w
opening between the hills, dropping to their knees in the snow, and
cautiously creeping forward the last few yards. Hamlin, convinced that
fear alone could control the ex-cowthief, kept slightly to the rear.

"Now wait, Hughes," he said, his voice lowered but still tense with
command. "Be careful, man. Crawl up there in between those drifts,
and look over. Keep down low, you fool."

The two men wriggled slowly forward, smothered in the snowdrift, until
Hughes' eyes barely topped the surface. Hamlin lay outstretched a foot
below, watchful for the slightest sign of treachery. The cowman stared
up the depression, blinking his eyes in the snow glare. The impatient
Sergeant gripped his arm.

"Well, what is it? Are they coming?"

"You bet, an' about dead, from the looks of 'em. Them fellars ain't
lookin' fer nuthin'. I reckon I could stand up straight yere an' they
'd never see me. Take a look yerself; it's safe 'nough."

Hamlin drew himself up, and peered out over the snow, but still gripped
the other's arm. With his first glance up the valley there swept over
him a strange feeling of sympathy for those he was hunting. It was a
dismal, depressing picture--the bare, snow-covered hillsides, and
between, floundering weakly through the drifts, the little party of
fugitives, the emaciated ponies staggering with weakness, the men on
foot, reeling as they tramped forward, their heads lowered in utter
weariness. The girl alone was in saddle, so wrapped about in blankets
as to be formless, even her face concealed. The manner in which she
swayed to the movements of the pony, urged on by one of the Indians,
was evidence that she was bound fast, and helpless. At sight of her
condition Hamlin felt his old relentless purpose return. He was
plainsman enough to realize what suffering those men had passed through
before reaching such extremity, and was quick to appreciate the full
meaning of their exhaustion, and to sympathize with it. He had passed
through a similar baptism, and remembered the desperate clutch of the
storm-king.

But the sight of that poor girl swaying helplessly in the saddle, a
bound prisoner in the midst of those ruffians, who had murdered her
father before her eyes and who were bearing her to all the unspeakable
horrors of Indian captivity, instantly stifled within him every plea of
mercy. No matter what they had suffered, they were a ruthless,
merciless gang of cut-throats and thieves, fleei