Drip—drip—drip! Brazos was wide awake now. In a single action, he slid upright off the bench.

The drip came from the loft just about the centre of the cabin. Brazos could not see the drops, but by their sound, he located them—stretched out his upturned palm. Spat! Despite his steely nerve the heavy wet contact on his hand give him a shock. He strode to the light of the doorway.

“Blood! Cold an’ thick—There’s a daid man up in thet loft. Aha! Them three hombres last night! Brazos, I reckon yu better be rustlin’ oot of heah pronto.”

Hurrying back to the bench, Brazos wiped the blood on his saddle blankets, and carried these with his saddle to the door. Dawn had given way to daylight. And at that moment a clattering roar of hoofs swept up, and a group of riders pulled their horses to a sliding halt before the cabin.

“Ahuh. Jig aboot up! I savvy,” muttered Brazos, and he flung down the saddle and blankets to stand at attention. He needed not to see the rifles to grasp that this was a posse.

“Hands up, cowboy!” came a harsh command.

“They’re up,” replied Brazos laconically, suiting action to words. The levelled guns and grim visages of this outfit showed that they meant business. Most of these riders had the cowboy stripe, but some of them, particularly the harsh-voiced, hard-faced leader, appeared to be matured men.

“Pile off, Stuke, an’ you, Segel,” ordered this leader. Whereupon two riders flung themselves out of their saddles to rush at Brazos from each side. “Grab his guns! Search him. Take everythin’.”

Brazos was quick to recognise real peril. He surveyed the group of horsemen to ascertain that they were all strangers to him. In a moment, he made certain that not one of them had ever seen him. He had not been in that vicinity for six years, which was a long time on the range.

“Bodkin!” called a rider from within the cabin, his voice queer.

“What! You found him?” queried the leader sharply.

“Yes. Up in the loft. Send someone to help us let him down.”

Brazos listened with strained ears to the sounds and husky voices inside the cabin. Presently three of the posse came out, carrying the body, which they deposited upon the grass. Brazos’s startled gaze bent down upon a handsome youth barely twenty, evidently a cowboy from his garb, dark-haired and dark-skinned. He had been shot through the back. All his pockets were turned inside, out.

“Allen Neece!” burst out Bodkin.

“Shot in the back.”

“Robbed!”

“Purty cold-blooded, I’d say.”

“Bod, I reckon we might jest as wal string this hombre up.”

These and other comments greeted Brazos’s ears, and drew from Bodkin the harsh decree: “Cowboy, you’re under arrest.”

“Hell, I’m not blind or deaf,” retorted Brazos. “May I ask who yu air?”

“I’m Deputy Sheriff Bodkin of Las Animas, actin’ under Kiskadden’s orders.”

“An’ what’s yore charge?”

“Murder.”

Brazos laughed outright. “My Gawd, man, air yu loco? Do I look like a hombre who’d shoot a boy in the back, rob him an’ hang aboot waitin’ for an ootfit to come get me?”

“You can’t never tell what a cowboy will do from his looks.”

“Aw, the hell yu cain’t,” replied Brazos, with a piercing glance of scorn flashing from Bodkin to his men. “What kind of Westerners air yu?”

Brazos’s scornful stand, his cool-nerve, obviously impressed some of the riders.

“Bod, you cain’t hang this Texan on such heahsay evidence,” advised a slow-spoken member.

“Why not? Cause you’re a Texan yourself?”

“Wal, as to thet, Texans, whether they’re guilty of crime or not, ain’t very often hanged. Personally, I reckon this cowboy is innocent as I am of this murder. An’ mebbe I’m not the only one. If you hang him, Kiskadden will be sore.