THE foreman of the Star C impatiently tossed his bridle reins over the post which stood near the sheriff’s door and knocked heavily, brushing the dust of his ride from him. Quick, heavy steps approached within the house and the door suddenly flew open.

“Hullo, Tom!” Shields cried, shaking hands with his friend. “Come right in–I knew you would come if we coaxed you a little.”

“You don’t have to do much coaxing–I can’t stay away, Jim,” replied Blake with a laugh. “How do you do, Mrs. Shields?”

“Very well, Tom,” she answered. “Miss Ritchie, Helen, Mary, this is Tom Blake; Tom, Miss Ritchie and James’ sisters. They are to stay with us just as long as they can, and I’ll see that it is a good, long time, too.”

“How do you do?” he cried heartily, acknowledging the introduction. “I am glad to meet you, for I’ve heard a whole lot about you. I hope you’ll like this country–greatest country under the sky! You stay out here a month and I’ll bet you’ll be just like lots of people, and not want to go back East again.”

“It seems as though we have always known Mr. Blake, for James has written about you so much,” replied Helen, and then she laughed: “But I am not so sure about liking this country, although very unusual things seem to take place in it. The journey was very trying, and it seemed to get worse as we neared our destination.”

“Well, I’ll have to confess that the stage-ride part of it is a drawback, and also that Apaches don’t make good reception committees. They are a little too pressing at times.”

“But, speaking seriously,” responded Helen, “I have had a really delightful time. James has managed to get me a very tame horse after quite a long search, and I have taken many rides about the country.”

“Wait ’til you see that horse, Tom,” laughed the sheriff. “It’s warranted not to raise any devilment, but it can’t, for it has all it can do to stand up alone, and can’t very well run away.”“I see that The Orphan delivered my message, contrary to the habits of men,” remarked the sheriff’s wife as she took the guest’s hat and offered him a seat. “I spoke to James about it several days ago, and asked him to send you word when he could, for you have not been here for a long time. And the wonderful thing about it is that he remembered to tell The Orphan.”

“Thank you,” he replied, seating himself. “Yes, he delivered it all right, it was about the second thing he said. But I just couldn’t get here any sooner, Mrs. Shields. And I was just wondering if I could get over to-night when he told me. When he said ‘apricot pie’ he looked sort of sad.”

“Poor boy!” she exclaimed. “You must take him one–it was a shame to send such a message by him, poor, lonesome boy!”

“Well, he ain’t so lonesome now,” laughed Blake.

Helen had looked up quickly at the mention of The Orphan’s name, and the sheriff replied to her look of inquiry.

“I sent him out to punch for Blake, Helen,” he said quickly. “If he has the right spirit in him he’ll get along with the Star C outfit; if he hasn’t, why, he won’t get on with anybody. But I reckon Tom will bring out all the good in him; he’ll have a fair show, anyhow.”

“And you never told us about it!” cried Helen reproachfully.

“Oh, I was saving it up,” laughed the sheriff. “What do you think of him, Tom?” he asked, turning to the foreman.

“Why, he’s a clean-looking boy,” answered Blake. “I like his looks. He seems to be a fellow what can be depended on in a pinch, and after all I had heard about him he sort of took me by surprise. I thought he would be a tough-looking killer, and there he was only a overgrown, mischievous kid. But there is a look in his eyes that says there is a limit. But he surprised me, all right.”

“You want to appreciate that, Miss Ritchie,” remarked the sheriff, smiling broadly. “Anything that takes Tom Blake by surprise must have merit of some kind. And he is a good judge of men, too.”

“I do so hope he gets on well,” she replied earnestly. “He was a perfect gentleman when he was here, and his wit was sharp, too. And out there on that awful plain, when he stood swaying with weakness, he looked just splendid!”

“Pure grit, pure grit!” cried the sheriff in reply. “That’s why I’m banking on him,” he added, his eyes warming as he remembered. “Any fellow who could turn a trick like that, and who has so much clean-cut courage, must be worth looking after. He’s got a bad reputation, but he’s plumb white and square with me, and I’m going to be square with him. And when you know all that I know about him you’ll take his reputation as a natural result of hard luck, spunk, and other people’s devilment and foolishness. But he’s going to have a show now, all right.”

