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10 VAL OF PARADISE

bunch-grass plain that lay between her and the railroad - the railroad that would never come nearer—and they still carried a slender freight of gold, still brought back supplies. For Santa Leandra, though seemingly of the past, was very much of the present.

On this particular day the life of the one street was gathered at the rack before Hunnewell's store where a bunch of horses were tied. They were good horses, all—lean, hard-ridden chaps, but in the pink of fitness, and most of them belonged in the place. The men who lived in this wild land were more than half horse, and wherever one was, there would his mount be also.

For a game was running at Hunnewell's and had run since the night before. One of those horses at the rack belonged to Brideman who rode alone, and when he struck town there was always play worth while at Hunnewell's. Brideman carried gold always, and though that was no rare thing, it was forever worth the taking.

But it took a good one to take it from Brideman in all truth—usually Corey who lived in the big stone house at the north end of the street, or Sanchez who came in from the Outskirts.

Both of these were at the table now, along with Tait and Hunnewell himself and several cowboys in chaps and sombreros, with their six-shooters hanging low at their lean hips. For that matter every man in the place carried a gun, after the custom of the region. Tait, there, was known in a