared with his horse. From the saddle he made his last announcement. "You think that over, Lin. I ain't sore—yet. Don't like to kill a man before I give him time for studying. Think it over."
He flung his quirt at the horse's lump and rode off at a lope. Ballou put up his pony and returned to the house. Before going inside, he scanned the heavens.
Rain? he thought. Shucks, no. No water in sight. Yet I bet every blessed man inside of fifty miles is praying for it. Some of these homesteaders would kill for an inch of water. He shook his head, far from feeling the humor that he had used all day among the people of the valley.
In that gloaming hour everything seemed discouraging. Even more, there was a portent of ruin in the air. All over this parched floor men were keeping up a flame of hope that must inevitably flicker out; and as for himself, he knew that by morning his own name would be further blackened by suspicion. What was to come of all this? And what would Gracie think?
CHAPTER II
A SECRET MEETING
At the very time Lin Ballou had ridden in and out of Powder, a secret parley of three men was going on in the back room of Lawyer Dan Rounds' office. Of all places to meet this was the strangest, for it was piled high with dusty, unclaimed trunks, bundles of law journals, and all the bric-a- brac that a man of the legal profession might collect in fifteen years of varied practice. However, these three wished no publicity on this particular occasion and had gathered as quietly as possible. Rounds had casually slipped from the front of his office to the rear and locked the intervening door. Archer Steele, cashier of the bank, had traversed the back lots and was already present. While the two debated in a subdued tone, they were joined in the same manner by the third, James J. Lestrade.
He was easily the most imposing of the group, this Lestrade; a jolly, bluff man, who wore good clothes and had a ready tongue for everyone he met. He was a cattleman, though he spent little enough time on the Double Jay, preferring to leave most of the routine to his foreman. It suited him better to have a small office adjoining that of Rounds and here he liked to play politics on a small scale. When he was not doing this, he was traveling across the country or to the stockyards at Portland—anything to give an outlet to his restless nature. Since he liked the limelight, it was therefore very strange to find him in this dusty lumber room of old relics. Characteristically, he had a joke on the tip of his tongue as he brushed the top of a trunk and gingerly sat down.
'"Well, boys, you can't say I'm modest, but this time the old man doesn't want everybody hearing his big bassoon."
"Better lower your tone, then," Rounds advised dryly. "Sometimes I think you must have learned to speak amongst a bunch of bawling heifers."
"Well, Dan, the louder you talk the more people will hear you. And I like to be heard. Howsomever, we'll try to 'bide the warning. Now as to the business in hand, here's some reading material that ought to be interesting. Cast an eye over it." He drew a long yellow paper from his inner pocket, smoothed it on his knees and gave it to Rounds. The latter settled down to a slow, painstaking perusal, at which Lestrade presently grew impatient. "For God's sake, it ain't necessary to read the commas and periods. Hurry along. Get the nubbin—that's all."
Rounds finished with it and passed it to Steele, who flashed a rather careless glance across the page and folded it. "Not being scientific," he said, "I don't comprehend all the figures."
"Sum and substance is," Lestrade explained, "that the quicker we get the land in this valley tied up, the sooner we'll be millionaires."
Rounds looked behind him uneasily and again warned Lestrade to lower his voice. There was a long period of silence, broken finally by the lawyer.
"This much is certain—we're not going to get any place trying to buy land piece by piece. Sooner or later the folks would wake up and get suspicious of our purpose. Another thing, there's homesteaders who are holding on with