VOLUME ONE NUMBER FOUR (cont. 5)

“There are at least two reasons, I think,” answered the girl. “The first is that Larson Beebe is a very cautious man. He will not risk a single hair of his head if it is not necessary. If he came up here he might get hurt. If he stays there he is perfectly safe and we haven’t a single chance of getting by.

“Another thing, I think he is deathly afraid of Wong. He came up in the night twice and stole provisions. Since then Wong has been watching. I don’t think he ever sleeps.”

“Well, we can outlast him anyway, Miss Carver.”

“But that’s just what we can’t do, Mr. Ross. Our provisions are very low.” The girl was gravely serious now. “Unless we can find some solution, I’m afraid he is going to starve us out very soon. It looks like we were trapped.”

_CHAPTER ELEVEN_

WONG HAS AN IDEA

Ross woke the next morning keenly aware of the seriousness of their predicament. As soon as breakfast was over he set out to examine the walls of the basin.

If he had any hope that there was a means of escape over the cliffs he was soon disillusioned. Nowhere was there a break in the walls. They were as perpendicular as a plumb-line and as smooth as basalt. Nothing but a fly could have scaled those cliffs.

The only way out led through the narrow twisting canon below. And there Larson Beebe lay in wait like a cat at a rat-hole. Ross realized that there was little or no chance for him or Wong to get through the canon alive. Beebe had all the advantage.

Ross returned to the house and sat down on the veranda. He ran over a dozen possible schemes for escape, and in the end he had to conclude that they were all impossible.

In fact, his only conclusion was that he would give what fortune he possessed to have Larson Beebe’s neck within the grasp of his two hands. That, however, seemed to be a remote possibility. If anything, the situation would be reversed.

Ross had about exhausted his whole range of impossible schemes when Wong appeared on the veranda. The Chinese wore an enigmatical smile on his usually inscrutable face. It was patent that he was well pleased with something.

“You come,” he addressed Ross. “Got something show.”

Ross rose and followed Wong, who led the way to one of the ’dobe outbuildings. Opening the door, he motioned Ross to enter.

The room was a work-shop of sorts, but what instantly attracted attention were two enormous kites leaning against the wall.

“You see?” inquired Wong.

“Yes, I see,” said Ross, “only I don’t. What’s the idea, Wong?”

“Mlisha Beebe kill everybody we go down canon. No can climb out. Wong make klite. Klite climb out.”

“Guess I’m pretty thick, Wong. I don’t get it yet.”

“When Wong little bloy China he fly many klites. Not forget how. Fly klite now. Klite lift lope top cliff. We climb lope. Go ’way.”

“By George, Wong, I believe you’ve got it,” cried Ross in admiration. “But will it work?”

“Can do” nodded Wong.

“But how will you fasten the rope at the top of the cliff, Wong?”

“Wong good klite flyer. Two klites lift big loop. Drop loop over tree top side cliff. Two ends hang dlown. Mlake slip knot. Pull one lope. All done.”

“Wong, you’re a wonder! I believe it’ll work. Worth trying anyway.”

“Can do. Try tomollow if wind come.”

Ross hurried away to find Virginia Carver.

“Miss Carver,” he hailed her joyously, “Wong has got a scheme to get us out of here, and I believe it will work. He has constructed two enormous kites down there in the workshop. He claims they will lift a rope, and he says he can drop it over one of those stunted pines at the top of the cliff. We climb the rope and leave friend Beebe down in the canon to hold the bag. Are you game?”

“Of course I am,” replied the girl, surprised that he should even question her gameness.

“I knew you would be. We’re going to try it tomorrow. You had better make two packs of food.”

“Two packs? Don’t I carry anything?” asked the girl.

“Miss Carver,” said Ross gravely, “it’s a long way to civilization, and it is going to be a big tax on your strength to make it without carrying anything.”

“I’ll make it,” said Virginia Carver, as she turned away.

The following morning Ross was eager for the experiment, but it was nearly noon before a breeze came up strong enough to lift the kites.

Virginia Carver came out, clad in flannel shirt, whipcord breeches and high laced boots. It was a costume well suited to the work ahead, but it accentuated the girl’s slimness, made her appear almost frail. There was no frailty there, though. Rather was she supple with the suppleness of a braided cable, and the girl had the grace of a fine Toledo blade. Once again Stanley Ross became acutely aware that Virginia Carver had become an exceedingly important interest in his life.

