demolishing a steak smothered in onions, came Pedro Menendez with a strange st

utte, out in the rim-rock country, and there was this wound in the back of his head. That was all. Pedro became vague at once

t they wanted to tell and no more. He accepted the news gi

t Pedro's tale changed his mind. Captain Ellison was at Austin, Lieutenant Hawley at Tascosa. Regretfully Roberts gave u

te, yellow, purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms. The white, lilylike flowers of the Spanish bayonet flaunted the

ade a last stand against an overwhelming force of an enemy tribe. It was a flat mesa rising sharply as a

ed him to expect. He moved toward it very carefully, in order not to obliterate any footprints. The body lay face down in a huddled heap, one hand with outst

y. The face was crushed and one of the arms broken. It was an easy guess

quicken to the hunt. His alert eyes narrowed in concentration. His fingertips, as he crept forward, touched the sand

record of guilt. Some one had come here and looked at the dead body. Why? To make sure that the

r led from it. On that one impressionable spot alone

or nothing. He knew that if he were patient

. It brought him to a stretch of soft ground at the edge of a wash. The foot

heel, the beveled edge of the toe-cap-all these fastened themselves in his memory. With a tape-line he measured minutely the length of the whole foot, of the sole and

probably the bullet had been fired from a revolver. In that case the man who did it would have made sure by standing close behind his victim. This would have left powder-marks, and there had been none around the wound. The chances were that the shoot

body who might have been hidden there. But Jack picked up something that was in its way as decisive as what he had been seeking. It was a cartridge that ha

sure whether there were three or four. From that spot he back-tracked for miles along the edge of the rim-

Texas more than six or eight months, and he could not have made many enemies. If he had nothing about him worth

ws, either of which might serve as a cause for the murder: Young Wadley had quarreled with Tony Alviro at a dance and

that he would like to

, but was named from the year it was got out. Its ca