After Conrad had gone the banker walked the floor in anxious thought. What, then, did that five-hundred-dollar check mean that Curtis had given to Jenkins? Perhaps he was holding the young man off, saying he was not yet sure of Delafield's identity and needed money to carry on his investigation, intending to give up his secret if he should find that he could bleed Bancroft no longer. That would be like Jenkins, he decided. As soon as he could get away he would go to Las Vegas and see if the fellow could be cowed by the knowledge that had come to him so opportunely. As for Conrad, it would be better to wait until he could learn whether those checks would produce the effect desired. In front of the court-house the ranchman met Tillinghurst and Little Jack Wilder. The Sheriff had a subpoena commanding him to appear as a witness for the State in the Melgares trial, set for June. Curtis remarked, as they talked of the case: "I reckon you'll have Pendleton as a witness; he'll want to take in the whole thing. Have you seen anything of him? He promised to meet me here. He's going back with me; says he wants to take in a round-up and see a steer on the prod. I sure reckon I'll have my hands full if I keep the boys from taking him in." "Let 'em run him, Curt, let 'em run him," said the Sheriff. "He's good-natured, and he'll soon strike their gait. He was never outside of New England before, and he's tryin' mighty hard to be tougher than anybody else on the border. He's been in town three weeks, and he calls everybody by their first names, from Judge Banks down to my Mexican stable-boy. He writes down all the slang he hears every day, sits up nights to study it, and the next day slings it around as free and easy as an old-timer. Is that him comin' yonder? Say, Curt, he'll stampede every cow-brute you've got on the range!" Pendleton, short, stout, and large of girth, had dressed himself for roughing it according to his own idea of custom and comfort. He wore a Mexican straw sombrero tied down over his ears with a red bandanna, a red flannel shirt, a long linen coat, huge spurs, and sheepskin _chaparejos_. "Oh, where did you get that coat?" the three men sang out as he came within hearing distance. Pendleton caught the tails in his finger tips and danced some sidewise steps. "Ain't she a beaut?" he shouted. "I found it in a store down in Dobytown." "Say, Pendy," called the Sheriff, "if you go pervadin' and pesterin' around among Curt's steers in those duds I'll have to send Jack down there to arrest you for breach of the peace." "All right, Tilly! I'm here for my health, but I'm takin' in on the side everything that comes my way!" Conrad found a letter at the ranch addressed to José Gonzalez, in his care, and grinned with satisfaction as he recognized Baxter's handwriting. "He's buffaloed all right and is calling off his man," he thought as he opened with eager curiosity a missive from Baxter for himself: