"Why, Tom, o' course not," denied Scotty, indignantly. "I wasn't thinkin' o' such a thing."

"I ain't none so sh.o.r.e, Scotty. It sounds just like yuh."

"Well, it ain't like me nohow. Yo're wrong, Tom, all wrong as usual.

Suit yoreself about the dance, suit yoreself. I got nothin' more to say. Here's a letter come for yuh to-day."

Scotty handed the letter to Loudon and departed, offended dignity in the set of his shoulders. The pose was a.s.sumed, and Loudon knew it.

When next they met, Scotty would reopen his favourite issue as usual.

"Now how did he guess it?" wondered Scotty, gloomily, kicking the pebbles on his way to the office. "How did he guess the truth, I'd like to know? An' he's goin' away after all! The best man in the outfit! I got to do somethin', that's a cinch."

Poor Scotty! So must Machiavelli have felt when one of his dearest schemes was upset by some clever Florentine.

Left alone, Loudon tore open the letter. It ran:

Dere frend lowden Id uv rote sooner only Ive been sick fele bad stil sene things fur a weak but I can rite now anyhow. Wel, after you an Mackenzy lef in the afternoon Block an the uther fellar rid in. I noed the uther fellar what stole yore hoss cause he looked just like you sed hed look but the hoss he was ridin wasnt yore hoss he was sumbuddy elses hoss I dunno whoos yet. Wen I sene Block an him I had it all fixed up with the marshul to arest the uther fellar but the hoss wasnt yourn it was a bawlface pinto so the marshal couldnt arest him without a warant. Block an him rode away on the trail to Farewel. Block tride to find out bout you an Scotty and that drummer told him how you an Scotty had rid back to the Bend. Wel, I knoked the drummer down an stepped on his face an throwed him into the waterin-troff an kiked him three times roun the house. I'm lookin out for yore hoss wen I see him I'll let you noe hopin this fines you like it leeves me yore frien Dave Sinclair.

Dave Sinclair was the landlord of the hotel in Rocket. Loudon re-read the letter and swore whole-heartedly. To miss Rufe Cutting by a few hours! Riding a bald-faced pinto, was he? What had he done with Ranger? Loudon went to the bunkhouse in a brown study.

Scotty alone of the Flying M outfit elected to remain at the ranch the night of the dance. All the others raced into town before sunset. At the ford of the Dogsoldier they met the Seven Lazy Seven boys from beyond the Government Hills. Doubleday greeted Dawson, the Seven Lazy Seven foreman, with a long wolf-howl. Whooping and yelling, the riders squattered across the creek and poured into Paradise Bend, the wild-eyed ponies rocketing like jack-rabbits.

It was an expansive evening in the Bend. The corrals were full of ponies bearing on their hips the brands of the Two Bar, TVU, Double Diamond K, Wagonwheel, and half-a-dozen other ranches. In the hotel corral where the Flying M outfit unsaddled, Loudon saw horses belonging to the Barred O and the T up-and-down, which ranches were a score of miles southwest of Rocket.

The men of the various outfits circulated rapidly from saloon to saloon. By midnight many would be drunk. But there were several hours before midnight.

Loudon and Telescope left their comrades lining up at the hotel bar and gravitated to the Three Card. Here they found Jim Mace and Marshal Dan Smith, who hailed them both with marked cordiality. They drank together, and Jim Mace suggested a little game. Telescope's eyes began to gleam, and Loudon perceived that his friend was lost to him for that evening. Loudon was in no mood for poker, so the three prevailed upon a gentleman from the Barred O to make a fourth, and retired to an empty table in the corner of the room. Loudon remained standing at the bar, regarding the rows of bottles on the shelves and gloomily pondering the exigencies of life.

"Cards no good," he reflected. "Dancin' the same. Nothin' goes good no more. Even licker don't taste like it used to. Guess I better have another an' make sh.o.r.e."

He had another. After a time he felt better, and decided to look in at the dance. From the open windows of the hotel issued sounds of revelry--the shuffle and pound of boot-leather and the inspiring strains of the "Arkansaw Traveller" played by two fiddlers sitting on a table.

Loudon, his hat pulled forward, leaned his chest against a windowsill and peered over the fat shoulders of Mrs. Ragsdale and a freighter's wife, who were enjoying the festivities with such zest that the chairs they sat in were on the point of collapse.

Kate Saltoun and Dorothy Burr were dancing in the same set. Dawson of the Seven Lazy Seven was Kate's partner, and Pete O'Leary swung Dorothy. Loudon was struck by the fact that Kate was not smiling. Her movements, likewise, lacked a certain springiness which was one of her salient characteristics.

