The fugitive was dead before Mr. Cook and Roy reached his body.

“It was me or him or both,” exclaimed the Company manager. “And after this, my boy, when you see two men out in this country eyeing each other as Mike and I were, you get to one side—not behind one of ’em. Killin’ Mike don’t prove he was a thief, but I’m goin’ to do that now.”

The briefest examination enabled Mr. Cook to make his word good. Of the stolen money, four thousand dollars was in one-hundred-dollar bills, each thousand dollars in a separate wrapper. The other thousand had been in one package about two inches thick; two hundred dollars in ones; two hundred dollars in twos; and the remainder in five-and ten-dollar bills. Hassell had divided the small bills into two parcels which he had stuffed into his hip pockets. The thin, green packet of new and unused bills, was in his inside waistcoat pocket.

Having taken this money and put it into his own pockets, Mr. Cook arose.

“If you don’t mind,” suggested Roy, “I’d like to look for something.”

Mr. Cook raised his eyebrows.

“We’re pretty straight about one thing out here,” he replied. “We’ll kill a man all right, an’ sometimes for mighty little provocation, but after he’s dead, what’s his is his. Of course, that isn’t what you mean, but you ought to know that we’re touchy on the point o’ molestin’ the dead. Wooley an’ the coroner’ll do what’s necessary now. It’s up to them to say whether I was justified.”

“I couldn’t tell who shot first,” exclaimed Roy innocently.

“You couldn’t?” answered Mr. Cook, with a smile.

“I didn’t hear but one shot.”

“There were two, all right,” added Mr. Cook, with another grim smile. Without further explanation, he held out his left arm. As his loose coat was extended, the boy saw two small, ragged holes where Hassell’s bullet had gone in and out of the folds of the garment just along the left side of the wearer’s body.

“What’ll the coroner decide?” continued Roy, whose tense, straining muscles were just relaxing into nervousness. “I can’t say Hassell fired first. And I wouldn’t think you’d know—hardly.”

Mr. Cook laughed.

“My boy,” he said, “there’s some laws that never get into the printed statutes. You know how it is if a man and his wife are lost at sea in the same wreck? The printed law presumes that the woman died first because she’s weaker than the man. In the desert, we have a lot of our own laws. If two men come together with shooting irons and both fire and one dies, the live one is given the benefit of the doubt.”

Roy couldn’t see the logic of this, but he hastened to explain that he had no desire to despoil the dead bartender’s body. “I have an idea,” he said.

A short search confirmed his theory. In Hassell’s vest pocket, Roy found a carefully folded two-dollar bill.

“I can’t be mistaken,” he said, rising to his feet, “for all my bills were alike. This is the money I gave Mike to pay for Banning’s supper. He even robbed Joe, his boss.”

“And when Old Utah set up a howl for the bill,” added Mr. Cook, “Mike shut him up by murderin’ him. Don’t you bother about which of us shot first. If Mike didn’t he’d ought to.”

Soon after nine o’clock, the aeroplane was in the Company corral again. The flight back to Bluff was made at top speed, and, strange to say, the landing attracted no attention. In the Company office, both clerks were already at work or going through the motions of it. As a matter of fact, they were both too much excited over the theft of the previous day to do more than discuss it.

Mr. Cook and Roy entered the office together. Offering the tired boy an easy chair, Mr. Cook stepped to a tank in a corner of the room, drew a glass of water which he considerately carried to the hot and nervous lad and then helped himself to one. That done, he extracted from his pocket his long-delayed morning cigar and lit it with great gusto.

“Mr. Blocki,” he said at last, addressing the clerk with the bent leg, “some time to-day make me a sketch map showing where all our men were the last time we heard from them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, by the way,” continued Mr. Cook, “put this back into the safe.”

With the words, he slowly drew from his coat pocket the two bundles of stolen money. The two clerks sprang forward with bulging eyes, their mouths open.

“Vic,” he added, indicating the younger clerk, “you go and find Marshal Wooley. Tell him Mike Hassell is over in Rattle Snake Desert, just below the buttes, waitin’ for the coroner. Better bring Hassell back here, tell him. And tell the marshal he don’t need a warrant. I’ll be at the inquest.”

