you say it was to the Rocking Chair?"

"I didn't say."

At the sound of a horses footfall she turned, and she saw that whereas
they had been two, now they were three. The newcomer was a slender,
graceful man, dark and lithe, with quick, piercing eyes, set deep in the
most reckless, sardonic face she had ever seen.

The man bowed, with a sweep of his hat almost derisive. "Miss Mackenzie,
I believe."

She met him with level eyes that confessed no fear.

"Who are you, sir?"

"They call me Wolf Leroy."

Her heart sank. "You and he are the men that held up the Limited.''

"If we are, you are the young lady that beat us out of thirty thousand
dollars. We'll collect now," he told her, with a silky smile and a
glitter of white, even teeth.

"What do you mean? Do you think I carry money about with me?"

"I didn't say that. We'll put it up to your father."

"My father?"

"He'll have to raise thirty thousand dollars to redeem his daughter." He
let his bold eyes show their admiration. "And she's worth every cent of
it."

"Do you mean--" She read the flash of triumph in his ribald eyes and
broke off. There was no need to ask him what he meant.

"That's what I mean exactly, ma'am. You're welcome to the hospitality of
Hidden Valley. What's ours is yours. You're welcome to stay as long
as you like, but I reckon YOU'RE NOT WELCOME TO GO WHENEVER YOU WANT
TO--not till we get that thirty thousand."

"You talk as if he were a millionaire," she told him scornfully.

"The major's got friends that are. If it's a showdown he'll dig the
dough up. I ain't a bit worried about that. His brother, Webb, will come
through."

"Why should he?" She stood as straight and unbending as a young pine,
courage regnant in the very poise of the fine head. "You daren't harm a
hair of my head, and he knows it. For your life, you daren't."

His eyes glittered. Wolf Leroy was never a safe man to fling a challenge
at. "Don't you be too sure of that, my dear. There ain't one thing on
this green earth I daren't do if I set my mind to it. And your friends
know it."

The other man broke in, easy and unmoved. "Hold yore hawses, cap. We
got no call to be threatening this young lady. We keep her for a ransom
because that's business. But she's as safe here as she would be at the
Rocking Chair. She's got York Neil's word for that."

The Wolf snarled. "The word of a miscreant. That'll comfort her a heap.
And York Neil's word don't always go up here."