The Westerner laughed, softly and derisively. “Fellow, you talk plumb foolish. This ain’t New York. It’s Colorado. That popgun of yours ain’t worth a billy be damn. Why, I could pick you off right now an’ never take a chance. Or my man could do it from the ledge up there. But say, for the sake of argument, we let you go. Say you ain’t found by any posse or cowpuncher. What’s the end of the trail you’re following? It don’t lead anywhere but round an’ round in a circle. You got nothing to eat and no place to go for food. Maybe you can stick it out a week. Then you’re done.” “I might get to a town and jump a freight.” “Not a chance. In a country like this news spreads in all directions. There ain’t a man within fifty miles but has his eyes peeled for you. No, sir, you’re in Dutch.” Cig felt his helplessness, in spite of the bluff he was putting up. This land of wide spaces, of a thousand hills and valleys, shook his confidence. In New York he would have known what to do, but here he was a child. The shrunken little man finished in brown leather was giving him straight facts and he knew it. “Nothing to that. Say, old Jonah, do I look like I had a yellow streak?” the New York tough demanded. “All right. Suits me if it does you.” Jake rose and waved a hand airily into space. “Drift right along, my friend. I’ll not keep you--not for a minute. But when you come to the end of yore trail, you’ll remember that you had one good bet you wouldn’t back because you’re one of these wise guys that know it all.” The fugitive listened with sullen resentment. He did not want to trust this old man. His instinct told him that, if he did so, Prowers would be for the time at least his master. But he was driven by circumstances which gave him no choice. “I ain’t said I wouldn’t listen to you, have I?” he growled. Prowers sat down again on the rock. “If I help you, we’ve got to come to an understanding right now. It’ll be a business deal. I hide you an’ feed you. Some day I’ll need you. When I do, you’ll take orders like a lamb. If that ain’t agreeable to you, why, all you got to do is start on yore travels now.” “Need me what for?” demanded Cig. Into the mild, skim-milk eyes of the cattleman there flashed for an instant an expression of cold cruelty scarcely human. As Prowers’s thin lip smile met Cig, the tramp still felt the shock of that ruthless ferocity. “How the jumpin’ Jehosaphat do I know?” the old man said suavely, almost in a murmur. “For murder, massacre, or mayhem. Not yore business, my friend. All you’ve got to do is jump when I say so. Understand?” Cig felt a cold sinking of the heart. He belonged to the dregs of humanity, but he knew that this mild old man was his master in villainy. It was as though he were smoking a cigarette with a keg of gunpowder scattered all around him. Jake Prowers was a center of danger almost Olympic in possibilities. “I dunno about that,” the crook snarled.