The morning was hardly two hours old, and the crisp air was stinging sweet with the tang of pine and fir, as Rathburn rode jauntily down the trail on the eastern slope of the divide and drew rein on the crest of a high ridge. As he looked below he whistled softly.

“Juniper, hoss, there’s folks down there plying a nefarious trade, a plumb dangerous trade,” he mused, digging for the tobacco and brown papers in the pocket of his shirt. “I reckon they’re carrying on in direct defiance of the law, hoss.”

The dun-colored mustang tossed his head impatiently, but his master ignored the animal’s fretful desire to be off and dallied with tobacco and paper, fashioning a cigarette, lighting it, breathing thin smoke as his gray eyes squinted appraisingly at the scene below.

Winding down into the foothills, in striking contrast to the dim trails higher up, was a well-used road. It evidently led from the saffron-tinted dump and gray buildings of a mine which showed on the side of a big, bald mountain to southward. At a point almost directly below the ridge where the man and horse stood, it crossed a small hogback and descended a steep slope between lines of jack pines, disappearing in the timber farther down.

The gaze of the man on the ridge was concentrated on the bit of road which showed on the hogback and the slope beyond. A truck was laboriously climbing the ascent. But the watcher evidently was not so 99 much concerned with the approach of the truck as with certain movements which were in progress on the hogback at the head of the grade.

Three persons had dismounted from their horses behind the screen of timber. One, a tall man, had donned a long, black slicker and was tying a handkerchief about his face.

“Juniper, hoss,” said Rathburn, “what does that gent want that slicker on for? It ain’t going to rain. An’ how does he reckon to see onless maybe he’s got holes cut in that there hanky?”

A second man had made his way down the slope a short distance. He took advantage of the timber which screened him from sight of the driver of the oncoming truck.

“I ’spect that’s in case the truck driver should suddenly take it into his head to slide down backwards,” said the observer, speaking his thoughts aloud in a musical, bass voice. “One in front, one behind; now how about the kid?”

As if in answer to his question the third member of the party, evidently a boy, led the horses a short way up the hogback where a good view could be obtained of the road in both directions.

The watcher grunted in approval. “One in front to do the stick-up, one behind to stop a retreat and get whatever it is they’re after, and one on the lookout to see there ain’t any unexpected guests. Couldn’t have planned the lay any better ourselves, hoss.”

He was too far distant to interfere, even if he had had any desire to do so, which was doubtful from his interested and tolerant manner. Anyway it could have done no good to shout a warning, for the driver of the truck could not have heard anything above the roar of his machine, and the trio had gone about the preparations with dispatch. Already the 100 truck was climbing the last steep pitch to the top of the hogback.

The tall man in the black slicker and mask now quickly stepped forth from the edge of the timber. The watcher above saw his right hand and arm whip out level with his shoulders. There was a glint of morning sunlight and dull metal. The truck came to a jarring stop as the driver jammed on the brakes. Then the driver’s hands went into the air.

Stepping from the timber at the roadside behind the truck, the second man leaped upon the machine. The watcher grunted again as he saw that this man was also masked. The driver was disarmed and searched, then forced to clamber down from the truck into the road, where the man in the slicker kept him covered while the other quickly searched about the seat and cab of the truck. Then the second man released the brakes and dropped nimbly from the machine which plunged backward down the steep slope, crashed into the tree growth on one side of the road, and overturned.

The boy mounted and led the other two horses down the hogback in the scanty timber to the head of the grade. There the man in the slicker and his companion joined him, mounted, and the trio rode quickly along the hogback in a southerly direction and disappeared on a blind rail into the forest.

Rathburn rolled himself another cigarette with a grin as he watched the truck driver stand for some moments uncertainly in the road and then start rapidly down the slope toward his disabled machine.

“C’mon, hoss,” said the erstwhile spectator, turning his dun-colored mount again into the trail. “So far’s I can make out, this is the only way down out of these tall mountains to the east, so we might as well get going. We ain’t got no business south or 101 west. We’ll be just in time to get blamed for what’s happened down there.”

Whatever there might be in the prospect, the rider did not permit it to have any influence on his cheerful mood. He drew in long breaths of the stimulating air and sniffed joyously at the fragrance of the murmuring forests which clothed the higher hills. Far below the timber would dwindle, the ridges would flatten into round knolls and lose their verdure; then would come the dust and lava slopes, and beyond––the desert.

A wistful light came into the horseman’s eyes. “Home, Juniper, hoss,” he said softly. “We’ve just got to have cactus an’ water holes an’ danged blistering heat in ours; and I don’t care so much as the faded label off an empty tomato can if it’s in California, or Arizona, or Nevada, so long as it’s desert!”

The trail he was following wound tortuously around ridges, through the timber, into ravines and caÑons; now treading close upon the bank of a swift-running mountain stream in a narrow valley, and again seeking the higher places where there were rocks and fallen trees and other obstructions. An observer would have gleaned at once that the rider was not familiar with the trail or territory he traversed.

