ell around
like most of the boys. You don't drink. Mebbe you ain't exactly pretty,
but yore face doesn't scare critters when they see it onexpected. An'
when the band begins to play--Gentlemen, watch Tex."

"If the girls would only let you do the pickin' for 'em, Jumbo,"
suggested Roberts with his sardonic smile.

Through rabbit weed and curly mesquite, among the catclaw and the
prickly pear, they followed the faint ribbon trail left by the outlaws
in their retreat from the scene of the hold-up.

When it was too late to cut sign any longer, the Ranger gave orders to
throw in to a small draw where the grass was good. At daybreak they were
on the trail again and came within the hour to the body of Overstreet.
They dug a grave in a buffalo run with their knives and buried the body
as well as they could before they picked up again the tracks of two
horses now traveling much faster.

"They're headin' for Palo Duro, looks like,'" commented Roberts.

"Looks like," agreed his friend.

Early in the afternoon the posse reached the little creek where the
outlaws had breakfasted. Old Guadaloupe crisscrossed the ground like a
bloodhound as he read what was written there. But before he made any
report Roberts himself knew that a third person had joined the fugitives
and that this recruit was a woman. The Ranger followed the Apache
upstream, guessed by some feathers and some drops of blood that one of
the outlaws had shot a prairie-hen, and read some hint of the story of
the meeting between the woman and the bandit.

Was this woman some one who had been living in Palo Duro Canon with the
outlaws? Or was this meeting an accidental one? The odd thing about it
was that there was no sign of her horse. She had come on foot, in a
country where nobody ever travels that way.

Roberts told Guadaloupe to find out where the party had gone from the
camp. He himself followed into the desert the footsteps of the woman who
had come across it toward the creek. He was puzzled and a little
disturbed in mind. She had not come from the canon. What was a woman
doing alone and on foot in this desert empty of human life for fifty
miles or more?

He found no answer to his questions and reluctantly returned to the
camp-fire. Guadaloupe was ready with his report. One man had started out
on foot along the edge of the canon. The other man and the woman had
struck on horseback across the plain.

"We'll follow those on horseback," decided the Ranger at