“I thought he was dead. Men left on the Painted Desert without water and no food don’t come back. He’s done it, though! It’s him. Still wearin’ one of my old hats—the one with that Moqui horsehair band. You remember—had a gold snake luck piece snapped on to the band. I tell you he looks like the livin’ spit of the way he did that night down on the Little Colorado.” His companion said nothing, but the sweat of fear had broken on his forehead. Crosbie Traynor’s return to the land of living men was as ominous as those black clouds gathering to the north. Death walked in the air. The little schemes, the plotting, the treachery of twenty years now crumbled to ruins! Not for a second was it to be supposed that Traynor had come to Standing Rock by accident. The man’s country lay far to the south, hundreds of miles. Yes, it was his way to ferret them out, to hang on, drifting from town to town until he tracked them down. “Damn you for a bungling fool!” cursed the brooding one. The man from the hotel sank lower into his chair, spineless, impotent in the face of that ghost-man’s visit. He raised his hands to shield his eyes from his companion’s wrath as the other went on: “A bungling, white-livered fool! That’s what you are! Now we’ll be lucky if our necks don’t get stretched.” “What you goin’ to do?” “Do?” The man got to his feet and shook his fist in his visitor’s face. “I’m going to do what you tried to do. I’m going to get Traynor before he gets me. Is that plain enough for you?” “You—you goin’ to kill him?” “Oh, bah!” the other hurled back with fine contempt. “That scares you, huh? Where’ll you be if he ever gets wind of you? That makes you shiver, eh? Well, you get this idea under your hat and let it stick there—you’re taking orders from me. ‘Cross’ Traynor is going to be erased!” CHAPTER II THE RED HAND Darkness came, bringing the day’s work to an end. The commotion on the wool platform ceased. Down the tracks from the direction of the shipping pens came the Diamond-Bar boys. They had just put ten hours of hard work behind them, but one would not have guessed it from their present vociferousness. Johnny Allerdyce, or rather Johnny Dice—to give him what he called his “_nom devoid_”—led the column headed for the Palace. He was walking the ties, taking three of them at a step. Behind him some fifteen of his pals were strung out at varying intervals. Johnny’s legs were pronouncedly bowed from his life in a saddle, and this long-stepping walk, or half run, only accentuated his deformity. Big hat flapping in the wind, the tails of his neckerchief flattening out behind him, made him seem grotesque. But there was action in every line of him, untouched vitality. Freckled face, untamed hair of flaming hue—they were fit companions for his dancing, mischievous eyes.