Sanders!"

A gun flashed as the pony jumped to a gallop. The silent night grew noisy
with shots, voices, the clatter of hoofs. Twice Dave fired answers to the
challenges which leaped out of the darkness at him. He raced across the
bridge spanning the Platte and for a moment drew up on the other side to
listen for sounds which might tell him whether he would be pursued. One
last solitary revolver shot disturbed the stillness.

The rider grinned. "Think he'd know better than to shoot at me this far."

He broke his revolver, extracted the empty shells, and dropped them to
the street. Then he rode up the long hill toward Highlands, passed
through that suburb of the city, and went along the dark and dusty road
to the shadows of the Rockies silhouetted in the night sky.

His flight had no definite objective except to put as much distance
between himself and Denver as possible. He knew nothing about the
geography of Colorado, except that a large part of the Rocky Mountains
and a delectable city called Denver lived there. His train trip to it had
told him that one of its neighbors was New Mexico, which was in turn
adjacent to Arizona. Therefore he meant to get to New Mexico as quickly
as Chiquito could quite comfortably travel.

Unfortunately Dave was going west instead of south. Every step of the
pony was carrying him nearer the roof of the continent, nearer the passes
of the front range which lead, by divers valleys and higher mountains
beyond, to the snowclad regions of eternal white.

Up in this altitude it was too cold to camp out without a fire and
blankets.

"I reckon we'll keep goin', old pal," the young man told his horse. "I've
noticed roads mostly lead somewheres."

Day broke over valleys of swirling mist far below the rider. The sun rose
and dried the moisture. Dave looked down on a town scattered up and down
a gulch.

He met an ore team and asked the driver what town it was. The man looked
curiously at him.

"Why, it's Idaho Springs," he said. "Where you come from?"

Dave eased himself in the saddle. "From the Southwest."

"You're quite a ways from home. I reckon your hills ain't so uncurried
down there, are they?"

The cowpuncher looked over the mountains. He was among the summits, aglow
in the amber light of day with the many blended colors of wild flowers.
"We got some down there, too, that don't fit a lady's boodwar. Say, if I
keep movin' where'll this road take me?"

The man with the ore team