From an upper window Fred Ransom looked down upon them, then called Duff
to his side.

"There is your game, Duff," hinted the agent.

"They'll be easy to a man of my experience," laughed the gambler. "I've
a clever scheme for starting trouble with them."

He whispered a few words in his companion's ears, at which Ransom
laughed with apparent enjoyment.

"You're a keen one, Duff," grinned the agent from Chicago.

"I've seen enough of life," boasted the gambler quietly, "to be able to
judge most people at first sight. You shall soon see whether I don't
succeed in starting some hard feeling with Reade and Hazelton."

The nearer edge of the treacherous Man-killer was something more than
two miles west of the town of Paloma. In the course of a quarter of an
hour Tom and Harry drew rein near a portable wooden building that served
as an office in the field.

Mr. Hawkins, a solid-looking, bearded man of fifty, with snapping eyes
that contrasted with his drawling speech, stepped from the building.

"Hawkins," called Tom, as a Mexican boy led the horses away to the shade
of a stable tent, "I see you have some men idle."

"Nine-tenths of 'em are idle," replied the superintendent of
construction. "I warned you, Mr. Reade, that our gangs would soon eat up