"I had just passed that freak bowlder on the Apache Trail when the man I was looking for turned up, and with the drop, of course. We reckoned that two was needed to stop the war-paints, which we did, him running the game and doing most of the playing. I felt like I was his honored guest whom he had invited to share in the festivities. He had plenty of chances to nail me if he wanted to, and he had chipped in on a game that he didn't have to take cards in; and to help me out. He could have let them get me and they would have thought that I had done all the injury and that there wasn't another man on the desert. But he didn't, and I began to think he wasn't as bad as he was painted." Then he told of the trouble between The Orphan and Jimmy of the Cross Bar-8, and of the rage which blossomed out on the ranch. "That shore settled it for the Cross Bar-8. They wanted lots of gore, and they got it, all right, when he played five of their punchers against the very war party he had sent north to meet me, while I was chasing him. That war party must have found something to their liking, wandering about the country all that time." Blake interrupted him: "War party that he sent north to meet you?" he asked in surprise. "How could he do that?" "That's just what I said," replied Shields, and then he explained about the arrow. "Any man who could stack a deck like that and use one danger to wipe out another ain't going to get caught by an outfit of lunkheads--by George! if he didn't work nearly the same trick on the Cross Bar-8 crowd! Oh, it's great, simply great!" The foreman slapped his knee enthusiastically: "Fine! Fine!" he exulted. "That fellow has got brains, plenty of them! And he'll make use of them to the good of this country, too, before we get through with him." Shields continued: "After he sic'd the chumps of the Cross Bar-8 on the Apaches he shore raised the devil on the ranch and I was asked to go out and run things, which I did, or rather thought I would do. Charley and I and the two Larkin boys laid out on the plain all night, covered up with sand, waiting for him to show up between us and the windows--and the first thing I saw in the morning was Helen's flower pot here--it used to be Margaret's--setting up on top of a pile of sand under my very nose where he had stuck it while I waited for him--and blamed if he hadn't signed his name in the sand at its base!" He suddenly turned to his sister: "Tell Tom about him calling on you while I was waiting for him out on the ranch, Helen." Helen did so and the way she told it caused the women to look keenly at her. Blake laughed heartily: "Now, don't that beat all!" he cried. "It don't beat this," responded the sheriff, turning again to Helen. "Tell him about the stage coach, Sis."