"Betty B., you're a rogue!" he exclaimed, pulling her ear. "You're just lonesome and want me to talk to you! My, but you're spoiled!" He stroked her neck affectionately, then suddenly leaned against her, buried his face in her mane, and a single deep breath that was half a sob shook his body. "Betty!" he muttered, "to find that your best friend is the damnedest villain that ever went unhung!" The little episode with the mare broke up the paralysis that staggering surprise had set upon both thought and feeling. As he mounted again his heart was hot and his mind working rapidly. "The damned villain!" he exclaimed savagely, "to be pretending such friendship with me when he knew what he had done!" He spurred Brown Betty to a gallop. The tyrannous habit of mind engendered by long-wonted thought and desire urged him on to face at once the man who had despoiled his father and deprived him of his birthright. The old anger and hate surged over him, and his pulses beat swift and hard. For a while he forgot the personality of the enemy he had run to earth at last. Through his set teeth came whispered curses of hatred and contempt, and his tongue clung to the shameful epithets he longed to throw in the fellow's face. Not fast enough could he ride to keep pace with his desire. Revenge, so long fed with hope and promise, was calling to be sated. "Faster, Betty, faster!" he called to the mare, spurring her on. But the very violence of his mood presently induced the beginning of reaction. He remembered who it was that he was riding so fast to expose and strike down. "Aleck! Aleck Bancroft!" he murmured, and slowed the mare's racing feet. The tenderness and loyalty of friendship raised still, small voices in his heart. Once again the thing staggered him. It seemed incredible. In the depths of his heart was conviction that José Gonzalez had told him the truth. But could he go to his best friend with such a charge, to taunt, insult, and challenge to death, on the word of a Mexican assassin? The idea repelled him. And he was glad of the misgiving, unwilling to believe that the quest he had followed with such eager determination was leading him to the door of Alexander Bancroft. "I ought--I ought to have confirmation, I suppose," he said to himself, uncertainly. And so, still undecided, feeling that it was truth and yet unwilling to believe, he came to the gate of his own corral. After he had unsaddled and stabled Brown Betty, he went through the kitchen for a drink of water from the big _olla_, wrapped in a wet coffee sack, that stood always in the drying wind and the shade of a tree beside the door. Mrs. Peters came in from the store-room with a panful of potatoes. "Hank had to go to White Rock this morning," she said, "and he brought some mail for you. It's on your desk."