The Husky — Hero of the Arctic

The Husky — Hero of the Arctic

Laurie York Erskine

Author of "Renfrew of the Mounted"

Condensed from National Home Monthly (January, '50). copyright 1949 by Home Pub. Co., Ltd., 25 Richmond St., W., Toronto 1, Canada Digital format by Doug Frizzle, June 2008.

His boundless vitality and unstinted devotion make habitation possible in the Far North

The Eskimo sled-dog, commonly called the Husky, is one of the hardiest animals on earth, yet no other breed of dog has perished in such great numbers in the service of mankind.

Until recent years the Husky provided the only means of overland transportation throughout the two million square miles of North America that stretch from the 60th parallel to within 500 miles of the North Pole; and in the largest part of that area he is still man's sole means of locomotion. Without the Husky, explorers, pioneer traders, prospectors and engineers could never have developed the rich fur and mineral resources of the North. Today doctors, missionaries and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police still depend almost entirely on dog-team transportation.

Among the first necessities flown in to the chain of weather stations now being jointly maintained by the United States and Canada in the Arctic were teams of sled-dogs, so that the weather crews can hunt fresh meat and reach help if they need it. This dog is called a Husky not because of unusual strength but because early traders coined the name as a short form of the word Eskimo. Today it is loosely applied to any kind of dog that draws a sled, but it rightly belongs to only three breeds: the Malemute of western Alaska; the Siberian Husky, which was brought to this continent by the Russians when they occupied Alaska; and the pure strain of the original breed which lives in northern Canada.

A typical Husky of this original breed stands about 25 inches high and is about 44 inches long from the tip of his nose to the base of his bushy tail, which curls proudly over his back. His weight ranges from 60 to 100 pounds. The female is slightly smaller and lighter, but both are built for hard pulling, with deep wide chests, thick muscular necks and iron-hard legs. Their toughly padded feet can take punishment on jagged rock and broken ice that would split the hoofs of a horse.

The Husky's coat is a dense growth of coarse hair four to six inches long. Under it is another coat of oily wool two or three inches thick. This double covering enables the Husky to endure great cold, even 50 degrees below zero, without the need of shelter.

The true Husky never barks, but gives an eerie, long-drawn howl which, combined with his shaggy coat, sharp face and slanting black eyes, makes people think he is a domesticated wolf or a half-breed "wolf-dog." Actually, although the wolf and the Husky spring from the same family tree, they branched off in different directions thousands of years ago. Today the wolf is the Husky's bitter enemy. So great is this aversion that, even when starving, the dog won't eat wolf flesh.

However, Huskies will mate with wolves. Sometimes a wolf bitch will lure a male dog to break away and follow her; but she always leads him back to the wolf pack, which promptly kills him. The female Husky is more fortunate. If male wolves court her, they invariably let her return to camp unharmed.

A Husky may come into the world at any time of the year as one of a litter of from six to eight pups. In winter the mother pulls her weight in the traces up to the day her puppies are born, and from her warm body they emerge into a temperature that hovers between 20 and 60 degrees below zero. As a rule the Eskimo will build the mother a snow kennel in which she can nurse her brood. If she must nest in the snow only a few of her litter survive.

Most Huskies pull a great deal more than their own weight. Loaded for the start of a trip, the average Eskimo sled weighs about 1100 pounds, and is usually drawn by a team of from 12 to 15 dogs. As long as he can move from one good hunting ground to another the nomadic Eskimo lives well. If he cannot move, he perishes, so his life depends on the faithfulness and efficiency of his dogs. He will seldom part with them at any price, and will frequently risk his life for them. Many an Eskimo has died trying to free his dogs when thin ice has broken under a heavy sled.

The Eskimo trains the pups by putting them, one or two at a time, into a team of veterans. The rookie pup will be about eight months old, and he finds that the seasoned old-timers are tough teachers. For years they have toiled together as a team, but all will fight like a flash for a lion's share of the food, and they carry on an unending competition for the favors of the females.

This hard-bitten crew is harnessed to the sled in what is known as the "fan hitch." From the front of the sled runs a stout walrus- or seal-hide pull-rope about six feet long. Each dog is hitched to this separately by a rawhide tug line about 12 feet long. Thus, when the team starts pulling, the dogs at the ends of their tug lines are abreast of each other in a fanwise formation. Compared with the single tandem hitch, which we generally see in pictures, this seems clumsy, but it has sound practical advantages. For one thing, it is the only method by which more than eight animals can be handily controlled.

The young Husky will probably first find himself hitched beside a cantankerous veteran. This is the "boss dog." He can lick any other member of the team and is always ready to prove it. His job is to see that every Husky pulls its full weight and obeys the driver's commands, and he runs tirelessly back and forth behind the formation, bounding over the tug lines and unmercifully nipping shirkers.

The lead dog, chosen for character and intelligence, works with a quiet determination that holds the rest of the team together. Some of the best lead dogs are bitches, for the female often shows a keener intelligence than the male and gets better support from the boss dog. A good leader reacts to its master's voice with almost human understanding and will frequently make wise decisions of its own. It will often feel out thin ice before its master does and veer the team away from danger. Sometimes it can lead the team back to base when the driver has completely lost his bearings.

Food is the dogs' greatest incentive because it is always scarce. The dog needs rich fats, muscle-building meat and loads of vitamins, all of which are concentrated in the flesh of the Arctic seal — the Eskimo's staff of life. A tired team will often dash forward without any visible reason, only to bring up at a seal hole several miles away. A veteran Hudson Bay trader declares that once when, all out of food, he was following the coast line in search of fresh meat his dogs veered inland against all he could do to control them and led him to a herd of caribou 12 miles away. This ability to discover food is probably due to a keen sense of smell, aided by the Arctic atmosphere, which will sometimes carry a scent for miles.

In the two months of Arctic summer, when the Eskimos turn their dogs loose to shift for themselves, the Huskies range along the shore line eating shrimp, mussels, birds' eggs and dead things cast up by the tide, or they scatter inland and run down hares and lemmings. This scanty diet reduces them to such a state of starvation that they gladly come back to camp when the weather turns cold, knowing they can count on a feast of rich walrus meat.

Much of the Husky's reputation for ferocity is due to his generally famished condition. Well fed and well treated, he is affectionate and friendly. Goaded by hunger, however, Huskies put up a fearsome show of snarling and snapping at feeding time, and have a dangerous habit of hurling themselves upon any human being who stands between them and their food. This can be fatal, for a fur-clad human being flopping about on the snow can be easily mistaken for a seal by a famished and excited dog. If this draws blood the whole pack may set upon the victim. The wife of one of the Canadian Mounties was killed in this way.

