Jim Munson, riding his pony over the home trail at a slow walk, drooped sleepily in his saddle. It was not a weirdly late bedtime, half-past ten, maybe, but he would have been sleeping soundly a good hour or more had this not been his night to go to town—if he chose. He had chosen. He would not have missed his chance for a good deal. But his dissipation had been light. The Boss never tolerated much along that line. He had drunk with some congenial cronies from the Circle E outfit complimentary to the future well-being and increasing wealth of this already well-known and flourishing cattle ranch. Of course he must drink a return compliment to the same rose-colored prosperity for the Three Bars, which he did and sighed for more. That made two, and two were the limit, and here was the limit overreached already; for there had always to be a last little comforter to keep him from nodding in his saddle.  
Before the time arrived for that, there were some errands to be executed for the boys on duty at the home ranch. These necessitated a call at the post-office, the purchase of several slabs of plug tobacco, some corn-cob pipes, and some writing material for Kin Lathrop. He must not forget the baking powder for the cook. Woe to him, Munson, if there were no biscuits for breakfast. Meanwhile he must not neglect to gather what little news was going. That would be a crime as heinous as the forgetting of the baking powder. But there didn’t seem to be anything doing to-night. Only the sheriff was playing again behind the curtain. Couldn’t fool him. Damned hypocrite!
 
The errands accomplished to his satisfaction and nothing forgotten, as frequent and close inspection of the list written out by the Scribe proved, his comforter swallowed, lingeringly, and regretfully, he was now riding homeward, drowsy but vastly contented with the world in general and particularly with his own lot therein. It was a sleepy night, cool and soft and still. He could walk his horse all the way if he wanted to. There was no haste. The boys would all be in bed. They would not even wait up for the mail, knowing his, Jim’s, innate aversion to hurry. Had he not been so drowsy, he would like to have sung a bit; but it required a little too much effort. He would just plod along.
 
Must all be in bed at Williston’s—no light anywhere. A little short of where the Williston branch left the main trail, he half paused. If it were not so late, he would ride up and give them a hail. But of course they were asleep. Everything seemed still and dark about the premises. He would just plod along.
 
“Hello, there! Where’d you come from?” he cried of a sudden, and before he had had time to carry his resolve into action.
 
A man on horseback had drawn rein directly in front of him. Jim blinked with the suddenness of the shock.
 
“Might ask you the same question,” responded the other with an easy laugh. “I’m for town to see the doctor about my little girl. Been puny for a week.”
 
“Oh! Where you from?” asked Jim, with the courteous interest of his kind.
 
“New man on the X Y Z,” answered the other, lightly. “Must be gettin’ on. Worried about my baby girl.”
 
He touched spurs to his horse and was off with a friendly “So long,” over his shoulder.
 
Jim rode on thoughtfully.
 
“Now don’t it beat the devil,” he was thinking, “how that there cow-puncher struck this trail comin’ from the X Y Z—with the X Y Z clean t’other side o’ town? Yep, it beats the devil, for a fac’. He must be a ridin’ for his health. It beats the devil.” This last was long drawn out. He rode a little farther. “It beats the devil,” he thought again,—the wonder of it was waking him up,—“how that blamed fool could a’ struck this here trail a goin’ for Doc.”
 
At the branch road he stopped irresolutely.
 
“It beats the devil—for a fac’.” He looked helplessly over his shoulder. The man was beyond sight and sound. “If he hadn’t said he was goin’ for Doc and belonged to the X Y Z,” he pondered. He was swearing because he could not think of a way out of the maze of contradiction. He was so seldom at a loss, this braggadocio Jim. “Well, I reckon I won’t get any he’p a moonin’ here less’n I wait here till that son-of-a-gun comes back from seein’ Doc. Lord, I’d have to camp out all night. Guess I’ll be a movin’ on. But I’m plumb a-foot for an idee as to how that idjit got here from the X Y Z.”
 
He shrugged his shoulders and picked up the fallen bridle-rein. He kept on straight ahead, and it was well for him that he did so. It was not the last of the affair. The old, prosaic trail seemed fairly bristling with ghostly visitants that night. He had gone but a scant quarter-mile when he met with a second horseman, and this time he would have sworn on oath that the man had not been on the forward trail as long as he should have been to be seen in the starlight. Jim was not dozing now and he knew what he was about. The fellow struck the trail from across country and from the direction of Williston’s home cattle sheds.
 
