k of the
banked clouds. June's eye swept the landscape and brightened. The sage
and the brush were very thick here. A grove of close-packed quaking asps
filled the draw. She glanced at Jake. He was busy wrestling with the loop
of wire that fastened the gate.

God helps those that help themselves, June remembered. She put down the
lines Houck had handed her, stepped softly from the buckboard, and
slipped into the quaking asps.

A moment later she heard Jake's startled oath. It was certain that he
would plunge into the thicket of saplings in pursuit. She crept to one
side of the draw and crouched low.

He did not at once dive in. From where she lay hidden, June could hear
the sound of his footsteps as he moved to and fro.

"Don't you try to make a fool of Jake Houck, girl," he called to her
angrily. "I ain't standin' for any nonsense now. We got to be movin'
right along. Come outa there."

Her heart was thumping so that she was afraid he might hear it. She held
herself tense, not daring to move a finger lest she make a rustling of
leaves.

"Hear me, June! Git a move on you. If you don't--" He broke off, with
another oath. "I'll mark yore back for you sure enough with my whip when
I find you."

She heard him crashing into the thicket. He passed her not ten feet away,
so close that she made out the vague lines of his big body. A few paces
farther he stopped.

"I see you, girl. You ain't foolin' me any. Tell you what I'll do. You
come right along back to the buckboard an' I'll let you off the lickin'
this time."

She trembled, violently. It seemed that he did see her, for he moved a
step or two in her direction. Then he stopped, to curse, and the rage
that leaped into the heavy voice betrayed the bluff.

Evidently he made up his mind that she was higher up the draw. He went
thrashing up the arroyo, ploughing through the young aspens with a great
crackle of breaking branches.

June took advantage of this to creep up the side of the draw and out of
the grove. The sage offered poorer cover in which to hide, but her
knowledge of Houck told her that he would not readily give up the idea
that she was in the asps. He was a one-idea man, obstinate even to
pigheadedness. So long as there was a chance she might be in the grove he
would not stop searching there. He would reason that the draw was so
close to the buckboard she must have slipped into it. Once there, she
would stay because in it she could lie concealed.

H