So, in these few words, the compact of friendship and alliance was sealed between them. Each of them was strangely taken with the other, but it is not the way of the Anglo-Saxon fighting man to voice his sentiment. Though each of them admired the stark courage and the flawless fortitude he knew to dwell in the other, impassivity sat on their faces like an ice-mask. For this is the hall-mark of the Southwest, that a man must love and hate with the same unchanging face of iron, save only when a woman is in consideration. They were to camp that night by Cottonwood Spring, and darkness caught them still some miles from their camp. They were on no road, but were travelling across country through washes and over countless hills. The ranger led the way, true as an arrow, even after velvet night had enveloped them. “It must be right over this mesa among the cottonwoods you see rising from that arroyo,” he announced at last. He had scarcely spoken before they struck a trail that led them direct to the spring. But as they were descending this in a circle Fraser's horse shied. “Hyer you, Pinto! What's the matter with--” The ranger cut his sentence in two and slid from the saddle. When his companion reached him and drew rein the ranger was bending over a dark mass stretched across the trail. He looked up quietly. “Man's body,” he said briefly. “Dead?” “Yes.” Neill dismounted and came forward. The moon-crescent was up by now and had lit the country with a chill radiance. The figure was dressed in the coarse striped suit of a convict. “I don't savvy this play,” Fraser confessed softly to himself. “Do you know him?” “Suppose you look at him and see if you know him.” Neill looked into the white face and shook his head. “No, I don't know him, but I suppose it is Struve.” From his pocket the ranger produced a photograph and handed it to him. “Hyer, I'll strike a match and you'll see better.” The match flared up in the slight breeze and presently went out, but not before Neill had seen that it was the face of the man who lay before them. “Did you see the name under the picture, seh?” “No.” Another match flared and the man from the Panhandle read a name, but it was not the one he had expected to see. The words printed there were “James Kinney.” “I don't understand. This ain't Kinney. He is a heavy-set man with a villainous face. There's some mistake.” “There ce'tainly is, but not at this end of the line. This is Kinney all right. I've seen him at Yuma. He was heading for the Mal Pais country and he died on the way. See hyer. Look at these soaked bandages. He's been wounded--shot mebbe--and the wound broke out on him again so that he bled to death.” “It's all a daze to me. Who is the other man if he isn't Kinney?”