“I Take it I am the One Wanted,” Said Williston.

LANGFORD OF THE THREE BARS

CHAPTER I—THE ISLAND WITH A MYSTERY

He said positively to Battle Ax, his scraggy buckskin cow pony, that they would ride to the summit of this one bluff, and that it should be the last. But he had said the same thing many times since striking the barren hill region flanking both sides of the river. Hump after hump had been surmounted since the sound of the first promise had tickled the ears of the tired bronco, humps as alike as the two humps of a Bactrian camel, the monotonous continuity of which might very well have confused the mind of one less at home on these ranges than George Williston. Even he, riding a blind trail since sun-up, sitting his saddle with a heavy indifference born of heat and fatigue, began to think it might be that they were describing a circle and the sun was playing them strange tricks. Still, he urged his pony to one more effort; just so much farther and they would retrace their steps, giving up for this day at least the locating of a small bunch of cattle, branded a lazy S, missing these three days.

Had not untoward circumstances intervened, he might still have gone blindly on; for, laying aside the gambling fever that was on him, he could ill afford to lose the ten or twelve steers somewhere wandering the wide range or huddled into some safe place, there to abide the time when a daring rustler might conveniently play at witchcraft with the brand or otherwise dispose of them with profit to himself and with credit to his craft. Moreover, what might possibly never have been missed from the vast herds of Langford, his neighbor of the plains country, was of most serious import to Williston for an even weightier reason than the actual present loss.

The existence of the small and independent ranchman was becoming precarious. He was being hounded by two prolific sources of trouble, these sources having a power and insolent strength contemptuously indifferent to any claim set up in their paths by one weaker than themselves. On the one hand