Then he turned to Roy and after a few moments’ conference, made a little calculation. On a bit of paper, he set down: “Outfit $110; railroad, sleeper fare and meals, $98; aeroplane, $5,000.”

“I’ll attend to Weston’s bill,” he said. “As for your own services, your pay begins from the time you reached Dolores. You can draw on us whenever you like at the rate of four hundred dollars a month.”

Then he tossed the memorandum on the table and beckoned to Blocki, the elder clerk and bookkeeper.

“Blocki,” he continued, “make out a check for $5,208, payable to the American Aeroplane Company.”

Then he turned to Roy.

“It isn’t often that you can get a full return on an investment before you pay in your money. That’s one of the most profitable business deals I ever made.”

Elated and having somewhat quieted his tingling nerves, Roy sprang up ready for new action.

“We’ve tried her out,” he said, with satisfaction. “Now, what’s the program?”

“I would suggest,” answered Mr. Cook, arising and taking off his coat as though about to attack his usual day’s routine of work, whatever it was, “that you are entitled to a little play. I can see you have been under a strain—probably ever since you left Newark—”

“Before,” interrupted Roy, with a laugh, thinking of his concern over the packing of the aeroplane and his constant apprehension over its safe transportation.

“Then take a day or two off. I may need you to-morrow or the next day. Get out and amuse yourself to-day. See you at dinner.”

The boy was certainly glad enough to follow instructions. The responsibility of the aeroplane off his shoulders, for a time, he passed out into the glare of the July sun ready to enjoy his holiday to the full. First, he went home, had a bath, changed his clothes and amused himself in Mr. Cook’s library for a few moments. Then, throwing his brother Phil’s camera over his shoulder, he went out sight-seeing.

With a pretty fair knowledge of the desert and surrounding country, he first made an examination of the town. That meant the stores—he had had enough of the saloons. Not one of these escaped him. In the main, they were similar—practically trading-posts, with horse feed and provisions for prospectors, miners, oil and cattle men—but one shop made a half-hearted attempt at notions, books, and drugs in front, while in the rear was a stock of showy toys, beads and machine-made blankets and moccasins for lazy Indians who might have money.

To Roy’s delight—but to his surprise—he found here an assortment of local picture postcards. He immediately purchased three sets which he later forwarded to his mother and brothers. On those which were labeled “Calabasa Mountains from the San Juan river,” he drew arrows pointing to a gap in the range. Beneath this, he wrote: “Where we captured Mike Hassell, the thief, bandit and murderer. See letter to follow.” These he sent to his brothers. His mother’s card he left blank.

Then, discovering that the postmaster was also a photographer, he took a boyish fancy to have his picture made. Carefully putting aside his camera as a part of civilization, he adjusted his revolver so that it was well to the fore, and tilting his hat brim, assumed a careless pose. In a few minutes, he had six tintypes, representing him in his prized outfit. A quarter of an hour later, he was on the banks of the San Juan.

There he took a half dozen snap shots and then sat down on the cliff-like banks to enjoy another look at his gorgeous tintypes. Finally he began to smile. As last, he said to himself:

“I never expected I’d get it that bad. Why, it’s worse than the factory boy who has his picture taken down at Coney Island sitting in a pasteboard automobile.” Then he laughed outright. One after another, he sent five of the pictures shooting down into the swift river below. The sixth, as evidence of his boyish exuberance, he buried in his hip pocket. “I’m over that now, anyway,” he said with another laugh.

At dinner, Mr. Cook told him that two more men had been sent up the river to stop the search for the missing thief. There had also been a conference in Mr. Cook’s office and Marshal Wooley and an aide with an extra horse had set out to recover and bring in Hassell’s body. By night, Roy had exhausted the sights of Bluff, and photographed most of them, including Utah Banning’s hut.

The town had few visitors, and almost no sightseers. For that reason, the trading stores were not stocked with curios. A few things that Roy bought were of real Indian manufacture or were articles made for the use of the men of the wilderness. Navajo silver rings, bracelets and chains were so cheap that the boy could not resist purchasing some of them. One ring struck him particularly. Instead of the prevailing silver, it was of copper, a beautiful oxydized brown. For a setting, it had a square of deep, almost translucent turquoise of the pure, sky blue. He bought it for himself at a cost of three dollars.

