Mogollon's Partners

NE harsh, hot morning in the month of June, a solitary rider came down through the mountains toward the abandoned Bronco Mine. A tall, lean man whose beard reached to his chest, he sat with drooping shoulders and bowed back, swaying loosely to the step of his dun mule. The dust of many seasons stained his hat's limp rim. Within his deep-set eyes there glowed the steady light which marks those men who spend their days searching for hidden things.

So he came down the glaring draw between the pallid flanks of the great hills within whose folds the shadows deepened to ashes of roses. And as the mesa opened out below him, revealing long empurpled reaches where a ghostly multitude of brown dust-devils were dancing fantastic figures to the searing wind's weird tune, the men at the adobe house caught sight of him.

Bronco Bob Lee, Tinkham and Shotgun Moore were sitting in the narrow strip of shade before the adobe's door, discussing a certain deal in Mexican cattle which had kept the last-named two south of the boundary for some weeks. After the fashion of that day, when many hard-eyed citizens were paying more attention to the condition of their rifle-sights than they were to the laws of nations, their herd had grown by leaps and bounds as it traveled northward; and this swift growth had been attended by swift incidents. Old Tinkham shifted his hat, gingerly disclosing a bloodstained bandage.

“One of them soldiers creased me when they jumped us down Moctezuma way,” he was saying. “Didn't amount to nothin', but the screw worms give me hell.” His eyes roved to the mouth of the ravine and his right hand went toward the rifle beside the door. Bronco Bob Lee noticed the movement and perceived its cause.

“That's only Mogollon,” said he. His manner of pronouncing the name was Muggyown, with the stress on the last syllable, and in his voice there was good-natured tolerance.

“Who's Mogollon?” demanded Shotgun Moore.

“All that I know,” Bronco Bob told them, “is that Curt Wilcox found him over in the Animas soon after yo' boys left. The Apaches had killed his pardner, an' he was out in the middle of the big alkali flat, crazy from want of water. Curt took him in to Paradise, and he worked a month or so for Pony Deal in the corrals. Sence then he's been prowlin' round these hills. He says he's from Pinos Altos, and all he knows to talk about is gold.”

“Them prospectors,” old Tinkham drawled, “is like that. Plumb locoed, every one of 'em.”

HEY watched him riding down out of the cañon mouth, past the abandoned shaft and the dump upon whose flanks the candle cactus grew. They saw his eyes rove toward the weather-grayed windlass, from which a bit of frayed rope was still dangling in the wind. He pulled up his mule before the door and slid from the worn old saddle.

“Mornin',” he bade them.

“Howdy,” they answered. He stood regarding them in silence.

“Which of yo' boys owns this here claim?” he asked at length. The other two glanced sidelong at Bronco Bob Lee.

“I reckon,” the latter told him, “I'm holding her down jest now.”

Mogollon turned his head to look again upon the signs of former mining activity, and the three partners smoked on in noncommittal silence.

“'Pears like nobody has been workin' her lately.” There was a mingling of diffidence and eagerness in his tone which did not escape Bronco Bob.

“Last time I heard of anybody burrowin' in that there shaft,” said he, “was ten or twelve years back. A feller by the name of Hassayampa Bill come down into this country with two pardners and found seven men mining here. Him and his outfit done laid fer 'em on the dump one mo'nin' when they was coming to work; and before noon they'd managed to kill the hull bunch. Then they went on sinkin' the shaft, but ol' Cochise and his renegades happened along this way a little later on and got them. The graves is over in that patch of ocatilla, all ten of 'em.”

“And sence that time?” asked Mogollon.

“Well, nobody's ever bothered their haids about it sence I've been here,” the other answered.

Mogollon reached into his pocket and brought forth several small chunks of brownish rock. These he fondled with calloused fingers. Finally he offered them to Bronco Bob, who bestowed upon them one brief glance.

“What be they?” he inquired indifferently.

“I run acrost the outcrop this side of the ridge,” said Mogollon. His manner was that of one who believes his announcement entitled to comment. Tinkham grunted. Shotgun Moore fell to rolling a cigarette.

