on the right scent this time. Murphy was riding north upon a mission
as desperate as ever man was called upon to perform. The chance of his
coming forth alive from that Indian-haunted land was, as the operator
truthfully said, barely one out of a hundred. Hampton thought of this.
He durst not venture all he was so earnestly striving after--love,
reputation, honor--to the chance of a stray Sioux bullet. No! and he
remembered Naida again, her dark, pleading eyes searching his face. To
the end, to the death if need were, he would follow!

The memory of his old plains craft would not permit any neglect of the
few necessaries for the trip. He bought without haggling over prices,
but insisted on the best. So it was four in the afternoon when he
finally struck into the trail leading northward. This proved at first
a broad, plainly marked path, across the alkali plain. He rode a
mettlesome, half-broken bronco, a wicked-eyed brute, which required to
be conquered twice within the first hour of travel; a second and more
quiet animal trailed behind at the end of a lariat, bearing the
necessary equipment. Hampton forced the two into a rapid lope,
striving to make the most possible out of the narrow margin of daylight
remaining.

He had, by persistent questioning, acquired considerable information,
during that busy hour spent in Cheyenne, regarding the untracked
regions lying before him, as well as the character and disposition of
the man he pursued. Both by instinct and training he was able to
comprehend those brief hints that must prove of vast benefit in the
pathless wilderness. But the time had not yet arrived for him to dwell
on such matters. His thoughts were concentrated on Murphy. He knew
that the fellow was a stubborn, silent, sullen savage, devoid of
physical fear, yet cunning, wary, malignant, and treacherous. That was
what they said of him back in Cheyenne. What, then, would ever induce
such a man to open his mouth in confession of a long-hidden crime? To
be sure, he might easily kill the fellow, but he would probably die,
like a wild beast, without uttering a word.

There was one chance, a faint hope, that behind his gruff, uncouth
exterior this Murphy possessed a conscience not altogether dead. Over
some natures, and not infrequently to those which seem outwardly the
coarsest, superstition wields a power the normal mind can scarcely
comprehend. Murphy might be spiritually as cringing a coward as h