"Poor chap! I shouldn't have sent him on this last trip. Where is Tony?" "Tony's out in the hills to keep an eye on Cut Finger. Will you go after him to-night?" "No, not till morning. The police will locate him and stay with him to-night, and to-morrow morning I will go out and get him myself. I don't want any shooting, if it can be avoided. What is it, Heavybreast?" he asked of a large Tetong who entered at the moment, his eyes bright with information. "White man coming," signed the redman. Curtis rose and went to the door and looked down the road. Three carriages were passing the issue-house--one a rather pretentious family surrey, the others ordinary mountain wagons. In the hinder seat of the surrey, and beside the sheriff, sat a gray-haired man. "It is Senator Brisbane!" said Curtis to Wilson, and a keen pang of anticipated loss came to him, for he knew that Brisbane had come to take his daughter away. But his face was calm as he went down to the gate to meet his distinguished and powerful enemy. The ex-Senator was hot, weary, and angry. He had arrived in Pinon City on the early train, just as the county attorney and the sheriff were about to set forth. A few words with these officials assuaged his anxiety for his daughter but increased his irritation towards Curtis. Leaving orders for another team to follow, he had taken passage with the sheriff, an action he regretted at once. The seats were too low and too narrow for his vast bulk, and his knees grew weary. The wind came from the plain hot and insolent, bringing no relief to the lungs; on the contrary, it filled his eyes and ears with dust and parched the skin like a furnace blast. Altogether the conditions of his ride had been torturing to the great man, and he had ridden the latter part of it in grim silence, mentally execrating both Lawson and Curtis for luring his daughter so far from civilization. No one spoke till the agent, pacing calmly down to the gate, stepped into the road and said: "Good-evening, gentlemen, will you get out and come in?" Even then Brisbane made no reply, but the sheriff spoke up: "I suppose we'll have to. This is Senator Brisbane, Major. He was very anxious about his daughter and so came in with me. This is Mr. Grismore, our county attorney." Curtis bowed slightly. "Mr. Grismore I have seen. Senator Brisbane I have met. Send your horses down to the corral, sheriff, and come in; you can't return to-night." As the sheriff got out he said: "This second team is the Senator's, and the reporter for the Associated Press is in there with Streeter." Brisbane got out slowly and painfully, and a yellow-gray pallor came into his face as he stood beside the carriage steadying himself by resting his hand on the wheel. The young county attorney, eager to serve the great politician, sprang out and offered a hand, and Curtis, with sudden pity in his heart, made a step forward, but Brisbane put them both aside harshly.