But I never doubted your word. . . . Come on -- an' talk out. What's in it for me?”

“Don't let any one in on this. You two can hold up the stage. Why, it was never held up. . . . But you want to mask. . . . How about ten thousand sheep -- or what they bring at Phenix in gold?”

Jim Wilson whistled low.

“An' leave for new territory?” repeated Snake Anson, under his breath.

“You've said it.”

“Wal, I ain't fancyin' the girl end of this deal, but you can count on me. . . . September sixteenth at Magdalena -- an' her name's Helen -- an' she's handsome?”

“Yes. My herders will begin drivin' south in about two weeks. Later, if the weather holds good, send me word by one of them an' I'll meet you.”

Beasley spread his hands once more over the blaze, pulled on his gloves and pulled down his sombrero, and with an abrupt word of parting strode out into the night.

“Jim, what do you make of him?” queried Snake Anson.

“Pard, he's got us beat two ways for Sunday,” replied Wilson.

“A-huh! . . . Wal, let's get back to camp.” And he led the way out.

Low voices drifted into the cabin, then came snorts of horses and striking hoofs, and after that a steady trot, gradually ceasing. Once more the moan of wind and soft patter of rain filled the forest stillness.

CHAPTER II

Milt Dale quietly sat up to gaze, with thoughtful eyes, into the gloom.

He was thirty years old. As a boy of fourteen he had run off from his school and home in Iowa and, joining a wagon-train of pioneers, he was one of the first to see log cabins built on the slopes of the White Mountains. But he had not taken kindly to farming or sheep-raising or monotonous home toil, and for twelve years he had lived in the forest, with only infrequent visits to Pine and Show Down and Snowdrop. This wandering forest life of his did not indicate that he did not care for the villagers, for he did care, and he was welcome everywhere, but that he loved wild life and solitude and beauty with the primitive instinctive force of a savage.

And on this night he had stumbled upon a dark plot against the only one of all the honest white people in that region whom he could not call a friend.

“That man Beasley!” he soliloquized. “Beasley -- in cahoots with Snake Anson! . .