Thus mounted he burned the earth, in range parlance, toward town. As he rode his personal danger from ambush became less of moment than the possibility of Mark Steele slipping through his fingers. Mark would do one of two things the moment he learned that Thatcher had been taken red-handed; either he would go gunning for Robin or he would jump the country. He had money. That inheritance of fifteen thousand dollars which he had _not_ put into the Bar M Bar partnership would take him far and fast--if he chose to own himself beaten and quit the field. That contingency worried Robin. He had made two definite promises both to himself and Shining Mark, one in anger, the other in cold blood, to kill him or put him in the penitentiary. He meant to keep one or the other. In the freshness of his anger that morning with Thatcher’s fear-wrung story to cap the climax, Robin had set out to take his man single-handed. Now, as he loped out of the foothills, he was not so sure of the wisdom of that plan. To act alone savored a little of satisfying a personal grudge, which he admitted to himself--and he reflected that making Steele’s arrest a personal, single-handed affair might easily permit Mark to evade justice altogether. Wherefore, by the time town loomed in the tenuous heat haze that quivered above a parched earth, Robin had decided to consult Adam Sutherland first. He could still grab Steele wherever he found him, but perhaps the entire machinery of the sheriff’s office had better be in motion. Montana covered a lot of territory. If Shining Mark went on the dodge he would take some catching. So he rode to the store on an angle that took him between the stockyards and the rows of houses that formed the one short street. A clerk stood in the door that Robin had to pass on his way to the front. He pulled up. “Sutherland inside?” “Went over to the house a while ago,” the man told him. Robin didn’t tarry. In two minutes he was striding up the front steps of the white cottage. Sutherland rose out of a chair behind a canvas screen. May appeared in the doorway. “Come on inside,” Sutherland said. “What’s up?” “How do you know anything’s up?” Robin asked when he doffed his hat in the cool room. He stole a look at May. She smiled welcome but there was a sort of shadow in her blue eyes, a something Robin had never seen there, a troubled, apprehensive expression. “I see two of your men with Sam Connors an’ that Texican ride in just as the west-bound stopped. Connors an’ Thatcher took the train. Your two boys say they just rode in for fun. You come ridin’ a Block S horse all sweat an’ foam.” “You notice things, don’t you,” Robin drawled. “Well, somethin’ is up. Do you happen to know if Mark Steele is in Big Sandy?” A look flashed between father and daughter. “I don’t spend no time keepin’ track of Mark myself,” Sutherland said dryly. “Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. Why? Sit down an’ spin your yarn.” Robin spun it briefly.