ianne, and then turned crimson with the memory.

"'You see," explained Red Jim Perris, "it's a bad habit I've picked up--
of doing the first fool thing that comes into my head. Good-bye, Miss
Jordan."

He was gone.

She felt, confusedly, that there were many thing? she should have said
and at the same time there was a strange surety that sometime she would
see him again and say them. She walked absently to the window which
opened on the vacant lot to the rear of the hotel.

Red Perris vanished from her mind, for below her she saw Cordova in the
act of tethering Alcatraz to the rack which stood in the middle of the
lot; saddle and bridle had been removed--the stallion wore only a stout
halter.

The Mexican kept on the far side of the rack and whipped his knot
together hastily; it was not till he sprang back from his work that she
saw the snaky length of an eight foot blacksnake uncoil from his hand.
He passed the lash slowly through his fingers, while surveying the
stallion with great complacence. The ears of Alcatraz flattened back, a
sufficient proof that he knew what was coming; he maintained his weary
attitude, but it now seemed one of despair. As for Marianne she refused
to admit the ugly suspicion which began to occur to her. But Cordova
left her only a moment for doubt.

The black streak curled around his head, and through the open window she
heard the crack of the lash-end. Alcatraz did not stir under the blow.
Once more the blacksnake whirled, and Cordova leaned back to give the
stroke the full stretch of arm and body; yet Alcatraz did not so much as
lift an ear. Only when the lash hung in mid-air did he stir. The rope
which tethered him hung slack, and this enabled the stallion to give
impetus to his backward leap. All the weight of his body, all the strain
of his leg muscles snapped the rope taut. It vibrated to invisibility
for an instant, then parted with a sound as loud as the fall of the
whip. The straining body of Alcatraz, so released, toppled sidewise.
He rolled like a dog in the dust, and when, with the agility of a dog,
he gained his feet, Cordova was fleeing towards the hotel with a
horror-stricken face.

Even then she could not understand his terror--not until she saw that
Alcatraz had wheeled and was bolting in hot pursuit. He came like the
"devil-horse" that the Mexican called him, with his ears flattened and
his mouth gaping; he came with such velocity that Cordova, running as
only consu