“Of course. I remember, now. You’re the good bad man of the West,” Mackenzie answered amiably. “Well, I drink to you. Here’s good hunting, lieutenant.” “Thank you.” “I suppose you’ll get right at this thing?” “I’ve got to take that kid in the next room out to my ranch first. I won’t stand for that knife thrower making a slave of him.” “What’s the matter with me taking the boy out to the Rocking Chair with me? My wife and I will see he’s looked after till you return.” “That would be the best plan, if it won’t trouble you too much. We’d better keep his whereabouts quiet till this fellow Hardman is out of the country.” “Yes, though I hardly think he’d be fool enough to show up at the Rocking Chair. If my vaqueros met up with him prowling around they might show him as warm a welcome as you did half an hour ago.” “A chapping would sure do him a heap of good,” grinned Bucky, and so dismissed the Champion of the World from his mind. CHAPTER V. BUCKY ENTERTAINS Bucky began at once to tap the underground wires his official position made accessible to him. These ran over Southern Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua. All the places to which criminals or frontiersmen with money were wont to resort were reported upon. For the ranger’s experience had taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb disport themselves together. The photograph from Webb Mackenzie of the cook Anderson reached him at Tucson the third day after his interview with that gentleman, at the same time that Collins dropped in on him to inquire what progress he was making. O’Connor told him of the Aravaipa episode, and tossed across the table to him the photograph he had just received. “If we could discover the gent that sat for this photo it might help us. You don’t by any chance know him, do you, Val?” The sheriff shook his head. “Not in my rogues’ gallery, Bucky.” The ranger again examined the faded picture. A resemblance in it to somebody he had met recently haunted vaguely his memory. As he looked the indefinite suggestion grew sharp and clear. It was a photograph of the showman who had called himself Hardman. All the trimmings were lacking, to be sure—the fierce mustache, the long hair, the buckskin trappings, none of them were here. But beyond a doubt it was the same shifty-eyed villain. Nor did it shake Bucky’s confidence that Mackenzie had seen him and failed to recognize the man as his old cook. The fellow was thoroughly disguised, but the camera had happened to catch that curious furtive glance of his. But for that O’Connor would never have known the two to be the same. Bucky was at the telephone half an hour. In the middle of the next afternoon his reward came in the form of a Western Union billet. It read: “Eastern man says you don’t want what is salable here.”