For, though he did not go near the cliff caves, he knew that the rifles still lay there awaiting Jim Galloway’s readiness.  A man named Bucky Walsh was prospecting for gold upon the slopes of Mt.  Temple, a silent, leather-faced little fellow, quick-eyed and resourceful.  And, above the discovery of color, it was the supreme business of Bucky Walsh to know what happened upon the cliffs above him.  If there were anything to report no man knew better than he how to get out of a horse all there was of speed in him.

In the end Norton called upon the reserves of his patience, saying to himself that if Jim Galloway could bide his time in calmness he could do the same.  The easier since he was unshaken in his confidence that the time was coming when he and Galloway would stand face to face while guns talked.  Never once did he let himself hope for another ending.

Giving what time he had free to ranch matters at Las Flores the sheriff found other things to occupy him.  There was a gamblers’ fight one night at the camp at Las Palmas mines, a man badly hurt, an ill-starred bystander dead, the careless gunman a fugitive, headed for the border.  Norton went out after him, shifted saddle from jaded beast to fresh again and again, rode two hundred miles with only the short stops for hastily taken food and water and got his man willy-nilly a mile below the border.  What was more, he made it his personal business that the man was convicted and sentenced to a long term; about San Juan there was no crime less tolerable than that of “shooting wild.”

But all this brought him no closer to Jim Galloway; Galloway, meeting him shortly afterward in San Juan, laughed and thanked him for the job.  It appeared that the man whom Norton had brought back to stand trial was not only no friend of the proprietor of the Casa Blanca, but an out-spoken enemy.

“You’ll be asking favors of me next, Norton,” grinned the big, thick-bodied man.  “I’d pay you real money for getting a few like him out of my way.  Get me, don’t you?” and he passed on, his eyes turned tauntingly.

Yes, Norton “got” him.  No man in the southwest harbored more bitter ill-will for the lawless than Jim Galloway . . . unless the lawless stood in with him.  Aforetime many a hardy, tempestuous spirit had defied the crime-dictator; here of late they were few who hoped to slit throats or cut purses and not pay allegiance to the saloon-keeper of San Juan.

Upon the heels of this affair, however, came another which was destined to bring Roderick Norton to a crisis in his life.  Word reached him at Las Flores that a lone prospector in the Red Hills had been robbed of a baking-powder tin of dust and that the prospector, recovering from the blows which had been rained on his head, had identified one of his two assailants.  That one was Vidal Nunez; circumstances hinted that the other well might be Kid Rickard.

Norton promptly instructed Tom Cutter to find out what he could of Rickard’s movements upon the day of the robbery, and himself set out to bring in Vidal Nunez, taking a grim joy in his task when he remembered how Nunez had been the man who, with a glance, had cautioned Antone to hold his tongue after the shooting of Bisbee at the Casa Blanca.