Megales and Carlo left the prison by the secret
passage, following the fork to the river bank and digging at the
piled-up sand till they had forced an exit. O'Halloran met them here
with horses, and the three men followed the riverwash beyond the limits
of the town and cut across by a trail to a siding on the Central Mexican
Pacific tracks. The Irishman was careful to take no chances, and kept
his party in the mesquit till the headlight of an approaching train was
visible.

It drew up at the siding, and the three men boarded one of the two cars
which composed it. The coach next the engine was occupied by a dozen
trusted soldiers, who had formerly belonged to the bodyguard of Megales.
The last car was a private one, and in it the three found Henderson,
Bucky O'Connor, and his little friend, the latter still garbed as a boy.

Frances was exceedingly eager to don again the clothes proper to her
sex, and she had promised herself that, once habited as she desired,
nothing could induce her ever to masquerade again. Until she met and
fell in love with the ranger she had thought nothing of it, since it
had been merely a matter of professional business to which she had been
forced. Indeed, she had sometimes enjoyed the humor of the deception.
It had lent a spice o enjoyment to a life not crowded with it. But after
she met Bucky there had grown up in her a new sensitiveness. She wanted
to be womanly, to forget her turbid past and the shifts to which she
had sometimes been put. She had been a child; she was now a woman. She
wanted to be one of whom he need be in no way ashamed.

When their train began to pull out of the depot at Chihuahua she drew a
deep sigh of relief.

"It's good to get away from here back to the States. I'm tired of plots
and counterplots. For the rest of my life I want to be just a woman,"
she said to Bucky.

The young man smiled. "I reckon I must quit trying to make you a
gentleman. Fact is, I don't want you to be one any more."

She slanted a look at him to see what that might mean and another up the
car to make sure that Henderson was out of hearing.

"It was rather hopeless, wasn't it?" she smiled. "We'll do pretty well
if we succeed in making me a lady in course of time. I've a lot to
learn, you know."

"Well, you got lots of time to learn it," he replied cheerfully. "And
I've got a notion tucked away in the back of my haid that you haven't
got such a heap to study up. Mrs. Mackenzie will put yo