Heading toward Crawling Water, the ranch owner rode rapidly over the sun-baked ground, too full of rage to take notice of anything except his own helplessness. The sting of Jensen's impudence lay in Wade's realization that to enlist the aid of the sheriff against the sheep man would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible. There was very little law in that region, and what little there was seemed, somehow, to have been taken under the direction of Race Moran.
It was now broad day and the prairie warmed to the blazing sun. Long, rolling stretches of grass, topped with rocks and alkaline sand, gave back a blinding glare like the reflection of a summer sea, from which arose a haze of gray dust like ocean mists over distant reaches. Far to the South, a lone butte lifted its corrugated front in forbidding majesty.
Beyond the summit of the butte was a greenish-brown plateau of sagebrush and bunch-grass. Behind this mesa, a range of snow-topped mountains cut the horizon with their white peaks, and in their deep and gloomy canyons lurked great shadows of cool, rich green. As far as the eye could see, there was no sign of life save Wade and his mount.
The horse's feet kicked up a cloud of yellow dust that hung in the air like smoke from a battery of cannon. It enveloped the ranchman, who rode with the loose seat and straight back of his kind; it came to lie deeply on his shoulders and on his broad-brimmed Stetson hat, and in the wrinkles of the leather chaps that encased his legs. He looked steadily ahead, from under reddened eyelids, over the trackless plain that encompassed him. At a pace which would speedily cover the twenty odd miles to Crawling Water, he rode on his way to see Race Moran.
Two hours later Oscar Jensen was shot from behind as he was walking alone, a little distance from his camp. He fell dead and his assassin disappeared without being seen.
CHAPTER II
A MEETING AND A PARTING
Had some one of Gordon Wade's multitude of admirers in the East seen him as he stood looking out over his Wyoming ranch, he might have recognized the true cowboy composure with which the ranchman faced the coming storm, but he would not have recognized the stripling who had won scholastic and athletic honors at Princeton a few short years before, and who had spent a year after graduating in aimless travel and reckless adventure.