Wong had instructed Ross in his scheme for escape. Ross saw at once that he had not intended to lift a rope heavy enough to hold a human being. Instead Wong had unearthed from one of the storehouses a very stout light line.

The plan was to lift the bight of the line with the two kites and drop it over a stunted pine growing out at an angle near the top of the north cliff. A heavier rope could then be attached to one end of this and drawn up and over the tree, making it possible to climb out.

Ross saw instantly that the plan was all right if the kites could be manipulated. That was Wong’s job, and he seemed quite confident.

All three knew that they must work quickly. If Larson Beebe discovered their scheme there was no telling what desperate action he might attempt.

Wong and Ross quickly got the first big kite into action. It rose readily, but on attaining a height of fifty feet flopped drunkenly. It did not fall, however—merely dipped and darted. This did not appear to bother Wong at all. He simply gave the kite string to Virginia Carver to hold while he quickly flew the second kite with Ross’s help.

Wong and Ross each took command of a kite now. Slowly paying out cord, they allowed the kites to rise. When the kites had risen to a height of about seventy-five feet the cords attached to the bight of the line suddenly became taut and the line began to rise from the ground.

It was then that Ross saw that as a designer of kites Wong most emphatically knew his business, for the instant the weight of the line was borne by the kites in that instant they ceased their drunken plungings and flew steadily.

Ross’s heart leaped within him, for he knew now that Wong’s scheme would work and that they were going to circumvent Larson Beebe. Up, up, the kites rose. A hundred feet! Two hundred! Five! A thousand!

The two kites were about thirty feet apart, and when it was obvious that the line was higher than the cliff wall Wong and Ross began to walk slowly forward. Their objective was a single low pine growing at an outward angle near the top of the cliff. Aiming carefully at this, Wong and Ross brought the kites to a position where an end of the line dangled on each side of the tree and against the cliff. The bight of the line was slightly above the tree, and the kites were pulling it forward.

“Missee, you grab ropes,” shouted Wong.

Quickly divining what was wanted of her, Virginia Carver grasped the ends of the dangling lines.

“Let glo!” shouted Wong again.

Instantly he and Ross released the kite cords. The kites plunged drunkenly down out of sight over the top of the cliff. The bight of the line dropped neatly over the pine tree and slid down its trunk to the roots. The thing was done!

Ross wanted to shout for pure joy. Elation showed in Virginia Carver’s every feature. As for Wong, the author of this daring scheme, he merely grinned, and went swiftly to work.

Somewhere in one of the buildings Wong had discovered a coil of light rope. It had undoubtedly been brought in to be made up into lariats, for it was very pliable and exceedingly strong—strong enough to support the weight of a heavy man.

One end of this was fastened to a free end of the line over the tree. When Wong pulled sharply on the opposite end of the smaller line it slipped readily over the tree trunk. In a minute or two the end of the rope had been pulled up over the tree trunk and back to the canon floor. Thus was the light line replaced by the heavier one.

There was no place to anchor one of the rope ends so Wong simply tied a loop in one end of the rope, passed the other end through it, making a running noose, and quickly ran it up to the tree. Wong’s kites had proved their worth. The means of escape was provided and ready.

“Wong go first,” said the Chinese. Without argument or permission, the intrepid Wong was assuming the risk of proving the safety of the rope. By way of explanation he added to Ross, “You shoulda no stlong. No can pull Missee up, Wong can do.”

Wong grasped the rope in his hands, and with the agility of a cat, feet on the canon wall, passed himself, hand over hand, up the face of the cliff. It seemed hardly a minute before he was at the top and had scrambled over the edge.

In a moment his head reappeared and he called down to Ross to send up the food packs, canteens, and blankets. This was but the work of a moment, and Wong quickly drew them to the top.

So far everything had gone well, and there was no sign of Beebe. It looked as though they were going to make good their escape.

When Wong let the rope down again Ross fashioned a loop in the end of it, which he passed over Virginia Carver’s head and secured it under her arms.

“Now, Miss Carver, if you will take hold of the rope with both hands I think Wong can pull you up safely,” he said. “If you hit against the cliff push yourself away with your feet.”

The girl did not answer him, but she smiled confidently. She accepted her part in the escape with what appealed to Stanley Ross as being splendid courage.

