"He's sold, if we c'n find the man't offered a thousand for him a year ago."

"Who was he?"

But she knew already. Some swift flash of intuition told her there was but one man in Paradise Park who--

"His name's Haig, an' he's--"

"Philip Haig!" she murmured.

"You know him?"

"Yes--no. That is, I've heard of him."

It was on her lips,--the explanation that the men had pa.s.sed the branch road leading to Haig's ranch, that they were now riding away from it. But she hesitated. And why? She did not know then; but an hour later she would be reproaching herself bitterly for that moment's indecision. The words were almost spoken, but something checked them; and before she could make up her mind to follow her first natural impulse it was too late.

The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and called to the man at Marion's side, who rode quickly forward and joined his companions.

There was a conversation inaudible to her ears, and while she still pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys and the golden horse, followed by Marion, approached the group of squat, unpainted houses that bore without apology the name of Paradise.

CHAPTER III

SETH HUNTINGTON'S OPPORTUNITY

It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing the mail and, now and then, a pa.s.senger, and always a whiff of the outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would willingly have missed the arrival of the stage; and on this occasion fully two-thirds of the male population, with nine-tenths of the female, had already a.s.sembled. But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The women bargained and gossiped in Thompson's store; the men, most of them, were gathered around a stiff game of freeze-out in the Square Deal Saloon; and only the score or more of saddle horses. .h.i.tched in front of the store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road wagons parked in the rear of it, showed that Paradise was in its weekly state of mild and patient expectancy.

So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and Marion rode into Paradise without being seen or heard, and halted in front of the post-office.

"Hal-lo! Hallo!" sang out the leader of the cowboys. And then, with the petulance of one that is "all in": "Is this a dam' graveyard?"

A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky gla.s.s in one hand and a towel in the other, came to the door of the Square Deal Saloon. His pallid face had the look of settled weariness that is characteristic of keepers of such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the slightest interest in anything. If there was a certain change in his expression as he looked out between narrowed eyelids into the garish sunlight it was one indicative of mild resentment at having been disturbed in his methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with neither interest nor antic.i.p.ation the three strangers, who ought to have had enough sense to dismount and walk in if they wanted anything.

"Well," he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone, "what--"

It probably would have been a cautious and covered insult to the presumed intelligence of the strangers, if he had finished the question. But it died away on his thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had caught at last the gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the dull-hued cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while his mouth stood open, and his features slowly responded to the first emotion he had felt in years.

"h.e.l.l's bobcats!" he yelled.

The gla.s.s slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in pieces on the floor as he lunged out into the road.

In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence as the men there slowly realized that a phenomenon had occurred. Slavin was excited!

The silence was followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of overturned chairs and the sc.r.a.pe and thud of boots on the sanded floor. At that instant a woman in a pink calico dress, drawn by Slavin's yell, came to the door of Thompson's, and promptly screeched.

The poker game was never finished; Thompson's trade was ruined for the day; and the strange group in the roadway became the center of a jostling, uproarious crowd of men and women, who alternately bombarded the three cow-punchers with questions and stared at Sunnysides in silent wonder. But they were careful to maintain a respectful distance between themselves and the formidable captive, though he stood motionless amid all the uproar, like a golden statue of a horse, with his head raised proudly, his yellow-black eyes flashing defiance and suspicion, and his l.u.s.trous hide gleaming in the sun.

Marion's enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged with a vague uneasiness. She had watched the men come tumbling out of the Square Deal Saloon and the women swarming from Thompson's store, and had felt a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among them.

Though she could not have given any reason for her satisfaction, their absence, and Seth's especially, seemed to her a piece of rare good fortune. Haig's warning--"Tell him he's a fool to anger me!"--was still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act of incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed her; and try as she would, she was unable to suppress the feeling that she had become inextricably entangled in the feud between Haig and Huntington.

She was not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he was not there!

But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and when she was just turning her attention again to the hubbub around the golden outlaw, her eye was suddenly caught, across the heads of the crowd, by a figure that caused her to stiffen in the saddle.

"Seth!" she gasped.

He came striding rapidly from the direction of the blacksmith's, the most distant of the group of buildings,--a large and heavy but well-built man, whose black, short-cropped beard and bushy, overhanging eyebrows gave him a somewhat truculent expression, which was heightened by his rough and domineering demeanor. He was better dressed, or more carefully at least, than any of the other men. He wore a coat and trousers of dark-brown corduroy, a light-gray flannel shirt with a flowing black tie, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. His belt, under the unb.u.t.toned coat, was of elaborately stamped leather, with a pocket at one side from which a heavy, gold watch chain was looped to a silver ring, and with an ornate holster at the other where the black b.u.t.t of a revolver was visible as he moved.

He shouldered his way through the crowd in the heedless manner of most bulky men, who seldom realize how much s.p.a.ce they take that properly belongs to others. At six feet from the golden horse he halted, and surveyed him with shining eyes.

"Sunnysides, eh?" he said, turning toward the nearest of the strangers.

"The's only one," replied the cow-puncher.

"Who caught him this time?"

"Us three. That's Jim Raley, with the busted arm. That other is Jud Smith, My name's Larkin. We belong to the X bar O outfit on Lost Soldier Creek."

"Second outfit below Forty-Mile," said Huntington, familiarly.

"Right!"

"Sanders still foreman?"

"Yes."

"Then what are you doing with that horse up here?"

The cow-puncher grinned.

"I ketch your meanin'," he replied. "It's like this. Sanders chased Sunnysides three seasons, an' thought he'd roped him. But all he gits 's a cracked leg, an' not a yeller hair of the slippery beast. Then us three takes on the job--not presumin' to be better'n Sanders, but hopin' for luck. It comes our way, an' there you are. We offer him to Sanders--for a price, natch'rally--but he says he don't believe in ghosts, an' we c'n go to h.e.l.l with him."

"You must have missed the road. This is Paradise," said Huntington.

The crowd roared its appreciation.

"The' ain't much in names," observed Larkin testily.

The crowd laughed again, though, of course, less heartily.

"Well, Heaven or h.e.l.l," said Huntington, "is the horse for sale?"

"He is--if he ain't sold already."

"How's that?"

"We're offered a price for him--if it still holds good. That's why we've come to Paradise--an' no other reason, believe me!"

"How much?"

"Thousand."