“Thanks.  I bought this horse—­and I happen to know Senator Brown.”

“No offense, stranger.  If I’d ‘a’ suspicioned you’d stole that horse, you wouldn’t take him out of here.  Like I said to Cheyenne, last week; he could fetch a whole carload of stock in here and take ’em out again without trouble.  He was tellin’ me how he lost his horses, and we got to talkin’ about some folks bein’ blind when they’re facin’ a brand on a critter.  Mebby you heard tell of Cheyenne Hastings?”

“I have traveled with him.  You say he stopped here a few days ago?”

“Well, not just stopped; he kind of looked in to see how I was gettin’ along.  He acted queerlike, for him.  I’ve knowed Cheyenne for years.  Said he was feelin’ all right.  He ast me if I’d seen Panhandle Sears down this way, recent.  Seemed kind of disappointed when I told him no.  Cheyenne used to be a right-smart man, before he had trouble with that woman of his.”

“Yes?  He told me about it,” said Bartley, not caring to hear any more of the details of Cheyenne’s trouble.

“’Most everybody knows it,” stated the smith.  “And if I was Sears I’d sure leave this country.”

“So should I. I’ve seen Cheyenne handle a gun.”

“You got the right idea!” exclaimed the blacksmith, evidently pleased.  “All Cheyenne’s friends have been waitin’ for years for him to clean that slate and start fresh again.  He used to be a right-smart hand, before he had trouble.”

The blacksmith accompanied his conversation with considerable elbow motion and the rattle and clang of shaping horseshoes.  Presently Dobe was new shod and ready for the road.  Bartley paid the smith, thanked him for a good job, and rode south.  Evidently Cheyenne’s open quarrel with Sears was the talk of the countryside.  It was expected of Cheyenne that he would “clean the slate and start fresh” some day.  And cleaning the slate meant killing Sears.  To Bartley it seemed strange that any one should be pleased with the idea of one man killing another deliberately.

In speaking of the recent horse-stealings, the blacksmith had mentioned no names.  But Bartley at once drew the conclusion that it had been Sneed’s men who had run off the Senator’s horses.  Sneed was known to be a horse-thief.  He had never been convicted, although he had been arrested and tried several times.  It was also known that Senator Steve had openly vowed that he would rid the country of Sneed, sooner or later.

Several times, during his journey south, Bartley was questioned, but never interfered with.  Thus far he heard of Cheyenne occasionally, but, nearing Phoenix, he lost track of his erstwhile companion.  However, he took it for granted that Phoenix had been Cheyenne’s destination.  And Bartley wanted to see the town for himself, in any event.

* * * * *

Cheyenne, arriving in Phoenix, stabled his horses at the Top-Notch livery, and took a room for himself directly opposite the Hole-in-the-Wall gambling-house.  He refused to drink with the occasional acquaintance he met, not because he did not like liquor, but because Colonel Stevenson, the city marshal, had told him that Panhandle Sears and his friends were in town.