Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/260

 saloons in this and that town known throughout the Southwest as bad, these agents talked with men of hard features and harder lives.

They talked glibly, did these agents, of easy money. They said they were recruiting a force of regulators who were to clean up cattle thieves. So many dollars down, all expenses paid, grub and horse for every man; and in the end, when everything was tidied up, a fat bonus for every man employed.

Whispers passed through the walls of these saloon back rooms in tough desert towns. The whispers were of something called the Invasion.