Slowly but very steadily, Wong began to raise the girl. The little Chinese seemed to be made of steel, for, without stopping once or increasing or decreasing the speed, he drew Virginia Carver to the top of the cliff and helped her over the edge. It was a feat of which a man twice his size might have been justly proud.

When the rope came down again Ross lost no time. A hasty glance toward the mouth of the tiny canon revealed no sight of Beebe. Grasping the rope, Ross began his ascent.

His shoulder bothered him somewhat, but it was not more than two or three minutes before he, too, was at the cliff top.

They were free!

_CHAPTER TWELVE_

AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING

Stanley Ross drew himself over the edge of the cliff, where Virginia Carver and Wong were waiting, and scrambled to his feet. He was exuberant.

“Well, Miss Carver, I guess we’re safe all right, thanks to Wong here,” he exulted. “All that remains now is to make tracks away from this accursed place.”

“So you think you’re safe, eh?” snarled a cold voice.

Ross whirled to find himself facing Larson Beebe. Beebe was covering him steadily with a big automatic, and his deep set, piggish eyes had an insane light in them.

Ross’s heart sank within him. He had expected an attack from Beebe from below, but that he might be waiting for them on the cliff top never entered his head. He was utterly helpless now. Beebe had the drop on him and could kill him twice over before he could draw his own gun. Moreover, it was certain Beebe intended doing that very thing.

Ross was filled with a sense of futility, impotency. That he was about to die he did not consider. He was merely disgusted with himself for allowing himself to be checkmated when the game was practically won.

“So you thought you could get away?” Beebe was going on. It was obvious that he, too, was nearly insane. “Thought I was asleep, eh? I knew what was up as soon as I saw the kites. I could have got you then, but I figured the easiest and safest way would be to slip up here and wait behind a rock till you were all up. You wouldn’t be looking for me and I could pot you easily. Well, I’m here and you’re due for a long journey.

“Thought you could outwit Larson Beebe, eh? I’m just going to shoot you and your precious Chink friend here now and kick you over the cliff. Then I’m going to take Virginia and——.”

Ross was conscious that Wong’s right hand whipped to the base of his skull just above the collar of his blouse. In the same instant it came away again and now it held a long, thin, slender glittering blade!

There was another movement of Wong’s hand so swift that he could not follow it. Ross only knew that a look of utterably blank amazement had overspread Larson Beebe’s face. It was as though Beebe had seen a miracle performed before his eyes and could not fathom it.

Then, suddenly, Ross saw what had happened. The hilt of the knife that Wong had held was protruding from Larson Beebe’s ribs!

For an instant Beebe wavered on his feet. His fingers relaxed and his gun clattered to the rocks. He pitched forward onto his face.

“Can do,” muttered Wong. “One day kick Wong. Not kick again.”

* * * * *

That night the three camped beside a little water-hole several miles down the main canon. Around the tiny campfire they made their plans for getting out of the desert.

Ross knew the general direction to take, and he felt confident that by taking it easy the girl would be able to make the journey on foot. Virginia Carver was confident.

The following morning Ross was awakened by footsteps on the rocks. He raised up to see two long-eared animals making their way down the trail to the water-hole. It was Archibald and Percy!

Ross let out a shout that instantly roused his companions.

“There’s your ship of the desert that’s going to carry you back to civilization,” he called, as Virginia raised up from her blankets.

The girl did not comprehend. She gazed at the two animals in astonishment for a moment.

“But they’re wild, aren’t they?” she asked.

“Just as wild as two snails,” said Ross. “Those two estimable gentlemen brought me into this desert, and they’re going to take us out.”

When breakfast had been finished Ross noticed that Wong was busily engaged in rearranging the weight of the packs.

“Never mind the packs, Wong. Friend Archibald here can carry Miss Carver and Percy can handle the supplies. You and I will go light, Wong,” Ross explained.

“No can do,” replied Wong. “Me no go you.”

“What do you mean, Wong?”

“Wong go that way,” answered the Chinese, pointing to the south.

“You go that way,” asked Ross, perplexed. “Why? You’re going with Miss Carver and me.”

Wong shook his head. “Wong kill man. Think not stay in ’Nited States. Go Mexiclo.”

“Nonsense, Wong,” said Ross. “Miss Carver and I can easily fix that.”

“Think not. Wong go Mexiclo. Got blother there. Buy li’le res’rant.”

Ross saw that there was no use in trying to dissuade Wong. There was no combating such a nature. After a few moments Ross asked:

“Wong, where you going in Mexico?”

