rancher shouted, springing from under the Texan's falling
body. The instant it struck the sand, Wade snatched Neale's revolver
from its holster and waited for him to try to rise; but he did not move.
A bloody froth stained his lips, while a heavier stain on his shirt,
just under the heart, told where the bullet had struck. The man was
dead.

"Hello! Hello!" Wade shouted repeatedly, and discharged the revolver
into the sand. He realized that, although a friend must have fired the
rifle, there was nothing to show where he was. "Hello!"

"Hello!" The hail was answered by the newcomer, who, thus guided,
approached the spot until his voice was near at hand. "Hello!"

"Hello! Come on!" The prisoner threw his hat up out of the hole. "Here I
am!"

The next moment Bill Santry, with tears streaming down his
weather-beaten cheeks, was bending over the edge of the fissure with
down-stretched hands. Beneath his self-control the old man was
soft-hearted as a woman, and in his delight he now made no attempt to
restrain himself.

"Thank Gawd for this minute!" he exclaimed. "Give me your hands, boy. I
can just reach 'em if I stretch a little an' you jump." Wade did so and
was drawn up out of the hole. "Thank Gawd! Thank Gawd!" the old fellow
kept exclaiming, patting his employer on the back. "Didn't hurt you
much, did they?"

Before Wade could answer, a patter of hoofs caused him to turn, as
Dorothy slipped from Gypsy's bare back and ran toward him. She stumbled
when she had almost reached him, and he caught her in his arms.

"Are you all right? Oh, your head! It's hurt--see, the blood?" She clung
to him and searched his face with her eyes, while he tried to soothe
her.

"It's nothing, just a bad bruise, but how--?" He checked the question
upon his lips. "We mustn't stay here. Moran may have...."

"There ain't nobody here. I wish to Gawd he was here. I'd...." Santry's
face was twisted with rage. "'Course," he added, "I knew it was him,
so'd Lem Trowbridge. But we come right smack through their camp, and
there was nobody there. This here skunk that I plugged, he must be the
only one. I got him, I reckon."

"Yes," Wade answered simply, as he watched three men from the Trowbridge
ranch ride up to them. "Where's Lem?"

Dorothy explained that she had set out to find him in company with the
man she had met at the big pine; but on the way they had met Santry and
the three cowboys. One of the men had then ridden on to Bald Knob af