“What did your men say when they saw him? Do they know who he is?” asked Mrs. Shields anxiously.

Blake laughed: “Oh, yes, they know who he is. They ain’t the talking kind in a case like that; they won’t say a word to him about what he has done. Besides, he was under their roof, eating their food, and that’s enough for them. Of course, they were a little surprised, but not half as much as I thought they would be. He is a man who gives a good first impression, and the boys are all fine fellows, big-hearted, square, clean-living and peaceful. Reputations don’t count for much with them, for they know that reputations are gossip-made in most cases. I asked him to stay, and they haven’t got no reason to object, and they won’t waste no time looking for reasons, neither. If there is any trouble at all, it will be his own fault. Then again, they know that he is all sand and that his gunplay is real and sudden; not that they are afraid of him, or anybody else, for that matter, but he is the kind of a man they like–somebody who can stand up on his own legs and give better than he gets.”

“I reckon he fills that bill, all right,” laughed the sheriff. “He can stand up on his own legs, and when he does he makes good. And as for gunplay, good Lord, he’s a shore wizard! I reckoned I could do things with a gun, but he can beat me. He ain’t no Boston pet, and he ain’t no city tough, not nohow. And I’d rather have him with me in a mix-up than against me. He’s the coolest proposition loose in this part of the country at any game, and I know what I’m talking about, too.”

“You promised to tell us everything about him, all you knew,” reproached Helen. “And I am sure that it will be well worth hearing.”“Well, I was saving it up ’til I could tell it all at once and when you would all be together,” he replied. “There wasn’t any use of telling it twice,” he explained as he brought out a box of cigars. “These are the same brand you sampled last time you were here,” he assured his friend as he extended the box.

“By George, that’s fine!” cried the foreman, picking out the blackest cigar he could see. “I could taste them cigars for a whole week, they was so good. There’s nothing like a good Perfecto to make a fellow feel like he’s too lucky to live.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Shields. “Then you won’t care for the coffee and pie and gingerbread,” she sighed. “I’m very sorry.”

Blake jumped: “Lord, Ma’am,” he cried hastily, “I meant in the smoking line! Why, I’ve been losing sleep a-dreaming of your cooking. Every time the cook fills my cup with his insult to coffee I feel so lonesome that it hurts!”

“You want to look out, Tom!” laughingly warned the sheriff, “or you’ll get yourself disliked! When I don’t care for Margaret’s cooking I ain’t fool enough to say so, not a bit of it.”

“You’re a nice one to talk like that!” cried his wife. “You are just like a little boy on baking day–I can hardly keep you out of the kitchen. You bother me to death, and it is all I can do to cook enough for you!”

After the laugh had subsided and a steaming cup of coffee had been placed at the foreman’s elbow, Helen impatiently urged her brother to begin his story.

He lighted his cigar with exasperating deliberateness and then laughed softly: “Gosh! I’m getting to be a second fiddle around here. From morning to night all I hear is The Orphan. The first thing that hits me when I come home is, ‘Have you seen The Orphan?’ or, ‘Have you heard anything about him?’ The worst offenders are Miss Ritchie and Helen. They pester me nigh to death about him. But here goes:

“I reckon I’d better begin with Old John Taylor,” he slowly began. “I’ve been doing some quiet hunting lately, and in the course of it I ran across Old John down in Crockettsville. You remember him, don’t you, Tom? Yes, I reckoned you wouldn’t forget the man who got us out of that Apache scrape. Well, I had a good talk with him, and this is what I learned:“About twenty years ago a family named Gordon moved into northwestern Texas and put up a shack in one of the valleys. There was three of them, father, mother, and a bright little five-year-old boy, and they brought about two hundred head of cattle, a few horses and a whole raft of books. Gordon bought up quite a bit of land from a ranch nearby at almost a song, and he never thought of asking for a deed–who would, down there in those days? There wasn’t a rancher who owned more than a quarter section; you know the game, Tom–take up a hundred and sixty acres on a stream and then claim about a million, and fight like the very devil to hold it. We’ve all done it, I reckon, but there is plenty of land for everybody, and so there is no kick. Well, he was shore lucky, for his boundary on two sides was a fair-sized stream that never went dry, and you know how scarce that is–a whole lot better than a gold mine to a cattleman.

