ican eagle swoop over the cloud, sailing on slow wing high above
it, and growing so distant in her vision that he became a mere speck
moving in the limitless expanse of space.

It was a colossal landscape, and its creator had neglected no detail. And
it was harmonious, from the emerald green that carpeted the floor of the
valley near the gleaming river to the gigantic shoulders of the rugged
hills that lifted their huge, bastioned walls into the blue of the sky.
Some tall rock spires that thrust their peaks skyward far over on the
southern side of the valley had always interested her; they seemed to be
sentinels that guarded the place, hinting of an ages-old mystery that
seemed to reign all about them.

But there was mystery in everything in the valley, she felt; for it lay
before her, spreading, slumbrous, basking in the brilliant
sunlight--seeming to wait, as it seemed to have waited from the dawn of
the first day, for man to wonder over it.

She saw the Mexican eagle again after a while. It was making a wide
circle beyond the rock spires, floating lazily above them in long,
graceful swoops that were so lacking in effort that she longed to be up
there with him--to ride the air with him, to feel the exhilaration he
must feel.

As she looked, however, she caught a faint blur on the southern horizon
of the big picture--a yellowish-black cloud that hugged the horizon and
traveled rapidly eastward. It was some time before she realized that what
she saw was a dust cloud, and there were men in it--horsemen.

She got up from the rock, her face slowly whitening. And into her heart
came a presentiment that those men in the dust cloud were abroad upon an
errand of evil.

No doubt the presentiment was caused from the dread and fear she had
lived under for days--the consciousness that Deveny was in the valley,
and a recollection of the warnings that Harlan had given her. And she
knew the horsemen could not be Rancho Seco men--for they had gone
southward from the ranch, and there was no grass range where the horsemen
were riding. Also, the men were riding eastward, toward the Rancho Seco.

Trembling a little with apprehension, she mounted Billy and sent him down
the slope to the floor of the valley. The descent was hazardous, and
Billy did not make good time, but when he reached the level at the foot
of the slope he stretched his neck and fell into a steady, rapid pace
that took him down the valley swiftly.

As the girl ro