Plimsoll produced a bottle and the four of them drank the fiery unrectified, unstamped liquor. Ahead was an abrupt turn. Jordan slowed. Making the curve, a fence stretched across the gorge, reaching from wall to wall, a four-strand barrier of barbed-wire, strung on patent steel posts. Jordan braked with emergency. The sight of such a fence in such a place was as unexpected as the sun-dried carcass of a steer would be on Broadway. Plimsoll and Jordan cursed, the former in pure anger, the latter with some appreciation of the stratagem for delay. "We can tear it down quicker'n they fixed it," he said. "I've got a pair of nippers in the tool kit. They can't have driven in those posts deep. Come on." A voice floated down to them. "You leave that fence alone, gents. _If_ you please. I went to a heap of trouble puttin' up that fence. It's _my_ fence." They looked up, to see Mormon seated on the top of a great boulder that had land-slipped from the cliff into the gorge. From thirty feet above them he looked down, amiably enough, though there was a glint of blued metal in his right hand. "Hello, Jim Plimsoll," he went on. "I ain't seen you-all fo' quite a while. You fellers out fo' a picnic?" Jordan advanced to the foot of the rock, producing his papers. "I have a bench warrant here to bring into court for the appointment of a proper guardian, the child Molly Casey, she being a minor and without natural or legal protectors. I've got yore name on these papers, Mormon Peters, as one of the three parties with whom the girl is now domiciled. I warn you that you are obstructing the process of the law by yore actions. You put up that gun an' come down here an' help to pull down this fence, illegally erected on property not yore own. Otherwise you're subject to arrest." "That is sure an awful long speech fo' a hot day," said Mormon equably. "But I don't sabe that talk at all. Molly Casey ain't here, to begin with. Nor she ain't been here. An' I don't sabe no obstruction of the law by settin' up a fence in a mesa canyon to round up broom-tails." One of the deputies snickered. "Broom-tails?" cried Jordan. "That's too thin. There's no mustangs hangin' round a mesa like this, 'thout feed or water." He flushed angrily. He was short-tempered and he was certain the fence was a ruse to gain time, with Mormon left behind to parley. It all seemed to point to Sandy Bourke making for the railroad. "You never kin tell about wild hawsses, or even branded ones," said Mormon pleasantly. "Ask Plimsoll. He picks 'em up in all sorts of places." Plimsoll cursed. Mormon still held his gun conspicuously, and he restrained his own impulse to draw. Jordan wheeled on the gambler. "You keep out o' this, Jim Plimsoll," he said. "I'm runnin' this end of it. He's talkin' against time. You come down an' help remove this fence," he shouted up at the smiling Mormon, "or I'll start something. It ain't on yore property and it's hindering the carrying out of my warrant."