An’ if by any chance he ain’t guilty an’ it comes oot—wal, it’d kind of heat up the stink thet hasn’t died oot cold yet.”

During that speech Brazos gauged both men—the sandy-haired, sallow-faced Texan whose looks and words were significant—and the swarthy Bodkin, dark-browed, shifty of gaze, chafing under the other’s cool arraignment of the case, and intense with some feeling hardly justified by the facts presented.

“All right, Inskip,” rejoined Bodkin, with suppressed anger. “We’ll take him before Kiskadden. Prod him to his hoss, men. An’ if he bolts, blow his tow-head off.”

Brazos’s captors shoved him forward. Bay had been found and saddled. Brazos mounted. The body of the boy Neece was lifted over, a saddle and covered with a slicker. The rider of this horse essayed to walk, which gave Brazos the impression that Las Animas was not far distant. Presently the cavalcade started toward the road, with Brazos riding in the centre.

They travelled on, and at length reached a site strangely familiar to Brazos. It was the head of the valley. A long, low, red-roofed, red-walled adobe ranch-house stood upon the north bank of the river, and below it, where cottonwoods trooped into the valley, spread barns and sheds, corrals and racks in picturesque confusion. The droves of horses in the pastures, the squares of alfalfa, and the herds of cattle dotting the valley and the adjacent slopes attested to the prosperity of some cattle baron.

“Doggone!” ejaculated Brazos. “Whose ootfit is thet?”

Inskip, the Texan, riding second on Brazos’s left, book it upon himself to reply: “Twin Sombreros Ranch. Operated now by Raine Surface runnin’ eighty thousand haid of the Twin Sombreros brand. Used to belong to Abe Neece, father of the daid boy we’re packin’ to town. Abe is livin’ still, but a broken man over the loss of thet ranch.”

It so happened that when the cavalcade reached the crossroad to the ranch a sextet of riders, some of them cowboys, rode down from above to halt their mounts at sight of the posse. Brazos espied two young women riders and he burned both inwardly and outwardly at the indignity Bodkin had forced upon him.

“What’s this, Bodkin?” demanded the leader.

“Mornin’, Mr. Surface,” replied Bodkin. “We been out arrestin’ a cowboy. Charged with murder. An’ I’ve got the proofs on him.”

“Murder! You don’t say? Who?”

“No other than Abe Neece’s boy—young Allen Neece.”

For Brazos it was one of those instinctively potent, meetings of which his life on the ranges had been so full. He turned from his long glance at the two girls, the older of whom had hair as red as flame, a strikingly beautiful face, with blue-green eyes just now dilated in horror.

“Who are you?” demanded Surface with intense curiosity.

Brazos gave the rancher a long stare.

“Wal, who I am is share none of yore business,” he replied coldly.

“Cowboy, I’m Raine Surface, an’ I have a good deal to say with the business of this county,” returned the rancher, plainly nettled.

“I reckon. Do you happen to be in cahoots with this fourflush, Deputy Bodkin?”

The sharp query disconcerted Surface and elicited a roar from Bodkin.

“I put Kiskadden in office,” said the rancher stiffly. “I recommended to the Cattlemen’s Association that we appoint deputies to help rid this range of desperadoes an’ rustlers—an’ rowdy cowboys.”

“See heah, Surface,” flashed Brazos, his piercing tenor stiffening his hearers. “I am a Texan an’ one of the breed thet don’t forget insult or injustice. You’re a hell of a fine Westerner to act as an adviser to a Cattlemen’s Association. A real Westerner—a big-hearted cattleman who was on the square—wouldn’t condemn me without askin’ for proofs. You take this Bodkin’s word. If he hasn’t got some queer reason to fasten this crime on me, it’s a shore bet he itches to hang someone. Wal, I happen to be innocent an’ I can prove it.