detour to reach Magdalena unobserved; the rescue of a
strange girl who would no doubt be self-willed and determined to ride
on the stage--the rescue forcible, if necessary; the fight and the
inevitable pursuit; the flight into the forest, and the safe delivery of
the girl to Auchincloss.

"Then, Milt, will we go after Beasley?" queried Roy Beeman,
significantly.

Dale was silent and thoughtful.

"Sufficient unto the day!" said John. "An' fellars, let's go to bed."

They rolled out their tarpaulins, Dale sharing Roy's blankets, and soon
were asleep, while the red embers slowly faded, and the great roar of
wind died down, and the forest stillness set in.

CHAPTER IV

Helen Rayner had been on the westbound overland train fully twenty-four
hours before she made an alarming discovery.

Accompanied by her sister Bo, a precocious girl of sixteen, Helen had
left St. Joseph with a heart saddened by farewells to loved ones at
home, yet full of thrilling and vivid anticipations of the strange life
in the Far West. All her people had the pioneer spirit; love of change,
action, adventure, was in her blood. Then duty to a widowed mother
with a large and growing family had called to Helen to accept this rich
uncle's offer. She had taught school and also her little brothers and
sisters; she had helped along in other ways. And now, though the
tearing up of the roots of old loved ties was hard, this opportunity was
irresistible in its call. The prayer of her dreams had been answered. To
bring good fortune to her family; to take care of this beautiful, wild
little sister; to leave the yellow, sordid, humdrum towns for the great,
rolling, boundless open; to live on a wonderful ranch that was some day
to be her own; to have fulfilled a deep, instinctive, and undeveloped
love of horses, cattle, sheep, of desert and mountain, of trees and
brooks and wild flowers--all this was the sum of her most passionate
longings, now in some marvelous, fairylike way to come true.

A check to her happy anticipations, a blank, sickening dash of cold
water upon her warm and intimate dreams, had been the discovery
that Harve Riggs was on the train. His presence could mean only one
thing--that he had followed her. Riggs had been the worst of many
sore trials back there in St. Joseph. He had possessed some claim or
influence upon her mother, who favored his offer of marriage to Helen;
he was neither attractive, nor good, nor industrious, nor anythin