even the little hoss, who do you guess is doin' the rustlin'?"

"If I knowed," growled the sheriff, "his name'd be wrote on the notice."

"Would it? I was just wonderin'. Habit I got."

"Don't you fret none about them rustlers. I'll get 'em if it takes ten years."

"Make it twenty, Sheriff. They'll keep right on electin' yuh."

"Do yuh mean to say the rustlers elected me?" exploded the sheriff.

"O' course not," chided Loudon, gently. "Now what made yuh think I meant that?"

"Well, yuh said——" began the sheriff.

"I said 'they,'" interrupted Loudon. "You said 'rustlers'. Stay in the saddle, Sheriff. You'll stub your toe sometime if yuh keep on a-travellin' one jump ahead o' the hoss."

"Yo're —— smart for a cow-punch."

"It is a cinch to fool most of 'em, ain't it—especially when yo're a sheriff?"

Loudon's eyes were wide open and child-like in their gray blandness. But the sheriff did not mistake his man. Block knew that if his hand dropped, a bullet would neatly perforate his abdomen. The sheriff was not a coward, but he had sense enough not to force an issue. He could afford to wait.

"I'll see yuh again," said the sheriff, harshly, and strode diagonally down the slope.

Loudon watched him until he vanished among the pines a hundred yards below. Then Loudon touched his horse with the spur and rode on, chin on shoulder, hands busy reloading his six-shooter. Three minutes later Loudon saw the sheriff, mounted on his big black stallion, issue from the wood. The great horse scrambled up the hillside, gained the trail, and headed south.

"Bet he's goin' to the 88," said Loudon. "I'd give ten dollars to know what Block was roostin' behind that rock for. Gawd! I shore would admire to be Sheriff o' Fort Creek County for thirty days!"

Eleven miles from Indian Ridge he topped a rise and saw below him Farewell's straggly street, flanked by several false-fronted saloons, two stores, one hotel leaning slightly askew, and a few unkempt houses, the whole encircled by the twinkling pickets of innumerable bottles and tin cans.

He rode along the street, fetlock-deep in dust, and stopped at the hotel corral. Freeing Ranger of the saddle and bridle, he opened the gate and slapped the chestnut on the hip.

"Go on in, fellah," said Loudon. "Yore dinner's a-comin'."

He walked around to the front of the hotel. Under the wooden awning a beefy, red-faced citizen was dozing in a chair tilted back against the wall. Loudon tapped the snoring individual on the shoulder. The sleeper awoke gaspingly, his eyes winking. The chair settled on four legs with a crash.

"Howdy, Bill," said Loudon, gravely.

"Howdy, Tom," gurgled the other.

"Hoss in the corral an' me here, Bill. Feeds for two."

"Sure. We've done et, but you go in an' holler for Lize. She'll fix you up."

The fat landlord waddled stableward and Loudon entered the hotel. A partition that did not reach the ceiling divided the sleeping apartments from the dining room. Carelessly hanging over the partition were two shirts and someone's chaps.

The whole floor slanted, for, as has been said, the hotel leaned sidewise. The long table in the dining room, covered with cracked and scaling oilcloth, was held unsteadily upright by three legs and a cracker box.

Loudon, quite untouched by this scene of shiftlessness, hooked out a chair with his foot, dropped his hat on the floor, and sat down.

"Oh, Mis' Lainey!" he called.

A female voice, somewhat softened by distance and a closed door, instantly began to make oration to the effect that if any lazy chunker of a puncher thought he was to eat any food he was very much mistaken.

The door banged open. A slatternly, scrawny woman appeared in the doorway. She was still talking. But the clacking tongue changed its tone abruptly.

"Oh, it's you, Tom Loudon!" exclaimed the lean woman. "How are yuh, anyway? I'm shore glad to see yuh. I thought yuh was one o' them rousy fellers, an' I wouldn't rustle no more chuck this noon for the likes o' them, not if they was starvin' an' their tongues was hangin' out a foot. But yo're different, an' I ain't never forgot the time you rode thirty mile for a doc when my young one was due to cash. No, you bet I ain't! Now don't you say nothin'. You jest set right patient a short spell an' I'll rustle——"

The door swung shut, and the remainder of the sentence was lost in a muffled din of pans. Loudon winked at the closed door and grinned.

He had known the waspish Mrs. Lainey and her paunchy husband since that day when, newly come to the Lazy River country, he had met them, their buckboard wrecked by a runaway and their one child apparently dying of internal injuries. Though Loudon always minimized what he had done, Mrs. Lainey and her husband did not. And they were not folk whose memories are short.

In less than twenty minutes Mrs. Lainey brought in a steak, fried potatoes, and coffee. The steak was fairly tough, so were the potatoes, and the coffee required a copious quantity of condensed milk to render it drinkable. But Loudon ate with a rider's appetite. Mrs. Lainey, arms folded in her apron, leaned against the doorjamb, and regaled him with the news of Farewell.

"Injun Joe got drunk las' week an' tried to hogtie Riley's bear. It wasn't hardly worth while buryin' Joe, but they done it. Mis' Stonestreet has a new baby. This one makes the twelfth. Yep, day before yestiddy. Charley's so proud over it he ain't been sober since. Slep' in the waterin'-trough las' night, so he did, an' this mornin' he was drunk as ever. But he never did do things by halves, that Charley Stonestreet. Ain't the heat awful? Yep, it's worse'n that. Did yuh hear about——"

Poor, good-hearted Mrs. Lainey. With her, speech was a disease. Loudon ate as hurriedly as he could, and fled to the sidewalk. Bill Lainey, who had fallen asleep again, roused sufficiently to accept six bits.

"Mighty drowsy weather, Tom," he mumbled.

"It must be," said Loudon. "So long."

Leaving the sleepy Lainey to resume his favourite occupation, Loudon walked away. Save Lainey, no human beings were visible on the glaring street. In front of the Palace Saloon two cow-ponies drooped. Near the postoffice stood another, bearing on its hip the Cross-in-a-box brand.

From the door of the postoffice issued the loud and cheerful tones of a voice whose owner was well pleased with the world at large.

"Guess I'll get that ribbon first," said Loudon to himself, and promptly walked behind the postoffice.

He had recognized the cheerful voice. It was that of his friend, Johnny Ramsay, who punched cows for the Cross-in-a-box outfit. And not for a month's pay would Loudon have had Johnny Ramsay see him purchasing yards of red ribbon. Ramsay's sense of humour was too well developed.

When four houses intervened between himself and the postoffice Loudon returned to the street and entered the Blue Pigeon Store. Compared with most Western frontier stores the Blue Pigeon was compactly neat. A broad counter fenced off three sides of the store proper.

Behind the counter lines of packed shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Between the counter and the shelves knotted ropes, a long arm's-length apart, depended from the rafters. Above the canvas-curtained doorway in the rear hung the model of a black-hulled, slim-sparred clipper.

At the jingle of Loudon's spurs on the floor the canvas curtain was pushed aside, and the proprietor shuffled and thumped, for his left leg was of wood, into the store. He was a red-headed man, was Mike Flynn, the proprietor, barrel-chested, hairy-armed, and even the backs of his ham-like hands were tattooed.

"Good aft'noon to yuh, Tom," said Mike Flynn. "'Tis a fine day—hot, mabbe, but I've seen worse in the Horse Latitudes. An' what is it the day?"

"Red ribbon, Mike," replied Loudon, devoutly thankful that no other customer was in the store.

Mike glanced at the sample