BEN THURSTON, during the afternoon, seated in his big armchair, had first nodded over a newspaper and then dropped off to sleep. He was awakened by a touch on the shoulder—rudely awakened, for he jumped to his feet, and in a dazed way glared at the disturber.

“Excuse me,” apologized Leach Sharkey, “but I want to remind you that this is the afternoon when we are to meet that old Portugee I told you about.”

“I need no reminder,” was the gruff reply. “I am ready to start when you are. By the way, what’s the fellow’s name?”

“JosÉ, he said. He claims to know every nook and corner in the range. Has lived in the mountains for many years; keeps goats and bees, and shoots a mountain lion occasionally, earning the bounty as well as getting the skin.”

“Shoots,” echoed Thurston, somewhat nervously.

“Oh, that was in his younger days mostly, I fancy. Today he is a tottering old man who couldn’t hold a rifle straight if he tried. But he’s well acquainted with the mountains, that’s the main thing. He tells me he has known where Dick Willoughby is hiding since the very day after he broke jail.”

“Then why didn’t he come to me?”

“Because he knew nothing about the reward. But at our very first chance meeting among the hills I very soon made five thousand dollars look mighty good to him. By gad, you should have seen his eyes pop and his hands tremble.”

“It is a fortune for such a man.”

“That’s what got him. He has been supplying Willoughby with goats’ milk, but is paid only two bits a quart. So he grabbed at my bait like a hungry coyote. You have the money ready, I suppose? Treasury bills—that’s what he stipulated for, because he’s too frail to hump a sack of gold around.”

“The money is in that wallet on my desk. You had better carry it.”

Sharkey stepped across the room and shoved a fat leather wallet into the breast pocket of his coat.

“So frail, is he?” Thurston went on, musingly. “Well, I needn’t take a gun.”

Sharkey smiled. He knew Ben Thurston’s timidity in even handling a revolver, and the man’s abject reliance on his armed bodyguard.

“Not the slightest necessity,” assented the sleuth. “I’ve always got my brace of bulldogs ready;” and the professional gunman, touching the broad leather belt to which his holsters were attached, grinned complacently.

“And no danger to be feared from Willoughby himself, you said?”

“None whatever. In fact, he don’t have a gun, JosÉ declares. So he only sneaks out after dark for a constitutional. The old fellow will take us to the spot where we can grab him by the neck.”

“That sounds like business,” replied Thurston, rubbing his hands. “And shoot him down, Sharkey, if he runs.”

“He won’t give us the slip this time—you can bet dollars to doughnuts on that. But of course he’s got to have the chance of hands-up before I fire. Killing is killing, and I prefer the handcuffs. There is really less trouble in the long run.”

“Well, perhaps I, too, would prefer to see him hanged,” murmured Thurston, with gloating satisfaction. “But don’t forget that we must get him this afternoon, dead or alive. I’m sick of this life of watching and waiting.”

“The end’s in sight at last.”

“Then we’ll go back East—after I have had my revenge. It will be sweeter to me after all the trouble we’ve encountered. And by God, we’ll drag that Farnsworth girl, too, through the mire. Hell to all of them! I’ve never had anyone but enemies around me here.”

While speaking, Thurston reached for his overcoat thrown across the back of a chair.

“All right, we’ll start,” said Sharkey. “I’ll go and get the horses ready.”

It was about half past three o’clock when the riders reached the base of the mountain barrier not far from the entrance to Tejon Pass.

“We’ve got to make it on foot now,” remarked Sharkey, as he swung himself from the saddle. “I’ll tether the horses to this manzanita.” Thurston dismounted, and while his companion led the animals under the trees, he gazed aloft at the precipice beetling in front of them.

“Damn it, I wish you had chosen any other place than Comanche Point,” he exclaimed irritably.

“We had to come to the spot where we can find our man,” replied Sharkey complacently. “It is on the ridge above that Willoughby has his place of hiding. Come along, we have a good stiff climb before us.”

He led the way up the first slope of the winding trail and Ben Thurston followed, reluctantly now, half doubting the wisdom of his having left his home for such an adventure.

Meanwhile there had been two other riders on the range that afternoon, mounted on little hill ponies. The one man was blindfolded; the other rode in advance and guided the second pony by a leading rein. It had been the usual experience to which Dick Willoughby had now become accustomed—hour after hour along winding, maze-like trails. At last the call had come to dismount, and the bandage had been removed from Dick’s eyes. He saw that he was in a little box-like nook in the mountains.