“They got along all right for a while, had a tenderfoot’s luck with their cattle, which soon began to be more than a few specks on the plain, and he was very well satisfied with everything, except that there wasn’t no school. Old man Gordon was daffy on education, which is a good thing to be daffy over, and he was some strong in that line himself, having been a school teacher back East. But he took his boy in hand and taught him all he knew, which must have been a whole lot, judging from things in general, and the kid was a smart, quick youngster. He was plumb crazy about two things–books and guns. He read and re-read all the books he could borrow, and got so he could handle a gun with any man on the range.

“About five years after he had located, the ranchman from whom he bought his range and water rights went and died. Some of the heirs, who were not what you would call square, began to get an itching for Gordon’s land, which was improved by the first irrigation ditch in Texas. There was a garden and a purty good orchard, which was just beginning to bear fruit. It was pure, cussed hoggishness, for there was more land than anybody had any use for, but they must grab everything in sight, no matter what the cost. Trouble was the rule after that, and the old man was up against it all the time. But he managed to hold his own, even though he did lose a lot of cattle.“His brand was a gridiron, which wasn’t much different from the gridiron circle brand of the big ranch. It ain’t much trouble to use a running iron through a wet blanket and change a brand like that when you know how, and the Gridiron Circle gang shore enough knew how. Their expertness with a running iron would have caused questions to be asked, and probably a lynching bee, in other parts of the country, but down there they were purty well alone. They let Gordon know that he had jumped the range, which was just what they had done, that he didn’t own it, and that the sooner he left the country the better it would be for his health. But he had peculiar ideas about justice, and he shore was plumb full of grit and obstinacy. He knew he was right, that he had paid for the land, and that he had improved it. And he had a lot of faith in the law, not realizing that he hadn’t anything to show the law. And he didn’t know that law and justice don’t always mean the same thing, not by a long shot.

“Well, one day he went out looking for a vein of coal, which he thought ought to be thereabouts, according to his books, and it ought to be close to the surface of a fissure. He reckoned that coal of any quality would be some better than chips and the little wood he owned, so he got busy. But he didn’t find coal, but something that made him hotfoot it to his books. When the report came back from the assay office he knew that he had hit on a vein of native silver, which was some better than coal.

“It didn’t take long for the news to get around, though God Himself only knows how it did, unless the storekeeper told that a package had gone through his hands addressed to the assay office, and things began to happen in chunks. He caught three Gridiron Circle punchers shooting his cows, and he was naturally mad about it and just shot up the bunch before they knew he was around. He killed one and spoiled the health of the other two for some time to come, which naturally spelled war with a big W. Then about this time his wife went and died, which was a purty big addition to his troubles. As he stood above her grave, all broken up, and about ready to give up the fight and go back East, he was shot at from cover. He didn’t much care if he was killed or not, until he remembered that he had a boy to take care of. Then he got fighting mad all at once, all of his troubles coming up before him in a bunch, and he got his gun and went hunting, which was only right and proper under the circumstances.”

The sheriff flecked the ashes of his cigar into a blue flower pot which was gay with white ribbons, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“I hate to think that it is possible to find a whole ranch of hellions from the owner down,” he continued, “but the nature of the owner picks a dirty foreman, and a dirty foreman needs dirty men, and there you are. That fits the case of the Gridiron Circle to a T. There was not one white man in the whole gang,” and he sat in silence for a space.

“Well, the boy, who was about fifteen years old by this time, took his gun and went out to find his daddy, and he succeeded. He cut him down and buried him and then went home. That night the shack burned to the ground, the orchard was ruined and the boy disappeared. Some people said that the kid took what he wanted and burned the house rather than to have it profaned as a range house by the curs who murdered his dad; and some said the other thing, but from what I know of the kid, I reckon he did it himself.

