al hours been lying as flat as a lizard under
a matted clump of laurel on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a ford
which could not be rapidly crossed. His function was to see to it that
no one passed there whose coming might prove an embarrassment.

The rawness of the air caused his bones to ache and his muscles to
cramp, but he had been steadfast. He was playing for high stakes.
Finally two horsemen had appeared--and they were two who must not pass.
One of them was Brent and the other was Bud Sellers.

So Jase had opened fire and Bud had returned it--returned it and fled.

That left the sentinel with a result half successful and half
disastrous, and made it necessary for him to make a hurried short-cut
to another point past which Brent must shortly ride. There he would
finish the matter of disputing the road.

Mallows drew himself out of his cramped ambuscade and started for his
new point, to the completion of his business--but before he had taken
many steps a sudden and violent distress assailed him. He pressed his
hand to his side with a feeling of vague surprise and it came away
blood-covered. He stopped and took account of his condition--and found
himself shot in the chest. In the excitement of the moment he had not
felt the sting, but now he was becoming rapidly and alarmingly weak.
He stumbled on, but several times he fell, and each time it was with a
greater burden of effort that he regained his feet. He clamped his
teeth and pressed doggedly forward, but the ranges began to swim in
giddy circles and a thickening fog clouded his eyes. When he dropped
down next time he did not rise again.

As night fell in the mine the temper of the men there became
increasingly ugly. Some had recourse to the flasks that they carried
in their pockets, and as their blood warmed into an alcoholic glow,
their eyes, through the slits in their masks, began dwelling on
Alexander's beauty of figure and face with a menacing and predatory
greed.

Alexander McGivins was in the most actual and imminent of conceivable
perils.

The girl's hands were no longer bound. When the commander of the group
had realized that her imprisonment was not to terminate so shortly as
had been planned he had been magnanimous to the extent of freeing her
wrists, but he had granted her no further extension of freedom.

The girl had given them no satisfaction of weakening nerve, but in her
heart she kept hidden a qualm as the time lengthened and