The Husky more than makes up for his occasional lapses by extraordinary devotion and self-sacrifice. Under ordinary conditions he will cover 25 miles a day at the rate of six or seven miles an hour, and hardly feel it. When the sledding is really tough, he will outstrip almost anything that can be imagined in the way of endurance.

Sub-zero gales that lash the dogs with drifting sand and snow will sometimes freeze their faces so severely that the dogs have to be destroyed. When the thermometer falls under 50 below zero the lungs of a panting dog become frostbitten if he is driven too hard, causing hemorrhages that choke him. If the snow is slushy it packs between the dog's toes and forms hard balls of ice that cripple him. Thoughtful drivers make him boots of rawhide or canvas, but while these protect his feet, they hamper his footing, making the pulling much harder. In spite of such hardships, a team of 15 Huskies traveled 1300 miles in 85 days, bringing home a rescue party of the Mounted Police and hauling the last ten days of the journey without any food at all.

Realizing how greatly the development of the North depends upon this indomitable dog, the Canadian Government now sends animal pathologists into the Arctic to study the Huskies' needs and combat epidemics of rabies and distemper that used to kill them by hundreds. Closely cooperating with the Canadian Government's Northwest Territories Administration, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Hudson's Bay Company are teaching the Eskimos to feed their dogs a full ration all year round, to breed them for strength and intelligence, to have them inoculated against disease, and to isolate them when they fall sick.

In many settlements throughout the Arctic hundreds of white men and women are pioneering in a country which, 25 years ago, most people considered uninhabitable by any but Eskimos. Steadily they are turning it into a new stronghold of civilization. But the first credit for anything they achieve must go to the faithful Husky. By his boundless vitality and his unstinted devotion, it was he who first made it possible for white men to enter that land of long winters and hard sledding.

He Makes People Proud of Their Jobs - McCormick

In McCormick & Company, the employes[1] help to run the business

He Makes People Proud of Their Jobs

Laurie York Erskine

Condensed from Future {July, '50), copyright 1950 by United Stales Junior Chamber of Commerce, Akdar Bldg., Tulsa 3, Okla.

WILLOUGHBY M. McCORMICK started a spice and flavoring-extract business in Baltimore in 1899, and built it up from a one-room plant to a $3,500,000 company in 1928. To him, workers were simply a commodity. Disagreement with the boss meant dismissal. The only employe who dared talk back was his nephew, young Charles P. McCormick, who had begun as an office boy and had risen through all the departments. His uncle had fired him seven times, but had rehired him each time because "he had ideas."

McCormick & Company began losing money in 1932, and was in the red for that year. The company's troubles were deeper than just the depression. "The workers were dispirited," explains Charlie. "Their pay was low and they weren't sure of their jobs. We had a labor turnover of about 30 percent. The work involved processing and packing hundreds of items — spices, extracts, tea, coffee and insecticides — and the cost of training new workers ran high. Poor morale and obsolete methods made production slump. The sales force lost spirit and orders dwindled."

Uncle Willoughby met the crisis by wage cuts, until he had slashed pay 25 percent. Then one week-end he told Charlie to announce another wage cut of ten percent. Charlie protested vainly, but before he could announce the cut his uncle died of a heart attack.

At a hurried meeting of the board of directors Charlie was elected president, and at the age of 36 was burdened with the responsibility of putting the failing firm on its feet. His first act was to call the company's 500 employes together.

"We're close to the rocks," he told them, "but we can win out. Prices for raw materials are low; however, we've got to turn them into salable products at lower production expense. If you'll increase production we can cut costs, lower prices, and thus give our salesmen the stimulus they need to bring in orders. That means an all-out effort on your part, and you can't do it on poor pay and long hours. So we're raising your pay ten percent and reducing the work week from 48 hours to 44. From now on every worker is going to prosper exactly as the firm prospers."

This amazing proposal, made in 1932 when wage cuts and unemployment were sweeping the country, had a breath-taking effect. The astonished employes not only increased their output beyond Charlie's highest expectations but found ways to eliminate waste. In three months the company was out of the red and Charlie raised wages again.

But he knew that the company needed more than the stimulus of raises. "About one out of every ten persons is a creative thinker," he says, "and I decided to use whatever creative minds we had in the company."

He selected 17 young men who worked at such jobs as credit clerks, cost accountants and assistants to department heads, and told them that they were to be a junior board of directors. "No one of higher rank will be present at your meetings," he said. "Your job will be to create ideas to increase the company's success and make it a better place for our people to work. The books are open to you; ask anything about the company's affairs you want to. Any ideas you recommend unanimously will be placed before our board of directors."

The first thing the junior board did was to overhaul the company's packages. They designed handier spice tins with more attractive labels, and a new extract bottle with a broad base and indentations for the housewife's fingers. Next they set up a system for testing stenographers to put the most efficient girls in important posts. They introduced speedier and more accurate billing machines. They suggested a number of new products and by fresh promotion ideas stepped up the sale of old ones.

When the head of the city-order department reported that he could handle 40 percent more business with the same number of employes, the junior board came through with a sales campaign for a somewhat moribund line of foods and remedies for household pets. This gave the city-order department all it could handle and led to nation-wide sale of products that had long been in the doldrums.

The youthful directors changed their chairman every three months. Every six months they rated themselves. The top six became a membership committee empowered to replace the three lowest-scoring members with three other promising employes.

In its first five years the junior board turned in 2109 recommendations to the board of directors, of which only six were rejected. Elated by this success, Charlie called together the foremen, mechanics and supervisors, and invited them to set up a similar board.

At the first meeting of this nine-man factory board, one member produced figures to show that too many cans were carried in stock and became shopworn before they were needed; new purchasing schedules were adopted. Other proposals overhauled the handling of three important products in a way that doubled output with the same machines and man power. Installation of new tanks and bins made it possible to buy more raw materials in bulk and at lower cost; packing methods were standardized.

By giving an open hearing to every worker with a grievance, the factory board was soon accepted by the workers as their representative before the board of directors. This made it possible to solve labor problems in a spirit of cooperation.

Was an accident the fault of a careless employe, or was there company negligence? Hearings by the board so justly placed the blame that the workers developed new safety codes and the company new safeguards, to the satisfaction of all.

The factory board suggested a 15-minute rest period every two hours; the result was a nine percent boost in production. Recommendations for a 40-hour week and for wage increases, bonuses, health insurance and other benefits, made by the factory board, were adopted by the company.

The board's biggest achievement was a reorganization of production schedules to avoid periodic layoffs after Christmas and during the summer months, when sales of spices and extracts slow up. These slack seasons were used to produce year-round items such as teas and insecticides, leaving the schedule free for full production of spices and extracts during the seasons of greatest demand. As a result employes were sure of at least 48 weeks of work a year. Labor turnover dropped to four percent.

