dawn broke, her eyes brightened as she took in the flat,
familiar country, even noting a distant line of wire fence, and for the
first time in many hours despair gave place to sudden hope. Where there
was range-land there must be cattle and men to tend them, and her
experience with Western cow-men had not been confined to those of Lynch's
type. Him she knew now, to her regret and sorrow, to be the great
exception. The majority were clean-cut, brave, courteous, slow of speech,
perhaps, but swift in action; simple of mind and heart--the sort of man,
in short, to whom a woman in distress might confidently turn for help.

But presently, as the rising sun, gilding the peaks that towered above
her, emphasized the utter emptiness of those sweeping pastures, the light
died out of her eyes and she remembered with a sinking heart the blackleg
scourge which had so recently afflicted the T-T outfit. There had been
much discussion of it at the Shoe-Bar, and now she recalled vaguely
hearing that it had first broken out in these very pastures. Doubtless, as
a method of prevention, the surviving stock had been moved elsewhere, and
her chances for help would be as likely in the midst of a trackless desert
as here.

The reaction made her lips quiver and there swept over her with renewed
force that wave of despair which had been gaining strength all through
those interminable black hours. She had done her best to combat it. Over
and over again she told herself that the situation was far from hopeless.
Something must happen. Some one--mostly she thought of Buck, though she
did not name him even to herself--would come to her aid. It was incredible
that in this day and generation a person could be successfully carried off
even by one as crafty, resourceful, and unscrupulous as Tex Lynch. But in
spite of all her reasoning there remained in the back of Mary's mind a
feeling of cold horror, born of those few sentences she had overheard
while Pedro was saddling the horses. Like a poisonous serpent, it reared
its ugly head persistently, to demolish in an instant her most specious
arguments. The very thought of it now filled her with the same fear and
dread that had overwhelmed her when the incredible words first burned into
her consciousness, and made her glance with a sudden, sharp terror at the
man beside her. She met a stare from his bold, heavy-lidded eyes that sent
the blood flaming into her cheeks.

"Well?" queried Lynch, smiling. "Feelin