ably been drinking like a sheepherder on a spree."

"I know what a devil he is. The question is how far would he dare go?"

"You've put yore finger right on the point, son. What might restrain
him wouldn't be any moral sense, but fear. He knows that once he
touched Miss Rutherford, this country would treat him like a
rattlesnake. He could not even be sure that the Rutherfords would not
hunt him down in Mexico."

"You think he would let her alone, then?"

The old-timer shook his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. But I reckon
he'd try to postpone a decision as long as he could. Unless he
destroyed her in the first rush of rage, he wouldn't have the nerve to
do it until he had made himself crazy drunk. It all depends on
circumstances, but my judgment is--if he had a chance and if he didn't
think it too great a risk--that he would try to hold her a prisoner as
a sort of hostage to gloat over."

"You mean keep her--unharmed?"

They were already in the saddle and on the road. Dave looked across at
his white-faced friend.

"I'm only guessing, Roy, but that's the way I figure it," he said
gently.

"You don't think he would try to take her across the desert with him to
Mexico."

Ryan shook his head.

"No chance. He couldn't make it. When he leaves the hills, Miss
Rutherford will stay there."

"Alive?" asked Beaudry from a dry throat.

"Don't know."

"God!"

"So that whether Miss Beulah did or did not meet Meldrum, we have to
look for her up among the mountains of the Big Creek watershed,"
concluded Dingwell. "I believe we'll find her safe and sound. Chances
are Meldrum isn't within forty miles of her."

They were riding toward Lonesome Park, from which they intended to work
up into the hills. Just before reaching the rim of the park, they
circled around a young pine lying across the trail. Roy remembered the
tree. It had stood on a little knoll, strong and graceful, reaching
straight toward heaven with a kind of gallant uprightness. Now its
trunk was snapped, its boughs crushed, its foliage turning sere. An
envious wind had brought it low. Somehow that pine reminded Beaudry
poignantly of the girl they were seeking. She, too, had always stood
aloof, a fine and vital personality, before the eyes of men sufficient
to herself. But as the evergreen had stretched its hundred arms toward
light and sunshine, so Beulah Rutherford had cried dumbly to life for
some vague good she could not formulate.