“Right there and then things began to happen that hurt the ease and safety of the Gridiron Circle. Cows were found dead all over the range–juglars cut in every case. Three of their punchers were found dead in one week–a .5O-caliber Sharps had done it. A regular reign of terror began and kept the outfit on the nervous jump all the time. They searched and trailed and searched and swore, and if one of them went off by himself he was usually ready to be buried. Ten experienced, old-time cowmen were made fools of by a fifteen-year-old kid, who was never seen by anybody that lived long enough to tell about it. When he got hungry, he just killed another cow and had a porterhouse steak cooked between two others over a good fire. He ate the middle steak, which had all the juices of the two burned ones, and threw the others away. Three meals a day for six months, and one cow to a meal, was the order of things on the ranges of the Gridiron Circle. He had plenty of ammunition, because every dead puncher was minus his belt when found and his guns were broken or gone; and early in the game the boy had made a master stroke: he raided the storehouse of the ranch one night and lugged away about five hundred rounds of ammunition in his saddle bags, with a couple of spare Colts and a repeating Winchester of the latest pattern, and he spoiled all the rest of the guns he could lay his hands on. Humorous kid, wasn’t he, shooting up the ranch with its own guns and cartridges?

“Finally, however, after the news had spread, which it did real quick, a regular lynching party was arranged, and the U-B, which lay about sixty miles to the east, sent over half a dozen men to take a hand. Then the Gridiron Circle had a rest, but while the gang was hunting for him and laying all sorts of elaborate traps to catch him, the boy was over on the U-B, showing it how foolish it had been to take up another man’s quarrel. By this time the whole country knew about it, and even some Eastern papers began to give it much attention. One of the punchers of the Gridiron Circle, when he found a friend dead and saw the tracks of the kid in the sand, swore and cried that it was ‘that d––n Orphan’ who had done it, and the name stuck. He had become an outlaw and was legitimate prey for any man who had the chance and grit to turn the trick. For ten years he has been wandering all over the range like a hunted gray wolf, fighting for his life at every turn against all kinds of odds, both human and natural. And I reckon that explains why he is accused of doing so much killing. He has been hunted and forced to shoot to save his own life, and a gray wolf is a fighter when cornered. I know that I wouldn’t give up the ghost if I could help it, and neither would anybody else.”

“Oh, it is a shame, an awful shame!” cried Helen, tears of sympathy in her eyes. “How could they do it? I don’t blame him, not a bit! He did right, terrible as it was! And only a boy when they began, too! Oh, it is awful, almost unbelievable!”

“Yes, it is, Sis,” replied Shields earnestly. “It ain’t his fault, not by any manner or means–he was warped.” And then he added slowly: “But Tom and I will straighten him out, and if some folks hereabouts don’t like it, they can shore lump it, or fight.”

“Tell me how you met him, Jim,” requested Blake in the interval of silence. “I’ve heard some of it, second-handed, or third-handed, but I’d like to have it straight.”

“Well,” the sheriff continued, “when he came to these parts I didn’t know anything about him except what I had heard, which was only bad. He had a nasty way of handling his gun, a hair-trigger and a nervous finger on his gun, and he had a distressing way of using one cow to a meal, so I got busy. I didn’t expect much trouble in getting him. I knew that he was only a youngster and I counted on my fifty years, and most of them of experience, getting him. Being young, I reckoned he would be foolhardy and hasty and uncertain in his wisdom; but, Lord! it was just like trying to catch a flea in the dark. He was here, there and everywhere. While I was down south hunting along his trail he would be up north objecting to the sheep industry in ingenious ways and varying his bill of fare with choice cuts of lamb and mutton. And by the time I got down south he would be–God only knows where, I didn’t. I could only guess, and I guessed wrong until the last one. And then it was the toss of a coin that decided it.