“Ef yo' all aint int'rested,” Mogollon went on, “mebbe yo' aint got no objections to my developin' the property.”

“Meanin',” said Bronco Bob, “you'd like to go gopherin' round that there mountainside?”

“That,” the prospector told him, “is what I was a-drivin' at.”

“Go ahaid,” the other bade him easily. “Nobody's going to bother yo'.”

O mind one's own affairs had become a fine art in southeastern Arizona. When Mogollon vanished on his dun-colored mule a few days later, no one gave the matter so much as a passing thought; and when he reappeared after a week, none wasted words in comment. To Bronco Bob, whom he seemed to have chosen for a confidant, he mentioned the fact that he had journeyed to Tombstone to record his claim.

Thereafter the three partners saw him frequently. Business was slack that summer at the Bronco Mine; the Mexican smugglers, who had been buying Tucson drygoods and hardware at the old adobe house for several years, were beginning to drive their pack-mules over the line by way of the San Pedro Valley. Bronco Bob Lee, Tinkham and Shotgun Moore had plenty of leisure to watch their new neighbor toiling in the blazing sunshine.

So they became accustomed to the sight of him about the old shaft-mouth. A Mexican, whom he had hired in Paradise for a dollar a day, would rouse himself from long inertia at some signal from the depths and fall to turning the rude wooden windlass. After weary minutes, a limp-rimmed sombrero would appear above the platform's sun-warped planks, followed by a pair of drooping shoulders; and at last a battered iron bucket would emerge, and Mogollon would climb forth with the red dust clinging to the sweat stains on his tattered garments. The partners began to regard him as a sort of institution like the long-eared jackrabbits, and the lizards which were forever basking on the heated rocks.

In the little town of Paradise, over at the mesa's rim, where existence was growing dull in the lack of Apache raids and the falling off of illicit export trade, he was a source of idle speculation among the group of leading citizens who spent their evenings around the whisky-barrel in the rear of Beaver Smith's general store. When he rode into the place on his dun mule to buy a can of baking powder or a few pounds of flour, his appearance invariably aroused conjecture.

“What I cain't understand,” Curt Wilcox said after one of these visits, “is what fun a man finds, gouging out holes in a mountain.”

“That's becuz yo' was raised in Texas,” Bull Lewis told him, “and all yo' know is cow-brutes and punchers and the like o' that. Now, up in Colorado, where I come from, the's a heap of these here prospectors. They're all alike. The's something gets into their heads, jest the same way as it is with drunkards, and they can't quit. I don't believe one of 'em ever expects to find anything, no more than I think one of them ol' soaks on Myers Street really figgers he's goin' to drink all the whisky in Tucson. But they keep on trying ontel they die.”

“I reckon,” Pony Deal chimed in, “Bull is right. I done spent a year in New Mexico, which is full of sheepherders an' prospectors; an' I have seen a man work hard fer six months so's he could make a stake to gopher round on a hot mountainside where the Apaches was as thick as fleas on a Mexican dog. I never yet did hear tell of one that got rich.”

O Mogollon took his place among them, arousing perhaps more than his share of passing interest; but in their minds there was no curiosity concerning the hidden thing which he sought. Mining was not their game. Because he showed no disposition to convert them to his faith, they did not resent his presence. But after a month had passed, there came a change.

Bronco Bob Lee was first to feel it. One morning, when his two partners were over in Paradise, Mogollon came down the hillside and called him to the door of the adobe house.

“I've done cleaned out the shaft and re-timbered the tunnel,” the prospector announced. “She's ready to go ahaid now.”

“That's good,” Bronco Bob answered idly. He noticed that the peculiar light seemed to have grown brighter in the deep-set eyes. Mogollon laid a calloused hand upon his shoulder.

“A hundred feet more of the crosscut, an' I'll reach the vein. She'll go more than eight foot wide, and she'll average a hundred dollar's, free millin', to the ton.”

“That's fine,” said Bronco Bob.

