nd looped it
around the saddle horn. Then he mounted and rode away. Grim, indistinct,
fading into the blackness of the desert night, he went, half a mile,
perhaps. And then, halting the pony, he turned in the saddle and looked
back, his head bent in a listening attitude. To his ears came the sharp
bark of a coyote, very near. It was answered, faintly, from the vast,
yawning distance, by another. Catherson stiffened, and lines of remorse
came into his face.

"Hell!" he exclaimed gruffly.

He wheeled the pony and sent it scampering back. A little later he was
kneeling at Masten's side, and still later he helped Masten to the saddle
in front of him and set out again into the desert blackness toward the
timber from which they both had burst some time before.

Many hours afterward they came to the river, at the point where the
Lazette trail intersected. There, in the shallow water of the ford,
Masten washed from his body the signs of his experience, Catherson
helping him. Outwardly, when they had finished, there were few marks on
Masten. But inwardly his experience had left an ineffaceable impression.

After washing, he staggered to a rock and sat on it, his head in his
hands, shivers running over him. For a time Catherson paid no attention
to him, busying himself with his pony, jaded from the night's work. But
after half an hour, just as the first faint shafts of dawn began to steal
up over the horizon, Catherson walked close, and stood looking down at
his victim.

"Well," he said, slowly and passionlessly, "I've got you this far. I'm
quittin' you. I reckon I've deviled you enough. I was goin' to kill you.
But killin' you wouldn't have made things right. I expect you've learned
somethin', anyway. You'll know enough to play square, after this. An'
wherever you go--"

Masten looked up at him, his face haggard, his eyes brimming, but
flashing earnestly.

"I'm going back to Hagar," he said. He shivered again. "You're right,
Catherson," he added, his voice quavering; "I learned a lot tonight. I've
learned--" His voice broke, and he sat there grim and white, shuddering
as a child shudders when awakened from a nightmare. He almost collapsed
when Catherson's huge hands fell to his shoulders, but the hands held
him, the fingers gripping deeply into the flesh. There was a leap in
Catherson's voice:

"You're almost a man, after all!" he said.

They got on the pony after a while, riding as before, Masten in front,
Catherson