“Go Wa’lz.”

“Going to Juarez, eh? What’s your full name?”

“Name? Wong Chen Chek.”

“All right, Wong. In about two months you go to the postoffice and inquire for a registered package. You’ll find enough money in it to buy the best little restaurant in Juarez.”

Wong grinned. “Thlank you.”

Swinging his pack to his shoulder, he swung down the trail without more ado.

“Goo’ bye. Goo’ bye, Missee,” came back to Ross and Virginia Carver.

A half hour later the Chinese disappeared from view far down the canon. Ross turned to the girl.

Virginia Carver was gazing far out over the jumble of rocks and sand that is the Red Desert to where the mists of the morning were dissolving into the shifting haze of the rising sun.

For a moment Ross watched her without speaking. Fresh and vibrant with youth, she was lovely beyond words.

“I guess we had best be going now,” he said. Then his voice stumbled, “Miss Carver—Virginia—when we get out of here—I’ve—I’ve something to say to you.”

For a long moment the girl continued to look far into the colorful haze of the desert. Then she turned toward Ross. A peculiarly tender little smile wreathed her mouth. Her eyes were swimming pools of unshed tears.

Her voice faltered, “Would—would you mind—saying it now—Stanley?”

THE END.

Chicago Man Attacked by Fighting Owl

John Casey, night watchman for the Chicago Protective Agency, while “walking his beat” one night recently, entered a dark passageway in West Madison Street; and then, all at once—

“Something flew at me from the darkness,” he said later, “and knocked my cap off and began scratching my face and clawing out my hair by the roots. I made a pass at it, but found I was fanning the air. Then I saw two blazing eyes, and struck at them. Before I could get out my gun the monster jumped on me again. I managed to swing on it with my night-stick—and that ended the fight.”

To substantiate his story, Watchman Casey exhibited a dead owl measuring thirty-six inches from tip to tip, also numerous cuts and bruises on his hands and face.

_A Powerful Novel of Sinister Madmen That Mounts To An Astounding Climax_

The Jailer of Souls

_Complete In This Issue_

_By_ HAMILTON CRAIGIE

_CHAPTER ONE_

SOUTHWEST OF THE LAW

All the way Westward in the smoker the man in the high-crowned, black Stetson had taken no part in the conversation. He had appeared to doze, slumping in the high-backed seat as the train rushed onward into the golden afternoon.

The three men at his back had been busy with an interminable round of poker: draw, jack-pot, and stud; deuces wild, and seven-card peak. They moved across the aisle now, as the long train slowed for the brief stop at Two-Horse Canyon, facing him obliquely and a little to his left.

Twice or thrice they had essayed to draw him into the talk, but the man in the black Stetson had been oblivious; he had continued taciturn—morose, almost, one might have said. But he had not been asleep; rather, he had listened with all his ears as their voices had reached him between hands:

“... Yes—Dry Bone—been there myself—they run things pretty much to suit _themselves_.... Wide-open.... Sure.... You might call it a dead open-and-shut proposition, I’ll tell a man!”

The laugh that followed had come to the man in the black Stetson with a curious, grating note:

“Sure-thing gamblers; con-men—it’s a regular crook’s paradise.... And there’s that fellow, Rook....”

The eyes of the man in the black Stetson narrowed abruptly at the corners; for a moment, as a curtain is drawn swiftly from right to left, something arose to peer out of those eyes, glowing, deep-down, like a still, festering flame. But it was gone upon the instant—

“... And there’s that fellow, Rook....” the man had said.

Of a sudden he had stopped short as if he had been muzzled; presently his voice had come again, dry, matter-of-fact:

“I’ll see that raise, Carpenter, and it’ll cost you just twenty iron men to call....”

Plainly, that name, “Rook,” had been taboo; the speaker had been silently reminded of it.

The man in the black Stetson—he had been known as Black Steve Annister in the back blocks at Wooloomooloof before he had made of that name a by-word in the honkatonks and the gambling-hells from San Francisco northward to the Wind River country, and beyond it—Black Steve Annister was sitting upright now, but he had retired behind a wide-spread copy of the _Durango County Gazette_. He was not reading it, however, although he was looking through it—at the three men just across the aisle, studying them through the pin-pricks he had made in it, himself unseen.

