"After Pauline?"

"Ahead of her!"

"And then what?"

"Then you will have to use your own judgment. But don't get excited and kill her, Hicks."

He accompanied the sharp warning with the alleviating roll of yellowbacks, which Hicks quickly deposited in an inside pocket.

The next morning they shook hands at the gate of the Pennsylvania station. Hicks looking a bit uncomfortable but much improved, in a suit of new clothes, and carrying a suitcase, hurried to catch the flyer for the West. A few hours later Owen was wishing a happy journey to Pauline at the same station rail.

Mary Haines stood in the low doorway of the Double Cross ranch house and gazed down the sun-baked road to where, in the far distance, a little wisp of dust was visible.

Laughing, she turned and called to someone inside the house. A towering, slow-moving, but quick-eyed man, in a flannel shirt, with corduroys tucked into the tops of spurred boots, appeared on the stoop. Hal Haines was so tall that his broad-brimmed hat grazed the porch roof of the house.

"Hal! Hal!" she cried eagerly. "What do you think? Pauline Marvin is coming to visit us--Pauline Marvin!"

"The little girl we met on the ship that I had to yarn to about the wild West?"

"Yes, of course. How you did lie to her! Goodness, I hope that's not why she's coming. She'll be awfully disappointed."

"Oh, I don't know as it's necessary to disappoint her," said Haines.

"If the State of Montana don't know how to entertain a lady from the East as she likes to be entertained it's time to quit bein' a State at all."

"Hal!" Mrs. Haines eyed her husband sternly. "I want you to remember who Pauline Marvin is. I'm not going to have her frightened by any of your wild jokes."

Haines burst into a ringing laugh.

"Honest, my dear, I promised that young lady if she ever came to Rockvale she'd see all the Wild West I told her about. I gave her my word. You don't want to make me out a liar, do you?"

"You can say that conditions have changed greatly in the last two years."

"Oh, come, just one little hold-up the day she gets here. She'll think it's great. She'll think she's the lost heiress that was carried off in the mountains--the one I told her about."

"I tell you I will not hear a word of it. She may be ill or something; it would scare her to death."

"I'll ask her if she's ill before I let the boys rob the buck-board.

What dye say, mother? Just this once."

His boyish joy in the prank brought laughter to her eyes, and he knew that his sins would be condoned.

Four days later Hicks, who looked as far from home in his excellent clothes as the clothes looked far from home in Rockvale, alighted, from a lumbering local train. He made an inquiry of a man on the platform, and, carrying a heavy suitcase, slouched up the main street of the town.

Ham Dalton's place was the one the man had directed him to, and Hicks, I after engaging the best rooms in the house for seventy-five cents, scrubbed a little of the dust of travel from his person and went down to the bar and gambling room. The drink of whiskey he got made even his trained throat writhe, and he strolled over to the poker table to join a group of calm and plainly-armed spectators of high play.

From the conversation he learned that the dam at Red Gut was washed out; that Case Egan, a noted rancher, was in jail for shooting a deputy sheriff, and that Hal Haines was expecting a "millionairess gal"

visitor from New York.

"When'll she be on?" drawled one of the players.

"Tomorrow's express."

"Sence when did the express stop at Rockvale?"

"Sence the president o' the road told it to stop for this here young person," replied the informant crushingly.

Hicks was scanning the faces of the men about him with a purposeful eye. Especially he watched one--a lean man in red shirt and leather breeches, booted and spurred, who stood near the table.

Hicks approached him. "h.e.l.lo, Patten," he said.

The man whirled so sharply that the revolver he had drawn, in whirling, caught in Hick's coat and jerked him into the middle of the room. The poker game went on without a sound or sign of interruption. The bartender took a casual look at Hicks and the gunman, then went on talking to a customer, as before.

"h.e.l.lo, Hicks," said Patten, putting up the gun. "I'm much obliged that I didn't kill you. We don't greet old friends quite so hasty out here, boy, as you do in New York--especially when we haven't heard our right name in some years," he added in a lowered voice.

"How long have you been here, Pat?"

"Eight-nine-twelve years; ever since that friend of yours, Mr. Owen, paid me $10,000 for getting rid of a certain--what he called a certain obstacle."

"Which you didn't get rid of?"

"No, he made the mistake of paying me in advance, and it didn't seem necessary to harm anybody."

"Got any of the money left?"

The lean gunman held his head back and guffawed.

"It's near here, I guess, but it ain't mine. It dropped between this bar and that table."

"Do you want a little job?" asked Hicks. "But let's go in the back room."

They strolled into an empty wine room and ordered drinks.

"What kind of a job?" asked Patten.

Hicks leaned across the table and whispered rapidly. His old acquaintance drew back, with a sudden suspicion.

"But no foolin' this time," warned Hicks. "Only part money in advance."

He produced $5,000 in bills from his trousers pocket, but secreted it again quickly as the waiter appeared.

Patten got up and sauntered out into the barroom, returning presently with three men of his own brand--broad-built, grim-eyed ruffians of the far north country--three of Case Egan's cattlemen.

In the meantime Mrs. Haines was fl.u.s.tered not only by the prospect of meeting her distinguished friend, but by the tumultuous staging of the great hold-up scene that was to mark Pauline's welcome. Hal had been up at three o'clock in the morning rehearsing the boys in their parts.

He had set off at five o'clock for the station.

As Pauline, trim in her traveling suit of gray and blithe in the clear Western air, tripped from the express, all Rockvale was there to meet her. Hal Haines, mighty man that he was in the region, was red with pride as the girl who could stop the express at Rockvale gave him her hand in happy greeting.

As he helped her into the two-seated buckboard, no one in the crowd noticed the man who had arrived the night before standing on the platform and pointing out the girl to Tom Patten who was seen to mount and ride rapidly away.