Charlie McCormick next formed a board of salesmen, and soon the three groups — junior board, factory and sales force — were working together, each sending representatives to the others' meetings and adding its knowledge to the development of the others' ideas. Through such relationships, in which everyone spoke his own mind regardless of position, the gap between labor and management vanished.

As news spread of the revolutionary ideas that brought McCormick's triumphantly through the depression, businessmen all over the country came to examine Charlie's system at work, and Charlie wrote a book explaining it. He called it Multiple Management. It went into five editions. It was also published in England, Spain and France.

Today some 500 companies use various forms of multiple management in the United States, Canada and England.

McCormick's is the largest firm of its kind in the United States, and has sales representatives in Europe and a branch in Mexico. Gross sales were 28 million dollars in 1949. Stockholders, who now include most of the company's employes, enjoy fatter dividends than ever before. But more important in Charlie's mind is the fact that anxiety and dissension have been replaced by opportunity and contentment.

Workers — there are 1200 of them now — have a paid vacation, and a yearly profit-sharing bonus that equals four to seven weeks' wages. A company-financed pension system, which applies to all ranks from janitor to president, provides a retirement income equal to about half basic pay, up to a maximum annual payment of $5000. A share of the profits is put into a trust fund that is paid to the employe whether he quits, retires or is fired.

The workers have demonstrated that they regard partnership as a two-way obligation. "Early in December 1945," says Charlie, "we announced there'd be a two weeks' Christmas holiday with pay. To my amazement our people turned out five weeks' production in the next three weeks." Since then the holiday has been an annual event, and production has never suffered.

Once-a month the company holds a meeting of all employes and tells them frankly the condition of their business. At a yearly meeting the company's financial report is read, and its details are illustrated with stacks of silver dollars which graphically show the firm's expenditures for materials, wages, etc., and the profits.

Charlie believes that multiple management holds the solution to the most urgent problems that confront labor and management. "If the employes of a business know its affairs, are given a democratic voice in running them, and are paid according to the profits that their ideas and efforts bring in, they will loyally put their minds to bear on making that business a success."

As Charlie sees it, the American wage earner wants to feel that he's more than just a number on the payroll. "Of course he wants security," says Charlie, "but he wants to earn it through his own efforts, working for the success of a business he's in. Let every employe feel that the firm he works for depends on his ideas and energy for its success or failure, and returns him his fair share of what he earns for it, and he won't want Government handouts.

"Workers who play a part in actually building the business which produces their living can never be convinced that the profit system is unsound, or that they can improve their lot through any form of socialism that takes their welfare out of their own control."

---

[1] Employee is the usual American English spelling, but employe is a Standard variant used especially by some corporate house organs and business publications.

Gray Wolf

The Great Gray Wolf —

Mighty Hunter of the Wilds

Laurie York Erskine

Condensed from Frontiers: A Magazine of' Natural History {December, '50), copyright 1950 by The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 19th St. & The Parkway, Philadelphia 3, Pa.

The gray wolf has the greatest range of any wild animal in the world. In spite of every effort to exterminate him he persists in most of Canada and Alaska in vast areas of Asia, in Eastern Europe and in at least 14 of our states.

He is the most efficient big-game hunter of all four-footed beasts. Some of the big cats are faster and stronger, but no other animal hunts in such uncanny cooperation with his fellows, or is so sure of success. This has not only gained for him a reputation for supernatural cunning but it has also earned for him the undying enmity of man.

In the early days of cattle ranching many small stockmen were wiped out by wolves. Certain wolves became famous. The Aguila wolf of southern Arizona averaged one calf every fourth night for eight years, and sometimes he wantonly slew half a hundred sheep in a single night. The Custer wolf in the Black Hills destroyed $25,000 worth of stock in seven years; old Three Toes of South Dakota slew $50,000 worth before he was captured in 1925, after being hunted for 13 years.

We call him the gray wolf, but his coat is often a tawny brown or red. Off-color wolves can be easily mistaken for dogs. Once in Ontario I saw three animals 100 yards away; one was gray, the others were brown, and they stood gazing at me with such friendly curiosity that I took them for Indian sled dogs. But when I stepped toward them they moved off into the woods, and I'll never forget the chill that ran up my spine when I recognized the unmistakable lope of the wolf.

The wolf is slower than many of his victims but he makes up for this by his endurance. He'll keep up a steady lope of 15 to 25 miles an hour all night if need be, in order to give his quarry no rest.

An average gray wolf is five and a half feet from nose to tail tip, stands 32 inches high and weighs 80 pounds. Seven-foot, 175-pound wolves have been killed. Stanley P. Young, veteran biologist of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service who, with Dr. Edwin Goldman, has collected almost everything that is known about the animal in their book, The Wolves of North America, reports that in Alaska he saw wolfskins eight feet long.

At two or three years of age the wolf finds a lifetime mate. The young are generally born in the late spring. The parents prepare for them by making four or five dens in high places, with a view of all approaches so that mother wolf always has other safe refuges for her little ones if the birth den must be abandoned.

The litter of from seven to 14 whelps is nursed for about two months, during which the male hunts alone, dragging part of his kill home for his mate. As soon as the young are weaned the mother helps with the hunting, for the whelps are then hungry for meat. If the parents make a kill far away they gorge themselves with meat and disgorge it again at the den entrance for the whelps. In the daytime the male wolf lies down on some high place overlooking the den where he can warn his family of danger. If a man approaches, he may show himself to divert the enemy from his family. When the young ones are three months old the family lives in the open, sometimes roaming a territory of 200 square miles.

Moving always counterclockwise, the wolf patrols his hunting route constantly. He knows every hiding place and lookout, every spot where he can blend his color with the landscape and melt from sight. Along this route the parents teach their young to hunt. A strange wolf enters the area at its peril.

Since the young often stay with their parents until two or three years old, a family may consist of from five to eight full-grown wolves and a litter of whelps. This is the legendary wolf pack. It seldom includes wolves of more than one family, though several families occasionally run together for brief periods.

Few wild-animal families are more devoted. At least one member is always on watch to warn the others of danger. They often risk their lives to protect one another. Once in the wilds of British Columbia I found myself watched by a wolf crouching on a hill near my camp. When I reached for my rifle the animal dashed for cover. As I fired, a second wolf ran openly across the hill, yelping loudly — apparently trying to save his mate by diverting my gunfire to himself.

Wolves will take on any odds to protect their young. Stanley Young tells of four grizzly bears that came too close to a wolf den in which there were whelps, and were rushed by the four grown wolves of the family. Forest rangers watched the battle through binoculars for three hours, until four badly slashed bears limped defeated from the field.

