that moment
despairingly, but no bell of warning rang within to tell him she was so
near and in such fearful need of him.

Twice during the morning did the refugee attempt to slip down into the
parched desert that stretched toward Sonora and safety. But the cordon set
about him was drawn too close. Each time a loose-seated rider lounging in
the saddle with a rifle in his hands drove them back. The second attempt
was almost disastrous, for the convict was seen. The hum of a bullet
whistled past his ears as he and his prisoner drew back into the chaparral
and from thence won back to cover.

Kate, drooping with fatigue, saw that fear rode Blackwell heavily. He was
trapped and he knew that by the Arizona code his life was forfeit and
would be exacted of him should he be taken. He had not the hardihood to
game it out in silence, but whined complaints, promises and threats. He
tried to curry favor with her, to work upon her pity, even while his
furtive glances told her that he was wondering whether he would have a
better chance if he sacrificed her life.

From gulch to arroyo, from rock-cover to pine-clad hillside he was driven
in his attempts to break the narrowing circle of grim hunters that hemmed
him. And with each failure, with every passing hour, the terror in him
mounted. He would have welcomed life imprisonment, would have sold the
last vestige of manhood to save the worthless life that would soon be
snuffed out unless he could evade his hunters till night and in the
darkness break through the line.

He knew now that it had been a fatal mistake to bring the girl with him.
He might have evaded Bolt's posses, but now every man within fifty miles
was on the lookout for him. His rage turned against Kate because of it.
Yet even in those black outbursts he felt that he must cling to her as his
only hope of saving himself. He had made another mistake in lighting a
campfire during the morning. Any fool ought to have known that the smoke
would draw his hunters as the smell of carrion does a buzzard.

Now he made a third error. Doubling back over an open stretch of hillside,
he was seen again and forced into the first pocket that opened. It proved
to be a blind gulch, one offering no exit at the upper end but a stiff
rock climb to a bluff above.

He whipped off his coat and gave it to Kate.

"Put it on. Quick."

Surprised, she slipped it on.

"Now ride back out and cut along the edge of the hill. You've got time to