“After a while he began to get more daring, and when I say more daring I mean an open game with no limit. He began to prove my ideas about his age making him reckless, though he was cautious enough, to be sure. One day, not long ago, he had a run-in with two sheepmen out by the U bend of the creek, who had driven their herds up on Cross Bar-8 land and over the dead-line established by the ranch. They must have taken him for some Cross Bar-8 puncher and thought he was going to kick up a fuss about the trespass, or else they recognized him. Anyway, when I got on the scene they were ready to be planted, which I did for them. Then I went after him on a plain trail north–and almost too plain to suit me, because it looked like it had been made plain as an invitation. He had picked out the softest ground and left plenty of good tracks. But I was some mad and didn’t care much what I run into. I thought he had driven the whole blasted herd of baa-baas over that high bank and into the creek, for the number of dead sheep was shore scandalous.

“I followed that cussed trail north, east, south, west and then all over the whole United States, it seemed to me. And it was always growing older, because I had to waste time in dodging chaparrals and things like that that might hold him and his gun. I went picking my way on a roundabout course past thickets of honey mesquite and cactus gardens, over alkali flats and everything else, and the more I fooled about the madder I got. I ain’t no real, genuine fool, and I’ve had some experience at trailing, but I had to confess that I was just a plain, ordinary monkey-on-a-stick when stacked up against a kid that was only about half my age, because suddenly the plainness of the trail disappeared and I was left out on the middle of a burning desert to guess the answer as best I could. I knew what he had done, all right, but that didn’t help me a whole lot. Did you ever trail anybody that used padded-leather footpads on his cayuse’s feet, and that went on a walk, picking out the hardest ground? No? Well, I have, and it’s no cinch.

“I got tired of chasing myself back to the same place four times out of five, and I reckons that it wouldn’t be very long before he had made his circle and got me in front of him. It ain’t no church fair to be hunting a mad devil like him under the best conditions, and it’s a whole lot less like one when he gets behind you doing the same thing. I didn’t know whether he had swung to the north or south, so I tossed up a coin and cried heads for north–and it was tails. I cut loose at a lope and had been riding for some time when I saw something through an opening in the chaparrals to the east of me, and it moved. I swung my glasses on it, and I’m blamed if it wasn’t an Apache war party bound north. They were about a mile to the east of me, and if they kept on going straight ahead they would run across my trail in about three hours, for it gradually worked their way. I ducked right then and there and struck west for a time, turning south again until I hit the Cimarron Trail, which I followed east. Well, as I went around one side of the chaparral six mad Apaches went around the other, and they hit my trail too soon to suit me. I heard a hair-raising yell and lit out in the direction of Chattanooga as hard as I could go, with a hungry chorus a mile behind me.

“I had just passed that freak bowlder on the Apache Trail when the man I was looking for turned up, and with the drop, of course. We reckoned that two was needed to stop the war-paints, which we did, him running the game and doing most of the playing. I felt like I was his honored guest whom he had invited to share in the festivities. He had plenty of chances to nail me if he wanted to, and he had chipped in on a game that he didn’t have to take cards in; and to help me out. He could have let them get me and they would have thought that I had done all the injury and that there wasn’t another man on the desert. But he didn’t, and I began to think he wasn’t as bad as he was painted.”

Then he told of the trouble between The Orphan and Jimmy of the Cross Bar-8, and of the rage which blossomed out on the ranch.

“That shore settled it for the Cross Bar-8. They wanted lots of gore, and they got it, all right, when he played five of their punchers against the very war party he had sent north to meet me, while I was chasing him. That war party must have found something to their liking, wandering about the country all that time.”

Blake interrupted him: “War party that he sent north to meet you?” he asked in surprise. “How could he do that?”

“That’s just what I said,” replied Shields, and then he explained about the arrow. “Any man who could stack a deck like that and use one danger to wipe out another ain’t going to get caught by an outfit of lunkheads–by George! if he didn’t work nearly the same trick on the Cross Bar-8 crowd! Oh, it’s great, simply great!”

