Rathburn picked his way slowly through the timber around to the southeast and then directly down toward the town. It was slow going, and the man seemed to relish this fact. His face was thoughtful, wistful, a bit grave. He occasionally patted his horse's neck.

"We're on our way home, old hoss," he said softly. "Seems like we just _had_ to stop off here."

He fingered two small objects in his coat pocket.

"I wonder," he murmured. "I wonder if I could be mistaken."

He turned west after a time and rode carefully until he gained a worn trail. This he followed down toward town, and in half an hour he dismounted in the timber behind a small cabin at the side of the road to the hogback.

Rathburn went to the rear door and knocked. He received no answer, but sounds came to him through an open window. He opened the door softly and stole inside. There was no one in the kitchen. The sounds came from another room. He pa.s.sed on into a bedroom and turned into another bedroom where he saw a figure in overalls lying on the bed. A great ma.s.s of dark hair covered the pillow. The form shook with sobs.

Rathburn laid a gentle hand upon the shoulder, and the face, which was quickly turned to him, was the face of a girl--the girl he had first seen when coming into the town, the girl who had been sitting the horse listening to Carlisle's tirade, the girl the barn man had said was supposed to be Carlisle's sister.

"They don't know you were up there," said Rathburn softly. "Your boy's clothes fooled them, if they saw you at all. They probably thought I was carrying Sautee down the trail, for they found Sautee up there in the powder house with me."

The girl sobbed again. Her eyes were red with weeping.

"Listen, ma'am," said Rathburn gently. "I picked these up from the road the day the truck driver was held up." He brought out two hairpins from his coat pocket.

"It set me to thinking, ma'am, an' was one reason why I stayed over here to find out what was goin' on. Maybe I've done wrong, ma'am, but I was hoping I'd be doin' you a favor. I saw the look in your eyes the day Carlisle was talkin' to you when you was on the hoss. I know you helped him in his holdups, dressed like a boy, but I figured you didn't do it because you wanted to."

"No--no--no!" sobbed the girl.

"All right; fine, little girl. No one knows anything about it but me, an' I'm goin' away. But, listen, girlie, just what was Carlisle to you?"

A spasm of weeping shook the girl. "Nothing I could help," she sobbed.

"He--I had to do as he said--because--oh, I hate him. I hate him!"

"There, there," soothed Rathburn. "I suspected as much, girlie."

"He made my father a bad man," sobbed the girl; "an' made me go with him or my father would have to go--to--to go----"

"Never mind, girlie," Rathburn interrupted softly. "I don't want to hear the story. Just keep it to yourself an' start all over. It ain't a bad world, girlie, an' there's more good men in it than there's bad.

Now, you can begin to live and be happy like you ought. Carlisle won't worry you no more."

She raised her head and looked at him out of startled eyes in which there was a ray of hope.

"You say--he won't--worry me----"

"Not at all, girlie. He walked into his own trap. I'm goin', girlie.

So long, an' good luck."

He took her hand and pressed it, and under the spell of his smile the hope came into her welling eyes.

"Good-by," he called from the doorway.

She was smiling faintly through her tears when he slipped out.

Deputy Sheriff Mannix was sitting in his little office alone. It was nearly sunset. A faint glow of crimson shot across the carpet.

Mannix was scowling thoughtfully. On the desk before him were two pieces of paper. One of them was a reward notice publishing the fact that The Coyote was wanted and that five thousand dollars would be paid by the State of Arizona for his capture, dead or alive.

Mannix picked up the second piece of paper and again read the words penciled upon it:

I am taking out of this money belonging to the Dixie Queen the five hundred dollars Sautee promised me for carrying the money to the mine, and the two thousand dollars reward offered for the capture of those who had been robbing the Dixie Queen. I expect that shortly after this gets into the proper hands Sautee will be in jail, and he will be handy to tell you this is all O. K.

RATHBURN.

Mannix took up the reward notice, put it with the note, and jammed the two pieces of paper into an obscure pigeonhole in his desk.

"Filed!" he said aloud.

Then he rose with a peculiar smile, went out upon the little porch, and stared toward the east where the reflection of the sunset cast a rosy glow over the foothills leading down to the desert.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PRODIGAL

With face upraised to the breath of air which stirred across the bare black lava hills, Rathburn leaned forward in the saddle eagerly, while his dun-colored horse stood patiently, seemingly in accord with his master's mood. A merciless sun beat down from a hot, cloudless sky.

Below, stretching in endless miles was the desert--a sinister, forbidding land of desolate distances, marked only by slender yucca palms, mesquite, dusty greasewood, an occasional clump of green palo verde, the slim fingers of the ocatilla, the high "forks" of the giant sahuara, and clumps of la cholla cactus, looking like apple orchards in full bloom.

Yet the man's gaze fell for a moment lovingly on each species of cactus and desert vegetation; his look was that which dwells in the homesick eyes of a traveler when he sees his native land from the deck of an inbound ship.

"Hoss, we're home!" he said aloud, while the animal p.r.i.c.ked up its ears.

Then he looked off to the left, where the blue outlines of a low range of mountains wavered in the heat like a mirage.

"Imagination Range," he said moodily.

He tickled the dun with his spurs and trotted along the crest of the lava ridge. At its eastern terminus he swung down into the desert and struck straight east in the direction of Imagination Range. The desert's surface between the lava ridge and the higher hills of the range to eastward was cut by dry washes and arroyos and miniature ridges studded with giant cactus.

On the top of one of these high rises the horseman suddenly reined in his mount and stared into the south. "There's trouble--an' spelled with a capital T!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

The gaze in his keen gray eyes centered upon a number of riders speeding their horses over the tumbled section of desert below him to his right. He made out two divisions of hors.e.m.e.n. One group was some distance ahead of the other. Even as he stared down at them, its group separated, and some rode for Imagination Range, while others hastened toward the lava hills, or due north in his direction. The second group halted for a brief spell, evidently for a conference, and then its members also divided and started in swift pursuit of the men ahead.

The watcher on the top of the rise frowned.

"Out of here, hoss," he said sharply. "This ain't our day for visitors."

He pushed on eastward, increasing its pace, but losing time in skirting the frequent bits of high ground. As he rode down into a deep arroyo, a horseman came galloping into its lower end and raced almost upon him before seeing him. His hand darted like lightning to his gun, and the weapon snapped into aim at his hip. The horseman came to a rearing halt, reins dangling, his hands held high, his eyes bulging from their sockets.