ling pleasure to
feel his power over her grow until she, also, seemed to have entered the
game.

A game it was, as he had said to Vic when they parted, with the
rather essential difference that in this pastime one was tagged with a
forty-five caliber chunk of lead and was quite apt to remain "it"
for the remainder of eternity. Barry dropped further and further back
towards the posse. The danger fascinated him. Once he whistled high
and shrill as a hawk's scream from the top of a bluff while the posse
labored through a ravine below. He saw the guns flash out, and waited.
He heard the sing of the bullets around him, and the splashing lead on a
solid-rock face just beneath him; he listened till the deep echoes spoke
from the gulch, then waved his hat and disappeared.

This was almost defeating the purpose of his play for if he came that
close again they would probably make out that they were following a
decoy. Accordingly, since he had now drawn them well away from Vic's
line of escape, he turned his back reluctantly on the posse and struck
across the hills.

He kept on for the better part of an hour before he doubled and swung in
a wide circle towards his cabin. He had laid out a course which the wise
sheriff could follow until dark and be none the wiser; and if Pete Glass
were the finest trailer who ever studied sign and would never be able to
read the tokens of the return ride. Accordingly, with all this well in
mind, he brought Grey Molly to a full halt and gazed around, utterly
stunned by surprise, when, half way up the valley, a rifle spoke small
but sharp from one side, and a bullet clipped the rocks not the length
of the horse away. He understood. When he cut straightaway across the
country he had indeed left a baffling trail, a trail so dim, in fact,
that Pete Glass had wisely given it up and taken the long chance by
cutting back to the point at which the hunt began. So their paths
crossed.

Barry spoke sharply to the mare and loosed the reins, but she started
into a full gallop too late. There came a brief hum, a thudding blow,
and Grey Molly pitched forward.

Chapter XI. A New Trail Begins

If he had been an ordinary rider, sitting heavily far back in the
saddle, at the end of a long ride, Barry would either have been flung
clear and smashed horribly against the rocks, or, more likely, he would
have been entangled in the stirrups and crushed to death instantly by
the weight of his horse; but he rode