Annister had arrived in New York only the week previous from Sourabaya, Java, and he had not waited even overnight before he had begun the long journey, broken at Washington for half a day, which had taken him now half way southwestward across the State of Texas. Presently the long train would cross the Pecos, beyond it the serrated ramparts of the Guadalupes; Dry Bone was just between.

Annister, studying the men, frowned abruptly, yawning behind his hand. Two of the men he put down for ranchers—sheep men, probably; there was about them none of the glamor of that West which lingers even now in the person of a cattleman; and these men were negligible.

But the third man would have been noticeable anywhere. He was a bull’s bulk of a man, hard-featured, mouth a straight gash above a heavy chin barbered to the blood; the observer across the aisle would have said “cowman,” and registered a bull’s eye with it, point-blank.

The two who were with him, evidently with interests in common, were scarcely friendly with the cowman, if such he was; it was evident in their attitude, the constraint which had fallen upon them following that mention of “Rook.”

But the man in the black Stetson continued to study the big fellow through the holes in his newspaper: the hard face, tanned a rich saddle color; the nose, flattened to a smudge of flaring nostril; the cauliflower ear.

He had heard the name, “Ellison” once or twice; somewhere, deep down, it had set vibrating a chord of memory that brought with it, incongruously enough, an altogether different setting: a padded ring under twin, blazing arcs; the thud and shuffle of sliding feet; a man, huge, brutish, broad, fists like stone mauls, yet, for all his bulk, a very cat for quickness....

He put down his paper now—to find those hard eyes boring into his. Ellison, or whatever the man’s name was, had shifted in his seat; the glance that he turned now upon the stranger in the black Stetson was searching, probing. There was a truculence in it, a fierce, bright, avid staring, like an animal’s, savage in its very directness, like a challenge—which in effect it was.

Annister returned the look, eye for eye, with a bitter, brooding insolence in which there was apparent a certain mockery, his eyes in a veiled gleaming, like the sun on water. For a long moment their glances engaged, in a silent duel, like rapier points; then the giant with the cauliflower ear vented a sound between a grunt and a snort, turning to the window, his gaze outward across the flat levels of the adjacent prairie in a kind of sightless stare.

There had been no reason in it—no logic—that Annister could see, but for the moment he had owned to a sudden sense of crisis; it had seemed to him for a moment that in the giant’s eyes there had been almost a knowing, an understanding look. But the man could have no business with him—of that he was certain.

The fellow was just a bully, probably, a big, hulking lump of beef who resented, as it might chance, Annister’s undeniably cosmopolitan air; the sardonic flicker in the gray-green eyes; the cool, contemptuous appraisal. But, after all, it had been the giant who had begun it.

And yet, somehow, Annister was thinking that he had seen him before, and, oddly, illogically enough, he found himself liking the man—why, he could not have told.

Black Steve Annister, “with the heart of a cougar and the conscience of a wolf,” as a disgruntled enemy had at one time phrased it, could have sat into that game had he been so minded, with profit to himself, pecuniary and otherwise, but he had preferred to play the hand that had been dealt him. Later, at Dry Bone, that would be another matter.

Now, his lean, strong, hawklike face darkened abruptly with the thought behind his eyes, and then—for Annister had eyes in the back of his head—he was suddenly aware that the conductor was advancing along the aisle.

The three men opposite had ceased their conversation as if at an order. Two or three of the remaining passengers stared curiously, after the manner of their kind (they were small tradesmen, merchants, going on beyond the border to Tucson), as the conductor halted at Annister’s elbow.

“Excuse me, Mister—Mister—” he began.

“—Annister!” The answer was low, even, controlled, but beneath the silken tone there ran a hint of iron.

“Mister Annister,” repeated the conductor. “Will you—just a moment, please?”

Annister rose, following the official outward toward the vestibule. And as he went he could feel those eyes, avid, curious, boring into his back. He permitted himself the ghost of a cold grin as the conductor, turning in the entry, laid a respectful hand upon his sleeve.

“I’m—sorry, sir,” he said, low. “You getting off at Dry Bone, aren’t you?”

The words were less a question than a statement of fact. Annister nodded. The conductor, a tall, bronzed man who might have been an old-time line rider, shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Then he said, his tone even, matter-of-fact:

“I—_wouldn’t_—if I was you.”

Annister stared. Then, producing his cigar-case, lighting a long, black invincible, the twin to which the conductor had selected, he remarked casually:

“They’re good cigars.... In the trenches we smoked ‘Woodbines’—a cross between tar-heel and alfalfa; you have a lot of alfalfa out here, eh? And the ‘third light,’ as we used to call it, most always got his—three men lighting up from the same match, you know.”