So it was past noon when he finally reached the hogback where the outstanding event of the morning had taken place. The rider looked back up toward the divide and grinned as he rested his horse just above the scene of the holdup.

“Don’t reckon they’d have heard me if I’d hollered, or seen me if I’d waved,” he mused. “They picked out a good spot for the dirty work,” he concluded, looking about.

Shortly afterward, as he was staring down at the tracks in the road, he smothered an exclamation. Then he dismounted, picked up two small objects 102 from the dust at the point where the trio had started on their get-away, examined them with a puzzled expression, and thrust them into a pocket.

“Queer,” he ruminated; “mighty queer. If those silly things had been laying there in the road before the rumpus they’d have been tracked into the dust. But they was on top of a perfectly good hoss track. An’ it don’t look like there’s been anybody along here since.”

He continued down the road, descending the steep slope, and came to the overturned truck. At a glance he saw it had been used for hauling supplies, doubtless to the mine he had glimpsed on the slope of the high mountain to southward. Several kegs of nails, some hardware, and some sacks of cement were scattered in the road. He remembered that the man who had climbed on the truck had only searched the driver and the cab. Anything he might have taken must have been in a small package or it would have been discernible even at that long distance.

“That outfit wasn’t after no mine supplies,” Rathburn reflected as he finished his brief inspection and again mounted. “An’ they wasn’t taking any chances on smoking anybody up or being followed too quick. Pretty work all around. An’ here’s the committee, hoss!”

A touring car came careening around a turn in the road and raced toward him. He turned his horse to the side of the road and spoke to him as the animal, plainly unfamiliar with motor cars, snorted and shied.

The car drew to a stop with a screeching of brakes. The horseman raised his hands as he saw two rifles leveled at him from the rear seat. There were five men in the car besides the driver. One of the men, who had been sitting in the front with the driver, leaped from the machine and strode toward the rider.

“Calm that horse down an’ climb out of that saddle,” 103 he commanded. “If you make any motions toward that gun you’re packing, it’ll make things simpler, in a way.”

The rider slipped from the saddle with a broad grin. “Right up to form,” he sang cheerfully, although he kept his hands elevated while the other took his gun. “My hoss’ll be calm enough now that that danged thing is shut off. You must be a sheriff to be flirting with the speed limit that way an’ forgetting you’ve got a horn.”

“Where are you from an’ where was you going?” demanded the other.

“I’m from up in the mountains, but I’d never got where I was going if I hadn’t seen you first the way you busted around that curve,” was the cool reply.

“Stranger,” was the next comment in a tone of satisfaction. “Look here, friend, I’m Mannix, deputy from High Point. You’ll sail smoother if you answer my questions straight.”

The deputy motioned to two men in the car. “Search him,” he ordered. Then he stood back, six-shooter in hand.

The stranger built a cigarette while the men were going through him. He lighted the weed and smiled quizzically while they examined the meager contents of the slicker pack on the rear of his saddle.

“See you’re packing a black slicker,” said Mannix, pointing to the rough raincoat in which the pack was wrapped.

“That’s in case of rain,” was the ready answer.

“What’s your name?” asked the deputy with a frown.

“Rathburn.”

“Where was you heading?”

“I was aiming in a general eastern direction,” Rathburn replied in a drawl. “Is there any law 104 against ridin’ hosses in this here part of the country?”

“Not at all,” replied the deputy heartily. “An’ there’s no law against drivin’ automobiles or trucks. But there’s a law against stoppin’ ’em with a gun.”

“So,” said Rathburn. “You stopped because you saw my gun? An’ I’m to blame, for it? If I’d known you were touchy about guns down here I’d have worn mine in my shirt.”

One of the other men from the car had joined the deputy. He was looking at Rathburn keenly. Mannix turned to him.

“Look like him?” he asked.

The man nodded. “About the same size and height.”

“This man was drivin’ a truck up here that was stopped this morning,” said the deputy sternly to Rathburn. “He says you size up to one of the men that turned the trick––one of them that wore a black slicker like yours.”

Rathburn nodded pleasantly. “Exactly,” he said with a smile. “I happen to be in the country an’ I’ve got a black slicker. There you are; everything all proved up. An’ yet there was somebody once told me it took brains to be a sheriff!”

There was a glint in Rathburn’s eyes as he uttered the last sentence.

Instead of flying into a rage, Mannix laughed.

“Don’t kid yourself,” he said grimly. “You’re not the man who held up this truck driver.”

He gave Rathburn back his gun, to the latter’s surprise. Then he waved toward Rathburn’s horse.

“Go ahead,” he said, smiling. “General eastern direction, wasn’t it? This road will take you clean to the desert, if you want to go that far. So long.”

He led the others back to the car which started 105 off with a roar. It passed the truck and continued on up the road.

Rathburn sat his horse and watched the automobile out of sight. His expression was one of deep perplexity.

“By all the rules of the game that fellow should have held me as a suspect,” he soliloquized. “Now he don’t know me from a hoss thief––or does he?”

He frowned and rode thoughtfully down the road in the direction from which the automobile had come.