Wolves are immensely strong. At the mouth of a den in New Mexico I found the remains of a yearling calf; the head and hindquarters were missing, but the wolf had dragged the rest of the carcass two miles from the nearest grazing land over ridges and through tangled brush that my companion and I had found hard going.

A wolf's long curved fangs are sharp as steel and he can sever the spine of a calf or break a deer's leg with- one bite. Traps have often proved unable to hold him. Few dogs can survive a fight with a wolf.

Much of the wolf's diet is made up of rabbits, mice, gophers and birds, but he prefers big game, cattle or sheep. In attacking sheep and cattle he is seemingly crazed by their stupidity and defenselessness and slaughters them indiscriminately, killing far more than he needs for food. But when hunting wild game he is a sportsman — and no more cruel than nature is.

Led generally by a she-wolf, a pack scouts for prey, and when the deer, elk, caribou or moose is found, one or two wolves will approach the animal from downwind until it is started up. Then the long chase begins. One wolf will follow directly behind the quarry; others take strategic positions and head it off so that it runs in a circle, until the quarry tires. Then the pack brings it down by tearing at its throat and hindquarters.

The cooperation of a hunting wolf pack is amazing. They seem to have a system of communication and take their positions like a well-trained team. They will herd a quarry to the edge of a cliff and run it over, or corner it in a steep ravine. In winter they run a deer onto ice, where it has no foothold. In summer they cover both banks of a stream and keep the deer swimming until it is exhausted. Bull moose, elk and caribou, however, often kill the attacker with their antlers or hoofs.

Man is the only animal the wolf fears. Today he will come close to a man's camp only in the Far North, where there are thousands of wolves that have never known man's scent.

Stories of human beings killed by wolves have little foundation in fact. Perhaps in Europe in the old days, when wolves roved near every village, some such cases may have occurred, but all who know the gray wolf of North America agree that he is no man-killer. The Canadian Wildlife Service knows of only one authentic instance of an unprovoked attack on a human being. Even a trapped wolf will seldom fight his captor, but will cringe away in fear.

The wolf has sharp eyesight, keen smell and good hearing. Hunters in prairie country have declared that wolves learn the range of a rifle and stay safely beyond it. Men who have set trap guns have found the trigger cords cut by wolves that have stolen the bait.

In outwitting this cunning opponent, expert wolf hunters have succeeded best by taking advantage of his two most dependable habits. His appetite for carrion makes him vulnerable to poisoned bait. In the first great campaign to wipe him out from the cattle ranges, professional hunters killed many thousands by poisoning carcasses with strychnine. In time the wolf learned to avoid such bait.

The wolf's second vulnerable habit is one which he shares with the dog. Along his hunting route he has his visiting posts, the equivalent of a dog's favorite tree or hydrant. The trapper who can find these posts and conceals his trap close to them usually gets results if the trap has the scent of a strange wolf. Smelling it, a wolf scratches up the area and strikes the trap.

Hunters have tried to rear captured wolf pups with varying degrees of success. Many Indian trappers in the North use half-breed wolf dogs for their sleds, but these beasts can seldom be controlled by anyone except their master.

The famous Joe Laflamme, a gigantic, bearded trapper of northern Ontario, lost all but two of his dogs in a distemper epidemic in 1923, and in desperation he made up a complete team with wolves captured in his traps. I've seen him put that team into harness. He'd lure each wolf with food into a small pen, and kneeling before it while it snarled and cringed he'd take a strangle hold around its neck with one arm and slip on a muzzle. Dragging the animal by a steel chain to the sled, he'd snap on the harness. After all his team was hitched up he'd whisk off the muzzles. "Wid de muzzle on," he explained, "dey do not pull!" Without it they pulled magnificently, but with their heads down and tails between their legs — cringing wild things shackled in fear to a task they despised.

Thousands of years ago, when the first dog wagged his way into the cave man's heart, the wolf remained true to the wilderness — and he has never changed his mind. No lure of care or comfort will ever tame him, and he will outtrick man's every effort to exterminate him. Indeed, if naturalists have their way, we shall always preserve him in the remoter regions where he can do no harm to man. There he will help maintain nature's control of the wildlife population, and remain the proud, defiant dog which refuses to wear man's collar.

The Curing of Linky McShane

The Curing of Linky McShane

By Laurie York Erskine

Illustrated by Frank E. Schoonover

From American Boy magazine January 1935. Digital capture June 2008 by Doug Frizzle

THEY came for Linky McShane at night. He saw them enter the door of the poolroom at Caley's Corners and he turned white, deep down inside himself. With hopeless, fear-stricken eyes he gazed about the room. He saw Tom Sacpoole, who was constable over at Caleyville, but Tom stared at the pool table. He wasn't going to interfere.

Linky knew that. Churt Somers and Buck Foster, who slipped in through the poolroom door as quietly as if the room were empty, were Alec Lestock's men; and Alec Lestock was wanted by the authorities, dead or alive. Tom Sacpoole and every man in the room knew that Lestock was hiding out on the Somers ranch, in the red shale country, and because of that not one of them looked up. They didn't want to be seen. They didn't dare to be seen. Lestock killed witnesses. . . . There wasn't a soul in the world, Linky McShane felt, who could or would help him now.

"Come along, Linky," murmured Churt Somers, quietly. "He wants yuh."

"I can't!" pleaded Linky. "I'm sick. Ask anybody!"

"Better be sick than dead," mourned Churt. "He says come."

Coughing, twitching, his soul sick with fear, Linky climbed into the flivver that waited outside and went with them. Out at Somers' ranch, in a colorless, ramshackle house, Linky repeated his plea to Alec Lestock.

"Leave me out," he whined. "I can't be no good to yuh. I'm sick!"

Lestock had a heavy, brutish face that was browned like sandstone. His eyes were like opals, murky-bright, hard, without any light in them. Under the mellow ring of the lamplight he huddled forward on the dirty oilcloth that covered a table top and stared at Linky with inhuman apathy.

"That's why I'm usin' you," he said. "I got a job that needs a kid who looks sick."

"But you don't get me. . . ." Linky glanced furtively around the unfeeling circle of faces. "I don't wanta be mixed up in it any more! I wanta go straight!"

An ominous silence followed, while Linky's soul shrank within him.

"You shoulda decided that before," rasped the slow voice of Lestock. "When we was riding round the country making big hauls, you was willing to be with us."

"1 wasn't! I didn't!" It was a wail of reckless despair. "Was it my fault I was in the poolroom at Glenrock? Was it my fault you laid out the Glenrock raid while I was workin' there?"