The foreman slapped his knee enthusiastically: “Fine! Fine!” he exulted. “That fellow has got brains, plenty of them! And he’ll make use of them to the good of this country, too, before we get through with him.”

Shields continued: “After he sic’d the chumps of the Cross Bar-8 on the Apaches he shore raised the devil on the ranch and I was asked to go out and run things, which I did, or rather thought I would do. Charley and I and the two Larkin boys laid out on the plain all night, covered up with sand, waiting for him to show up between us and the windows–and the first thing I saw in the morning was Helen’s flower pot here–it used to be Margaret’s–setting up on top of a pile of sand under my very nose where he had stuck it while I waited for him–and blamed if he hadn’t signed his name in the sand at its base!” He suddenly turned to his sister: “Tell Tom about him calling on you while I was waiting for him out on the ranch, Helen.”

Helen did so and the way she told it caused the women to look keenly at her.Blake laughed heartily: “Now, don’t that beat all!” he cried.

“It don’t beat this,” responded the sheriff, turning again to Helen. “Tell him about the stage coach, Sis.”

“Well, I don’t know much about the first part of it,” she replied. “All I remember is a terrible ride –oh, it was awful!” she cried, shuddering as she remembered the tortures of the Concord. “But when we stopped and after I managed to get out of the coach I saw the driver carrying a man on his shoulders and coming toward us. He laid his burden down and revived him–and he was a young man, and covered with blood.” Then she paused: “He was real nice and polite and didn’t seem to think that he had done anything out of the ordinary. Then we went on and he left us.”

The sheriff laughed and leveled an accusing finger at her:

“You have left out a whole lot, Sis,” he said affectionately. “Helen acted just like the thoroughbred she is, Tom,” he continued. “I guess Bill told you all about it, for he’s aired it purty well. Why, she even lost her gold pin a-helping him!” and he grinned broadly.Helen shot him a warning glance, but it was too late; Mary suddenly sat bolt upright, her expression one of shocked surprise.

“Helen Shields!” she cried, “and I never thought of it before! How could you do it! Why, that horrid man will show your pin and boast about it to everybody! The idea! I’m surprised at you!”

“Tut, tut,” exclaimed Shields. “I reckon that pin is all right. He might find it handy some day to return it, it’ll be a good excuse when he gets on his feet. And I’d hate to be the man to laugh at it, or try to take it from him. Now, come, Mary, think of it right; it was the first kind act he had known since he lost his daddy. And that pin is one of my main stand-bys in this game. I believe that he’ll be square as long as he has it.”

“Well, I don’t care, James,” warmly responded Mary. “It was not a modest thing to do when she had never seen him before, and he her brother’s enemy and an outlaw!”

“How could I have fastened the bandage, sister dear?” asked Helen, her complexion slightly more colored than its natural shade. “It was so very little to do after all he had done for us!”“Well, Tom and I have some business to talk over, so we’ll leave you to fight the matter out among yourselves,” the sheriff said, arising. “Come to my room, Tom, I want to talk over that ranch scheme with you. You bring the coffee pot and the cigars and I’ll juggle the pie and gingerbread,” he laughed as he led the way.

“Oh, Tom!” hastily called Mrs. Shields after good-nights had been said, and just before the door closed; “I promised you a dinner for your boys when Helen and Mary came, and if you think you can spare them this coming Sunday I will have it then.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Shields,” earnestly responded Blake, turning on the threshold. “It is awful good of you to put yourself out that way, and you can bet that the boys will be your devoted slaves ever after. If you must go to that trouble, why, Sunday or any day you may name will do for us. Gosh, but won’t they be tickled!” he exulted as he pictured them feasting on goodies. “It’ll be better than a circus, it shore will!”

“Why, it’s no trouble at all, Tom,” she replied, smiling at being able to bring cheer to a crowd of men, lonely, as she thought. “And you will arrange to have The Orphan with them, won’t you?”

“I most certainly will,” he heartily replied. “It’ll do wonders for him.” He glanced quickly at Helen, but she was busily engaged in threading a needle under the lamp shade.

“Good night, all,” he said as he closed the door.