For the first time Buck Johnson lost his head and his dignity. He ordered the horses. "I'm going to follow that -- -- into Sonora," he shouted to Jed Parker. "This thing's got to stop!" "You can't make her, Buck," objected the foreman. "You'll get held up by the desert, and, if that don't finish you, they'll tangle you up in all those little mountains down there, and ambush you, and massacre you. You know it damn well." "I don't give a --" exploded Senor Johnson, "if they do. No man can slap my face and not get a run for it." Jed Parker communed with himself. "Senor," said he, at last, "it's no good; you can't do it. You got to have a guide. You wait three days and I'll get you one." "You can't do it," insisted the Senor. "I tried every man in the district." "Will you wait three days?" repeated the foreman. Johnson pulled loose his latigo. His first anger had cooled. "All right," he agreed, "and you can say for me that I'll pay five thousand dollars in gold and give all the men and horses he needs to the man who has the nerve to get back that bunch of cattle, and bring in the man who rustled them. I'll sure make this a test case." So Jed Parker set out to discover his man with nerve. CHAPTER TWO THE MAN WITH NERVE At about ten o'clock of the Fourth of July a rider topped the summit of the last swell of land, and loped his animal down into the single street of Pereza. The buildings on either side were flat-roofed and coated with plaster. Over the sidewalks extended wooden awnings, beneath which opened very wide doors into the coolness of saloons. Each of these places ran a bar, and also games of roulette, faro, craps, and stud poker. Even this early in the morning every game was patronised. The day was already hot with the dry, breathless, but exhilarating, heat of the desert. A throng of men idling at the edge of the sidewalks, jostling up and down their centre, or eddying into the places of amusement, acknowledged the power of summer by loosening their collars, carrying their coats on their arms. They were as yet busily engaged in recognising acquaintances. Later they would drink freely and gamble, and perhaps fight. Toward all but those whom they recognised they preserved an attitude of potential suspicion, for here were gathered the "bad men" of the border countries. A certain jealousy or touchy egotism lest the other man be considered quicker on the trigger, bolder, more aggressive than himself, kept each strung to tension. An occasional shot attracted little notice. Men in the cow-countries shoot as casually as we strike matches, and some subtle instinct told them that the reports were harmless.