"You came in." Lestock's voice was queerly insistent.

"Shore I came in. I had to. You knew I was wise, and you made me play lookout. I want to go straight, but I won't squeal. I won't." Linky was frankly pleading, his body quivering with the tension of his wretched, overwrought spirit.

Lestock stared at him stonily. "It wouldn't be good for you to back out now." The man moved his arms and with one thick thumb rubbed a greasy trail across the oilcloth. He stared up at Linky. "You gotta decide," he said, "or else. ..." With a hard pressure on the cloth, he brought the thumb back toward him. "Understand?"

Rubbed out! Linky understood with ghastly clearness. Orphan of a mining town slum, his small, hard body had been exploited by the low, gambling element of the place. They had made him a jockey; they had made him a tenth-rate, lightweight boxer. After four years of reckless living, Linky, at the age of nineteen, had been dropped, his physique wrecked, his spirit broken, to pick up a living any way he could.

Drifting into the job of helper in a poolroom where Lestock's gang had met to plan the raiding of the bank at Glenrock, he had been forced into helping them because he innocently knew too much and lacked the courage to defy them. That had made him a member of the gang—and now Lestock was asking him to decide! One despairing look about that circle of relentless faces told him what his decision would have to be.

"Tell me what I'm to do," he said hopelessly.

For a long time Lestock stared at him steadily. He was deciding whether the wrecked and broken youngster was weak and vicious enough to be a safe and useful tool.

"You got sense," he croaked finally. "Now I'll tell you what you gotta do." For a moment he continued to stare; then: "When they rounded up Deaf Eddie and Byrd Wineman and the rest, you thought it was out of the sheriff's office down at Garrison, didn't yuh? Well, it wasn't. It was from over the border." A murderous bitterness glittered behind the pallor of his eyes. "The Mounted Police," he said, "found out too much."

"Yeah?" quavered Linky.

"They got a man up there named Renfrew," continued Lestock. "He found out a lot more than's healthy, and he tips off Hannigan down at Garrison. We gotta get this Renfrew out of the way, see? He's still diggin' up stuff that looks bad for us." A sudden flush suffused Lestock's face, like a red mask of fury. "We fill his hide full of lead, see?" he gasped, as if he were short of breath. "We rub him out!" His face became cold again, like sandstone. "And we gotta do it right, without leaving tracks."

Linky's face turned an unhealthy green color. His eyes popped.

"But I can't do nothing like that!" he wailed. "I ain't no trigger man!"

Lestock sneered contemptuously. "All you got to do," he said, "is give us the layout. This Renfrew is living at a ranch with some people named Conners, near a town called Paynter, off the railroad south of McLeod. You go there by rail, see, all the way from Winnipeg. You're a sick kid, boardin' out for your health, see? Then you get the dope on this Renfrew, and you tip us off on how we get to him without anybody around, and how we get away again, see? The roads are important; the back roads, down to the border."

Linky stared back at him like a rabbit hypnotized. They would murder this Renfrew as they'd committed a dozen murders before, and he was chosen to fix it. He was doomed! He knew it. There was no escape from the incarnation of black wickedness that was embodied in the gross, squat form of Alex Lestock.

"Well?" rasped the bandit.

"Sure, chief," whined Linky McShane. "I got you. I unnerstand." A gleam of hope entered his mind. "But how about Hannigan? He's workin' against yuh from this end, ain't he?"

"He's taken care of," said Lestock. "Buck Foster's doin' the same for Hannigan as you're doin' up there for this Renfrew."

Renfrew drove the buckboard and Gordon Conners sat beside him. The sun beat furiously down upon the wide grasslands of the hill country, sending up waves of heat that pressed against the skin, that suffocated the traveler and tortured him. In that blazing heat Renfrew and Gordon Conners had driven seventeen miles from McLeod, and had twelve miles still to go. Since they wasted no energy in talking, Gordon's exclamation broke a long silence.

"There's your hobo!" he cried suddenly.

Renfrew peered through the heat waves and saw a slight figure lying prostrate in the narrow band of shadow behind a long rock.

"Poor kid," he said, and guided the buckboard out of the wagon track toward the wayfarer's sorry shelter.

Eight miles back they had met an irritated citizen of McLeod changing the tire of a flivver. He had been cheated, he declared. A youth, a gutter rat from the East, had hired him to drive to Paynter for five dollars. When they were more than halfway there, the passenger had admitted to having just 78 cents. He had thereupon dropped the tramp in the middle of the sun-beaten hill country, and left him to walk. Now the motorist was penitent, realizing that the heat and exhaustion could kill the tenderfoot. Would Renfrew and Gordon keep an eye open for him?

They would and they did. And here was the stranded culprit, prostrate under the scant shadow of the rock.

Bending over him, Renfrew and Gordon looked down upon a wizened, stunted youth, clad cheaply in a tan suit of ornate design, a felt hat, and down-at-heel shoes. His necktie shrieked aloud, and his sweat-sodden shirt was imitation silk. He was unconscious as Renfrew felt his pulse.

"Too much heat, I guess," he said. He gazed on the unwholesome pallor of the boy's face, the dark rings under the eyes. "Not in condition for hiking," he added dryly.

At that point Linky McShane opened his eyes and looked into the faces above him. Something in the keen, studying glance of Renfrew alarmed him. Abruptly he sat up.

"All right," said Renfrew, reassuringly. "We're friends."

Linky stared at him. In Renfrew he recognized instantly a type of man he had always feared, a type with whom he had never been on speaking terms—a man who was courageous and incorruptible. No such man had ever called Linky McShane his friend.

"It's the heat," he faltered, and they helped him to his feet. Again he was gazing into the eyes of the man who had called him a friend. "You won't— let me down?" he muttered, and taking three steps forward, he collapsed in a heap.

"We'd better take him home with us," said Renfrew thoughtfully. "Your mother will bring him around."

Gordon looked worried. He was thinking of the business that had taken them to McLeod.

"What's the matter?" asked Renfrew.

"You take big chances," said Gordon.

"How's that?" Renfrew grinned at him.

"Well, here you're staying out at the ranch as a guest, while you're really rounding up Lestock's connections in Canada. We've just been down to McLeod turning over evidence against the Gerdells that shows they're a part of the Lestock gang, and yesterday the Lestock gang shot down Sheriff Hannigan, who worked with you on the American side—killed him."

"What's that got to do with this?" asked Renfrew softly.

Gordon was silent. He was young, and he didn't want to appear too easily excited, but his fear was for Renfrew.

"This kid is out of the gutter!" he blurted. "What's he doing here? Why's he beating his way out to Paynter?"

"You tell me," urged Renfrew.