His tone abruptly hardened; the glance that he turned upon the conductor now was like a lance of flame.

“Well—I’m not superstitious—but—will you tell me _why_?”

It is significant that the conductor was breaking a rigid Company rule by joining Annister in a surreptitious cigar. Now he turned guiltily as a voice sounded from the corridor at his back:

“Ex-cuse me—but could I trouble you for a light?”

The third man, as Annister could see, was tall and heavily built, with broad shoulders and a curiously small head. He had a sharp, acquisitive nose, and a mouth tight-lipped and thin. Annister, versed in reading men, was abruptly conscious of an instinctive and overmastering repugnance. For the man’s eyes were cold and cruel, sleepy-lidded, like a snake’s, roving between Annister and the conductor in a furtive scrutiny.

The match was still alight. Annister, his hand steady as a rock, extended it to the newcomer, who, with an inarticulate grunt, lighted his cigarette, turning, without further speech, backward along the corridor.

Annister waited a moment until he was certain that the man was out of earshot. Then:

“The ‘third light,’ eh?” he murmured, his tone abruptly hardened. “Well—and why shouldn’t I get off?” he asked, grimly.

The conductor for a moment seemed at a loss.

“It’s like this, Mr. Annister,” he said slowly. “I’m a new man on the S. P., but I’ve been hearing a lot—no gossip, you understand—but a conductor hears a good deal, by and large.... And this is a cow country, or it used to be—pretty wild, in spots. Dry Bone, now—they run things pretty much to suit themselves—”

He paused, in a visible embarrassment.

“There’s a party of four back there in the diner—I couldn’t help overhearing what they were saying, and—well—I’m just repeating what they said, and no offense—”

“That’s all right,” interrupted Annister, evenly. “Go on.”

“Why—they said,” continued the conductor, “that you were an Eastern gambler—a—confidence-man—that you were not wanted here in Dry Bone; that it wouldn’t be exactly healthy for you if you stopped off—that’s all. I thought you’d be wanting to know. And if you’ll take my advice, even if you haven’t asked it, I’d say: go on to Tombstone—you can figure it out from there.”

“Thanks,” answered Annister shortly. “I’m getting off—at Dry Bone. How soon are we due?”

“Fifteen minutes,” replied the conductor, glancing at his watch. “But if I was you, sir, I’d stay aboard; it’s a bad crowd there, as I happen to know, and they’ve got a branch of the S. S. S. there, only they work it to suit themselves: tar-and-feathers is just a picnic with that gang; they’re a stemwinding bunch of assassins, I’ll say! So far they’ve operated under cover, mostly, and down here in the Southwest—well—it ain’t a lot different, in some ways, than it was thirty years ago. You’ll see—because they’re—”

“—Southwest of the Law—is that it?” Annister laughed shortly. “Well—much obliged, old-timer,” he said. “I won’t forget it. But I’m getting off.”

The long train was slowing for the station stop. Annister, striding to his seat, got down his heavy bag. For a moment he stood, considering, his gaze, under lowered lids, upon the long coach and its passengers in a swift, squinting appraisal.

The three men were gone.

Somehow, they had found out who he was. Well—that made little difference, he reflected, grimly, except to force matters to a show-down, and the sooner the better.

For there was a man in Dry Bone; Annister had known him in the old time; and it was with this man, unless he was greatly mistaken, that his business had to do.

He would put it to the touch, then; he would sit into the game, and would come heeled, and they could rib up the deck on him, and welcome.

He was turning to the door when, of a sudden, there came to him a second warning: there was a swish of skirts, a sudden odor of violets. Annister had a glimpse of a blonde head beneath a close-fitting toque, as the girl passed him, disappearing in the doorway.

And there, on the flooring at his feet, was a square of white.

Annister, stooping, retrieved it, holding the card upward to the light:

“_Stay on board. Dry Bone is not safe—for you. Be warned—in time._”

There was no signature. Annister made a little clucking sound with his tongue, his face set like flint. He was alone in the car.

The train had stopped now as, bag in hand, he shouldered through the doorway. And then, abruptly, as if materialized out of the air, a face grinned into his, lips drawn backward from the teeth in a soundless snarl. It was the big man with the cauliflower ear.