“It's goin' to take about a thousand dollars,” Mogollon went on as if he had not been interrupted, “and I aim to leave yo' in on the ground floor.”

Bronco Bob shifted his position uneasily; and finally, when he had drawn a long breath:

“Look here, Mogollon,” he managed to say, “minin' aint my game. I aint saying yo' aint got a good thing, but this business of looking at one side of a mountain an' telling what's a hundred foot underground on the other side, is more than ever I could get the hang of. I'd a heap ruther yo'd talk it over with somebody else.”

Mogollon withdrew his hand. The light in his eyes remained unchanged. There was no shadow of disappointment in his face, only a faint regret.

“I sorta felt like yo' had the right to the fust chance,” he said.

FEW evenings later Bronco Bob rode into Paradise and got a sour greeting from the group around Beaver Smith's whisky-barrel.

“This ol' badger of yourn,” Bull Lewis explained, “is gettin' to be a pest.”

“Meanin'?” asked Bronco Bob.

“Mogollon,” the teamster answered. “He's tryin' to sell a half int'rust in that there hole in the ground of his.”

“I aint heard tell of any law ag'in' sellin' a mine in the territory of Arizona,” Bronco Bob retorted serenely.

“The's a heap of things the law allows that don't go here,” Bull Lewis asserted darkly. “I've seen men run outa camp that wasn't half the nuisance Mogollon has got to be. He clamped down on me this afternoon, an' I thought I never would get shet of him.”

“He thinks,” Curt Wilcox growled, “he's doin' a man a favor. He says he's got a shore thing, an' he wanted me to put up a thousand dollars to throw in with him on the deal.”

“He nailed me when I was down in the corral shoeing that mean little mouse-colored mule the other day,” Pony Deal chimed in. “The only way it would be safe to handle that brute's feet would be to bury him an' leave the hoofs stick up out of the ground. And right when things was gettin' lively, here comes Mogollon a-talking mine. He like to got me killed. Ef the mule hadn't reached out and chawed his shoulder, I reckon he'd of been pestering me yet.”

Old Santa Cruz Castañada, the wagonmaster, raised his hand.

“Hark,” he said. “Now he has got Beaver.”

From the blue night a querulous voice floated into the store's long interior. Bronco Bob smiled grimly.

“Beaver takes it hard,” he murmured, but the others did not seem to share his amusement.

“Yo' wouldn't take it so blame easy ef yo' was in his shoes,” they told him. The voice outside was rising to a final outburst. The words came to them:

“An' that's flat, Mogollon. I wouldn't resk a dobe dollar on yo'r swindlin' game. Now go away an' leave me be.”

A moment later the proprietor entered his establishment alone. His goat's beard had assumed a horizontal angle, and he was breathing heavily. His eyes met Bronco Bob's.

“I tell yo' what it is,” he sputtered shrilly: “yo' gotta get him outa camp.”

“Ef it's goin' to he'p yo' boys to ferget yo'r troubles,” Bronco Bob suggested, “I'll buy a drink.” But the memory of their various ordeals did not leave the men of Paradise so easily as he had imagined. There was but little of light-heartedness about the whisky-barrel that evening.

ND as the days wore on, Mogollon became more and more an object of aversion. Men slunk from sight whenever he appeared; he walked the street a solitary figure; and some who saw him maintained that he had fallen to talking to himself.

A week later Bronco Bob Lee was within the old adobe house where the seven miners had fought their losing battle against Hassayampa Bill and his partners in years gone by. Hearing a step before the door way, he looked up and saw the tall, droop ing form of his neighbor upon the threshold.

“Come in,” said he; but Mogollon shook his head.

“Got to be shovin' on,” he announced. “The' aint no use tryin' to do business in Paradise. I'm leavin' today.”

“The boys,” said Bronco Bob, “aint much on minin', an' that's a fact. Now, ef yo'r game was cows or faro bank, it would be more along their line.”

Mogollon stroked his beard; his eyes remained serene. “I would of liked to see yo' fellers get in on the ground floor.”

Bronco Bob came to the door and watched him mount the dun mule.

