e medium of daylight to convince
any human that they were other than ghostly. Then, despite the wind and
despite the changing murmur of the brook, there seemed to be a silence
insulating them, as deep and impenetrable as the darkness.

But the outlaws, who were fugitives now, slept the sleep of the weary,
and heard nothing. They awoke with the sun, when the forest seemed smoky
in a golden gloom, when light and bird and squirrel proclaimed the day.

The horses had not strayed out of this basin during the night, a
circumstance that Anson was not slow to appreciate.

"It ain't no cheerful camp, but I never seen a safer place to hole up
in," he remarked to Wilson.

"Wal, yes--if any place is safe," replied that ally, dubiously.

"We can watch our back tracks. There ain't any other way to git in hyar
thet I see."

"Snake, we was tolerable fair sheep-rustlers, but we're no good
woodsmen."

Anson grumbled his disdain of this comrade who had once been his
mainstay. Then he sent Burt out to hunt fresh meat and engaged his other
men at cards. As they now had the means to gamble, they at once became
absorbed. Wilson smoked and divided his thoughtful gaze between the
gamblers and the drooping figure of the girl. The morning air was
keen, and she, evidently not caring to be near her captors beside the
camp-fire, had sought the only sunny spot in this gloomy dell. A couple
of hours passed; the sun climbed high; the air grew warmer. Once the
outlaw leader raised his head to scan the heavy-timbered slopes that
inclosed the camp.

"Jim, them hosses are strayin' off," he observed.

Wilson leisurely rose and stalked off across the small, open patches,
in the direction of the horses. They had grazed around from the right
toward the outlet of the brook. Here headed a ravine, dense and green.
Two of the horses had gone down. Wilson evidently heard them, though
they were not in sight, and he circled somewhat so as to get ahead of
them and drive them back. The invisible brook ran down over the rocks
with murmur and babble. He halted with instinctive action. He listened.
Forest sounds, soft, lulling, came on the warm, pine-scented breeze. It
would have taken no keen ear to hear soft and rapid padded footfalls.
He moved on cautiously and turned into a little open, mossy spot,
brown-matted and odorous, full of ferns and bluebells. In the middle
of this, deep in the moss, he espied a huge round track of a cougar.
He bent over it. Sudden