“Hombre,” he said, without preamble, in a hoarse, carrying whisper, “take an old-timer’s advice: go back—_an’_ set down—you savvy? This place—it ain’t exactly healthy for a young fellow like you, I’m tellin’ yu! For if you don’t—”

Annister’s cold stare was followed by his voice, low, incisive:

“You’re blocking the doorway,” he said, with a sort of freezing quiet.

The giant’s hard mouth twisted in a sneer; his great paw reaching upward with a clawing motion, blunt fingers upon Annister’s shoulder. Then—what followed happened with the speed of light.

“You can’t get off here, Mister—” the giant was continuing, when the words were blotted out. Annister’s right fist, behind it the full weight of his two hundred pounds of iron-hard muscle, curved in a short arc; there was a spanking thud. The big man, lifted from his feet, crashed into the front door-frame, slumping face downward in an aimless huddle of sprawling limbs.

“The hell you say!” grinned Black Steve Annister, leaping lightly to the platform, with never a backward glance.

Such was the manner of his coming.

_CHAPTER TWO_

THE HAND IN THE DARK

The one hotel in Dry Bone was the Mansion House.

Annister, crossing the lobby, was aware of a veiled hostility in the stares directed at him from the group of loungers in the doorway; they gave ground grudgingly, as he came in, with a sort of covert truculence.

Here, as he could see, there was a curious mingling of the Old West and the New: men, whose attire would have created no remark, say, even in New York; others, booted and spurred, cartridge-belted and pistolled—but all, as he noticed, with, for headgear, the inevitable Stetson.

Once in his room, and the door locked and bolted, he busied himself for a moment with a sheaf of papers, several of them adorned with a huge, official seal; they crackled as he put them in an inner pocket. Then, dressed as he was, he lay down upon the bed, but not to sleep.

It was late—hard upon midnight—when the sound for which he had waited came with the soft _whirring_ of the window-weights. The sound was not loud; it would not have awakened him had he been asleep; but Annister could hear it plainly enough.

He had removed his shoes upon retiring. Now, in his stocking-feet, he approached the window, a black, glimmering oblong against the windy night without. As he watched, the faint _whirring_ ceased; a pair of hands appeared suddenly out of the darkness, fingers hooked into the window-sill.

Annister drew a faint, hissing breath. In the star-shine, for there was no moon, the fingers showed in a luminous grayness against the sill, clawlike, malformed, like the talons of a beast, which in effect they were.

Annister knew them upon the instant, for, in far-off Java, for instance, he had seen those hands, or, rather, the same and yet not the same. And in that instant he had acted.

Both hands upon the window-sash, he brought it down with a crash upon those fingers; there followed a yelp of pain, inhuman, doglike—a groaning curse—the slam of a falling ladder—a heavy thud—silence.

Annister smiled grimly in the darkness. Whoever it was, the intruder would never be certain as to whether that window had crashed downward of its own accord, or not. And leaning in the window, Annister raised it cautiously again after a moment. He heard presently the slow drag of retreating footsteps; after all, it had not been much of a drop.

Closing and bolting the window, he undressed in the darkness, and with the facility of an old campaigner was asleep and snoring beneath the blankets between two ticks of the watch.

But in the morning a surprise awaited him.

Always an early riser, he was breakfasting alone in the empty dining-room when the waitress brought him a note. Beyond noting that she was pretty, and that she did not look like a waitress, Annister, somewhat engrossed in the business in hand, for a moment stared at the envelope with unseeing eyes.

Then, ripping it open, he took in its contents in one swift, flashing glance:

_“My dear Mr. Annister_:

_“I would be very glad to see you at my office at ten this morning—if you are able to be there.”_

It was signed simply: “Hamilton Rook.”

Annister grinned fleetingly in answer.

“Well—it’s not another warning, at any rate,” he said, half aloud, turning to the consideration of his breakfast bacon. Then, at a low voice at his back, he turned:

“Did you—say your coffee needed warming, sir?”

It was the waitress.

Annister had turned the note, face downward, on the table, with a quick flirt of his thumb. How long she had been there behind him he could not tell, for he had heard no sound.

“Thanks—no,” he said shortly, his hard eyes boring into hers with an almost insolent appraisal.

Yes—she was pretty, and more than that, her violet eyes darkening now under his abrupt, almost savage scrutiny. And her voice—it was like a bell just trembling out of silence. Annister spoke:

“Have you been here long—in Dry Bone, I mean?” he asked.

