The Brander company.

A flicker of Sanderson’s eyelids was all the emotion he betrayed to Williams.  The latter looked at him admiringly.

“By George,” he said, “you take it like a major!  In your shoes I’d get off my nag and claw up the scenery!”

Sanderson smiled.  After telling the engineer to do as much as he could without the material, he rode on.

He had betrayed no emotion in the presence of Williams, but he was seething with passion.

Late the next afternoon he joined Carter and the outfit.  The men had made good use of their time, and when Sanderson arrived, the entire herd of cattle was massed on a broad level near the river.  They were milling impatiently, for the round-up had just been completed, and they were nervous over the unusual activity.

The cowboys, bronzed, lean, and capable, were guarding the herd, riding slowly around the fringe of tossing horns, tired, dusty, but singing their quaint songs.

Carter had sent the cook back to the ranchhouse during the afternoon to obtain supplies; and now the chuck wagon, with bulging sides, was standing near a fire at which the cook himself was preparing supper.

Carter grinned as Sanderson rode up.

“All ready!” he declared.  “We sure did hump ourselves!”

Around the camp fire that night Sanderson was moody and taciturn.  He had stretched out on his blanket and lay listening to the men until one by one they dropped off to sleep.

Sanderson’s thoughts were bitter.  He felt the constricting influence of his enemies; he was like the herd of cattle that his men had rounded up that day, for little by little Silverthorn, Dale, and Maison were cutting down his area of freedom and of action, were hampering him on all sides, and driving him to a point where he would discover resistance to be practically useless.

He had thought in the beginning that he could devise some way to escape the meshes of the net that was being thrown around him, but he was beginning to realize that he had underestimated the power and the resources of his enemies.

Maison and Silverthorn he knew were mere tentacles of the capital they represented; it was their business to reach out, searching for victims, in order to draw them in and drain from them the last vestige of wealth.

And Sanderson had no doubt that they did that work impersonally and without feeling, not caring, and perhaps not understanding the tortures of a system—­of a soulless organization seeking only financial gain.

Dale, however, was intensely human and individualistic.  He was not as subtle nor as smooth as his confederates.  And money was not the only incentive which would drive him to commit crime.  He was a gross sensualist, unprincipled and ruthless, and Sanderson’s hatred of him was beginning to overshadow every other consideration.

Sanderson went to sleep with his bitter thoughts, which were tempered with a memory of the gentle girl at whom the evil agencies of his enemies were directed.  They were eager to get possession of Mary Bransford’s property, but their real fight would be, and was, against him.