“The blustering man on the door was Noll Lassiter,” he mused. “And the silent man inside was Milt. The nervous party--I can’t place him. I’m wondering about the casual individual who held the horses. It certainly does look as if they’d cancelled the family feud.” For Bart Lassiter’s two-day trip to Caldwell had lengthened into a week and he had not yet returned. The name of Lassiter had been whispered in connection with recent misdeeds but the raids had been frequent and at widely separate points. It was certain that Milt and Noll Lassiter had not participated in some of these, their whereabouts at the time having been definitely established, and there was no proof that they had been connected with any one of the numerous affairs. Carver angled slightly westward as he reached the sand-hill country near the line. This was the poorest land in all the Strip, yet in common with better stuff it had been staked solidly on the day of the run. The majority of these sand-hill claims were destined to change hands many times before prove-up work would be completed and patents issued for the land. Carver found this country unfenced and the few homestead cabins were mainly deserted. The surface was rough and choppy, a veritable maze of dunes, some covered with tufts of tall red grass and studded with clumps of dwarfed brush and needle-leaved yucca plants. There were ridges and domes of white blow-sand, worn by the action of the wind. These stretches of sand had retarded the progress of the fire which had swept the country in late summer and the most of it was covered with grass. There were occasional flats carpeted with short, wiry salt grass. As Carver neared the edge of one of these basins he suddenly pulled up his horse and peered through the fringe of tall grass that graced the crest of an intermediate ridge. “Here comes the casual party now,” he commented. “Wounded as stated in the reports, and with a posse right at his heels.” Two hundred yards out in the flat a rider was pounding down toward the possible cover afforded by the rough country which Carver had just traversed. His left arm hung stiffly at his side and he turned in his saddle with an effort as he gazed back at a group of horsemen, some eight or ten of them, that were surging out into the far edge of the depression a mile or more behind. As Bart crossed the low ridge he started to whirl his horse at the sight of the man posted in his line of flight, then recognized Carver and held straight on. Carver turned and rode with him, noting that Bart’s horse was almost spent. “I’d trade mounts and let them pick me up instead. I could furnish a perfect alibi,” Carver said. “But that wouldn’t do. They’d trace the ownership of your horse.” “Don’t let that point deter you,” Bart returned easily. “This is no horse of mine. I wouldn’t own him. I borrowed him, sort of, on the spur of the moment.” “But the saddle,” Carver insisted.