“You bet he is.”  West laughed reminiscently.  “Lemme tell you how I first met him.”  He told the story of how Dave had handled the stock shipment for him years before.

Horace Graham nodded shrewdly.  “Exactly the way I had him sized up till I began investigating him.  Well, let’s hear the rest.  What more do you know about him?”

The Albuquerque man told the other of Dave’s conviction, of how he had educated himself in the penitentiary, of his return home and subsequent adventures there.

“There’s a man back there in the Pullman knows him like he was his own son, a straight man, none better in this Western country,” West concluded.

“Who is he?”

“Emerson Crawford of the D Bar Lazy R ranch.”

“I’ve heard of him.  He’s in this Jackpot company too, isn’t he?”

“He’s president of it.  If he says the company’s right, then it’s right.”

“Bring him in to me.”

West reported to his friends, a large smile on his wrinkled face.  “I got him goin’ south, boys.  Come along, Em, it’s up to you now.”

The big financier took one comprehensive look at Emerson Crawford and did not need any letter of recommendation.  A vigorous honesty spoke in the strong hand-grip, the genial smile, the level, steady eyes.

“Tell me about this young desperado you gentlemen are trying to saw off on me,” Graham directed, meeting the smile with another and offering cigars to his guests.

Crawford told him.  He began with the story of the time Sanders and Hart had saved him from the house of his enemy into which he had been betrayed.  He related how the boy had pursued the men who stole his pinto and the reasoning which had led him to take it without process of law.  He told the true story of the killing, of the young fellow’s conviction, of his attempt to hold a job in Denver without concealing his past, and of his busy week since returning to Malapi.

“All I’ve got to say is that I hope my boy will grow up to be as good a man as Dave Sanders,” the cattleman finished, and he turned over to Graham a copy of the findings of the Pardon Board, of the pardon, and of the newspapers containing an account of the affair with a review of the causes that had led to the miscarriage of justice.

“Now about your Jackpot Company.  What do you figure as the daily output of the gusher?” asked Graham.

“Don’t know.  It’s a whale of a well.  Seems to have tapped a great lake of oil half a mile underground.  My driller Burns figures it at from twenty to thirty thousand barrels a day.  I cayn’t even guess, because I know so blamed little about oil.”

Graham looked out of the window at the rushing landscape and tapped on the table with his finger-tips absentmindedly.  Presently he announced a decision crisply.

“If you’ll leave your papers here I’ll look them over and let you know what I’ll do.  When I’m ready I’ll send McMurray forward to you.”