"Hello, out there! Who is it?"
"Ford."
The rider swung to the ground stiffly and led his horse forward down a sharply descending path to a little draw. A lank, sallow man with a rifle joined him. With his back to a flat rock, a heavy-set, broad-shouldered fellow was lounging.
"'Lo, Ford. Didn't expect you to-night," he grumbled.
"Drifted over from the dance at Tomichi Creek. Beat up a young Mexican and had to get out."
"You're such a sullen brute! Why can't you let folks alone?" Pete Dinsmore wanted to know.
He was annoyed. Rutherford Wadley was not a partner in the business on hand to-night, and he would rather the man had been a hundred miles away.
"He got jealous and tried to knife me," explained the heir of the A T O sulkily.
"You durn fool! Won't you ever learn sense? Who was it this time?"
"Tony Alviro. His girl's crazy about me."