in, looking into
two rifle barrels. The men covering him lay a dozen feet above his
head upon a bare, flat rock. He could see only the hands upon their
guns, the heads under their tall hats, the shoulders. But he was near
enough to mark a business-like look in the hard black eyes.

"You've got the drop on me, _companeros_," he said lightly. "What's
the game?"

A third man appeared on foot in the trail before him, stepping out from
behind a shoulder of rock. He came on until he could have put out a
hand to the sorrel's reins.

"Where do you ride so early?" asked the man on foot, his voice quiet
but vaguely hostile. "On what errand?"

"What business is it of yours, my friend?" returned Kendric.

"I know the horse," called one of the figures above. "It is El Rey,
from the stables of La Senorita."

"Then the rider must have a message. Or a sign. Or he has stolen the
horse, which would go bad with him!"

"Curse you and your signs and messages," cried Kendric hotly. "It's a
free country and I ride where I please."

The man before him only smiled.

"Let me look at your saddle strings," he said.

Kendric stared wonderingly; was the fellow insane? What in the name of
folly did he mean by a thing like this? Surely not just the
opportunity to draw close enough to strike with a knife; the rifles
above made such strategy useless.

So he sat still and contented himself with watching. The man came a
step closer, twisted El Rey's head aside, pressed close and looked at
the rawhide strings on one side of the saddle. Then he moved to the
other side and repeated the process. Immediately he drew back, lifting
his hat widely.

"Pass on, senor," he said courteously. "_Viva La Senorita_!"

Kendric spurred by him and rode on, passing abruptly out of a
wilderness of tumbled boulders into a grassy flat. He turned in the
saddle; nowhere was there sign of another than himself upon the
mountain. Curiously he looked at his saddle strings; in one of them a
slit had been made through which the end of the string had been passed;
a double knot had been tied just below the slit. In no other
particular was any one of the strings in the least noteworthy.

"As good a way to carry a message as any," he grunted. "With not even
the messenger aware of the tidings he brings!"

The incident impressed him deeply. Zoraida, at the game she played,
was in deadly earnest. Her commands went far and through many channels
and wer