“So long,” he called after him. “Hope yo' get luck.”

“Oh, I'll find some one,” Mogollon told him over his shoulder; and with those words he rode away.

That was in July.

N AN an August noontide a fat man, with flabby face and eyes as hard as jet, urged his jaded horse across the glaring flats below the great bend of the Gila, more than two hundred miles away. Behind him in the West his unsavory past remained; he looked ahead into the East, where there was none who knew him, and began to plan his future. To begin with, he had selected Williams as an easy-fitting name.

Dark mountain ranges closed in with perspective to north and south, making an exact circle, of which he always remained the center, an obese smudge ringed by the desert's savage splendor. As he moved, the plain unfolded, revealing new reaches but no change.

The sun crept on. When afternoon was at its height, he saw two objects far ahead. From what men had told him at the last stage-station, he knew the nearer to be the clump of mesquite at a water-hole; but into whom the crawling speck beyond was going to reveal itself, he could not tell. Now as they drew nearer to each other, he shifted the rifle from its sheath beneath the stirrup-leather, holding it ready across his lap; and his eyes became like two beads of dark obsidian.

The speck developed into a dual form; the twisting heat-waves distorted it to vast dimensions, lifting it into the pallid sky, then letting it down to earth again. The fat man distinguished the mule and its bearded rider. His eyes became less ugly, and he replaced the rifle in its scabbard.

“Only a prospector,” he told himself. The afternoon was on the wane when the two of them rode into the mesquite thicket from either side and met by the little pool.

“Howdy!” said Mogollon. “Hot day.” He slid from the dun mule's back and left the other to take first possession of the spring. “Ef I was you,” he remarked while he was loosening his cinch, “I'd unsaddle that hoss and leave him roll. He'll carry yo' better fer it when yo' go on.”

After the mule had gotten its fill of water, and the two animals had fallen to cropping the scanty grass, the men sat down together in the shade.

“Come fur?” asked Williams.

“Tombstone,” Mogollon answered—which brought the talk to mining. He took some brownish rock fragments from his pocket, and the fat man listened idly to his recital of what had happened in the town of Paradise.

“So I shoved on to Tombstone,” Mogollon continued, “an' tried to find some one to back her, but the best I could get was a promise that they'd send an expert when I struck the vein; an' ef she showed up well enough, they'd buy.”

“Yo' say them fellers in Paradise had money?” the other interrupted, heedless of this portion of the narrative.

“They could of raised ten thousand among 'em in half a day,” said Mogollon.

The fat man had been lying flat on his back at the beginning of that statement. At its conclusion he was sitting bolt upright. The sun swung westward, and the shadows lengthened under the mesquite trees; the animals grazed unheeded in a widening circle, while Mogollon, in answer to his companion's questions, went on giving the financial rating of the leading citizens in Paradise.

O it came about that when old Beaver Smith stood in the doorway of his store one morning two weeks later, he saw a buckboard approaching by the road down on the flat, and called a quartet of early customers from the rear of the establishment.

“That there nigh mule,” he announced, “is Mogollon's. He's come back to pester us again.”

“But who's the feller with him?” Pony Deal demanded.

“I reckon,” Curt Wilcox hazarded, “the ol' boy has done found a pardner.”

The buckboard climbed the grade to the mesa's summit and came rattling into the little town. The cloud of gray dust which mantled the vehicle and its two occupants swirled away before a gust of wind, and the group of watchers got their first clear view of the obese Williams. Bronco Bob Lee's eyes became narrow.

“Ef that's his pardner,” said he, “he might have done well to look a little fu'ther.”

When Mogollon had pulled up and tied the team at the long hitching-rack before the store, the men of Paradise noticed that he was still wearing the same patched overalls and faded shirt; the hat had grown perhaps a little limper about the brim. But there was, in his manner, a new assurance; and when he presented his companion, they could not mistake the pride in his voice. They acknowledged the introduction with noncommittal monosyllables, and during the brief session at the whisky-barrel which followed, they remained for the most part grimly silent.

