[Pg 4]

It was from behind their loopholed walls that the Scarboroughs watched the trail, to cut off such chance travelers as he, and as the prisoner climbed up his lip curled scornfully at the sight of their elaborate precautions. In spite of their bluster something still seemed to tell him that they were not as bad as they looked; although often, as he knew, the most hideous crimes have been committed by cravens at heart. They entered a low door and passed on from room to room until at last he was thrust into a dark and noisome space and bound with his back against a post.

It was one of those black holes which the cliff-dwellers themselves had apparently used as a prison and against the square of light which poured in from above he saw the heavy lattice of bars. Wooden bars, and something else—and as he looked again he saw the sinister outlines of a loop. It hung from a beam like the slack body of a snake, and there was a hangman's knot on the end!

"Now," began Isham Scarborough, "perhaps you can talk. You ain't the first Sorry horse-thief that has tried to hold out on us, but they danged sure talked—or hung. So you never even heard of the Sorry Blacks?"

"No, I never did," answered the prisoner stoutly, and Isham shook down the loop.

[Pg 5]

[Pg 5]

"Say, now listen," he warned, "we know doggoned well that you ain't no friend of ours. We're from Texas, see, and back where we come from no white man rides a saddle like that. So you're ditched at the start by that center-fire rigging and the danged fresh way you've got, but before we stretch your neck we'll give you a chance to tell where you got that horse."

He paused and opened up the hangman's loop, and the prisoner found his tongue.

"I bought him in Bowie," he declared in a passion, "and I've got the bill of sale in my pocket. But I swear I never heard of the Blacks in my life—and I don't know what you're talking about."

"Well, the Bassett gang, then!" broke in Red Scarborough roughly, "ain't you never heerd tell of the Dirty Black Bassetts? Well, that's the outfit we're talking about!"

"Well, why didn't you say so?" demanded the prisoner resentfully. "Of course I've heard of the Bassetts. But is that any reason for holding a man up and threatening to hang him for a horse-thief? You must be some of the Scarboroughs, but they 

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