Eliminating this possibility, there remained—­Dug Doble.  Had Dug fired the brush while his companion was saddling for the start?  The more Shorty considered this possibility, the greater force it acquired in his mind.  Dug’s hatred of Crawford, Hart, and especially Sanders would be satiated in part at least if he could wipe their oil bonanza from the map.  The wind had been right.  Doble was no fool.  He knew that if the fire ran wild in the chaparral only a miracle could save the Jackpot reservoirs and plant from destruction.

Other evidence accumulated.  Cryptic remarks of Doble made during the day.  His anxiety to see Steelman immediately.  A certain manner of ill-repressed triumph whenever he mentioned Sanders or Crawford.  These bolstered Shorty’s growing opinion that the man had deliberately fired the chaparral from a spirit of revenge.

Shorty was an outlaw and a bad man.  He had killed, and might at any time kill again.  To save the Jackpot from destruction he would not have made a turn of the hand.  But Shorty was a cattleman.  He had been brought up in the saddle and had known the whine of the lariat and the dust of the drag drive all his days.  Every man has his code.  Three things stood out in that of Shorty.  He was loyal to the hand that paid him, he stood by his pals, and he believed in and after his own fashion loved cattle and the life of which they were the central fact.  To destroy the range feed wantonly was a crime so nefarious that he could not believe Doble guilty of it.  And yet—­

He could not let the matter lie in doubt.  He left the tendejon and rode to Steelman’s house.  Before entering he examined carefully both of his long-barreled forty-fives.  He made sure that the six-shooters were in perfect order and that they rested free in the holsters.  That sixth sense acquired by “bad men,” by means of which they sniff danger when it is close, was telling him that smoke would rise before he left the house.

He stepped to the porch and knocked.  There came a moment’s silence, a low-pitched murmur of whispering voices carried through an open window, the shuffling of feet.  The door was opened by Brad Steelman.  He was alone in the room.

“Where’s Dug?” asked Shorty bluntly.

“Why, Dug—­why, he’s here, Shorty.  Didn’t know it was you.  ’Lowed it might be some one else.  So he stepped into another room.”

The short cowpuncher walked in and closed the door behind him.  He stood with his back to it, facing the other door of the room.

“Did you hire Dug to fire the chaparral?” he asked, his voice ominously quiet.

A flicker of fear shot to the eyes of the oil promoter.  He recognized signs of peril and his heart was drenched with an icy chill.  Shorty was going to turn on him, had become a menace.

“I—­I dunno what you mean,” he quavered.  “I’ll call Dug if you wanta see him.”  He began to shuffle toward the inner room.