“Well,” Mogollon told the fat man after the second round, “I reckon we'll shove on to the mine.”

“See yo' later,” he called back to them from the buckboard, and released the brake. “Giddap!” The team sprang into a brisk trot.

“It's a blame shame,” Beaver Smith growled. Bronco Bob Lee nodded.

“I wonder,” he murmured, “what that fat sharp's game is?”

ARADISE waited to learn the answer to that question, but as the days went by, there came no enlightenment. During the pair's brief visits to the town, Mogollon retained the new assurance which they had marked on his arrival; and now they began to notice another change. He never mentioned the subject with which he had bored them before his departure. Once or twice Beaver Smith transgressed the rigid code of Southwestern etiquette which forbade asking another man about his business; but the best he got was the vague assurance that the Bronco Mine was doing nicely. Then Santa Cruz Castañada brought in the wagon-train from Tucson at the week-end, and four Tombstone miners, who had come with him as passengers, wrestled with Ma Smith's cooking at the boarding-house that evening. To those who had followed him to the rear of the store after the meal, the wagonmaster confided that he had hauled a half-ton of provisions, along with much steel and giant powder, consigned to the claim.

“Looks like this fat man aims to back his play,” Curt Wilcox commented. Bull Lewis chuckled.

“I was thinkin',” said he, “what ef that there mine should be a good thing after all.”

“What ails yo', Bull?” Bronco Bob demanded. “Yo' look like yo'r drink had went the wrong way.”

HEREAFTER Bronco Bob Lee, Tinkham and Shotgun Moore, returning to Paradise every evening after their daily vigils at the old adobe house where they still awaited stray bands of Mexican smugglers, reported increasing activity about the shaft mouth. And as suspicion began to evolve into a general conviction that the camp had allowed opportunity to pass into the hands of a rank stranger, solicitude for Mogollon grew strong.

“When this here pussy sharp gets done with him,” old Beaver declared to the group of customers about the whisky-barrel one afternoon, “he'll have his hide a-hangin' on the fence. Su'thin' ort to be done.”

“What's botherin' yo', Beaver,” Curt Wilcox drawled, “is the same thing that's ailin' all the rest of us. We could stand passin' up a good chancet, but we hate to see that pot-bellied swindler walking off with it right onder our noses thet-a-way.”

Bronco Bob, who was spending the day in town, ceased carving notches on the packing-box which served him as a seat. He closed his jackknife with a snap and thrust it into his pocket.

“Mogollon done tol' me last evenin',” said he, “how them two has organized into a stock comp'ny; an' this here Williams man owns half the shares. He claims they're due to strike that vein some time inside of the next month.”

Thus Paradise became corrupted, and for the time forgot the art of minding its own business. And as the month which Mogollon had designated drew toward its close, speculation concerning the riches in that arid hillside beyond the mesa grew apace. In all the town, none took this thing so hard as Beaver Smith. Once, during his earlier career, he had spent a few months in Prescott and picked up a smattering of mining information. Mogollon himself, during the period when he had importuned them, had not talked so much of dips and angles of hanging walls and footwalls as the leading merchant of Paradise talked now. At last, when curiosity, which was not unmixed with avarice, had irked him beyond further endurance, he saddled up and rode over to the claim. Those who witnessed his departure awaited his homecoming with a degree of anticipation, but their hopes of gaining any information were dashed when he arrived.

“Anybody,” he told them, “would think I was tryin' to spy on them, the way they done handled me.” There was a flicker in the tail of his eye which did not escape Curt Wilcox, who mentioned the matter to Bronco Bob Lee that same evening.

“I didn't take notice of anybody mistreatin' him,” the latter answered reflectively. “He had a bottle of whisky along with him, and he put in a heap of time with the man at the windlass. Between the two of 'em, they killed the hull quart. I reckon ol' Beaver will bear watchin'.”

O it came that Bronco Bob Lee, Tinkham and Shotgun Moore kept their eyes on the growing dump during these days, and were able to report subsequent visits by the leading merchant of Paradise. And so, on a September evening when Bull Lewis sought his friends down at the corrals, where they had gathered to help Pony Deal diagnose the ailment of an invalid mule, he found a receptive audience for his tidings.

