Morning found him descending from a mountain pass to the Ruidosa.

“Breakfast soon, you wall-faced old Piute,” Jim told his mount.  “You’re sure a weary caballo, but we got to keep hitting the trail till we cross that hogback.”

A thin film of smoke rose from a little valley to the left.  Clanton drew up abruptly.  He had no desire to meet now any strangers whose intentions had not been announced.

Swiftly, with a pantherish smoothness of motion, he slid from the cowpony and moved to the edge of a bluff that looked down into the arroyo below.  He crept forward and peered through a clump of cactus growing at the edge of the escarpment.

The camp-fire was at the very foot of the bluff.  A man was stooped over it cooking breakfast.

The heart of the fugitive lost a beat, then raced wildly.  The camper was Devil Dave Roush.  A rifle lay beside him.  His revolver was in a cartridge belt that had been tossed on a boulder within reach of his hand.

Clanton wriggled back without a sound from the edge of the cliff and rose to his feet.  A savage light of triumph blazed in his eyes.  The enemy for whom he had long sought was delivered into his hands.  He ran back to the bronco and untied the reata from the tientos.  Deftly he coiled the rope and adjusted the loop to suit him.  Again he stole to the rim rock and waited with the stealthy, deadly patience of the crouched cougar.

Roush rose.  His arms fell to his sides.  Instantly the rope dropped, uncoiling as it flew.  With perfect accuracy the loop descended upon its victim and tightened about his waist, pinning the arms close to the body.

Clanton, hauled in the rawhide swiftly.  Dragged from his feet, Roush could make no resistance.  Before he could gather his startled wits, he found himself dangling in midair against the face of the rock wall.

The man above fastened the end of the rope to the roots of a scrub oak and ran down the slope at full speed.  In less than half a minute he was standing breathless in front of his prisoner.

Already shaken with dread, Roush gave way to panic fear at sight of him.

“Goddlemighty!  It’s Clanton!” he cried.

Jim buckled on the belt and appropriated the rifle.  His grim face told Roush all he needed to know.

There had been a time when Roush, full of physical life and energy, had boasted that he feared no living man.  In his cups he still bragged of his bad record, of his accuracy as a gunman, of his gameness.  But he knew, and his associates suspected, that Devil Dave had long since drunk up his courage.  His nerves were jumpy and his heart bad.  Now he begged for his life abjectly.  If he had been free from the rope that held him dangling against the wall, he would have crawled like a whipped cur to the feet of his enemy.

At a glance Clanton saw Roush had been camping alone.  The hobbled horse, the blankets, the breakfast dishes, all told him this.  But he took no chances.  First he saddled the horse and brought it close to the camp-fire.  When he sat down to eat the breakfast the rustler had cooked, it was with his back to the bluff and the rifle across his knees.