"Somebody must 'a' stepped on her toe," decided Loudon. "Bet she don't dance with Dawson again."

She didn't. Marshal Dan Smith, perspiring and painfully conscious of a hard shirt and a forest-fire necktie, was her next partner. Loudon wondered why he had not hitherto perceived the marked resemblance between Dan Smith and a jack-rabbit. He found himself speculating on Kate's reasons for breaking her engagement. As he looked at Kate, her extreme beauty, contrasted with that of the other girls in the room, was striking.

"Kate is certainly a heap good-looker."

Mrs. Ragsdale and the freighter's wife turned sharply and stared open-mouthed at Loudon. Not till then did that young man realize that he had voiced aloud his estimate of Kate Saltoun. He fled hurriedly, his skin p.r.i.c.kling all over, and dived into the kindly darkness behind the corral.

"Now I have done it!" he mourned, bitterly, squatting on the ground.

"Those old tongue-wagglers heard me, an' they'll tell her. I seen it in their faces. What'll she think o' me. Luck! There ain't no such thing. If all the rocks was tobacco an' all the gra.s.s cigarette-papers, I'd be there without a match."

From the hotel drifted thinly the lilt of "Buffalo Girls." A bevy of convivial beings in the street were bawling "The Days of Forty-Nine."

Across the discordant riot of sound cut the sudden clipping drum of a galloping pony.

"Injuns!" shouted a voice. "Injuns!"

Loudon sprang up and dashed around the corral. In the flare of light from the hotel doorway a dusty man sat a dustier horse. The man was hatless, his dark hair was matted with dirt and sweat, and his eyes were wild.

"Injuns!" cried the dusty man. "Injuns on Hatchet Creek! I want help!"

In thirty seconds there was a fair-sized group surrounding the horseman. In a minute and a half the group had become a crowd. Up bustled Marshal Dan Smith followed by Telescope Laguerre, Jim Mace, and the gentleman from the Barred O. Loudon, first on the scene, was jammed against the rider's stirrup.

"Gents," the dusty man was saying, "my three pardners are a-standin'

off the war-whoops in a shack over by Johnson's Peak on Hatchet Creek.

There's more'n a hundred o' them feather-dusters an' they'll have my pardners' hair if yuh don't come a-runnin'."

"Johnson's Peak!" exclaimed Jim Mace. "That's fifty mile away!"

"All o' that," a.s.sented the dusty man, wearily, without turning his head. "For G.o.d's sake, gents, do somethin', can't yuh? An' gimme a fresh hoss."

Already three quarters of his hearers were streaking homeward for their Winchesters and saddles. The men from the ranches were the last to move away. No need for them to hurry. The few who had brought rifles to the Bend had left them with their saddles at the various corrals.

Within half an hour the dusty man, mounted on one of the marshal's ponies, was heading a posse composed of every available man in Paradise Bend. Only the marshal and two men who were sick remained behind.

The posse, a column of black and bobbing shapes in the starlight, loped steadily. Many of the ponies had travelled twenty and thirty miles that day, and there were fifty more to pa.s.s under their hoofs. The average cow-horse is a hardy brute and can perform miracles of work when called upon. Secure in this knowledge, the riders fully intended to ride out their mounts to the last gasp.

Doubleday and Dawson rode stirrup to stirrup with the man from Hatchet Creek. Tailing these three were Loudon, Telescope Laguerre, the Barred O puncher, and Jim Mace.

"How'd yuh get through, stranger?" queried Doubleday.

"I dunno," said the dusty man. "I jus' did. I had to. It was make or break. Them war-whoops chased me quite a spell."

"You was lucky," observed Dawson.

"Yo're whistlin' I was. We was all lucky when it comes to that. We was at the shack eatin' dinner when they jumped us. S'pose we'd been down the creek where our claims is at, huh?"

"Yo're hair would sh.o.r.e be decoratin' a Injun bridle," admitted Dawson.

"But I didn't know there was gold on Hatchet Creek."

"We got four claims," said the dusty man, shortly.

"Gettin' much?"

"We ain't millionaires yet."

"No, I guess not," whispered Jim Mace to Loudon. "I'll gamble that gravel don't a.s.say a nickel a ton. Been all through them hills, I have. I know Hatchet like I do the Dogsoldier. There's no gold there."

"This prospector party says different," muttered Loudon.

"You'll see," sniffed Jim Mace. "Gold on the Hatchet! He's loco!

You'll see."