The Nevada County picayune., 1923-04-05
The Whistle of a Horse.
CHAPTER XVII

1 At the ranch-houSe at FOrlorn River Bedding stood alone He took up the gun belt from his table and with slow hands buckled it around his waist. He seemed to feel something familiar and comfortable and inspiring in the weight of the big gun against his hip. He faced the door as if to go out, but hesitated, and then began a slow, lplodding walk up and down the length of the room. Presently he halted at the table, and with reluctant hands he unbuckled the gun belt and laid it down.
 The action did not have an air of Iflnality and Bedding knew it. He had been sheriff when the law in the West depended on quickness of wrist; he had seen many a man lay down his gun for good and all. His own action was not final. Of late he had done the same thing many times, and this last time it seemed little harder to do little more indicative of vacillation. There were reasons why Belding's gun held for him a gloomy fascination.
 The Glasses. those grasping and con- scienceless agents of a new force in the development of the West, were bent upon Belding's ruin, and, so far as. his fortunes at Forlorn River were concerned, had almost accomplished it. One by one he lost points for which he contended with them. He carried into the Tucson courts the matter of the staked claims, and min- ing claims, and water claims, and he lost all. Following that, he lost his government position as inspector of immigration and this fact, because of what he considered it's injustice, had been hard blow. He had been made to suffer humiliation equally as great. It came about that he ac- tually had to pay the Glasses for water to irrigate his alfalfa fields. The never-failing spring upon his land an- swered for the needs of household and horses, but no more.
 These matters were unfortunate for Bedding, but not by any means wholly accountable for his worry and unhap- piness and breeding hate. He be- lieved Dick Gale and the rest of the party taken into the desert by the IYaQui had been killed or lost. Two months before a string of Mexican horses, nderless. saddled. starved for grass and wild for water, had come to Forlorn River. They were a part of the horses belonging to Rojas and his band. Their arrival complicated the mystery and strengthened convic- Euons of the loss of both pursuers and pursued.
 Beldings unhappiness could hardly be laid to material loss. He had been rich and was now poor, but change of fortune such as that could not have made him unhappy. Something more somber and mysterious and sad than the loss of Dick Gale and their friends had come into the lives of his wife and Nell. He dated the time of this change back to a certain day when Mrs. Bedding recognized in the elder Chase an old schoolmate and a re- 5ected suitor. It took time for slow thinking Bedding to discover anything wrong in his household, but gradually he had forced on him the fact of some secret cause for grief other than Gales loss. He was sure of it when his wife signified her desire to make visit to her old home back in Peoria.
 A letter she had received contained news that may or may not have been authentic; but 1t was enough, Belding thought to interest his wife. An old prospector had returned to Peoria, and he had told relatives of meeting Robert Burton at the Sonoyta oasis fifteen years before, and that Burton had gone into the desert never to re- turn. To Bedding this was no sur prise, for he had heard that before his marriage. There appeared to have been no doubts as to the death of his wife's first husband. The singular thing was that both Nell's father and grandfather had been lost somewhere in the Sonora desert
 Bedding did not oppose his wife's desire to visit her old home. He thought 1t would be wholesome trip for her, and did all in his power to persuade Nell to accompany her. But Nell would not go.
 It was after Mrs. Beldings depar- ture that Bedding discovered in Nell