“The devil!” he muttered, and this time he was in deep and terrible earnest.
 
“Hullo!” the fellow accosted him, genially.
 
“Too damned pleasant—the whole bunch of em,” found quick lodgment in Jim’s active brain. Aloud, he responded with answering good-nature, “Hullo!”
 
“Where ye goin’?” asked the other, as if in no particular haste to part company. If he had met with a surprise, he carried it off well.
 
“Home. Been to town.” Jim was on tenter hooks to be off.
 
“Belong to the Three Bars, don’t you?”
 
“Yep.”
 
“Thought so. Well, good luck to you.”
 
“Say,” said Jim, suddenly, “you don’t happen to hang out at the X Y Z, do you?”
 
“Naw! What d’ye suppose I’d be doing here this time of night if I did?” There was scorn in his voice and suspicion, too. “Why?” he asked.
 
“Oh, nothin’. Thought I knew your build, but I guess I was mistaken. So long.”
 
He had an itching desire to ask if this night traveller, too, was in quest of the doctor, but caution held him silent. He had need to proceed warily. He rode briskly along until he judged he had gone far enough to allay suspicion, then he halted suddenly. Very wide-awake was Jim now. His hand rested unconsciously on the Colt’s 45, protruding from his loosely hanging belt. His impulse was to ride boldly back and up to Williston’s door, and thus satisfy himself as to what was doing so mysteriously. There was not a cowardly drop in Jim’s circulation. But if foul play was abroad for Williston that night, he, Jim, of course, was spotted and would never be permitted to reach the house. It would mean a useless sacrifice. Now, he needed to be alive. There was a crying need for his good and active service. Afterwards—well, it was all in the day’s work. It wouldn’t so much matter then. He touched spurs lightly, bent his head against the friction of the air and urged his horse to the maddest, wildest race he had ever run since that day long ago, to be forgotten by neither, when he had been broken to his master’s will.
 
Paul Langford dropped one shoe nervelessly to the wolfskin in front of his bed. Though his bachelor room was plain in most respects, plain for the better convenience of the bachelor hands that had it to put to rights every day,—with the exception of a cook, Langford kept no servant,—the wolfskin here, an Indian blanket thrown over a stiff chair by the table, a Japanese screen concealing the ugly little sheet-iron stove that stood over in its corner all the year round, gave evidence that his tastes were really luxurious. An oil lamp was burning dimly on the table. The soot of many burnings adhered to the chimney’s inner side.
 
“One would know it was Jim’s week by looking at that chimney,” muttered the Boss, eyeing the offending chimney discontentedly as he dropped the other shoe. “He seems to have an inborn aversion to cleaning chimneys. It must be a birthmark, or maybe he was too anxious to get to town to-night. I see I’ll have to discipline Jim. I have to stop and think even now, sometimes, who’s boss of this shebang, he or I. Sometimes I’m inclined to the opinion that he is. Come to think of it, though,” whimsically, “I lean to a vague misgiving that I didn’t touch that low-down chimney myself last week. We’re kind of an ornery set, I’m thinking, every mother’s son of us—and I’m the worst of the lot. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for the bunch of us, if one of the boys were to marry and bring his girl to the Three Bars. But I’ll be hanged if I know which one I’d care to give up to the feminine gender. Besides, she’d be bossy—they all are—and she’d wear blue calico wrappers in the morning—they all do.”
 
He began pacing the floor in his stocking feet.
 
“Wish I could get that blamed little girl of Williston’s out of my head to-night. Positively red-headed. Well, call it auburn for the sake of politeness. What’s the difference? She’s a winner, though. Wonder why I didn’t know about her before? Wonder if Dick’s in love with her? Shouldn’t wonder. He’s plumb daffy on the subject of the old man. Never thought of that before. Or maybe it’s Jim. No, she’s not his kind.” He stopped for a moment at the open window and looked out into the still, starry night “Guess I’ll have to let the Scribe commit matrimony, if he’s ‘willin’.’ He’s the only one of the bunch—fit.”
 
The sound of galloping hoof-beats on the hard road below came up to him as he stood at the window. A solitary horseman was coming that way and he was putting his horse to the limit, too.
 
“Who the—deuce,” began Langford. “It’s Jim’s cow pony as sure as I’m a sinner! What brings him home at that pace, I wonder? Is he drunk?”
 
He peered out indifferently. The hoof-beats rang nearer and nearer, clattered through the stable yards and, before they ceased, two or three revolver shots rang out in rapid su............