“The way the play come up,” the teamster told them, “I was dozin' in a chair by Beaver's whisky-barrel, me havin' been up all the night before tryin' to break a monte game that them Mexicans has started at the other side of town. But I was sleepin' like a dog with both ears open; and by and by I took notice of Beaver talkin' to somebody in the front of the store.

“'Yo're shore yo're right?' he was a-sayin'.

“'I was there when they cleaned away the muck from the last shot,' the other feller says, 'an' the vein shows ten foot wide!'

“I cocked one eye open an' got a good look at him. 'Twas one of them miners from the Bronco.”

“So they've made their strike!” Curt Wilcox swore softly. “Now, what do yo' boys reckon that ol' miser aims to do?”

“That ain't all I heard,” Bull Lewis cut in. “This here miner goes on out without even takin' a drink. And I am jest about to make a play like I was wakin' up, when here comes the rattle of a buckboard, and that kettle-bellied Williams sharp busts into the front door with a canvas bag in his hand.

“'I want this sack of ore,' says he, 'took to Tucson when the wagons goes out in the mo'nin'. Tell them to give it to the assayer on Myers Street, and to fetch back the report to me in person.'

“Which Beaver says he will; an' this Williams party aint no more than left, before the ol' thief comes on his tiptoes to the back end of the store. Fust thing he does is to make shore I'm asleep. Then he onties the sack and pours out half of the rocks into another canvas bag. He sneaks out of the back door, and after a while, he comes in again with some chunks of stone which he puts into the Williams sack. He fiddles around for a little, and comes over to wake me up. It takes consid'able shaking to do it. He gives me the two bags; one is marked with his name, and the other is labeled 'Williams.'

“'Take these to the assayer on Myers Street,” he says, 'and bring back his reports on 'em. Be shore to give me mine the very fust thing, as soon as yo' hit Paradise. Keep yo'r mouth shet, and ef the's anything in it, I'll see yo' get yo'r share.'

“I tol' him I'd 'tend to it, and we had a drink. After that, I lit out to find you fellers.”

“I don't jest get the hang of this,” Curt Wilcox complained when the teamster had finished his narrative. Bronco Bob chuckled.

“Beaver aims to buy in cheap,” said he. “The ore that he has stole will tell how rich the vein is. The Williams man will get a report showing about half the values. When Bull turns over them papers next week, jest watch that ol' scoundrel make tracks fer the mine and offer Williams good money fer some stock.”

“Ef it wasn't fer his wife,” Pony Deal growled, “I'd be fer runnin' that ol' hyena out of camp. Why couldn't he let us in on this?”

“I was thinkin',” Bronco Bob drawled, “why cain't we cut in, anyhow? Bull can show us Beaver's report when the wagons come in.”

“But,” Pony Deal interrupted, “we cain't do no business till the fat man gets his bad news; and by that time Beaver has got his figgers too. He'll burn the wind out to the mine.”

“Let him,” Bronco Bob answered serenely. “We'll organize our game so he don't travel very fur. The's a pack-train due from Sinaloa inside of the next few days, and I know that bunch of greasers. Half of 'em are bandits when trade is slack. Is the' any of yo' boys savvys the reata trick?”

Santa Cruz Castañada, the wagonmaster, swore softly in Spanish, and old Tinkham smote the speaker's back in the fullness of his joy.

WEEK later, when the gray dusk was turning into purple darkness, the wagon-train came rattling down the single street of Paradise. Beaver Smith watched its arrival from his store's front door. For what seemed to him a long time he stood there waiting for Bull Lewis.

Down in the mule-corrals where the dust-haze showed gulden in the lantern-light, the teamster grinned into the faces of the group who surrounded him.

“Well, boys!” His voice was vibrant with exultance. “She shows a little better'n a hundred dollars to the ton.”

