s so close at hand. He dared not leave her in the prospect hole. He
was not yet ready to do murder for fear of punishment. That was a
possibility to be considered only if he should be hard pressed. The only
alternative left him was to take her to the border as a companion of his
fugitive doublings.

"We'll be going now," he announced, after he had eaten.

"Going where? Don't you see I'll be a drag to you? Take my horse and go.
You'll get along faster."

"Do you think so?"

She opened her lips to answer, but there was something in his
face--something at once so cruel and deadly and wolfish--that made the
words die on her lips. For the first time it came to her that if he did
not take her with him he would kill her to insure his own safety. None of
the arguments that would have availed with another man were of any weight
here. Her sex, her youth, the service she had done him--these would not
count a straw. He was lost to all the instincts of honor that govern even
hard desperate men of his class.

They struck into the mountains, following a cattle trail that wound upward
with devious twists. The man rode, and the girl walked in front with the
elastic lightness, the unconscious flexuous grace of poise given her body
by an outdoor life. After a time they left the gulch. Steadily they
traveled, up dark arroyos bristling with mesquite, across little valleys
leading into timbered stretches through which broken limbs and uprooted
trees made progress almost impossible, following always untrodden ways
that appalled with their lonely desolation.

By dusk they were up in the headwaters of the creeks. The resilient
muscles of the girl had lost their spring. She moved wearily, her feet
dragging heavily so that sometimes she staggered when the ground was
rough. Not once had the man offered her the horse. He meant to be fresh,
ready for any emergency that might come. Moreover, it pleased his small
soul to see the daughter of Luck Cullison fagged and exhausted but still
answering the spur of his urge.

The moon was up before they came upon a tent shining in the cold silvery
light. Beside it was a sheetiron stove, a box, the ashes of a camp fire,
and a side of bacon hanging from the limb of a stunted pine. Cautiously
they stole forward.

The camp was for the time deserted. No doubt its owner, a Mexican
sheepherder in the employ of Fendrick and Dominguez, was out somewhere
with his flock.

Kate cooked a meal and the convict ate