kind
to Miss Gordon."

"Oh, senor!" she cried, as in protest. But she took the bank note.
Kendric felt better for the transaction; he finished his breakfast with
rare appetite.

"Now," he cried, jumping up, "for the horse. Is it ready?"

Juanita, the folded paper in her hands, went with him to the door.

"The horse is ready, Senor Americano," she told him. "It remains only
for me to tell the boy that you have promised to return."

Sure enough, pawing the gravel in front of the house, half jerking off
his feet the _mestizo_ holding it, was a tall, rangy sorrel horse
looking as fine an animal as any man in a hurry could wish.

"Senor Kendric will ride, Pedro," called Juanita. "Give him the horse."

Pedro gave the reins over to Kendric and turned away toward the
stables. Kendric swung up into the saddle and for a moment curbed the
big sorrel's dash toward the gates, to say meditatively to Juanita:

"If I took that paper away from you and made a run for it, what then?"

A look of fear leaped into the girl's dark eyes and she drew hastily
back, clutching the paper to her breast.

"Senor!" she cried, breathless and aghast. "You would not! She--she
would kill me!"

"She would _what_?" he scowled.

"She would give me to her cat, her terrible, terrible cat, to play
with!" Juanita shivered, and drew still further back. "With my life I
must guard this paper until it goes from my hand into her hand."

He laughed his disbelief and gave his horse his head at last. They
shot away through the shrubberry; the horse slid to a standstill before
the closed gate. Of the man smoking a cigaret before it Kendric said
curtly:

"You are to let me through. And direct me to Bruce West's ranch."

"Si, senor." The man opened the gate. "It is yonder; up the valley.
The trail will carry you up over the mountain; there are piled stones
to mark the way to the pass. In an hour, from the other side of the
ridge, you will see houses. Ten miles from there."

Kendric rode through and as he did so his figure straightened in the
saddle, his shoulders squared, he put up his head. Free and in the
open, if only for twenty-four hours. And with a horse, a real horse,
between his knees. He looked off to the left to Barlow's three peaks;
the sun was gilding the top of the tallest and it was unquestionable
that it was flat-topped. But he did not dwell long upon buried gold
nor yet on the query which suggested itself: "Where were