h that held the peace of the country within its varnished walls
go sliding out of the yard, its green tail lights the only illumination
anywhere behind the engine. When it had clicked over the switch and was
picking up speed for its careening flight south through the cool hours of
early morning, he gave a sigh that had no triumph in it, and turned away
toward his cabin.

"Well, there goes the revolution," he said somberly to himself. "And here
I go to do the rest of the job; and alongside what I've got to do, hell
would be a picnic!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

STARR TAKES ANOTHER PRISONER

With a slip of paper in his pocket that would have gone a long way toward
clearing Helen May, had he only taken the trouble to look at it, Starr
rode out in the cool early morning to Sunlight Basin. He looked white and
worn, and his eyes were sunken and circled with the purple of too little
sleep and too much worry, for in the three days since he had seen her,
Starr had not been able to forget his misery once in merciful sleep. Only
when he was busy with capturing the Junta had he lost for a time the keen
pain of his hurt.

Now it was back like an aching tooth set going again with cold water or
sweets. He tried to make himself think that he hated Helen May, and that
a girl of that type--a girl who could lend herself to such
treachery--could not possibly win from him anything but a pitying
contempt. He told himself over and over again that he was merely sore
because a girl had "put something over on him"; that a man hated to have
a woman make a fool of him.

He tried to gloat over the fact that he had found her out before she had
any inkling of how he felt toward her; he actually believed that! He
tried not to wince at the thought of her at Fort Bliss, a Federal
prisoner, charged with conspiring against the government. She must have
known the risk she took, he kept telling himself. The girl was no fool,
was way above the average in intelligence. That was why she had appealed
to him; he had felt the force of her personality, the underlying strength
of her character that had not harshened her outward charm, as strength so
often does for a woman.

That was the worst of it. Had she been weak she would never have mixed
with any political conspiracy; they would not have wanted her, for
intrigue has no place for weaklings. But had she been weak she would
never have attracted Starr so deeply, however innocent she might have
been. So