Mead listened quietly, looking the man in the eye. "Look here," he said, "what did you reckon would happen to any man who tried to rope me? Did you think I'd let you-all drag me into camp at your horse's tail? I'm sorry I had to do that, but I didn't want to kill you. Here, Jim, you fellows better tie up Antone's wrists." Mead offered his own handkerchief to help out the bandages, and, suddenly remembering the whisky flask in his breast pocket, took it out and told the wounded man to finish its contents. While this was going on Tuttle and Ellhorn rode up. The rain had stopped, and through a rift in the eastern clouds the level, red rays of the sun were shining. Mead met their eager, anxious faces with a smile. "It's all right, boys. Jim says the game's off for this morning." Nick and Tom turned black and scowling looks on Halliday and his party, and the deputy sheriff, manifestly nervous, rode toward them with an exaggeratedly genial greeting: "Howdy, boys! Put up your guns! We ain't goin' to have any gun-fight this morning." "How do you know we ain't?" growled Tom. "Well, Emerson says so," he replied, with an apprehensive glance at Mead. "Well," said Nick, "if Emerson says so it's all right. But we've had a devil of a ride, and we'd like to get square somehow!" Mead laughed. "You can tally up with Jim, who's going to lose his job because I'm too mean to let him run me in." Tuttle and Ellhorn turned grimly joyous faces toward Halliday. "If you want to arrest Emerson this morning," said Ellhorn, "just begin right now! We're three to three! Come on now and try it!" The officer edged his horse away: "I'll wait till the round-up is over. Then you can't have the excuse that the Fillmore Company's doing it. But I'll have him yet, and don't you forget it!" "Just like you got him this time!" taunted Ellhorn. Halliday turned back a red and angry face: "I'll have him," he yelled, "if I have to kill the whole damned three of you to get him!" A derisive shout of laughter was the only answer he received as he and his party galloped back to camp. CHAPTER XI After the round-up was finished Emerson Mead and his two friends started, with two _vaqueros_, to drive a band of cattle to Las Plumas for shipment. When they reached Juan Garcia's ranch Mead remembered that he wished to see the old Mexican, and the two cow-boys were sent on with the cattle while he and Tuttle and Ellhorn tied their horses in the shade of the cottonwoods at the foot of the hill. They found Amada Garcia leaning on her folded arms across the window-sill and making a picture in the frame of the gray adobe walls that was very good to see.