"Meaning that I'd like to have you beat those men. Oh, the miserable schemers! They will go to any length to defeat you."

He laughed lowly and vibrantly. "Well, they'll certainly have to travel _some_," he said. "About as fast as the man will have to travel that takes you away from me."

"Is victory that dear to you?" she asked.

"I won't take one without the other," he told her his eyes glowing.

"If I don't beat Silverthorn and the others, an' keep the Double A for you, why I----"

"You'll win!" she said.

"You are hopin' I will?" he grinned. "Well," he added, as she averted her eyes, "there'll come a time when we'll talk real serious about that. I'm goin' to tell the range boss to get ready for a drive to Las Vegas."

"That is a hundred and seventy-five miles!" gasped the girl.

"I've followed a trail herd two thousand," grinned Sanderson.

"You mean that you will go yourself--with the outfit?"

"Sure."

Sanderson went out, mounted Streak, and found the range boss--Eli Carter. Carter and the men were ordered to round up all the Double A cattle and get ready to drive them to Las Vegas. Sanderson told Carter he would accompany the outfit.

Cutting across the basin toward the ranchhouse, he saw another horseman riding fast to intercept him, and he swerved Streak and headed toward the other.

The rider was Williams, and when Sanderson got close enough to see his face he noted that the engineer was pale and excited.

CHAPTER XVIII

CHECKED BY THE SYSTEM

The engineer waved a yellow paper at Sanderson and shouted:

"I just got this. I made a hit with the Okar agent last week, and he sent a man over with it. That's a d.a.m.ned scoundrelly bunch that's working against you! Do you know what they've done?"

Sanderson said nothing, and the engineer resumed, explosively:

"They've tied up your money at the Lazette bank! My material men won't send a pound of stuff to me until they get the cash! We're stopped--dead still!"

He pa.s.sed a telegram to Sanderson, who read:

Bank here refuses to honor Sanderson's check. Claim money belongs to Bransford estate. Legal tangle. Must have cash or won't send material.

THE BRANDER COMPANY.

A flicker of Sanderson's eyelids was all the emotion he betrayed to Williams. The latter looked at him admiringly.

"By George," he said, "you take it like a major! In your shoes I'd get off my nag and claw up the scenery!"

Sanderson smiled. After telling the engineer to do as much as he could without the material, he rode on.

He had betrayed no emotion in the presence of Williams, but he was seething with pa.s.sion.

Late the next afternoon he joined Carter and the outfit. The men had made good use of their time, and when Sanderson arrived, the entire herd of cattle was ma.s.sed on a broad level near the river. They were milling impatiently, for the round-up had just been completed, and they were nervous over the unusual activity.

The cowboys, bronzed, lean, and capable, were guarding the herd, riding slowly around the fringe of tossing horns, tired, dusty, but singing their quaint songs.

Carter had sent the cook back to the ranchhouse during the afternoon to obtain supplies; and now the chuck wagon, with bulging sides, was standing near a fire at which the cook himself was preparing supper.

Carter grinned as Sanderson rode up.

"All ready!" he declared. "We sure did hump ourselves!"

Around the camp fire that night Sanderson was moody and taciturn. He had stretched out on his blanket and lay listening to the men until one by one they dropped off to sleep.

Sanderson's thoughts were bitter. He felt the constricting influence of his enemies; he was like the herd of cattle that his men had rounded up that day, for little by little Silverthorn, Dale, and Maison were cutting down his area of freedom and of action, were hampering him on all sides, and driving him to a point where he would discover resistance to be practically useless.

He had thought in the beginning that he could devise some way to escape the meshes of the net that was being thrown around him, but he was beginning to realize that he had underestimated the power and the resources of his enemies.

Maison and Silverthorn he knew were mere tentacles of the capital they represented; it was their business to reach out, searching for victims, in order to draw them in and drain from them the last vestige of wealth.

And Sanderson had no doubt that they did that work impersonally and without feeling, not caring, and perhaps not understanding the tortures of a system--of a soulless organization seeking only financial gain.

Dale, however, was intensely human and individualistic. He was not as subtle nor as smooth as his confederates. And money was not the only incentive which would drive him to commit crime. He was a gross sensualist, unprincipled and ruthless, and Sanderson's hatred of him was beginning to overshadow every other consideration.

Sanderson went to sleep with his bitter thoughts, which were tempered with a memory of the gentle girl at whom the evil agencies of his enemies were directed. They were eager to get possession of Mary Bransford's property, but their real fight would be, and was, against him.

But it was Mary Bransford that he was fighting for, and if he could get the herd of cattle to Las Vegas and dispose of them, he would be provided with money enough to defeat his enemies. But money he must have.

At breakfast the next morning Carter selected the outfit for the drive.

He named half a dozen men, who were variously known as Buck, Andy, Bud, Soapy, Sogun, and the Kid. These men were experienced trail-herd men, and Carter had confidence in them.

Their faces, as they prepared for the trip, revealed their joy and pride over their selection, while the others, disappointment in their eyes, plainly envied their fellow-companions.

But Sanderson lightened their disappointment by entrusting them with a new responsibility.

"You fellows go back to the Double A an' hang around," he told them.

"I don't care whether you do a lick of work or not. Stick close to the house an' keep an eye on Mary Bransford. If Dale, or any of his gang, come nosin' around, bore them, plenty! If any harm comes to Mary Bransford while I'm gone, I'll salivate you guys!"

Shortly after breakfast the herd was on the move. The cowboys started them westward slowly, for trail cattle do not travel fast, urging them on with voice and quirt until the line stretched out into a sinuously weaving band a mile long.

They reached the edge of the big level after a time, and filed through a narrow pa.s.s that led upward to a table-land. Again, after a time, they took a descending trail, which brought them down upon a big plain of gra.s.sland that extended many miles in all directions. Fringing the plain on the north was a range of hills that swept back to the mountains that guarded the neck of the big basin at Okar.

There was timber on the hills, and the sky line was ragged with boulders. And so Sanderson and his men, glancing northward many times during the morning, did not see a rider who made his way through the hills.