ngs and come to harm in the
murderous barbed-wire fences. Shorty was hurrying around on the other
side.

Before she had taken half a dozen steps the neigh of the stallion,
deafeningly loud, brought her to a halt with her hands clasped. She saw
the mares start under the alarm-call and rush for the gate; in a moment
their hoofs were volleying down the road and the wail of Marianne went
shrilling: "Lew Hervey! Lew Hervey! They're gone!"

Lew Hervey, in the bunkhouse, pushed away his cards and rose with a
curse. "That's what comes of working for a woman," he growled. "No
peace. No rest. Work day and night. And if you ain't kept working you're
just kept worried. It's hell!"

He clumped to the door and cast it open.

"Well?" he called into the darkness.

"Every one out!" cried Marianne. "The mares have broken through the gate
and stampeded!"

CHAPTER X

THE THIEF

They came with a rush, at that. The mares the girl prized so highly
were, in the phrase of the cowpunchers, "high-headed fools" incapable
of taking care of themselves. Running wild through the night, as likely
as not they would cut themselves to pieces on the first barbed wired
fence that blocked their way. With such a thought to urge them,
Marianne's hired men caught their fastest mounts and saddled like
lightning. There was a play of ropes and curses in the big corral, the
scuffle of leather as saddle after saddle flopped into place, and then a
stream of dim riders darted through the corral gate.

All of this, dazed by the misfortune, Marianne waited to see, but as the
first of the pursuers darted out of sight she turned and ran to the box
stall where she kept her favorite pony, a nimble bay, inimitable on a
mountain trail and with plenty of foot on the flat. But never did hurry
waste so much precious time. The rush of her entrance in the dark
startled the nervous horse, and she had to soothe it for a minute or
more with a voice broken by excitement. After that, there was the
saddling to be done and her fingers stumbled and stuttered over the
straps so that when at last she led the bay out and swung up to the
saddle there was no sound or sight of the cowpunchers. But a young moon
was edging above the eastern mountains and by that light, now only an
illusory haze, she hoped to gain sight of her men.

Down the road she jockeyed the mare at the top of her pace with the
barbed wire running in three dim streaks of light on either side until
at last sh