ing upside down in the stirrup leathers
as stirrups are likely to do when a saddled horse has been running
riderless.

She had been to investigate the Secret! She had been gone all day, all
night! And now her horse had come home without her! He dared not try
to think what had happened to her; he knew that she must have
dismounted while at the spring to examine the ground; he knew that
there were sections of the desert alive with rattlesnakes.

The Great Work which had walked and slept with him for weeks, which
had never in a single waking hour been absent from his thoughts, was
forgotten as though it had never been. The Great Work was suddenly a
trifle, a nothing. It did not matter; nothing in the wide world but
one thing mattered. Failure of the Great Work was nothing if only a
slender, gray-eyed, frank-souled girl were safe. Success, unless she
were there to look into his eyes and see that he had done well, was
nothing.

Unheeding Mrs. Ridley's shrill cries, he swung about and ran back to
the office.

"Tommy," he cried, hoarsely, "her horse is back--without her! She rode
away into the desert yesterday morning. She is out there yet. Billy,
my horse is in the shed. Don't stop to saddle, but ride like the very
devil out to Brayley's camp. Tell him what has happened. Tell him to
rush fifty men on horseback to me. Tell him to see that each man takes
two canteens full of water. And, for Heaven's sake, Billy, hurry!"

CHAPTER XXIII

Billy Jordan, terror springing up into his own eyes, sped through the
door. And Conniston and Garton turned grave faces upon each other.

"Have you any idea," Garton was asking, and to Conniston his voice
seemed to come faintly from a great distance, "which way she rode?"

"North. I don't know how far. Tommy, have you a horse here I can
ride?"

"You are going to look for her?"

"Yes."

He was already at the door, and turned impatiently as Garton called to
him:

"It's up to you, Greek. But--do you think that you could do any more
to help her than the men you are sending out?"

"No. But, man, I can't sit here without knowing--"

"Greek!" There was a note in Tommy's voice, a look in his eyes which
held Conniston. "I know how you feel, old man. And don't you know that
another man might be fool enough to--to love her as much as you do?"

"Tommy!"

"Yes," with a hard little smile. "Why not? I'm only half a man, old
fellow, but the head and the heart of me are left. And I'v