the saddle
and rode rapidly away. The flood of her temper had brought a disregard
of consequence: it was in the glow of her eyes, the lines of her lips,
and the tremor of her nostrils as she breathed long and deeply on her
flying horse.

When she checked Jim she had ridden miles, but not without a course
nor without a purpose. Where the roads ahead of her parted to lead
down the river and over the Elbow Pass to Medicine Bend, she halted
within a clump of trees almost where she had first seen McCloud.
Beyond the Mission Mountains the sun was setting in a fire like that
which glowed under her eyes. She could have counted her heart-beats as
the crimson ball sank below the verge of the horizon and the shadows
threw up the silver thread of the big river and deepened across the
heavy green of the alfalfa fields. Where Dicksie sat, struggling with
her bounding pulse and holding Jim tightly in, no one from the ranch
or, indeed, from the up-country could pass her unseen. She was waiting
for a horseman, and the sun had set but a few minutes when she heard a
sharp gallop coming down the upper road from the hills.

All her brave plans, terror-stricken at the sound of the hoof-beats,
fled from her utterly. She was stunned by the suddenness of the
crisis. She had meant to stop McCloud and speak to him, but before she
could summon her courage a tall, slender man on horseback dashed past
within a few feet of her. She could almost have touched him as he flew
by, and a horse less steady than Jim would have shied under her.
Dicksie caught her breath. She did not know this man--she had seen
only his eyes, oddly bright in the twilight as he passed--but he was
not of the ranch. He must have come from the hill road, she concluded,
down which she herself had just ridden. He was somewhere from the
North, for he sat his horse like a statue and rode like the wind.

But the encounter nerved her to her resolve. Some leaden moments
passed, and McCloud, galloping at a far milder pace toward the fork of
the roads, checked his speed as he approached. He saw a woman on
horseback waiting in his path.

"Mr. McCloud!"

"Miss Dunning!"

"I could not forgive myself if I waited too long to warn you that
threats have been made against your life. Not of the kind you heard
to-day. My cousin is not a murderer, and never could be, I am sure, in
spite of his talk; but I was frightened at the thought that if
anything dreadful should happen his name would be