“Better fetch Beaver his report right now,” Bronco Bob bade him, “or he'll be coming after it. He's been watching the road fer yo' sence four o'clock. The's a pony saddled behind the blacksmith shop. Don't lose any time, but climb onto him as quick as yo' can and ride over to the mine with Williams' paper before Beaver gets started. He turned to old Tinkham as the teamster was departing:

“Got them greasers ready?”

“They're waitin' now jest this side of Chilson's cabin, where the road leaves town,” the Texan whispered. “I done give 'em their orders exactly what to do.”

“All right, then, boys,” the leader told them. “We may's well keep onder cover in the wagonshed fer an hour or so. That'll give this Williams party plenty of time to think over his bad news.”

Beaver Smith ceased fumbling with his goat's beard and sighed with relief as he recognized the figure of Bull Lewis approaching through the dark.

“Here's that there paper from the assay-office,” the teamster announced cheerfully. The storekeeper took it from his hand and began to open it with eager fingers.

“Go back to the bar'l an' he'p yo'se'f to a drink,” said he. In the act of turning away, Bull hesitated. Bronco Bob's instructions for haste had been explicit, but the dust of the Tucson road had never seemed to rankle in his throat as it did now.

“Reckon a mule's earful wouldn't hurt me none,” he muttered, and retraced his footsteps. When he was bending over the faucet, he got a glimpse of Beaver scanning the report by the light of the kerosene lamp in the front of the store. When he straightened up again, the room was empty save for himself.

“Wonder what made him pile out so sudden?” he mused. “Well, anyhow, he's got to leave me ride over there ahaid of him. Reckon I better be a-movin' now.”

He hurried to the rear of the blacksmith shop and untied the waiting pony. He swung into the saddle and was off at a fast lope. Where the road took a sharp turn to descend into a dry wash, beyond which the Chilson cabin stood, he pulled down to a running walk; and then he felt the horse shy. He heard a whining whisper above his head. Cold, slippery strands of rawhide settled down and tightened to a rigid clasp about his throat. His breath was gone, but when he struck the earth with a bone-shaking jar, he was fighting manfully, if blindly. And two swarthy men from Sinaloa, in steep-crowned sombreros and wide-mouthed trousers faced along the sides with leather, assured each other fervently in their own tongue two minutes later that they would yet have a reckoning with the Texas man who had promised them a safe and easy job.

“It may be,” one whispered, when they had dragged their victim into the shadow of the mesquite bushes, enwrapped as tightly as a cocoon, “this is the wrong man.”

“No, Esperidion,” his companion answered, “did we not see the first one leave the store and ride by? And this one comes next, just as the Tehuana told us. Hark! Now he swears again. Stuff the handkerchief some more into his mouth, so that we may leave him and go in peace.”

T was midnight when Bronco Bob and his companions left the mine to ride back to Paradise. The Williams man had driven a harder bargain than they had anticipated.

“I begun to be afeard we'd have to get a little rough with him before he was done,” Curt Wilcox said when they were out of earshot from the tent.

“I wonder,” Pony Deal speculated, “why he was so dead set ag'in' lettin' go of more'n half his stock.”

“Fifty dollars a ton aint such a bad showin',” Bronco Bob reminded him. “We're in luck to get what we did fer five thousand. I wisht we'd doctored them samples of his a leetle more. What'll we do with ol' Beaver?”

“May's well leave him lay out till mo'nin',” Tinkham suggested. “'Taint going to hurt him none. I kin come ridin' by and sort of find him, like, at sunup.”

“An' the rest of us will be at the store to hear his hard-luck story when yo' fetch him in,” Bronco Bob chuckled. “That's fine!”

O it was agreed. But in the early morning they gathered at the store, to find the doors already open. The proprietor was behind the counter, whistling between his teeth. He cocked a jovial eye at them.

“Mo'nin', men,” he bade them. “Have a drink?”

“Beaver,” demanded Bronco Bob, who was the first to find his wits and tongue, “where was yo' las' night?”

