He laughed, weakly.

“You think I’m loco, eh?  Well, I ain’t.  Barney Owen ain’t Barney Owen at all—­he’s Will Bransford.  I found that out yesterday,” he continued, soberly, as Sanderson looked quickly at him.  “I had some men down to Tombstone way, lookin’ him up.

“When old Bransford showed me the letter that you took away from me, I knew Will Bransford was in Tombstone; an’ when Mary sent that thousand to him I set a friend of mine—­Gary Miller—­onto him.  Gary an’ two of his friends salivated young Bransford, but he turned up, later, minus the money, in Tombstone.  Another friend of mine sent me word—­an’ a description of him.  Barney Owen is Bransford.

“Just what happened to Gary Miller an’ his two friends has bothered me a heap,” went on Dale.

“They was to come this way, to help me in this deal.  But they never showed up.”

Sanderson smiled, and Dale’s eyes gleamed.

“You know what’s become of him!” he charged.  “That’s where you got that thousand you give to Mary Bransford—­an’ the papers, showin’ that young Bransford was due here.  Ain’t it?”

“I ain’t sayin’,” said Sanderson.

“Well,” declared Dale, “Barney Owen is Will Bransford.  The night Morley got him drunk we went the limit with Owen, an’ he talked enough to make me suspicious.  That’s why I sent to Tombstone to find out how he looked.  We had the evidence to show the court at Las Vegas.  We was goin’ to prove you wasn’t young Bransford, an’ then we was goin’ to put Owen out of the—­”

Dale gasped, caught his breath, and stiffened.

Sanderson stayed with him until the dawn, sitting, quietly beside him until the end.  Then Sanderson got up, threw the body on Dale’s horse, mounted his own, and set out across the basin toward Okar.

CHAPTER XXXV

A DEAL IN LOVE

A few days later Mary Bransford, Sanderson, and Barney Owen were sitting on the porch of the Double A ranchhouse, near where they had sat on the day Mary and Owen and the Dale men had seen Sanderson riding along the edge of the mesa in his pursuit of Williams and the others.

Mary and Sanderson were sitting rather close together at one end of the porch; Barney Owen was sitting near them, on the porch edge, his elbows resting on his knees.

There had been a silence between the three for some time, but at last Sanderson broke it.  He smiled at Mary.

“We’ll build that dam—­an’ the irrigation plant now, mebbe,” he said.  “But it’s goin’ to be a big job.  Williams says it will take a year, or more.”

“There will be difficulties, too, I suppose,” said Mary.

“Sure.”

“But difficulties do not worry you,” she went on, giving him a glowing look.

He blushed.  “We promised each other not to refer to that again,” he protested.  “You are breaking your promise.”