"Well, he's the kind of tool Lestock would use if he wanted to spy on a guy like you, that's all."

"Even if he were," smiled Renfrew, "wouldn't it be logical to keep him around where we can see what he's doing? Take hold of his legs."

Linky McShane awoke twelve hours later in a soft bed, swathed with clean sheets, in a shuttered room that was cool despite the glare of sunlight outside.

"Hey!" he cried. No sound answered him. It made him feel scared—as if they'd left him alone in a hospital to die. "Hey!" he cried again, and then, more sharply, "Hey! I'm sick! Don't I get no service? Hey, somebody. ..." His voice rose to a wail.

The door opened and a woman entered. She was tall and good looking, bearing with her a bright atmosphere of good nature.

"Hey, where am I, anyways?" Linky demanded petulantly. "Where's my clo'es?" He recalled his position—and Lestock! He had gambled away the funds Lestock had given him. If this were a public hospital they'd send him back to Butte, Montana, which he was pretending was his home. What would Lestock do then? Linky knew, and it filled his veins with fear. He had to get out of here!

"That's all right," soothed Mrs. Conners. "We're keeping your clothes for you. You just rest, and don't worry."

"But I gotta have 'em!" yelled Linky. "I gotta get out of this dump! You ain't got no right to keep me here. I gotta go!"

The lips of Gordon's mother tightened. She frowned.

"Lie still," she said. "My son Gordon brought you here when he found you by the trail, prostrated by the heat. And Mr. Renfrew wants you to rest until you're well again. You won't want to leave."

At the sound of the name Renfrew, Linky perked up. This was a break! He could play sick in the house of the man he had to watch!

"All right, lady," he whined. "I'll stay."

That was the beginning of long days of luxury for Linky McShane—and of bewildered indignation on the part of the countryside. The countryside soon agreed that Mrs. Conners' invalid was a cross between a snake and a skunk. His abusive, spiteful tongue was constantly raised against every service rendered him. The edict that he was not to smoke cigarettes or drink coffee, but must drink quantities of milk, he greeted as a three-way conspiracy against his life and well-being. The cleanliness enforced by his hostess he regarded as a studied insult. Moreover, realizing that Mrs. Conners was inclined to humor him as an invalid, he developed an insolence in his bearing toward her that recklessly invited disaster.

The disaster befell him when Renfrew, Gordon Conners, and Hunter, his husky older brother, were engaged in breaking horses out at the Rock Creek corrals in the Paint River Valley. The horse breaking kept them out at the creek for weeks at a time, so that they had not seen Linky since the day they had brought him home. It was about two weeks after that day when Grant Furman, the ranch foreman, reported that he had heard the invalid use language to Mrs. Conners that he wouldn't let a cowboy use in a bunk house.

"Let's ride to town," said Hunter Conners, grimly.

The three of them arrived at Paynter in midmorning and found Linky lounging on the bed in his shirt sleeves in a room tainted with stale cigarette smoke. The rest and careful attention he had received showed in the fullness of his face, the clearness of his complexion, and a general air of jauntiness that he hadn't possessed before.

"Hello, cowboy!" said Hunter Gordon breezily. "How about looking around for new lodgings?"

"Yeh?" sneered Linky, insolent in the assurance of his illness.

"Yeh!" explained Hunter cheerfully. "Roll up your tarp, and ride over to some other outfit."

Linky appeared to consider this. "Who's goin' to make me?" he jeered.

"I'll take a chance," said Gordon. He stepped forward and snatched for Linky's right wrist. But Linky moved first. As though on tempered springs he bounded from the bed and the arm that Gordon all but grasped lashed out with a lightning blow that caught Gordon squarely on the chin. Gordon reeled backward against the steadying arm of Renfrew, who at that moment entered the room.

"Gosh!" gasped Gordon. "He's got a kick like a mule!"

For an instant Linky was gazing once more into the gray eyes of the officer. Then Mrs. Conners stood, white-faced, in the doorway.

"We can't leave him here, Mother!" cried Gordon.

"Do what Mr. Renfrew thinks best," she said quietly. "But remember this: the poor boy needs curing, not punishing." She walked from the room, leaving Linky and the two brothers to stare expectantly at Renfrew.

"You—you—" stammered Linky miserably, "you're this guy Renfrew?"

Renfrew appeared to ignore him.

"Your mother's right," he said crisply to Gordon. "He needs curing. Get him some riding boots."

"Hey!" protested Linky, instantly on the defensive. "I'm sick! I can't ride no horse! You can't make me!"

"Put 'em on," said Renfrew, as Gordon produced a pair of high-heeled riding boots. "You're coming with us."

Again Linky was aware of Renfrew's even, studying gaze. He pulled on the boots. Ten minutes later he stood sullenly beside a pony they had saddled for him, profanely refusing to mount.

"You're not sick! You're not even tired!" snapped the voice of Renfrew. "Get up and ride that horse!"

For a long instant this time the beady, shifty eyes of Linky McShane looked into the steady eyes of the police officer. Then, feeling caught, Linky leaped like a monkey into the saddle and went thundering off down the dirt trail. They rode hard after him, but were in sight of the Rock Creek corrals before they caught him.

Five weeks later, four horsemen rode in from the range and clattered down the main street of Paynter. One, thickset, grizzled, was Grant Furman, foreman and top rider of the Conners outfit. Another, erect in the saddle, riding with a trim, military bearing, was Douglas Renfrew, special officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The third was Gordon Conners, his blond slightness masking a wiry strength. Beside him rode a sun-browned, keen-eyed youth who controlled a dancing pony with the easy, steady grace of an athlete: this was Linky McShane.

The curing of Linky McShane had been the wonder of the range. From the moment he had first ridden into the corrals at Rock Creek and fallen in a blasphemous heap from the saddle of a spent pony, the men had watched his progress with a scepticism that had changed daily toward astonishment. It had started off in battle, when the cook had tried to put Linky to bed as an invalid. Spitefully, vindictively, Linky seemed determined to be an invalid no longer. He fought the cook, and as reinforcements rushed to the cook's assistance, he fought them all. He had a punch that could lift an unsuspecting cowboy from the floor. It was Renfrew who quieted him with a command that Linky appeared to respect as he respected nothing else.

"Leave him alone," said Renfrew. "He's game. He'll make a good rider."

Linky stared at him with the trusting gaze of a child in the presence of a wise, all-powerful adult.

After that he rode with the cowboys, making life miserable for them with his bitter, insulting tongue and petulant selfishness, until, losing patience, they hazed him. For a week Linky mounted no horse without the fear of being thrown. He found snakes, toads, and cockleburs in his bed. His temper grew venomous, but his body thrived. He took it all until one night he arose from a bed full of black-snakes and confronted a room full of tormentors. With one blow he knocked out the nearest of them and snatched from its holster a revolver that hung near-by. To the consternation of the hazers, he turned with the gun in his hand and darted from the bunk house.

