h us."

Her lip trembled. She knew that in the shadow of the immediate future red
tragedy lurked. She had done her best to avert it and had failed. The
very men she was trying to save had dismissed her.

"Must I go?" she begged.

"You must, Miss Lee. We're both grateful to you. Don't you ever doubt
that!" Billie said, his earnest gaze full in hers.

The girl turned away and went up through the sand, her eyes filmed with
tears so that she could not see where she was going. The two men entered
the arroyo. Before they reached the head of it she could hear the crack
of exploding rifles. One of the men across the river was firing at them
and they were throwing bullets back at him. She wondered, shivering,
whether it was her father.

It must have been a few seconds later that she heard the joyous
"Eee-yip-eee!" of Prince. Almost at the same time a rider came splashing
through the shallow water of the river toward her.

The man was her father. He swung down from the saddle and snatched her
into his arms. His haggard face showed her how anxious he had been. She
began to sob, overcome, perhaps, as much by his emotion as her own.

"I'll blacksnake the condemned fool that set fire to the prairie!" he
swore, gulping down a lump in his throat. "Tell me you-all aren't hurt,
Bertie Lee.... God! I thought you was swallowed up in that fire."

"Daddie, daddie I couldn't help it. I had to do it," she wept. "And--I
thought I would choke to death, but Mr. Prince saved me. He kept my
face close to the water and made me breathe through a handkerchief."

"Did he?" The man's face set grimly again. "Well, that won't save him. As
for you, miss, you're goin' to yore room to live on bread an' water
for a week. I wish you were a boy for about five minutes so's I could
wear you to a frazzle with a cowhide."

Snaith's intentions toward Clanton and Prince had to be postponed for the
present, the cattleman discovered a few minutes later. When he and Lee
emerged from the river-bed to the bank above, the first thing he saw was
a group of cowpunchers shaking hands gayly with the two fugitives. His
jaw dropped.

"Where in Mexico did they come from?" he asked himself aloud.

"I expect they're Webb's riders," his daughter answered with a little sob
of joy. "I thought they'd never come."

"You thought.... How did you know they were comin'?"

"Oh, I sent for them," The girl's dark eyes met his fearlessly. A flicker
of a smile crept into them. "I