Dave helped himself to bread from a plate stacked high with thick slices.  He buttered it and began to eat.  Hart did the same.  At Delmonico’s nobody ever waited till the meal was served.  Just about to attack a second slice, Dave stopped to stare at his companion.  Hart was looking past his shoulder with alert intentness.  Dave turned his head.  Two men, leaving the restaurant, were paying the cashier.

“They just stepped outa that booth to the right,” whispered Bob.

The men were George Doble and a cowpuncher known as Shorty, a broad, heavy-set little man who worked for Bradley Steelman, owner of the Rocking Horse Ranch, what time he was not engaged on nefarious business of his own.  He was wearing a Chihuahua hat and leather chaps with silver conchas.

At this moment Hop Lee arrived with dinner.

Dave sighed as he grinned at his friend.  “I need that supper in my system.  I sure do, but I reckon I don’t get it.”

“You do not, old lizard,” agreed Hart.  “I’ll say Doble’s the most inconsiderate guy I ever did trail.  Why couldn’t he ‘a’ showed up a half-hour later, dad gum his ornery hide?”

They paid their bill and passed into the street.  Immediately the sound of a clear, high voice arrested their attention.  It vibrated indignation and dread.

“What have you done with my father?” came sharply to them on the wings of the soft night wind.

A young woman was speaking.  She was in a buggy and was talking to two men on the sidewalk—­the two men who had preceded the range-riders out of the restaurant.

“Why, Miss, we ain’t done a thing to him—­nothin’ a-tall.”  The man Shorty was speaking, and in a tone of honeyed conciliation.  It was quite plain he did not want a scene on the street.

“That’s a lie.”  The voice of the girl broke for an instant to a sob.  “Do you think I don’t know you’re Brad Steelman’s handy man, that you do his meanness for him when he snaps his fingers?”

“You sure do click yore heels mighty loud, Miss.”  Dave caught in that soft answer the purr of malice.  He remembered now hearing from Buck Byington that years ago Emerson Crawford had rounded up evidence to send Shorty to the penitentiary for rebranding through a blanket.  “I reckon you come by it honest.  Em always acted like he was God Almighty.”

“Where is he?  What’s become of him?” she cried.

“Is yore paw missin’?  I’m right sorry to hear that,” the cowpuncher countered with suave irony.  He was eager to be gone.  His glance followed Doble, who was moving slowly down the street.

The girl’s face, white and shining in the moonlight, leaned out of the buggy toward the retreating vaquero.  “Don’t you dare hurt my father!  Don’t you dare!” she warned.  The words choked in her tense throat.

Shorty continued to back away.  “You’re excited, Miss.  You go home an’ think it over reasonable.  You’ll be sorry you talked this away to me,” he said with unctuous virtue.  Then, swiftly, he turned and went straddling down the walk, his spurs jingling music as he moved.