that would have kept any ordinary
saddle horse trotting to match for speed, and although he still mouthed
the strange bit pettishly, he carried Mary V over the trail with a kingly
graciousness that instilled a deep respect into that arrogant young lady.

Tango, I think, would have been amazed to see how Mary V refrained
from bullying her mount that night. There was no mane-pulling, no
little, nipping pinches of the neck to imitate the bite of a fly, no
scolding--nothing that Tango had come to take for granted when Mary V
bestrode him.

It was only a little after one o'clock when Mary V, holding Jake down to
a walk, nervously passed the empty corral at Sinkhole Camp. She paused
awhile in the shadows, wondering what she had better do next. After all,
it would be awkward to investigate the interior of the little cabin that
squatted there so silently under the moon. She hesitated to dismount.
Frankly, Mary V felt much safer with a fleet horse under her, and she was
afraid that she might not be so lucky next time in mounting. So she began
to reconnoiter warily on horseback.

She rode up to the window of the little shed, and saw that it was empty.
She rode inside the corral and made a complete circuit of the fence, and
saw nothing whatever of Johnny's saddle and bridle. They would be
somewhere around, surely, if he were here. She avoided the cabin, but
rode down to the pasture in the creek bottom where Johnny's extra horse
would be feeding. The horse was there, and came trotting lonesomely
up to the fence when he saw Jake. But there was only the one horse,
which seemed to prove that the other horse was with the saddle and
bridle--wherever they were.

Mary V returned to the corral, still keeping far enough away from the
cabin to hide the sound of Jake's hoof beats from any one within. She
tied the horse to a corral post and went on foot to the cabin. She
carried her six-shooter in her hand, and she carried in her throat a
nervous fluttering.

First she sidled up to a window and listened, then peered in. She could
see nothing, for the moon had slid over toward the west, and the room was
a blur of shade. But it was also silent, depressingly silent. She crept
around to the door, and found that it was fastened on the outside.

That heartened her a little. She undid the rawhide string and pushed the
door open a little way. Nothing happened. She pushed it a little farther,
listened, grew bolder--yet frightened with a new fear-