"Wait a minute--he wants to know if you can forgive him--if you will take him back." "Slim!" was the only word Echo uttered, but the volume of love it contained told him everything. "You needn't say nothin' more--I see it shinin' in your eyes," cried Slim. "Jack! Jack!" he shouted, "you derned idiot, come a-runnin--" Payson hurried up from the arroyo within which he had been waiting. "Echo, I have not altogether failed in my mission. I have not brought Dick Lane back, but I hope I come from him bearing something of his loyalty and simple faith. If you ever can learn to trust me again--if you ever can learn to love me--" he said to Echo humbly. "Don't be a derned fool, Jack," blurted Slim; "can't you see she ain't never loved no one else?" "Echo, is it so?" asked Jack eagerly. Slim grinned. Going over to Echo's side, he gave her a slight push, saying: "Go tell him." "Jack!" was her only cry, as her husband enfolded her in his arms. * * * * * * * With the next election for sheriff in Pinal County, William Henry Harrison Hoover had no opposition, for Buck McKee's nomination for that office of one Peruna, formerly of the Lazy K outfit, was not ratified for several reasons, the chief of which was that W. H. H. Hoover, alias Slim, had, just previous to election, officially declared that the said Peruna was deceased, having come to his death in the jail-yard of Pinal County, by a sudden drop at the end of a new hempen rope, which did not break, as Slim, before the ceremony, had assured the apprehensive Peruna it would not. The sudden and successive removals of its two most honored and influential members, Buck McKee and Peruna, greatly demoralized the Lazy K outfit, and the demoralization was completed by the pernicious activity of the reelected Sheriff in interfering with the main purpose of that industrial organization, which was the merger of the Sweetwater cattle-business through a gradual amalgamation of all brands into the Lazy K. One by one the captains or cavaliers of this industry sought more congenial regions, where public inquisition into such purely private concerns as theirs was not so vigorously prosecuted.