Fred turned and looked full in the handsome face of the fellow beside him.

“It strikes me that you are showing little faith in your own words.  Why do you remain where you are a marked man when there is no need of it, and where your personal danger is certainly as great as mine?”

This argumentum ad hominem was so unexpected that Sterry was embarrassed for the moment, but found voice to reply: 

“I have no mother and sister dependent on me, as you have.”

“But you have brothers, sisters, father and mother, and therefore the more to mourn if you should fall.  The fact is, Mont, I feel that it is a duty you owe to them to give up the dangerous calling you have adopted.  You not only do not need it, but are squandering time that ought to be given to the study of your profession, and you have become so feared and hated by the rustlers that they will go to any length to ‘remove’ you.”

“The more cause, therefore, why I should stay,” responded the other.

“A poor argument—­”

The discussion was interrupted by the sound of a horse’s hoofs.  Some one was riding toward them on a gallop, and speedily loomed to view in the bright moonlight.  The three instinctively ceased speaking and gazed curiously at the horseman, who reined up in front of where they were sitting.

Hospitality is limitless in the West, and, before the stranger had halted, Fred Whitney rose from his chair and walked forward to welcome him.

The man was in the costume of a cowboy, with rifle, revolver and all the paraphernalia of the craft.

“Is your name Whitney?” asked the horseman, speaking first.

“It is; what can I do for you?”

“Do you know Mont Sterry?”

“He is a particular friend of mine,” replied Whitney, refraining from adding that he was the young man sitting a few paces away with his sister and hearing every word said.

“Well, there’s a letter for him; if I knew where to find him I would deliver it myself.  Will you hand it to him the next time you meet him?”

As he spoke he leaned forward from his saddle and handed a sealed envelope to Fred Whitney, who remarked, as he accepted it: 

“I will do as you wish; I expect to see him soon; won’t you dismount and stay over night with us?”

“No; I have business elsewhere,” was the curt answer, as the fellow wheeled and spurred off on a gallop.

Budd Hankinson and Grizzly Weber, the two hired men, were absent, looking after the cattle, for the rustler is a night hawk who often gets in the best part of his work between the set and rise of sun.

Mrs. Whitney was sitting in the gloom, alone in her sorrow.  Jennie wished to stay with her, but the mother gently refused, saying she preferred to have none with her.  No light was burning in the building, and that night the weather was unusually mild.

Mont Sterry accepted the paper from the hand of his friend and remarked, with a smile: