"Your name Jud Brown?" he asked, stepping inside the room and to the side of the door toward the table where he could not be seen from the street.

"I'm _Judge_ Brown," replied the large man testily. "You should have knocked before you came in, but now you're here, state your business as quickly as possible."

"That's a businesslike tone that I admire to hear, Brown," drawled Rathburn. "You'll excuse my not callin' you judge. I'm afraid when you find out who I am you'd think I was kiddin' you!"

He smiled amiably while the justice glared angrily.

"You're drunk!" flared Brown. "The best thing you can do is get out of here--quick."

Rathburn looked pained. "First you ask me to state my business an' now you tell me to get out," he complained. "You might as well know that I never touch likker," he added convincingly.

Brown was studying him intently with a puzzled look on his face.

"Well," he said finally, with a show of irritation, "what do you want?"

"I want you to tell me the why an' the wherefores of this doc.u.ment,"

said Rathburn sternly as he drew a folded piece of paper from a pocket and spread it out on the table before the astonished gaze of the justice.

"That's one of a number I saw tacked on trees on the east trail out of here," continued Rathburn, frowning. "What's it all about, Brown?"

The pen in the hand of the justice suddenly began to waver as the hand trembled. Then Brown dropped it, squared away his chair, and looked grimly at his nocturnal visitor. For some moments his gaze was concentrated on Rathburn's face. Then he slowly read the poster offering a reward of five hundred dollars for The Coyote. He wet his lips with his tongue.

"So I was right!" he exclaimed. "You _were_ headed in this direction.

I'm a.s.suming that you're The Coyote!"

"And you're a.s.suming what's the bare, untarnished truth," said Rathburn. "I'm The Coyote you've offered five hundred for, an' who'll bring another five hundred in several counties in Arizona, not to mention five thousand that the State of Arizona has tossed into the pot. I suppose I'm worth at least ten thousand as I stand here."

"That would be cheap for a man of your reputation!" said the justice bravely. "We don't want you across the line in California, Coyote. We won't put up with your depredations, and if you murder one of our citizens you'll hang!"

Rathburn's chilling laugh hung upon the justice's words. "You're side-stepping the point," he said suddenly in crisp tones that were like the crack of a whiplash. "You're antic.i.p.ating events, Jud. That's my complaint--that's my business here with you." He brought his right palm down upon the table smartly.

"An' now that I'm here, Jud, you're sure goin' to listen!"

"Don't threaten me!" cried the justice. "There are a hundred men within call and they'd make short work of you if they got their hands on you. Darn your ornery hide, I'm holding the winning cards in this game!" he concluded excitedly.

Rathburn was smiling at him; and it was not his natural smile. It gave the justice pause as he looked up into those narrowed gray eyes, shot with a steel-blue light. Rathburn's right hand and wrist moved with incredible swiftness, and Brown found himself staring into the black bore of a six-gun. Still he saw the eyes above the weapon. His face blanched.

"There are six winning cards in my right hand," Rathburn said slowly.

"You can start shoutin' for those hundred men you mentioned just as soon as you want. Brown, it's you an' your kind that's made me desperate--dangerous, like you said in that printed notice. I won't fool with you or any other man on earth!"

"What--what did you come here for?" stammered the justice.

"To get away from--from back there in that cactus-bordered country of black, lava hills where I was born an' where I belong!" said Rathburn grimly, sliding into a chair on the opposite side of the table from Brown.

"Listen to me! I was driven out. I've ridden for a week with the idea of gettin' where I wasn't known an' where I could maybe get a fresh start, and here I find a reward notice staring me in the face from the top of the first hill I cross after leaving Arizona. I've never been here before; I've done nothing to molest you or your town; but you sic the pack on me first off an' hand-running, without any reason, except that you've _heard_ things about me, I reckon."

Brown nodded his head as Rathburn finished. A measure of composure returned to him. His eyes gleamed with cunning as he remembered that his front door was unlocked and some one might by chance come in. But he again felt troubled as he conjectured what might happen in such event.

