bines for the preaching service. Sweet-peas would do very
well. But she was a young woman who did not like to be beaten. She
had plenty of time, and she wanted an excuse to be alone all day. Why
not ride over to Del Oro Creek, where the season was later and the
columbines would be just coming on?

The ayes had it, and presently Miss Rutherford was winding deeper into
the great hills that skirted Flat Top. Far in the gulches, dammed by
the small thick timber, she came on patches of snow upon which the sun
never shone. Once a ptarmigan started from the brush at her feet. An
elk sprang up from behind a log, stared at her, and crashed away
through the fallen timber.

Her devious road took Beulah past a hill flaming with goldenrod and
Indian paint-brushes. A wealth of color decorated every draw, for up
here at the roots of the peaks blossoms rioted in great splashes that
ran to the snowbanks.

After all, she had to go lower for her favorite blooms. On Del Oro she
found columbines, but in no great profusion. She wandered from the
stream, leading Blacky by the bridle. On a hillside just above an
aspen grove the girl came upon scattered clumps of them. Tying the
pony loosely to a clump of bushes, she began to gather the delicate
blue wild flowers.

The blossoms enticed her feet to the edge of a prospect hole long since
abandoned. A clump of them grew from the side of the pit about a foot
below the level of the ground. Beulah reached for them, and at the
same moment the ground caved beneath her feet. She clutched at a bush
in vain as she plunged down.

Jarred by the fall, Beulah lay for a minute in a huddle at the bottom
of the pit. She was not quite sure that no bones were broken. Before
she had time to make certain, a sound brought her rigidly to her feet.
It was a light loose sound like the shaking of dried peas in their
pods. No dweller of the outdoors Southwest could have failed to
recognize it, and none but would have been startled by it.

The girl whipped her revolver from its scabbard and stood pressed
against the rock wall while her eyes searched swiftly the prison into
which she had fallen. Again came that light swift rattle with its
sinister menace.

The enemy lay coiled across the pit from her, head and neck raised,
tongue vibrating. Beulah fired--once--twice--a third time. It was
enough. The rattlesnake ceased writhing.

The first thing she did was to examine every inch of her prison