At Sleepy Cat 428 ILLUSTRATIONS De Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on the trail. Frontispiece FACING PAGE Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky's left shoulder. 135 "Stand away from that girl!" repeated de Spain harshly, backing the words with a step forward. 200 "I've promised you I would. I will promise every time you ask me." 417 NAN OF MUSIC MOUNTAIN CHAPTER I FRONTIER DAY Lefever, if there was a table in the room, could never be got to sit on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of the table. One of his small feet--his feet were encased in tight, high-heeled, ill-fitting horsemen's boots--usually rested on the floor, the other swung at the end of his stubby leg slowly in the air. This idiosyncrasy his companion, de Spain, had learned to tolerate. But Lefever's subdued whistle, which seemed meditative, always irritated de Spain more or less, despite his endeavor not to be irritated. It was like the low singing of a tea-kettle, which, however unobtrusive, indicates steam within. In fact, John Lefever, who was built not unlike a kettle, and whose high, shiny forehead was topped by a pompadour shock of very yellow hair, never whistled except when there was some pressure on his sensibilities. The warm sun streaming through the windows of the private office of the division superintendent at Sleepy Cat, a railroad town lying almost within gunshot of the great continental divide, would easily have accounted for the cordial perspiration that illumined Lefever's forehead. Not that a perspiration is easily achieved in the high country; it isn't. None, indeed, but a physical giant, which Lefever was, could maintain so constant and visible a nervous moisture in the face of the extraordinary atmospheric evaporation of the mountain plateaus. And to de Spain, on this occasion, even the glistening beads on his companion's forehead were annoying, for he knew that he himself was properly responsible for their presence.