sent a
call spitting tiny blue sparks from the key under his fingers.

He waited, repeating the call. His blue eyes clouded with anxiety and
he fumbled the adjustments, coaxing the current into perfect action
before he called again. Answer came, and Swan bent over the table,
listening, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the opposite wall of the
dugout. Then, his fingers flexing delicately, swiftly, he sent the
message that told how completely his big heart matched the big body:

"Send doctor and trained nurse to Quirt ranch at once. Send men to
Bear Top Pass, intercept man with young woman, or come to rescue if he
don't cross. Have three men here with evidence to convict if we can
save the girl who is valuable witness. Girl being abducted in fear of
what she can tell. They plan to charge her with insanity. Urgent.
Hurry. Come ready to fight.

"S. V."

Swan had a code, but codes require a little time in the composition of
a message, and time was the one thing he could not waste. He heard the
gist of the message repeated to him, told the man at the other station
that lives were at stake, and threw off the current.

CHAPTER XX

KIDNAPPED

Lorraine had once had a nasty fall from riding down hill at a gallop.
She remembered that accident and permitted Snake to descend Granite
Ridge at a walk, which was fortunate, since it gave the horse a chance
to recover a little from the strain of the terrific pace at which she
had ridden him that morning. At first it had been fighting fury that
had impelled her to hurry; now it was fear that drove her homeward
where Lone was, and Swan, and that stolid, faithful Jim. She felt that
Senator Warfield would never dare to carry out his covert threat, once
she reached home. Nevertheless, the threat haunted her, made her
glance often over her shoulder.

At the Thurman ranch, which she was passing with a sickening memory of
the night when she and Swan had carried her father there, Al Woodruff
rode out suddenly from behind the stable and blocked trail, his
six-shooter in his hand, his face stony with determination. Lorraine
afterwards decided that he must have seen or heard her coming down the
ridge and had waited for her there. He smiled with his lips when she
pulled up Snake with a startled look.

"You're in such a hurry this morning that I thought the only way to get
a chance to talk to you was to hold you up," he said, in much the same
tone he had used that day