II. THE PLOT

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      “All I say, ‘Baldy’ McNair,” said Marty, “Is that the old man is sure stepping out long and hard to make things seem as mysterious as he can. Which they ain’t no real need to come clean out here. This makes fifty miles I’ve rode, and you’ve come nigher onto eighty. What sense is in that, Baldy?”

      The match burned out. Baldy spoke in the dark.

      “Maybe the work he’s got planned out lies ahead—lies north.”

      “Maybe. But it sure grinds in on me the way he works. Never no reasons. Just orders. ‘Meet here today after sunset.’ That’s all he says. I up and asks him: “Why after sunset, Jack? Afraid they’ll be somebody to see us out there —a coyote or something, maybe?’ But he wouldn’t answer me nothing. ‘You do what I say, ‘ says he, ‘and figure out your reasons for yourself.’ That’s the way he talks. I say: Is it fit and proper to talk to a gent like he was a slave?”

      “Let’s start a fire,” said his companion. “Talk a pile better when we get some light on the subject.”

      In a minute or two they had collected a great pile of dry stuff; a little later the flames were leaping up in great bodies toward the roof and puffing out into the darkness.

      The firelight showed Ronicky two men who had thrown their dripping slickers back from their shoulders. Marty was a scowling fellow with a black leather patch over his right eye. His companion justified his nickname by taking off his hat and revealing a head entirely and astonishingly free from hair. From the nape of his neck to his eyebrows there was not a vestige or a haze of hair. It gave him a look strangely infantile, which was increased by cheeks as rosy as autumn apples.

      “Now,” went on Baldy McNair, “let me put something in your ear, Lang. A lot of the boys have heard you knock the chief. Which maybe the chief himself has heard.”

      “He’s give no sign,” muttered Marty.

      “Son,” said Baldy, who was obviously much younger than the man of the patched eye, but who apparently gained dignity by the baldness of his head, “when Jack Moon gives a sign, it’s the first sign and the last sign all rolled into one. First you’ll hear of it will be Moon asking you to step out and talk to him. And Moon’ll come back from that talk alone and say that you started out sudden on a long trip. You wouldn’t be the first. There was my old pal ‘Lefty’ and ‘Gunner’ Matthews. There was more, besides. Always that way! If they start getting sore at the way he runs things, he just takes them out walking, and they all go on that long journey that you’ll be taking one of these days if you don’t mind your talk, son! I’m telling you because I’m your friend, and you can lay to that!”

      “What I don’t see,” answered Marty Lang, “is why the chief wants to hang on to a gent forever. You make it out? Once in the band, always in the band. That ain’t no sense. A gent don’t want to stick to this game forever.”

      “Oh, ho!” chuckled Baldy. “Is that the way of it? Well, son, don’t ever let the chief hear you say that! Sure we get tired of having to ride wherever he tells us to ride, and we want to settle down now and then—or we think that we want to—and lead a quiet life and have a wife and a house and a family and all that. For that matter, there’s nothing to keep us from it. The chief don’t object.”

      “Don’t object? How can a gent settle down at anything when he’s apt to get a call from the chief any minute?”

      “Wrong again. Not more’n once every six months. That’s about the average. And then it’s always something worth while. How long you been with us?”

      “Four years.”

      “Ever gone hungry for four years?”

      “No.”

      “When you was sick, two years back, were you took care of?”

      “Sure.”

      “What did you have when the chief picked you up?”

      “Nothing.”

      “All right. You were down to zero. He picked you up. He gave you a chance to live on the fat. All you got to do in return is to ride with him once in six months and to promise never to leave the band. Why? Because he knows that if ever a gent shakes clear of it he’ll be tempted to start talking some day, and a mighty little talk would settle the hash of all of us. That’s the why of it! He’s a genius, Moon is. How long d’you think most long riders last?”

      “I dunno. They get bumped off before long.”

      “Sure they do. Know why? Because the leaders have always kept their men together in a bunch most of the time. Moon seen that. What does he do? He gets a picked lot together. He gets a big money scheme all planned. Then he calls in his men. Some of ‘em come fifty miles. Some of ‘em live a hundred miles away. They all come. They make a dash and do the work. Soon’s it’s done they scatter again. And the posse that takes the tracks has five or six different trails to follow instead of one. Result? They get all tangled up. Jack Moon has been working twenty years and never been caught once! And he’ll work twenty years more, son, and never be caught. Because why? Because he’s a genius! Steady up! Who’s that?”

      Straight through the entrance to the mow came two riders.

      “Silas Treat and the chief himself,” said Lang.

      What Ronicky Doone saw were two formidable fellows. One, mounted on a great roan horse, was a broad-shouldered man with a square-cut black beard which rolled halfway down his chest. The other was well-nigh as large, and when he came into the inner circle of the firelight Ronicky saw one of those handsome, passionless faces which never reveal the passage of years. Jack Moon, according to Baldy, had been a leader in crime for twenty years, and according to that estimate he must be at least forty years old; but a casual glance would have placed him closer to thirty-three or four. He and his companion now reined their horses beside the fire and raised their hands in silent greeting. The black-bearded man did not speak. The leader, however, said:

      “Who started that fire?”

      “My idea,” confessed Baldy. “Matter of fact, we both had the same idea. Didn’t seem anything wrong about starting a fire and getting warm and dry.”

      “I seen that fire a mile away,” said the leader gloomily. “It was a fool idea.”

      “But they’s nobody else within miles.”

      “Ain’t there? Have you searched all through the barn?”

      “Why—no.”

      “How d’you know somebody didn’t come here?”

      “But who’d be apt to come this way?”

      “Look at those cinders over there. That shows that somebody lately has been here and started a fire. If they come here once, why not again?”

      “I