he pulled her Stetson
tight against the sweep of the rushing wind. The ground was becoming
more and more uneven. Loose rock fragments were strewn about in
increasing numbers, and the valley was narrowing to an extent that
necessitated frequent fording of the shallow creek. "He can't make any
better time than I can," muttered the girl, as she noted the
slackening of her horse's speed. She was riding on a loose rein,
giving her horse his head, for she realized that to force him might
mean a misstep and a fall. She closed her eyes and shuddered at the
thoughts of a fall. A thousand times better had she fallen and been
pounded to a pulp by the flying hoofs of the horse herd, than to fall
now--and survive it. The ascent became steeper. Her horse was still
running, but very slowly. His neck and shoulders were reeking with
sweat, and she could hear the labored breath pumping through his
distended nostrils.

A sudden fear shot through her. Nine valleys in every ten, she knew,
ended in surmountable divides; and she knew, also, that one valley in
every ten did not. Suppose this one that she had chosen at random
terminated in a cul-de-sac? The way became steeper. Running was out of
the question, and her horse was forging upward in a curious
scrambling walk. A noise of clattering rocks sounded behind her, and
Patty glanced backward straight into the face of Bethune. Reckless of
a fall, in the blind fury of his passion, the quarter-breed had forced
his horse to his utmost, and rapidly closed up the gap until scarcely
ten yards separated him from the fleeing girl.

In a frenzy of terror she lashed her laboring horse's flanks as the
animal dug and clawed like a cat at the loose rock footing of the
steep ascent. White to the lips she searched the foreground for a
ravine or a coulee that would afford a means of escape. But before her
loomed only the ever steepening wall, its surface half concealed by
the scattering scrub. Once more she looked backward. The breath was
whistling through the blood-red flaring nostrils of Bethune's horse,
and her glance flew to the face of the man. Never in her wildest
nightmares had she imagined the soul-curdling horror of that face. The
lips writhed back in a hideous grin of hate. A long blue-red welt
bisected the features obliquely--a welt from which red blood flowed
freely at the corner of a swollen eye. White foam gathered upon the
distorted lips and drooled down onto the chin where it mingled with