past, he headed on it, straight for the slope now darkening
in the twilight. The big cougar showed more willingness to return on
this trail than he had shown in the coming. Ranger was fresh and wanted
to go, but Dale held him in.

A cool wind blew down from the mountain with the coming of night.
Against the brightening stars Dale saw the promontory lift its bold
outline. It was miles away. It haunted him, strangely calling. A night,
and perhaps a day, separated him from the gang that held Bo Rayner
prisoner. Dale had no plan as yet. He had only a motive as great as the
love he bore Helen Rayner.

Beasley's evil genius had planned this abduction. Riggs was a tool, a
cowardly knave dominated by a stronger will. Snake Anson and his gang
had lain in wait at that cedar camp; had made that broad hoof track
leading up the mountain. Beasley had been there with them that very day.
All this was as assured to Dale as if he had seen the men.

But the matter of Dale's recovering the girl and doing it speedily
strung his mental strength to its highest pitch. Many outlines of action
flashed through his mind as he rode on, peering keenly through the
night, listening with practised ears. All were rejected. And at the
outset of every new branching of thought he would gaze down at the
gray form of the cougar, long, graceful, heavy, as he padded beside the
horse. From the first thought of returning to help Helen Rayner he had
conceived an undefined idea of possible value in the qualities of his
pet. Tom had performed wonderful feats of trailing, but he had never
been tried on men. Dale believed he could make him trail anything, yet
he had no proof of this. One fact stood out of all Dale's conjectures,
and it was that he had known men, and brave men, to fear cougars.

Far up on the slope, in a little hollow where water ran and there was
a little grass for Ranger to pick, Dale haltered him and made ready to
spend the night. He was sparing with his food, giving Tom more than he
took himself. Curled close up to Dale, the big cat went to sleep.

But Dale lay awake for long.

The night was still, with only a faint moan of wind on this sheltered
slope. Dale saw hope in the stars. He did not seem to have promised
himself or Helen that he could save her sister, and then her property.
He seemed to have stated something unconsciously settled, outside of his
thinking. Strange how this certainty was not vague, yet irreconcilable
with any plans he