Bob hastened to meet the figure in the road. He knew it was Imogene
Chandler, and that her haste meant she was either desperately
frightened or in great trouble.
"Is that you, Mr. Rogeen?" She checked up and called to him fifty
yards away.
"Yes. What is the matter?"
"I've been frightened three times in the last week." She caught her
breath. "A man hid in the weeds near the house, and his movements gave
me a scare; but I didn't think so much about it until Saturday night,
when I went out after dark to gather sticks for the breakfast cooking,
a man slipped from the shadow of the trees and spoke to me and I ran
and he followed me nearly to the house. I got my gun and shot at him.
"But to-night," she gasped for breath again, "just as I was going from
papa's tent to my own, a man jumped out and grabbed me. I screamed and
he ran away."
Bob put his hand on her arm. He felt it still quivering under his
fingers.
"I'll walk back with you," he said in a quiet, reassuring tone.
"Can you lend me a blanket?" he asked when they reached the Chandler
ranch. "And let me have your gun, I'll sleep out here to one side of
your tent."
She protested, but without avail.
Next morning when Bob returned to his own ranch he spoke to Noah
Ezekiel Foster.
"Noah, this afternoon move your tent down to the Chandler ranch. Put
it up on the north side of Miss Chandler's so she will be between yours
and her father's. I'm going to town and I'll bring out a
double-barrelled riot shotgun that won't miss even in the dark. You
and that gun are going to sleep side by side."
Noah Ezekiel grinned.
Bob went to the shack, put his own pistol in his pocket, and rode off
to Calexico.
Reedy Jenkins sat at his desk in shirt sleeves, his pink face a trifle
pasty as he sweated over a column of figures. He looked up annoyedly
as someone entered through the open door; and the annoyance changed to
surprise when he saw that it was Bob Rogeen.
"I merely came in to tell you a story," said Bob as he dropped into a
chair and took a paper from the pocket of his shirt and held it in his
left hand.
"This," Bob flecked the paper and spoke reminiscently, "is quite a
curiosity. I got it up near Blindon, Colorado. A bunch of rascals
jumped me one night when my back was turned.
"Next day my friends hired an undertaker to take charge of my remains,
and made up money to pay him. This paper is the undertaker's receipt
for my funeral.
"The rascals did not get either me or the cash they were after; but
they taught me a valuable lesson: never to have my back turned again."
He stopped.
"You see," went on Bob in a tone that did not suggest argument, "there
is a ranch over my way you happen to want--two of them, in fact. The
last week the lessees have both been much annoyed; the one on the south
one especially.
"Now, of course, we can kill Madrigal and any other Mexican that keeps
up that annoyance. But instead, I suggest that you call them off. For
the Chandlers have fully made up their minds not to sell, and so have
I."
Bob rose. "If anything further happens down there, I'm afraid there'll
be an accident on this side of the line. It was merely that you might
be prepared in advance that I dropped in this morning to make you a
present of this." He tossed the paper on Jenkins' desk and went out.
Reedy picked up the receipt. The undertaker, after Rogeen's recovery,
had facetiously written on the back:
This receipt is still good for one first-class funeral--and it is
negotiable.
Reedy felt all the sneer go out of his lips and a sort of coldness
steal along his sweaty skin. Underneath this writing was another line:
Transferred for value received to Reedy Jenkins.
BOB ROGEEN.