nd him all right there. He ought to be very
proud of you."

Dorothy caught her hands to her breast in a little gesture of
exultation, and the expression on her face was a wonderful thing to see.

"You'll go?"

"In the morning," Senator Rexhill answered.

Eager as Dorothy was to reach the big pine with her message, she could
not leave without giving Helen such a glance of triumph as made her
wince.

Then, hurrying to her pony, she rode rapidly out of town into the black
night which cloaked the trail leading to the pine. She knew that her
mother would miss her and be anxious, but the minutes were too precious
now to be wasted even on her mother. She did not know what peril Gordon
might be in, and her first duty was to him. She was almost wild with
anxiety lest the courier should not be at his post, but he was there
when she dashed up to the pine.

"Take me to Mr. Trowbridge. Quick!" she panted.

"He's somewhere between Bald Knob and Hatchet Hill," the man explained,
knocking the ashes from his pipe. "It's some dark, too, miss, for ridin'
in this country. Can't you wait until morning?"

"I can't wait one second. I have found out where Mr. Wade is, and I
mean to be with you all when you find him."

"You have, eh?" The man, who was one of Trowbridge's punchers, swung
into his saddle. "That bein' so, we'd get there if this here night was
liquid coal."

CHAPTER XVIII

A RESCUE AND A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE

At the end of an hour, or so, the lion withdrew and Wade thought he had
seen the last of it. He began to pace up and down the fissure once more,
for now that his thin shirt was damp with perspiration, set flowing by
the nervous strain he had been under, he began to get chilly again. He
had just begun to warm up, when he heard the animal returning. He
crouched back against the cavern wall, but the lion had evidently lost
the zest for such impossible prey. It walked about and sniffed at the
edges of the fissure for some minutes; then it sneaked off into the
timber with a cat-like whimper.

The exhausted ranchman kept his feet as long as he could, but when the
first rays of the morning sun cast purple shadows into the depths of the
hole, he could no longer keep awake. With his hands, he drifted the
loose sand about him, as travelers do when exposed to a snow-blizzard,
and slept until Goat Neale aroused him, in broad daylight. The Texan
performed this service by deftly dropping a small stone upon the
sleep