"You cannot blame me," he said to Rathburn. "You've robbed, and you're a killer----"

"That's what you _hear_?" thundered Rathburn. "I admit several robberies--holdups of crooked, gambling joints like you've got in this town, an' petty-larceny bankers who robbed poor stockmen with sanction of the law. I've killed one man who had it coming to him. But I've shouldered the blame for every killing an' every robbery that's been staged in the desert country for the last three years. 'The Coyote did it,' is what they say, an' the crooks an' gunmen that turned the deal go free. I'm talking to you, Brown, as man to man--a thing I've never done with any mouthpiece of the law before. I'm trying to show you how you an' your kind can make a man an outlaw an' keep him one till somebody shoots him down. I'm sore, Brown, because I know that one of these days I'm going to get it myself!"

The justice saw that the man was in deadly earnest. He saw the hand resting on the table tighten its grip upon the gun.

"I didn't know all these things," he said hastily. "I had to judge by what I heard--and read. Why didn't you make all this known to the Arizona authorities?"

Rathburn laughed harshly. "Because I'd be framed clear across the board," he said jeeringly. "It's the law! It's as much of a crime to rob a thieving gambler or a snake of a whisky runner or peddler as it is to rob a home! I've had to rob to live! An' all the while there's been the makings of one of the hardest-lookin' bad men that this Southwest country ever saw in me. And, now that I think of it, why the devil I've held off I don't know!"

Brown was moved by the sincerity of the man. He saw in Rathburn's eyes that he was speaking the gospel truth. He saw something else in those eyes--the yearning of a homeless, friendless man, stamped with the stigma of outlawry, rebelling against the forces which were against him, relentlessly hunting him down.

"You say you came here to start over?" he asked curiously. "How do I know you won't walk right out of this office and turn a trick right here in this very town?"

"You don't know it, that's the devil of it!" exclaimed Rathburn. "An'

there's no use in my telling you I won't, for you wouldn't take my word for it. You've got me pegged for a gun-fightin' bandit of first water an' clear crystal, an' I won't try to wise you up because it wouldn't do any good. Now that you know I'm in this country, you'll blame the first wrong thing that happens on to me. I've got no business here talking to you. I'm wasting my breath. You'll have to find out from somebody besides me that I was telling you the truth, an' I reckon that coincidence ain't in the pictures. Where's your handcuffs?"

The justice stared at him, startled.

"Where's your handcuffs?" insisted Rathburn angrily.

"In the drawer of my desk out in front," replied Brown.

"Go an' get 'em an' bring 'em here," Rathburn commanded. "I'll keep my drop on you under cover."

Brown rose and went to his desk in the front room while Rathburn watched him in the doorway with his gun held under his coat.

When the justice returned to the inside room Rathburn moved a chair close against one of the bedposts. He compelled Brown to sit in the chair, put his hands around between the supports in the back, and about the bedpost. He handcuffed him in that position.

Drawing a bandanna handkerchief from a pocket he swiftly gagged the justice. Then he rummaged about the room until he found a piece of rope tied about a pack in the bottom of the wardrobe. With this he secured Brown's ankles to the front legs of the chair.

"There!" he said, standing back to view his handiwork. "You're pretty well trussed up. I ain't trusting you any more than you'd trust me, an' I don't figure on you raising any hue an' cry before I can get along on my way."

The eyes of the justice were rolling as he struggled in vain to speak.

"Never mind," said Rathburn. "I reckon I know what you want to say.

Under the circ.u.mstances, the same being so much on my side, you'd say you believed me an' all that. But I took a chance in coming here to tell you what I did an' I never aim to take more'n one chance in a day. So long."

CHAPTER IV

"I KNEW HE LIED!"

Rathburn extinguished the light in the lamp, walked swiftly to the front door, and outside. Closing the door softly he turned back up the street. He sauntered along slowly, debating his next move. Evidently the town was the last for many miles in the mountainous country east and north. Westward he would come upon many towns as the country became more and more densely populated toward the coast. Northwestward he would be able to keep within the arm of the mountains and still be in touch with civilization. But he would have to make some changes in his attire and fix that brand on his horse.

Instinctively his course brought him to the big resort he had noticed upon his arrival. The entrance doors had been closed against the chill of the night, but he could see the interior of the place through one of the windows despite the coating of dust upon the gla.s.s.

As he peered within he stiffened to alert attention and a light oath escaped him. Walking swiftly from a rear door was a tall man, the lower part of his face concealed by a black handkerchief. He held a gun in each hand and was covering the score or more patrons of the place who had risen from the tables, or stepped back from the bar, with their hands held high above their heads.