In spite of the fact that hundreds of ranchmen were searching for and laying traps for him, night and day, the visitations of the masked horseman went on. Arson was added to his crimes, as he burned the ranch of a newcomer on Lone Lake Mesa, after shooting the homesteader, as the others had been shot. Again men examined the mysterious square of paper, with its poorly printed message of warning. Milton Bertram and Arch Beam, on the headwaters of the Roaring Fork, the stream which later on foamed past the naturalist’s cabin, felt that only extreme vigilance could save them from being victims of the assassin. They went cautiously about their work each day and seldom exposed themselves to fire from the points of attack that covered their cabin, without first making reconnaissance. They felt that their caution was not misplaced, when, on two occasions, they found pony tracks in the thickets that commanded unobstructed views of their homestead. “That feller is a real rifleman, whoever he might be,” observed Arch Beam. “He never shoots until he has his man well covered. But some day he’s goin’ to slip up, and a better man than he will do the shootin’ first.” “I hope that time isn’t far off, Arch,” returned Bertram. “There’s no use fooling around in the open with an enemy like that, a man who won’t even give you as much warning as a rattlesnake gives before he strikes. He’d simply add you to his victims, as easily as you might mark up another point on a billiard string. A man like that has to be caught off his guard. He knows there are plenty of men looking for him in the open, and that’s why he’s not going to be caught there.” “Where are you goin’ to get him, then?” asked Archie doubtfully. “I don’t say I’m going to get him,” responded Bertram. “But whoever does get him will probably land his game in some totally unexpected place. Wild Horse wouldn’t be a bad place to look. I think I’ll drift around there a little more than I have been.” Bertram followed out the hint he dropped to his partner. He rode to Wild Horse, where he had seldom been seen since he and Archie had taken up their homestead. Wild Horse was typical of the towns of the frontier. Most of its one-story business houses were spread along both sides of a broad street. There were a few general stores, two banks, a hotel, several restaurants, and numerous saloons and gambling places. All were prosperous, and, while the sun might cease to illumine Wild Horse at evening, there was plenty of light there, of an artificial kind, till well along toward the next daybreak. The topic of conversation in Wild Horse, as everywhere else, was the work of the masked horseman. But here the comments were a little more guarded, on account of the feeling that some inside ring of the cattle interests was prompting the assassinations, and Wild Horse was headquarters of those interests, which fact Swingley did not allow to be forgotten for a moment.