“You will remain here,” said Pierre Luzon, “until I whistle for you—you know my signal. Zen you will lead ze ponies along zis path. When you come to me, I will put you on ze road for home, and we will say good-bye.”

“I suppose I may smoke,” laughed Dick, philosophically. The day of surprises had left him dulled to any further wonderment.

“Sure, smoke,” replied Pierre. “But remember ze forest regulations,” he added with a chuckle, “and do not set ze brush on fire.”

“Oh, I’m no green tenderfoot,” laughed

Willoughby, as he drew his briar-root from his pocket. “And it’s quite a balmy afternoon for October.”

He sat down and propped his back against a moss-grown rock.

“You must not stir from here,” continued Pierre. “Remember I have to find you again.”

“Guess I’ve learned to obey orders. I’m quite comfortable where I am.” And Dick started contentedly smoking.

Pierre, following the little path to which he had drawn Dick’s attention, pushed through the brushwood and disappeared.

Just ten minutes later Pierre Luzon stood on Comanche Point and gazed down the trail leading up from the pass below.

“Zey are coming, zey are coming!” he exclaimed eagerly to himself, with finger outpointed in the direction of the two climbers on foot half way up the ascent. Then he slipped back into the shadow of a clump of stunted pines that grew close to the cliff.

Fifteen minutes or so passed. Then the heads of Ben Thurston and Leach Sharkey showed above the final steep ascent that led directly on to the projecting spur known as Comanche Point. Thurston was breathing hard after the difficult climb.

“Here we are at last,” remarked Sharkey cheerfully, as he glanced around.

Even as he spoke, a tottering figure came forth from among the pines. A few minutes before, Pierre Luzon had been erect and vigorous and nimble on his feet, but now he seemed to be indeed a frail and bowed old man.

“I have come,” he said, as he approached the figures on the cliff.

“Hands up, then,” cried the sleuth, half laughing. “You remember, I said I would search you for a gun.”

“I have no gun,” Pierre answered, as he halted and elevated his arms.

Sharkey advanced and, without taking the trouble to draw either of his own weapons, ran his fingers with the quick touch of experience over the old man’s clothes.

“I knew you were on the square, JosÉ,” said the bodyguard, quickly satisfied. “Well, I’ve brought the mazuma.”

He drew from his pocket the fat wallet, opening it for a moment to display the wads of greenbacks. Then he put it back again.

“Now where is our man?”

“He is down here, just a little distance,” replied Pierre, in a cautious whisper. “I am not strong enough to hold him. But you come. Ze boss, he can remain here for ze present.”

Ben Thurston had turned away and was looking down into the valley.

“We’ll be back in a short time,” called out Sharkey.

But Thurston, if he had heard, made no reply.

“Now show the way, old fellow,” continued the sleuth, addressing his guide.

A moment later Ben Thurston was alone.

Alone on Comanche Point—gazing over the broad sweep of lands that had been his princely heritage, but which he had now lost forever! The valley lay beneath him, bathed in the mellow evening sunshine. But his eyes were riveted on a single spot. And what a transformation scene for the erstwhile cattle king—this new city with its checkerboard of streets and all around it new homes amid plots of young fruit trees and meadows of alfalfa!

The whole picture was one of fascinating beauty—the city itself the finishing touch that gave it human interest. But in Ben Thurston’s soul there was nothing but bitterness and disgust. He had kept on complaining that he had been unscrupulously plundered by the Los Angeles syndicate, and with the realization now of what enterprise and enlightened progress could achieve, he began to feel that he had been mercilessly stripped of what was rightfully his. Greed and envy and vain regrets were all commingled in his surge of envenomed thoughts. But avarice predominated.

“Good God, to think I parted with the rancho at a beggarly acreage price, when I might have been selling town lots today. There will be a dozen other towns springing up to follow this one.”

In his agony he groaned aloud and covered his eyes with his hands to shut out the hateful sight.

Just at that moment the sound of a twig crackling underfoot smote his ear. He turned round; into his face stole an ashen look of terror as he watched an approaching figure wrapped in a Spanish cloak and crowned by a broad-brimmed sombrero. His haggard eyes asked: “Is it man or ghost?” He would have screamed aloud, but found himself voiceless from fear.

At last the figure stood before him with proudly folded arms.

“The White Wolf!” gasped Thurston, in a faint whisper.

“Yes, Don Manuel de Valencia—the White Wolf, as you choose to call him. And now at last, Ben Thurston, we meet face to face, and alone—after thirty long years, and without a woman’s tears this time to save you!”

Ben Thurston sank to the ground, a huddled heap, trembling in every limb.