“What?” Johnny’s jaw dropped in pained surprise. “He’s a liar, then. He told me he was an outlaw. Don’t blame me!”
“You hell-sent half-wit! Where’s that other man—Jones?”
“Oh, him? He’s down the cañon, sir. He went with Bob after horses. He hasn’t got back yet, sir.”
“Dines, you scoundrel! Are you trying to make a fool out of me?”
“Oh, no, sir! Impossible. Not at all, sir. If you and your posse will take cover, sir, I’ll capture him for you when he comes back, just as I did this one, sir. We are always glad to use the Bar Cross house as a trap and the Bar Cross grub for bait. As you see, sir.”
“Damn you, Dines, that man isn’t coming back!”
Johnny considered this for a little. Then he looked up with innocent eyes.
“Perhaps you are right, sir,” he said thoughtfully.
Long since, the floods have washed out the Bar Cross horse camp, torn away pens and flat and house, leaving from hill to hill a desolate wash of gravel and boulders—so that no man may say where that poor room stood. Yet youth housed there and hope, honor and courage and loyalty; there are those who are glad it shall shelter no meaner thing.