did not
thrill to the peaceful picture. He glanced instead at the buzzard
which seemed curiously to hang above the long black car.

Now presently as he eyed the road ahead for a glimpse of the van,
Ronador saw the familiar lines of a music-machine and drove by it with
a glance of interest. Instantly the blood rushed violently to his
face. For, as the horse and music-machine had been familiar, so was
the driver, who swept a broad sombrero from his head and revealed the
face of Philip Poynter.

With a curse Ronador abruptly brought the car to a standstill. The
very irony of this masquerade fired him with terrible anger.

"You!" he choked. "You!"

Philip nodded.

"I guess you're right," he said.

The blazing dark eyes and the calm, unruffled blue ones met in a glance
of implacable antagonism. Not in the least impressed Philip replaced
his sombrero and spoke to his horse. Fish crows flew overhead with
croaks of harsh derision.

Another buzzard! With a terrible jerk, Ronador drove on, his face
scarlet.

So Poynter still dared to follow! By a trick he had bought the
music-machine, by a trick he had given the Regent's Hymn to the curious
ears at Sherrill's. Very well, there were tricks and tricks! And if
one man may trick, so, surely, may another.

Passion had always hushed the voice of the imperial conscience, though
indeed it awoke and cried in a terrible voice when passion was dead.
So now with stiff white lips fixed in unalterable resolution, Ronador
drove viciously on, turning over and over in his fevered brain the ways
and days of Philip Poynter. . . . So at last he came to the camp he
sought.

It was pitched upon the upland bank of the winding creek and as the car
shot rapidly toward it, a great blue heron flapped indignantly and
soared away to the marsh beyond the trees. Ronador jumped queerly and
colored with a sense of guilt.

There was yellow oxalis here carpeting the ground among the low, dark
cedars, yellow butterflies flitted about among the trees where Johnny
was washing the van, and the inevitable buzzard floated with upturned
wings above the camp. Ronador had grown to hate the ubiquitous bird of
the South. Superstition flamed hotly up in his heart now at the sight
of it.

Diane was sewing. He had caught the flutter of her gown beneath a
cedar as he stopped the car. There was no one visible in the camp of
the Indian girl. Ronador sprang from his car and waved to the girl,
smi