valign="top" class="chalgn">XXI.

A Capture 151 XXII. A Second Capture 160 XXIII. Quick Facts 165 XXIV. The Show-down 170 XXV. Filed! 175 XXVI. The Prodigal 179 XXVII. The Desert Code 185 XXVIII. A Night Summons 194 XXIX. Gunmen 201 XXX. The Sheriff’s Plight 207 XXXI. A New Count 215 XXXII. The Compass Fails 220 XXXIII. Fast Work 224 XXXIV. The Compass Wavers 230 XXXV. Guns in the Night 235 XXXVI. The Loot 242 XXXVII. The Test of a Man 245 XXXVIII. Ten Miles’ Start 250

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THE COYOTE

The sign on the tree attracted the man’s attention while he was still far down the slope. He could see the tall pine on the crest of the ridge above a veritable landmark in that country of stunted timber, and the square of paper, tacked to its trunk under the lowest branches, gleamed white against the background of vivid green.

The air was clear, and every detail of the landscape––the red rocks, the saffron-colored slopes, the green pines and firs and buck brush, the white cliffs––everything within sight for miles stood out, clean-cut in the brilliant sunshine which flooded the empty land under a cloudless sky.

When the man, mounted on a lean, dun-colored horse, first looked up at a turn of the narrow trail and saw the sign, he grunted. Then he frowned and looked back along the way he had come with a glowing light of reflection in his gray eyes. He was a tall man, slim and muscular, clean-shaven, his face and hands bronzed by sun and wind, and his face open and good-natured. A shock of blond hair showed where his gray, wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat was pushed back from his high forehead.

His dress, though typical of the country which he traversed, was distinctive, or it might have been 12 a certain natural grace that made it seem so. He wore a light-gray, soft shirt made of French flannel, a dark-blue silk scarf, leather chaps over olive-drab khaki trousers, black, hand-sewed riding boots which displayed their polish despite a coating of fine dust,