“Mr. Mason, you have come at just the right time if you like excitement,” he said, looking the Easterner over sharply.
“That’s my middle name,” returned Mason easily.
Anderson nodded approval.
“We are going to have some stormy times around these parts,” he declared. “I understand that Miss Josephine has told you about some of our bad neighbors, the Ricker outfit.
“Well,” he went on, “I just discovered today that four more men joined forces with them, and I took the trouble to look up their names. They are the same bunch I rounded up in that shooting scrape five years ago,” he concluded.
“Oh, I remember,” the girl cried in evident distress, “they wrote you from prison that they would get you when their term was up.”
They had turned their horses into the corral and were walking slowly to the house. Anderson shut up like a clam and refused to say anything further on the subject. Mason figured it was on account of the nervousness of the girl. That night Anderson told Mason all the ins and outs of the affair.
The trouble had occurred in a small town called Atwater, situated a few miles from Trader’s Post. Anderson having business to attend to there had stumbled on to the case shortly after it happened.
An old retired silver miner living alone in a cabin had been set upon and robbed by four men. He was found bound and gagged, with a bullet wound in his shoulder.
Anderson took the trail and followed it untiringly for a week until he landed his men. After being convicted and sentenced to five years in prison they had friends write the sheriff a letter swearing vengeance after their term expired.