The waitress smiled, and it was not the smile of a waitress, Annister was convinced. Now, with a girl like that for a partner—was his unspoken thought—he could—well....

“N-no, sir,” the girl made answer, with a sudden affectation of primness. “I came in yesterday, sir—on the same train with you, sir. I—I’ve just been—engaged.”

Annister repressed an absurd prompting to ask her how many times she had been engaged before, and to whom and at what. Her eyes were assuredly hypnotic, with lashes long and delicately fine.

“_Umm_,” he rumbled in answer.

Was it possible, after all, that she had been the girl in the crimson toque? And, with the card in his pocket, for a moment he was tempted to show it to her. Instead:

“Well—I hope you like it here,” he said. “You’ll know me—the next time?”

And for a moment he could have sworn that in the face of the girl there had come all at once a curious, almost a baffling look, at once enigmatic and self-revealing. But the entrance of the vanguard of breakfasters interrupted.

He watched her for a little as with a swaying, lilting step she moved off to minister to the late-comers, his eyes speculative. Then, turning once more to the letter, he re-read it as a man reading a cipher:

“_If you are able to be there._” Could there be a double meaning in that? For if Rook had sent that midnight visitor, then there were no lengths indeed to which he might go—for the hand, like a beast’s paw, upon the window-sill, had been, as Annister had known upon the instant, the hand of the Thug, the Dacoit, the Strangler.

Warnings, thrice repeated; a hand in the dark; a waitress who was not all she seemed; an invitation, suave, and, as Annister conceived it, ironic—it was a situation not without its possibilities for action.

And Black Steve Annister loved action. Perhaps, after all, he was to have it now, whether he would or no.

Rook he had known aforetime, but he was convinced that the latter would not recognize him save as Black Steve Annister, wastrel of the wide world, gentleman adventurer-in-waiting to the High Gods of Adventure and Derring-do, knight-errant of the highways and byways of Criminopolis, scarce a black sheep, indeed, but a wolf of the long trail and of the night.

Rook had known him as such in the days when, as jackal for certain vested interests, the black-bearded lawyer had run foul of young Annister, just then beginning a hectic career of spending which, but three years in the past, had abruptly terminated with Annister’s complete disappearance from joyous jazz-palace and discreetly gilded temple of high hazard.

For he had dropped out of sight, lost, as a stone is lost, in the sea-green waters of oblivion, save for an occasional ripple thereafter which proclaimed him blacksander, beachcomber, _chevalier d’industrie_, until one memorable evening a twelve-month gone ... but Rook would be knowing nothing of that.

Annister had come home from the South Seas to find his father gone, and a note: “_Do not look for me, for you are not my son._” And an exhaustive inquiry had failed even to suggest the slightest clue.

The elder Annister could have written his check for seven figures, and it appeared, following his disappearance, that he had done so; they had come in from North and South and East and West, steadily, and, as it seemed, with purpose. But as a clue to his whereabouts they had been unavailing.

But, from the moment of his discovery of that note, Black Steve Annister, visiting a certain office in a certain side-street not far distant from the Capitol, had surprised its guardian with a terse:

“That offer of yours, Childers—I’ve come to take it up.”

The man called Childers had bent a keen look upon his visitor; another might have described it as unpleasant, stern.

“Well, you know just what that means, eh?” he had said. “You’ll be merely a cog, a link—remember that!”

“Yes,” Annister had answered, and there the interview had ended.

And so Black Steve Annister, serving two masters, had come to Dry Bone, and the end, as it might chance, of the long trail leading Westward into the setting sun.

He rose from the table now, going out into the pale Spring sunshine on his way to the office of Hamilton Rook. He found the building presently; it was the court-house; there was a figure of Blind Justice with her scales just over the entrance. Annister reflected sardonically that, here, in Carter County, distant from a civilization at present as remote as the moon, she was probably also deaf—and dumb. And presently, at the head of a dark flight, there was the office, with the legend:

HAMILTON ROOK

ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW

There was a small sign at the corner of the door; in obedience to its invitation to “Walk In,” Annister, his hand upon the knob in a noiseless pressure, abruptly flung it wide.

A split second before the opening of that door, and while his hand was on the knob, Annister had seen, or thought that he had seen, a swift shadow pass suddenly across the ground-glass panel; there was the grating sound of a chair being moved backward.