The weight of the belt on his hips was good. It gave the man a feeling of competence. He drew the guns and spun them by the trigger guard. Reflected light splashed off the spinning weapons. Then the butts dropped in his palms, and the guns were steady. With those weapons the Ranger had ridden a fast horse at top speed and kept a tin can bouncing ahead of him with bullets. He could--and frequently he had done it--restrain his draw until fast gun-slingers had their own weapons free of the holster, and still get the drop on them. He "broke" one of the guns and dumped the cartridges into the palm of his hand. "You loaded them, eh?" Tonto nodded. There was something about the cartridges--they gleamed brilliantly. He studied them a moment, and looked questioningly at the Indian. "Those bullet," Tonto said, "are silver." It was true. The bullets in the cartridges were hard, solid silver. The Texan looked puzzled. "That makes pretty high-priced shooting," he said. "You not shoot much," Tonto replied. Then he explained how the precious metal for the bullets had come from the Texan's own silver mine. Tonto himself had cast the metal. The white man marveled at the complete knowledge Tonto had of him and of his affairs. Then Tonto brought a mask from beneath his buckskin shirt. It was black, and fashioned to cover the entire upper part of a man's face, effectively concealing all identity. "Wear this," Tonto said. The white man hesitated. "If I go about wearing a mask, the law will be in full chase in no time," he said. Tonto nodded. "You hunt-um outlaw!" Birds of a feather! By concealing his identity with the mask, his disguise would serve a second purpose. It would mark him in such a way that outlaws might welcome his company and thus put him in possession of information otherwise impossible to secure. "Other Ranger all dead," said Tonto, as the white man tried the mask and found it a perfect fit. "You only Ranger now. You all alone." "All alone," repeated the other softly. "Except for you, Tonto. It seems that it's your plan for us to travel together." Tonto nodded slowly, soberly. He held out his brown hand again. In the palm there was a metal badge. The Texas Ranger's badge. The white man took it, looked at it, then closed his fist about it tightly. "The Texas Rangers," he said softly, "are dead. All six of them have gone. In their place there's just one man. The lone Ranger." He put the badge deep in his pocket and murmured again, "The Lone Ranger." Chapter XI THE LONE RANGER RIDES