"You're awake, eh?" Trevison grinned as he wheeled and looked in at his prisoner. "This," he waved a hand toward the ledge and its surroundings, "is an Indian pueblo, long deserted. It makes an admirable prison, Judge. It is also a sort of a fort. There is only one vulnerable point--the slope we came up last night. I'll take you on a tour of examination, if you like. And then you must return here, to stay until you disclose the whereabouts of the original land record." The Judge paled, partly from anger, partly from a fear that gripped him. "This is an outrage, Trevison! This is America!" "Is it?" The young man smiled imperturbably. "There have been times during the past few weeks when I doubted it, very much. It _is_ America, though, but it is a part of America that the average American sees little of--that he knows little of. As little, let us say, as he knows of the weird application of its laws--as applied by _some_ judges." He smiled as Lindman winced. "I have given up hoping to secure justice in the regular way, and so we are in the midst of a reversion to first principles--which may lead us to our goal." "What do you mean?" "That I _must_ have the original record, Judge, I mean to have it." "I deny--" "Yes--of course. Deny, if you like. We shan't argue. Do you want to explore the place? There will be plenty of time for talk." He stepped aside as the Judge came out, and grinned broadly as he caught the Judge's shrinking look at a rifle he took up as he turned. It had been propped against the wall at his side. He swung it to the hollow of his left elbow. "Your knowledge of firearms convinces you that you can't run as fast as a rifle bullet, doesn't it, Judge?" The Judge's face indicated that he understood. "Ever make the acquaintance of an Indian pueblo, Judge?" "No. I came West only a year ago, and I have kept pretty close to my work." "Well, you'll feel pretty intimate with this one by the time you leave it--if you're obstinate," laughed Trevison. He stood still and watched the Judge. The latter was staring hard at his surroundings, perhaps with something of the awed reverence that overtakes the tourist when for the first time he views an ancient ruin. The pueblo seemed to be nothing more than a jumble of adobe boxes piled in an indiscriminate heap on a gigantic stone level surmounting the crest of a hill. A sheer rock wall, perhaps a hundred feet in height, descended to the surrounding slopes; the latter sweeping down to join the plains. A dust, light, dry, and feathery lay thickly on the adobe boxes on the surrounding ledge on the slopes, like a gray ash sprinkled from a giant sifter. Cactus and yucca dotted the slopes, thorny, lancelike, repellent; lava, dull, hinting of volcanic fire, filled crevices and depressions, and huge blocks of stone, detached in the progress of disintegration, were scattered about. "It has taken ages for this to happen!" the Judge heard himself murmuring.