Yet he grinned and waved a greeting.  “How!” he said, as though he were meeting an old friend.

Corliss nodded briefly.  He sat gazing at Fadeaway with an unreadable expression.

“Got the lock-jaw?” queried Fadeaway, his pretended heartiness vanishing.

Corliss allowed himself to smile, a very little.  “You better ride back with me,” he said, quietly.

Fadeaway laughed.  “I’m takin’ orders from the Blue, these days,” he said.  “Mebby you forgot.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“And I’m headed for the Blue,” continued the cowboy.  “Goin’ my way?”

“You’re on the wrong trail,” asserted Corliss.  “You’ve been riding the wrong trail ever since you left the Concho.”

“Uhuh.  Well, I been keepin’ clear of the sheep camps, at that.”

“Don’t know about that,” said Corliss, easily.

Fadeaway was too shrewd to have recourse to his gun.  He knew that Corliss was the quicker man, and he realized that, even should he get the better of a six-gun argument, the ultimate result would be outlawry and perhaps death.  He wanted to get away from that steady, heart-searching gaze that held him.

“Sheep business is lookin’ up,” he said, with an attempt at jocularity.

“We’ll ride back and have a talk with Loring,” said Corliss.  “Some one put a band of his sheep into the canon, not two hours ago.  Maybe you know something about it.”

“Me?  What you dreaming anyhow?”

“I’m not.  It looks like your work.”

“So you’re tryin’ to hang somethin’ onto me, eh?  Well, you want to call around early—­you’re late.”

“No, I’m the first one on the job.  Did you stampede Loring’s sheep?”

“Did I stampede the love-makin’?” sneered Fadeaway.

Corliss shortened rein and drew close to the cowboy.

“Just explain that,” he said.

“Oh, I don’ know.  You the boss of creation?”

Corliss’s lips hardened.  He let his quirt slip butt-first through his hand and grasped the lash.  Fadeaway’s hand slipped to his holster.  Before he could pull his gun, Corliss swung the quirt.  The blow caught Fadeaway just below the brim of his hat.  He wavered and grabbed at the saddle-horn.  As Corliss again swung his quirt, the cowboy jerked out his gun and brought it down on the rancher’s head.  Corliss dropped from the saddle.  Fadeaway rode around and covered him.  Corliss’s hat lay a few feet from where he had fallen.  Beneath his head a dark ooze spread a hand’s-breadth on the trail.  The cowboy dismounted and bent over him.  “He’s sportin’ a dam’ good hat,” he said, “or that would ‘a’ fixed him.  Guess he’ll be good for a spell.”  Then he reached for his stirrup, mounted, and loped up the trail.

Old Fernando, having excused himself on some pretext when Corliss rode into the camp that morning, returned to find Corliss gone and Nell Loring strangely grave and white.  She nodded as he spoke to her and pointed toward the mesa.  “Carlos—­is out—­looking for the sheep,” she said, her lips trembling.  “He says some one stampeded them—­run them into the canon.”