A few seconds later, Renfrew, who shared a cabin with Hunter Conners, and who was working alone by lamplight at his table, became abruptly aware of a snarling maniac who shoved a gun into his middle and raved.

"You turned me over to 'em!" cried Linky McShane. "You pretended you was a friend and turned me over. You're goin' to take it now!"

"Put down the gun!" Renfrew seemed completely oblivious of the gun, confident that neither by accident nor design would it be fired. "I'm glad you came," he said.

Linky dropped the muzzle of the gun slowly toward the floor. His breath came in gasps, as though he were panting.

"Sit down," said Renfrew. He himself sat again at the table. "I want to tell you something I think you ought to know."

"Yeah?" breathed Linky. He felt bewildered and confused. He sank slowly into a chair.

Renfrew turned to the cowboys who crowded the doorway.

"McShane will stay here tonight," he said, and waited until the cowboys had gone beyond earshot.

"A young man named Buck Foster," he said very thoughtfully, "was shot and killed down in Garrison yesterday. They believe he was killed by the Lestock gang. They believe it had some connection with the death of Sheriff Hannigan, whom the gang killed three weeks ago."

"Yeah?" Linky's eyes slowly widened. No longer given to twitching, his sun-browned face was blank of all expression. In his wide eyes there was a queer glitter, but he made no further comment.

Renfrew bade him good night, and the matter was not referred to again.

After that night the hazing of Linky McShane stopped dead. As though transformed by the experience, Linky became a quiet, respectful, and daringly useful cow hand. In only one respect did he differ widely from the rest in his behavior: he became a walking shadow of Renfrew. Whenever he could, without comment, accompany Renfrew, he was there, riding silently beside him.

Renfrew seemed to develop a trust and confidence in this new Linky that Gordon Conners regarded with troubled fear. He knew the difficulties and the constant peril that lurked in the work Renfrew was doing under cover of his vacation on the ranch. In fact Gordon suspected Linky's devotion was the devotion of a spy. While Linky watched Renfrew, Gordon watched Linky.

Now, as they rode into Main Street, he noticed an incident that neither Renfrew nor Furman seemed to observe. A young man with a pale, wedge-shaped face was standing outside the entrance to the Maple Leaf, the town's disreputable hotel. Gordon, spotting the stranger and casually attracted by the queer, cheaply dandified appearance of his dress, was surprised to see him signal, almost imperceptibly, with a furtive nod of his head, to someone beyond Gordon's shoulder. Gordon turned in time to catch in Linky's eye an unmistakable glance of recognition.

At the police barracks at the end of the street, Renfrew drew rein and dismounted. With his three companions he strode into the barracks and answered the greetings of Corporal Whalen.

"We're ready for the round-up," he said.

Vainly Gordon sought to catch Renfrew's eye. Linky McShane was close to Renfrew's elbow, listening alertly.

"Wire McLeod to have four men join me out at Rock Creek on Monday," said Renfrew. "I'll have warrants for twelve men ready!"

"Any dope on Lestock, sir?"

Gordon saw Linky stiffen.

"All we need," said Renfrew. "I'm sending evidence to the States that will show them where to look for him. But I'm holding it back till we've made our arrests up here. Our prisoners will probably have something to add to it."

"Four men at Rock Creek Monday," repeated Whalen, writing.

Leaving the barracks they walked to their horses. Linky alone hung back.

"I'll join you later, chief," he said.

"I got things to see to in town." With Renfrew's assent he hurried away down the street.

"Do you know where he's going?" asked Gordon grimly.

"To get a hair cut, I hope," grinned Renfrew.

"He's going to the Maple Leaf to meet up with a stranger who looks as if he'd just got out of jail."

Renfrew regarded Gordon for a moment gravely.

"You think Linky's playing the spy?" he asked.

"I know it!" cried Gordon. "Can't you see how he's been worming his way into your confidence? Can't you see how much he's learned?"

Smiling, Renfrew shook his head.

"He's cured," said Renfrew.

Gordon was aghast at Renfrew's unsuspected gullibility.

"You can cure a snake's body," he cried, "but you can't make him anything but a snake!"

In the meantime Linky McShane was face to face with Alec Lestock's representative, Fingers Alfred.

"You didn't come a second too quick," Linky was saying. "You tell Alec that. He's got to act quick, like my letter said. That guy I was ridin' with— the tall, hard guy—is this Renfrew. You see how close I been to him. Tell Alec that. I been right next to him for more'n a month. He's been watch-in' the mails, see? He's been watchin' the roads, and the guys up here that Alec's been teamin' with. And, say, has he got 'em cold!" He continued with a recital of many accomplishments by Renfrew in the way of gathering evidence.

"Alec wants to know how come you didn't write more?" said Fingers coldly. His shifty eyes flitted over Linky.

"Like I said in my last letter," said Linky, "this Renfrew sees everything that goes out in the mails. I gotta be careful. He's got the goods on Alec, though, and next Monday he rounds up the mob on this side of the border. You tell Alec to act this Sunday like I'm tellin' you, or take a long trip some-wheres, 'cause if they don't get this Renfrew it's curtains for the whole mob, see? You'd best get the night rattler out of McLeod; then you can see Alec by tomorrow night. That'll give him two days to make it."

"Sunday night, huh?"

"That's right. Every Saturday Renfrew rides down to Paynter to go to church with the Conners family. Sunday night, about eight o'clock, he rides back to the Rock Creek outfit. He's got every road to the border watched, but if Alec follows this map I'm givin' yuh, an' crosses the border over the open country where I've marked it, he'll find it as good drivin' as any road. Then let him pick up the wagon trail where I marked it on this side of the border and it'll bring him right onto the Rock Creek trail. All he's gotta do is park there until this Renfrew comes ridin' out, then flash on his lights and let him have it. He can't miss him if he floods the road with his lights and lets go with the chopper at the same time. Tell him to get away with any stuff Renfrew's carryin', 'cause he's packin' the warrants and a lot of dope on Alec, see?"

Fingers studied the map.

"Sunday night," he muttered. "Hey?"

"Yeah, Sunday night. Now you better breeze an' get the train. Tell Alec how close I been, see?"

It seemed that no one except Gordon Conners, who lurked in the drug store opposite the hotel, saw Linky exit from the Maple Leaf, followed later by Fingers Alfred. Gordon waited until Alfred had haggled with two taxi drivers for a ride to McLeod, and then interviewed the rejected driver and found out what he wanted. That night, at Rock Creek, he saw Renfrew.

