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 the bank, open his old, battered gripsack, and pile up seventy-five or eighty thousand dollars for deposit as carelessly as some of us would handle collars. Those were the days on the range when men made money in a hurry when they made it, and lost it on the jump when it began to go. There wasn't any plodding, slow-going medium road for a faint-hearted man.

There were but two people regularly engaged in the bank besides Stott, the bookkeeper and receiving-paying teller. Neither of these had arrived when Texas Hartwell and Fannie Goodnight walked in through the wide-swung door and confronted Stott at his desk. A revolver lay on the desk within Stott's instant grasp, a rifle leaned against the wall not three feet away, and he seemed to hesitate between them as his early visitors drew up to the railing behind which he sat.

Stott was facing the door, and, as his hand crept now stealthily toward his revolver weighting the pile of papers at his side, his eyes sought the street as if for the waiting horses, or accomplices, of the two who had appeared so unexpectedly.

"It isn't a raid, Mr. Stott, sir," Texas hastened to assure him. "We've come to talk over a matter of business with you."

"Well, what can I do for you?" Stott asked, his