“Me?” Beaver answered blithely. “Why, I done lit out right after the wagons come in. My ol' woman was settin' up with Mis' Chilson's kid, that's down with scarlet fever, an' I'd promised to fetch her some yarb tea that one of them Mexican women brewed up. Whassa matter with yo' fellers, anyhow?”

But the conspirators were spared the necessity of reply to his question by the arrival of Tinkham and the badly battered Bull Lewis, who managed to make known a pressing want by an extended finger. By the time they had ministered to his needs at the whisky-barrel, Bronco Bob had done quite a bit of swift thinking.

“Where did yo' go from Chilson's, Beaver?” he asked briskly.

“I dunno what's bitin' yo' fellers,” the other told him. “Anybody would think I'd robbed a stage, the way yo' act. Ef yo've got to know, why, I done rode out to the mine an' put one over on that there Williams thief by gettin' a hunk of his minin' stock off'm him. Who's been beatin' yo' up, Bull?”

“Boys,” Curt Wilcox interrupted, “my insides is feelin' sort of cold. I think I need another drink before we go fu'ther with this.”

“What I would like to know—” old Beaver was beginning, when they had heartened themselves at his expense.

“I reckon,” Pony Deal told him brusquely, “yo'll know purty soon. Didn't yo' never hear of sellin' a salted mine? Come on, boys.”

T did not take them long to saddle up, and they rode hard across the mesa to the Bronco Mine.

A half-dozen tents were pitched hard by the cañon mouth. Before one of these, under a scrub oak tree, Mogollon was standing. His back was toward them, and he was bending over a rude iron mortar. The thump-thump of a steel bar, which he was employing as a pestle, was the only sound about the place. He turned at their approach.

“Howdy!” he bade them, and laid the bar aside.

“Where's Williams?” three of them asked at once.

Mogollon picked up the iron receptacle and emptied its powdered contents into a gold-pan. He rinsed the last grains forth with water from a battered canteen, poured a pint or so more into the pan and gave it a preliminary twirl.

“I reckon he done lit out last night,” he answered slowly. “That's what he aimed to do.”

Beaver Smith, who had had opportunity for much reflection on the way here, ripped out a hair-raising oath.

“I've a plumb notion to drill yo' between the eyes,” he announced with fervor. “That crook has got five thousand dollars of my money, an' yo' was in on this deal from the start.” Bronco Bob Lee laid a hard hand on the speaker's wrist. Mogollon ceased twirling the gold-pan and glanced up at them. His eyes held that same sure, far-seeing look which they had noticed so many times before.

“Did he sell out to yo' boys?” he asked placidly. Bronco Bob forbore from reply until he had disarmed the raging Beaver. And then he answered with a counter-question.

“What do yo' know about this, Mogollon?”

“I know,” the latter said over his shoulder, the while he swished the water in the pan, “that he's a low-down swindler.”

“I reckon mebbe yo' know he done salted this here mine, then?” Curt Wilcox interjected hotly.

“He didn't savvy enough about the business to do that.” Mogollon was talking with provoking slowness. “He had a bag of samples which he had stole somewheres up La Paz way, an' 'twas them he used to bait yo' fellers on. An' he done paid one of the hands twenty dollars to tell Beaver that we'd made a strike.”

“I wisht yo'd hol' this ol' tarantalar, Curt,” said Bronco Bob. “I'd like to talk. Now, Mogollon, yo' knowed all about this, then?”

“Me an' him throwed in together,” Mogollon said with pleasant indifference, “agreein' that he was to furnish a thousand dollars an' sell out his half of the stock to yo' boys ef he could. As long's yo'-all come in fer pardners, I was satisfied.”

Bronco Bob swore. Incredulity and rising rage were in his voice.

“Our havin' paid ten thousand don't seem to hurt yo'r feelin's none!”

“Why should it?” Mogollon had finished the washing. He scraped the powdered remnants from the pan into a small glass bottle, which he held forth to them.

“Take a good look at it. I've got ten more samples just as rich. We made the strike last night inside of an hour after he pulled his freight. Ef yo' boys had took my word that 'twas there in the beginning, yo'd of got in cheaper. Anyhow, we're pardners now.”