snarled. An echo ripped the shimmering heat. A horse reared and plunged
up the valley, the saddle empty.

Waring rose, and plodded up the slope.

"Three would have trailed us. Two will ride back to the railroad and
report. I wonder how many of them are bushed along the trail between
here and Nogales?"

In the American custom-house at Nogales sat a lean, lank man gazing out
of a window facing the south. His chair was tilted back, and his large
feet were crossed on the desk in front of him. He was in his
shirt-sleeves, and he puffed indolently at a cigar and blew smoke-rings
toward the ceiling. Incidentally his name was known throughout the
country and beyond its southern borders. But if this distinction
affected him in any way it was not evident. He seemed submerged in a
lassitude which he neither invited nor struggled against.

A group of riders appeared down the road. The lean man brushed a cloud
of smoke away and gazed at them with indifference. They drew nearer. He
saw that they were Mexicans--rurales. Without turning his head, he
called to an invisible somebody in the next room.

"Jack, drift over to the cantina and get a drink."

A chair clumped to the floor, and a stocky, dark-faced man appeared,
rubbing his eyes. "On who?" he queried, grinning.

"On old man Diaz," replied the lean man.