"You've hired me." "And if we're attacked?" "I pack a six-shooter." The troubled young man looked into the hard, reckless face of this stranger who had gone out of his way to warn him of the impending attack. No certificate was necessary to tell him that this man would fight. "I don't know your name," said Ridley, still hesitating. "Any more than I know yours," returned the other. "Call me Bill Moore, an' I'll be on hand to eat my share of the chuck." "We'd better leave at once, don't you think?" "You're the doc. Meet you here in an hour ready for the trail." The man who called himself Bill Moore went his uncertain way down the street. To the casual eye he was far gone in drink. Young Ridley went straight to the corral where he had put up his horse. He watered and fed the animal, and after an endless half-hour saddled the bronco. Moore joined him in front of the officers' quarters, and together they rode out of the post. As the Texan had said, the road to Tascosa ran straight as a gun-barrel. At first they rode in silence, swiftly, leaving behind them mile after mile of dusty trail. It was a brown, level country thickly dotted with yucca. Once Moore shot a wild turkey running in the grass. Prairie-chicken were abundant, and a flight of pigeons numbering thousands passed at one time over their heads and obscured the sky. "Goin' down to the _encinal_ to roost," explained Moore. "A man could come pretty near living off his rifle in this country," Arthur remarked. "Outside o' flour an' salt, I've done it many a time. I rode through the Pecos Valley to Fort Sumner an' on to Denver oncet an' lived off the land. Time an' again I've done it from the Brazos to the Canadian. If he gets tired of game, a man can jerk the hind quarters of a beef. Gimme a young turkey fed on sweet mast an' cooked on a hackberry bush fire, an' I'll never ask for better chuck," the Texan promised. In spite of Ridley's manifest desire to push on far into the night, Moore made an early camp. "No use gauntin' our broncs when we've got all the time there is before us. A horse is a man's friend. He don't want to waste it into a sorry-lookin' shadow. Besides, we're better off here than at Painted Rock. It's nothin' but a whistlin'-post in the desert." "Yes, but I'd like to get as far from the fort as we can. I--I'm in a hurry to reach Tascosa," the younger man urged. Moore opened a row of worn and stained teeth to smile. "Don't worry, young fellow. I'm with you now."