here the others are. Doctor Long is there, and
somebody will have water."

He looked at her anxiously. "But you?" he exclaimed.

She answered with a sharp insistence in her tones, leaning toward him,
the words flying from her lips:

"Take him and run, run! Never mind me. I will come behind you. Go, go
quickly!"

He cradled the unconscious child in his arms, running with long
strides up hill and down, aiming a straight course toward the bulk of
the searching party, which he could see from the hilltops, a multitude
of moving dots straggling back into the hills where he and Marguerite
had first followed the footprints. As he ran, his mind went back over
the winding trail they had followed, and he calculated that the child
had traveled not less than a dozen miles since sunset of the night
before. He glanced over the hills at the crowds beyond and thought it
must be some four or five miles to the nearest one. He saw a single
horseman off to his left who seemed much nearer, but he decided it
would be safer to run straight for the greater number, lest the man
might turn about and ride away without seeing him. But the horseman
presently came in his direction and soon Mead saw that the man was
looking toward him. He waved his hat and halloed, and the man
evidently saw and understood, for he spurred his horse into a gallop.
As he came nearer Mead thought there was something familiar in his
attitude and the outline of his body. But he did not look closely, for
he was running through a growth of prickly pear cactus and needed to
watch his footsteps. Scarcely more than two hundred yards separated
them when the horseman leaned forward in his saddle, studying keenly
the figure of the man on foot. A look of cruel, snarling triumph
flashed over his face and a Spanish oath broke from his lips. He
whipped out a revolver and leveled it at the running man with the
child in his arms. Mead had been looking at the ground, choosing his
course, and then had glanced at Paul's face for a moment. When he
raised his eyes again he saw the shining muzzle of a revolver pointed
at his breast and above it the savage, revengeful, triumphant face of
Antone Colorow.

CHAPTER XXII

A bullet tore through the sleeve of Mead's coat, passing but a few
inches from the head of the unconscious child. Another sang over his
left shoulder, scorching his coat. His face, flushed with running,
went white and grim with sudden passion, his lips closed in a