"The little crook he met with hopped a train for the border," he said. "It looks like you trusted McShane too far."

"I don't think so," said Renfrew slowly, but he noticed with some uneasiness that Linky avoided him.

On Saturday evening he failed for the first time in weeks to join Renfrew and the Conners brothers in their weekend ride to Paynter, but Sunday morning found Linky surprisingly in church, and late in the afternoon he came to the Conners home for Sunday evening supper, ignoring the coldness of the Conners men.

"Thought you were playing hooky," said Renfrew. "How'd you get into town?"

"I came in on the truck with the boys," grinned Linky. "I aim to ride that little pinto pony out to the creek; the one that's been laid up in the barn here with a strained shoulder."

"The truck didn't come in this morning, did it?" asked Gordon.

"No. They come in last night and took out the supplies."

A silence fell. Gordon and Hunter stared at Linky expectantly.

"I spent the night in town," muttered Linky grudgingly.

"At the Maple Leaf!" Gordon's voice rose accusingly. "Where they were holding mail for you!"

Linky glared at him for a moment, then looked appealingly at Renfrew. Renfrew gazed gravely back. Linky rose suddenly from his chair.

"Yeah?" he cried. "Well, get a load of this! The mail wasn't for me, because the Mounted Police are watching the mails too close. There was a letter addressed to Joe Gurrit, who runs the Maple Leaf, and it was in code, see? That only me can understand. So stick that in your muzzle loaders and fire away. I'm fading now, and you guys can sit around and dope out what it's all about!"

He turned and strode from the room. In another instant they heard the outer door slam behind him.

"Let him go," said Renfrew, as the two brothers stepped forward.

"But he's double-crossing us!" cried Gordon. "He'll give the whole game away. The men you want will be over the border by morning!"

"Sit down," said Renfrew. "We've got to wait for a phone call."

He resumed his seat at the table, meeting their insistent queries and excited protests with a preoccupied serenity. More than an hour later the phone rang. Gordon answered it.

"It's George Curran," he reported, mystified. "He says to tell you, Renfrew, that McShane passed the foot of his lane ten minutes ago, riding out on the Rock Creek trail."

Renfrew smiled. He seemed extraordinarily relieved.

"That's good," he said. "Let's ride."

"What's it all about, Doug?" demanded Hunter Conners.

"I don't know," said Renfrew. "Linky's been in touch with Alec Lestock. Why, I can't tell you, but I believe the kid's straight, and I don't want him to get in a jam; so I've been having all his lines of communication watched. All I know now is that he's riding out to Rock Creek. I think he's planning to meet somebody."

He went upstairs and came down buckling on a holstered revolver and a cartridge belt. Without words the brothers followed suit. In half an hour they were cantering into the velvet blackness of the grassy hill country. At a dirt crossroad Renfrew drew rein.

"If he doesn't want company," he said, "he'll watch his rear. We can follow the Black Snake Coulee and cut in ahead of him."

He led the way at a hard gallop and they followed, exhilarated by the cool night and the promise of adventure.

From a hilltop they looked down an hour later upon a velvet darkness that they knew was threaded by the winding, rutted passage of the Rock Creek trail. They dismounted and walked their horses gingerly along the rim of the steep hill, seeking cautiously for the footpath to the depths. Renfrew, who was leading, stopped short.

"Listen!" he whispered.

Below and from the eastward came the rhythmic padding of hooves. A horseman was riding out the Rock Creek Trail. Suddenly, with the swift, staccato action of violent movement, melodrama flamed below them.

From a point off the trail the twin headlights of a motor car were flashed on, trained up the Rock Creek Trail, catching the figure of a lone rider full in a stream of light. Instantly the rider whisked his pony aside into the blackness of night, just as a rattling volley of gunfire burst forth from behind the headlights. Almost simultaneously a close-grouped volley blazed forth from several points beneath the precipice, and the headlights, shattered, vanished from the night.

Darkness. Silence.

Then a voice spoke, ringing clearly in the still air from some point of concealment startlingly close to where the car seemed to be.

"Drop your guns, Lestock!" rang the voice. "Your engine's busted and you're covered all around. Drop your guns and stick up your hands!"

Before the voice ceased speaking guns were rapping out in answer.

"Not for you, Renfrew!" bawled the voice of Alec Lestock. "There ain't enough cops in Canada to take Al Lestock alive!"

"There ain't no cop trying to," sang out the first voice, from a surprisingly different position. "It's me! Linky McShane!"

"You rat!" screamed Lestock. Again the din of shooting stabbed the silence. Then a pause. From a new position the voice of Linky McShane laughed.

"Last call!" sang Linky. "Drop your guns!"

The guns of the gangsters in the motor car clattered defiance.

"Okay!" yelled Linky. And now headlights were flashed on from another source, and in the stream of light the crippled car, with the assassins huddled about it, was mercilessly revealed. From all sides the firing opened—bullets that pecked with horrible insistence at the dirt, just inside the circle of the spotlight.

"You still got a chance!" cried Linky. "We ain't murderers!"

Bellowing curses, the outlaws blazed uselessly at jets of fire, at the relentless searchlights. Unceasingly, with terrible regularity, the pecking bullets crept closer into the lighted area, reaching toward the gangsters' feet.

"Stop it!" shrieked Lestock suddenly. "Hold your fire! You got us! Don't make it a massacre!" He hurled his gun into the light.

"Line up in the light!" cried a new voice in answer. It was the voice of Renfrew, who rode in from the foot of the cliff as Alec Lestock and three companions stepped forward, hands aloft, into the lights of the Conners ranch truck.

"You take 'em, Linky!" cried Renfrew; and Linky McShane stepped forward with three cowboys of the outfit to accept the bandits' surrender. He stood in front of Lestock, his eyes dancing.

"You rat-faced stool pigeon!" snarled Lestock.

But Linky laughed. "I told you I was through!" he cried. "And you wouldn't believe me. You thought you had me scared enough to help you rub out the whitest man on earth—and then you'd a'put me out of the picture like you did Buck Foster. But I couldn't stay scared, see? When a guy rides with a man like Renfrew, he can't stay scared of you. You shoulda hit me when I gave you the chance."

Renfrew put one hand on Linky's shoulder.

"You started this alone," he said; "so you'd better see it through. Put your prisoners in the truck, and I'll ride into town with you."

"Thanks, Chief," Linky beamed his gratitude. "I got the boys to help me because I wanted to do it alone, see? I wanted to show you I was cured like you said. Get me?"

"I get you," said Renfrew. By the way he said it, by the almost imperceptible glance that passed between them, Linky felt vastly rewarded.

The End