e struck the edge of the desert. The moon was now well above
the horizon and the sands rolled in dun levels and black hollows over
which she could peer for a considerable distance. Still there was no
sight of her cowpunchers and this was a matter of small wonder, for a
ten minute start had sent them far away ahead of her.

It would never do to push ahead with a blind energy. Already the bay was
beginning to feel the run, and Marianne reluctantly drew down to the
long lope which is the favorite gait of the cowpony. At this pace she
rocked on over mile after mile of desert through the moonhaze, but never
a token of the cowpunchers came on her. Twice she was on the verge of
turning back; twice she shook her head and urged the mare on again. Hour
upon hour had slipped by her. Perhaps Hervey long since had given up the
chase and turned towards the ranch. In the meantime, so much alike was
all the ground she covered that she seemed to be riding on a treadmill
but yet she could not return.

The moon floated higher and higher as the night grew old and at length
there was a dim lightening in the east which foretold dawn, but Marianne
kept on. If she lost the mares it would be very much like losing her
last claim to the respect of her father. She could see him, in prospect,
shrug his shoulders and roll another cigarette; above all she could see
Lew Hervey smile with a suppressed wisdom. Both of them had, from the
first, not only disapproved of the long price of the Coles horses, but
of their long legs as well and their "damned high heads." She had kept
telling herself fiercely that before long, when the mares were used to
mountain ways and trails, she would ride one of them against the pick of
Hervey's saddle ponies and at the end of a day he would know how much
blood counts in horse flesh! But if that chance were lost to her with
the mares themselves--she did not know where she could find the courage
to go back and face the people at the ranch. Meantime the dawn grew
slowly in the east but even when the mountains were huge and black
against flaming colors of the horizon sky, there was no breaking of
Marianne's gloom. Now and then, hopelessly, she raised her field glasses
and swept a segment of the compass. But it was an automatic act, and her
own forecast of failure obscured her vision, until at last,
saddle-racked, trembling with weariness and grief, she stopped the mare.
She was beaten!

She had turned the bay towards the ho