“Boss, I’m confidin’ what I want kept under your hat,” said Wade, quietly.  “I knew Smith.  He’s as bad as the West makes them.  I gave him that scar....  An’ when he sees me he’s goin’ for his gun.”

“Wal, I’ll be darned!  Doesn’t surprise me.  It’s a small world....  Wade, I’ll keep my mouth shut, sure.  But what’s your game?”

“Lewis an’ I will find out if there is any connection between Smith an’ this gang of strangers—­an’ the occasional loss of a few head of stock.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, you have my good will, you bet....  Sure thar’s been some rustlin’ of cattle.  Not enough to make any rancher holler, an’ I reckon there never will be any more of thet in Colorado.  Still, if we get the drop on some outfit we sure ought to corral them.”

“Boss, I’m tellin’ you—­”

“Wade, you ain’t agoin’ to start thet tellin’ hell-bent happenin’s to come hyar at White Slides?” interrupted Belllounds, plaintively.

“No, I reckon I’ve no hunch like that now,” responded Wade, seriously.  “But I was about to say that if Smith is in on any rustlin’ of cattle he’ll be hard to catch, an’ if he’s caught there’ll be shootin’ to pay.  He’s cunnin’ an’ has had long experience.  It’s not likely he’d work openly, as he did years ago.  If he’s stealin’ stock or buyin’ an’ sellin’ stock that some one steals for him, it’s only on a small scale, an’ it’ll be hard to trace.”

“Wal, he might be deep,” said Belllounds, reflectively.  “But men like thet, no matter how deep or cunnin’ they are, always come to a bad end.  Jest works out natural....  Had you any grudge ag’in’ Smith?”

“What I give him was for somebody else, an’ was sure little enough.  He’s got the grudge against me.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, then, don’t you go huntin’ fer trouble.  Try an’ make White Slides one place thet’ll disprove your name.  All the same, don’t shy at sight of anythin’ suspicious round the ranch.”

The old man plodded thoughtfully away, leaving the hunter likewise in a brown study.

“He’s gettin’ a hunch that I’ll tell him of some shadow hoverin’ black over White Slides,” soliloquized Wade.  “Maybe—­maybe so.  But I don’t see any yet....  Strange how a man will say what he didn’t start out to say.  Now, I started to tell him about that amazin’ dog Fox.”

Fox was the great dog of the whole pack, and he had been absolutely overlooked, which fact Wade regarded with contempt for himself.  Discovery of this particular dog came about by accident.  Somewhere in the big corral there was a hole where the smaller dogs could escape, but Wade had been unable to find it.  For that matter the corral was full of holes, not any of which, however, it appeared to Wade, would permit anything except a squirrel to pass in and out.

One day when the hunter, very much exasperated, was prowling around and around inside the corral, searching for this mysterious vent, a rather small dog, with short gray and brown woolly hair, and shaggy brows half hiding big, bright eyes, came up wagging his stump of a tail.