I won't remember you, I am sure, for I am only nineteen now, and you were only fifteen when you left home. And I suppose you have grown big and strong, and have a deep, booming voice and a fierce-looking mustache. Well, I shall love you, anyway. So hurry and come home.

I am sending you a telegraph money order for one thousand dollars, for from the tone of your letter it seems things are not going right with you. Hurry home, won't you?

With love,

Your sister,

MARY.

Sanderson finished reading the letter. He meditated silently, turning it over and over in his hands. The last letter was dated a month before. Evidently Bransford had not hurried.

Sanderson searched all the other pockets, and discovered nothing of further interest. Then he stood for a long time, looking down at the man's face, studying it, his own face expressing disapproval.

"Mebbe it's just as well that he didn't get to the Double A," he thought, noting the coa.r.s.e, brutal features of the other.

"If a girl's got ideals it's sometimes a mighty good thing the real guy don't come along to disabuse them. William ain't never goin' to get to the Double A."

He buried the body in a gully, then he returned to the other men.

Upon their persons he found about nine hundred dollars in bills of small denomination. It made a bulky package, and Sanderson stored it in his slicker. Then he mounted Streak, turned the animal's head toward the northeast, and rode into the glaring sunshine of the morning.

CHAPTER III

"SQUARE" DEAL SANDERSON

Three days later, still traveling northeastward, Sanderson felt he must be close to the Double A. Various signs and conclusions were convincing.

In the first place, he had been a week on the trail, and estimating his pace conservatively, that time should bring him within easy riding distance of the place he had set out to seek. There were so many miles to be covered in so many days, and Streak was a prince of steady travelers.

Besides, yesterday at dusk, Sanderson had pa.s.sed through Las Vegas.

Careful inquiry in the latter town had brought forth the intelligence that the Double A was a hundred and seventy-five miles northeastward.

"Country's short of cow-hands," said Sanderson's informer. "If you're needin' work, an' forty a month looks good to you, why, I'd admire to take you on. I'm German, of the Flyin' U, down the Cimarron a piece."

"Me an' work has disagreed," grinned Sanderson; and he rode on, meditating humorously over the lie.

Work and Sanderson had never disagreed. Indeed, Sanderson had always been convinced that work and he had agreed too well in the past.

Except for the few brief holidays that are the inevitable portion of the average puncher who is human enough to yearn for the relaxation of a trip to "town" once or twice a year, Sanderson and work had been inseparable for half a dozen years.

Sanderson's application had earned him the reputation of being "reliable" and "trustworthy"--two terms that, in the lexicon of the cow-country, were descriptive of virtues not at all common. In Sanderson's case they were deserved--more, to them might have been added another, "straight."

Sanderson's trip northeastward had resulted partly from a desire to escape the monotony of old scenes and familiar faces; and partly because one day while in "town" he had listened attentively to a desert nomad, or "drifter," who had told a tale of a country where water was to be the magic which would open the gates of fortune to the eager and serious-minded.

"That country's goin' to blossom!" declared the Drifter. "An' the guy which gets in on the ground floor is goin' to make a clean-up! They's a range there--the Double A--which is right in the middle of things. A guy named Bransford owns her--an' Bransford's on his last legs. He's due to pa.s.s out _p.r.o.nto_, or I'm a gopher! He's got a daughter there--Mary--which is a pippin, an' no mistake! But she's sure got a job on her hands, if the ol' man croaks.

"They's a boy, somewheres, which ain't no good I've heard, an' if the girl hangs on she's due for an uphill climb. She'll have a fight on her hands too, with Alva Dale--a big rough devil of a man with a greedy eye on the whole country--an' the girl, too, I reckon--if my eyes is any good. I've seen him look at her--oh, man! If she was any relation to me I'd climb Dale's frame sure as shootin'!"

There had been more--the Drifter told a complete story. And Sanderson had a.s.similated it without letting the other know he had been affected.

Nor had he mentioned to Burroughs--his employer--a word concerning the real reason for his desire to make a change. Not until he had written to Bransford, and received a reply, did he acquaint Burroughs with his decision to leave. As a matter of fact, Sanderson had delayed his leave-taking for more than a month after receiving Bransford's letter, being reluctant, now that his opportunity had come, to sever those relations that, he now realized, had been decidedly pleasant.

"I'm sure next to what's eatin' you," Burroughs told him on the day Sanderson asked for his "time." "You're yearnin' for a change. It's a thing that gets hold of a man's soul--if he's got one. They ain't no fightin' it. I'm sure appreciatin' what you've done for me, an' if you decide to come back any time, you'll find me a-welcomin' you with open arms, as the sayin' is. You've got a bunch of coin comin'--three thousand. I'm addin' a thousand to that--makin' her good measure.

That'll help you to start something."

Sanderson started northeastward without any illusions. A product of the Far Southwest, where the ability to live depended upon those natural, protective instincts and impulses which civilization frowns upon, Sanderson was grimly confident of his accomplishments--which were to draw a gun as quickly as any other man had ever drawn one, to shoot as fast and as accurately as the next man--or a little faster and more accurately; to be alert and self-contained, to talk as little as possible; to listen well, and to deal fairly with his fellow-men.

That philosophy had served Sanderson well. It had made him feared and respected throughout Arizona; it had earned him the sobriquet "Square"--a t.i.tle which he valued.

Sanderson could not have told, however, just what motive had impelled him to decide to go to the Double A. No doubt the Drifter's story regarding the trouble that was soon to a.s.sail Mary Bransford had had its effect, but he preferred to think he had merely grown tired of life at the Pig-Pen--Burrough's ranch--and that the Drifter's story, coming at the instant when the yearning for a change had seized upon him, had decided him.

He had persisted in that thought until after the finding of the letters in William Bransford's pockets; and then, staring down at the man's face, he had realized that he had been deluding himself, and, that he was journeying northeastward merely because he was curious to see the girl whom the Drifter had so vividly described.

Away back in his mind, too, there might have been a chivalrous desire to help her in the fight that was to come with Alva Dale. He had felt his blood surge hotly at the prospect of a fight, with Mary Bransford as the storm center; a pa.s.sion to defend her had got into his soul; and a hatred for Alva Dale had gripped him.

Whatever the motive, he had come, and since he had looked down into William Bransford's face, he had become conscious of a mighty satisfaction. The two men who had trailed Bransford had been cold-blooded murderers, and he had avenged Bransford completely. That could not have happened if he had not yielded to the impulse to go to the Double A.

He was glad he had decided to go. He was now the bearer of ill news, but he was convinced that the girl would want to know about her brother--and he must tell her. And now, too, he was convinced that his journey to the Double A had been previously arranged--by Fate, or whatever Providence controls the destinies of humans.

And that conviction helped him to fight down the sense of guilty embarra.s.sment that had afflicted him until now--the knowledge that he was deliberately and unwarrantedly going to the Double A to interfere, to throw himself into a fight with persons with whom he had no previous acquaintance, for no other reason than that his chivalrous instincts had prompted him.

And yet his thoughts were not entirely serious as he rode. The situation had its humorous side.

"Mostly nothin' turns out as folks figure in the beginnin'," he told himself. "Otherwise everything would be cut an' dried, an' there wouldn't be a heap of fun in the world--for b.u.t.ters-in. An' folks which scheme an' plot, tryin' to get things that belong to other folks, would have it too easy. There's got to be folks that wander around, nosin' into places that they shouldn't. Eh, Streak?"

Streak did not answer, and Sanderson rode on, smiling gravely.

He made a dry camp that night in a sea of mesquite at the edge of a sand plain, although, he knew he could not now be far from the Double A range. And in the early light of the morning he found his judgment vindicated, for stretching before him, still in a northeasterly direction, he saw a great, green-brown level sweeping away from his feet and melting into some r.i.m.m.i.n.g mountains--a vast, natural basin of gigantic proportions.

Sanderson was almost at the end of his journey, it was early morning, and he was in no hurry. He leisurely prepared his breakfast, sitting on a flat rock as he ate, and scanning the basin.

Mere bigness had never impressed Sanderson; the West had shown him greater vistas than this mammoth basin. And yet his eyes glowed as he looked out and down at the country that lay, slumbering in the pure white light of the dawn.

He saw, dotting the floor of the basin, the roofs of houses. From his height they seemed to be close together, but Sanderson was not misled, and he knew that they were separated by miles of virgin soil--of sagebrush and yucca, and soapweed and other desert weeds that needed not the magic of water to make them live.

When Sanderson finally mounted Streak, the sun was up. It took Streak two hours to descend the slope leading down into the basin, and when once horse and rider were down, Sanderson dismounted and patted Streak's moist flanks.

"Some drop, eh, Streak?" he said. "But it didn't fool us none. We knowed it was some distance, didn't we? An' they ain't foolin' us about the rest of it, are they? The Drifter said to head toward the Big Peak. The Double A would be right near there--in the foothills.

Looks easy, don't it? But I reckon we'll have to hump ourselves to get there by feedin' time, this noon, eh?"

A little later, Streak having rested, Sanderson mounted and rode forward, toward the peak of a majestic mountain that loomed far above them.