When Mr. Cook came home late in the afternoon, Roy was taking his ease on the gallery, refreshed with another washup, and twirling the exquisitely colored ring in his fingers. The moment Mr. Cook saw it, his eyes lit up with enthusiasm.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked impulsively.

“At that old fellow’s down by the postoffice. Three dollars,” he added, with some pride.

His host examined and fondled the ring with the gentle touch of a connoisseur. Then he sighed:

“That’s the way it goes,” he said at last almost scowling. “I’ve been snooping around desert towns and Indian camps nearly six years, keepin’ my eye open for one of these, and I never saw one till this minute. Where I’ve been rakin’ with a fine-tooth comb,” he added, changing his smile to a scowl, “you stumble over the thing I can’t find.”

“Why,” exclaimed Roy, jumping up and taking another look at the ring, “what is it? I just—”

“That,” broke in Mr. Cook, “is the rarest speciment of Navajo metal work that you can find. And that stone—you won’t see its like in Tiffany’s. No matrix there—the true turquoise. As for the copper—well, look at it!”

He held it off and feasted his eyes on it as if it had been of gold and diamonds.

“I’ve heard of two others,” the absorbed enthusiast went on. “There isn’t any way to gauge its value. Colonel Oje, of Dolores, has one. You couldn’t buy it. He got it out of a religious Khiva down on the Tunit-Cha Mountains. He says it’s older than the Aztecs.”

Roy looked at the ring with new interest. Then he reached out and taking hold of it, slipped it upon Mr. Cook’s third finger. It fitted perfectly.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said as he settled back into his chair and dropped his head upon his arms on the chair back. “I hoped you would. I bought it for you.”

Mr. Cook looked at him with sudden intenseness. Then his face relaxed into a good natured laugh.

“You are a li—a prevaricator,” he said.

“Only a little,” laughed Roy in reply. “I really bought it for myself. But it’s yours now.”

Mr. Cook sat down, twisted the jewel on his finger a moment, and then said:

“Do you really want me to take it?”

“It’ll give me more pleasure than to own it myself.”

“Are you sure you don’t want it?”

“Of course, I want it. I wouldn’t give it to you if I didn’t. It’s my greatest joy to give people things I want myself. That’s how I show them how much I care for them. I may never have a better chance to show you how glad I am that I came to know you.”

Mr. Cook was silent for a moment. Then, with a little huskiness in his voice, he said:

“That’s more to me than the ring, and that’s saying a good deal. I’m goin’ to take it. I won’t thank you. I’ll just say, for what you’ve said, I’m glad. I hope I deserve it.”

At noon the next day, in the corral back of the Company office, six sworn citizens of Bluff met and held formal inquest on the blanket-covered body of Mike Hassell. Perhaps a hundred men were present—all standing. Joe Ullmacher identified the body, and added, without being questioned and at some length, that the deceased had stolen six twenty-dollar gold pieces from his bar till.

“Hyar they air,” exclaimed Marshal Wooley tersely at the end of the witness’ harangue. “I got ’em outten his belt.”

Roy was then called as a witness. The formality of swearing him was not observed. At Mr. Cook’s suggestion, the boy told truthfully and in detail what had taken place. At the end of his testimony the jury stepped aside and almost immediately reached a verdict. The postmaster, Al Christian, was foreman. Mr. Christian removed his hat, cleared his throat and faced the crowd. Moved by his example, many of those present also solemnly removed their hats.

“We, the jury settin’ on the case o’ Mike Hassell, now layin’ dead afore us, hevin’ heard the evidence an’ duly considered it, hev reached the followin’ verdic’, to wit: That the deceased kem to his death at the hands o’ our respected citizen Colonel R. C. Cook, which same was justifiable suicide—”

“Homicide,” whispered two or three jurors at once.

“Homicide,” corrected Foreman Christian, “an’ that the said Colonel Cook didn’t shoot none too quick.”