t here there is--this?" Endicott's eyes met
hers, and in their depths she perceived a newly awakened fire. She was
conscious of a strange glow at her heart--a mighty gladness welled up
within her, permeating her whole being. "He has awakened," her brain
repeated over and over again, "he has----"

The voice of the Texan fell upon her ears softly as from a distance,
and she turned her eyes to the boyish faced cow-puncher who viewed life
lightly and who, she had learned, was the thorough master of his
wilderness, and very much a man.

"I love it too," he was saying. "This bad land best of all. What with
the sheep, an' the nesters, the range country must go. But barbed-wire
can never change this," his arm swept the vast plain before him. "I
suppose God foreseen what the country was comin' to," he speculated,
"an' just naturally stuck up His 'keep off' sign on places here an'
there--the Sahara Desert, an' Death Valley, an' the bad lands. He
wanted somethin' left like He made it. Yonder's the Little Rockies,
an' them big black buttes to the south are the Judith, an' you can
see--way beyond the Judith--if you look close--the Big Snowy Mountains.
They're more than a hundred miles away."

The cowboy ceased speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze,
made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched
and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair
of glasses," he muttered, with his eyes on the moving dot.

"What is it?" asked the girl.

"Rider of some kind. Maybe the I X round-up is workin' the south
slope. An' maybe it's just a horse-thief. But it mightn't be either.
Guess I'll just throw the hull on that cayuse of mine an' siyou down
and see. He's five or six miles off yet, an' I've got plenty of time
to slip down there. Glad the trail's on the west side. You two stay
up here, but you got to be awful careful not to show yourselves. Folks
down below look awful little from here, but if they've got glasses
you'd loom up plenty big, an' posse men's apt to pack glasses." The
two followed him to camp and a few moments later watched him ride off
at a gallop and disappear in the scrub that concealed the mouth of the
precipitous trail.

Hardly had he passed from sight than Bat rose and, walking to his
saddle, uncoiled his rope.

"Where are you going?" asked Endicott as the half-breed started toward
the horses.

"Me, oh, A'm trail long behine. Mebbe-so two kin