Without lighting the lamp Patty dressed hurriedly. Was the Samuelson ranch a place of mystery? What was the meaning of the light sounds—the soft tramp of horses, and the padding of feet upon the stairs? The footsteps paused at the door across the hall. There followed a whispered colloquy and the steps retreated rapidly to the lower regions. Patty opened her door to see Mrs. Samuelson, her face expressing the deepest agitation, and one thin hand catching together the folds of a lavender kimono.

"What is the matter?" asked the girl. "What has happened?"

The old lady closed the door from beyond which came sounds of heavy breathing. "I am afraid he is worse," she whispered. "Wong Yie went to the bunk house to send the boys for the doctor and for Mrs. Pierce, and he says they are gone! Their horses are not in the corral. I don't understand it," she cried. "I told them not to go away. They know, that with my husband sick, we are in momentary danger from the horse-thieves, and they know that their place is right here."

"You told Bill to stay until he heard from Vil Holland," reminded Patty. "Maybe they heard from him, and left without disturbing you."

"That's it, of course!" cried the woman. "I ought to have known I could trust them. But, for a moment it seemed that—" She stopped abruptly and glanced anxiously into the girl's face, "But what in the world will we do? Wong Yie can't ride a step, and if he could, I need him here——"

"I'll ride to Pierce's!" exclaimed Patty. "And get Mr. Pierce to go for the doctor, and bring Mrs. Pierce back with me. My horse is in the corral, and I can get down there in no time."

"Oh, can you? Will you? And you are not afraid—alone at night in the hills? Under any other circumstances I wouldn't think of letting you do it, child—especially with the horse-thieves about. But, it seems the only way——"

"Of course it's the only way! And I'm not a bit afraid."

Hurrying to the corral, Patty saddled her horse, and a few moments later swung into the trail that led down the creek. She glanced at her watch; it was one o'clock. The moon floated high in the heavens and the valley was almost as light as day. Urging her horse into a run, she found a wild exhilaration in riding through the night, splashing across shallows and shooting across short level stretches to plunge through the water again.

After what seemed an interminable wait, Pierce himself appeared at the door in answer to her persistent pounding. Patty thought he eyed her curiously as he stood aside and motioned her into the kitchen. Very deliberately he lighted the lamp and listened in silence until she had finished. Then, coolly, he eyed her from top to toe: "'Pears to me I've saw you before," he announced. "Over on the trail, a while back. An' you was a-ridin' with—Monk Bethune."

"Well?" asked the girl, angered by the man's tone.

"Well," mocked Pierce. "So to-night's the night yer figgerin' on pullin' the raid, is it?"

"I'm figuring on pulling the raid! What do you mean?"

"I mean you, an' Bethune, an' yer gang. You be'n up a-spottin' the lay, so's to tip 'em off, an' now you come down here an' tell me the Old Man's worst so's I'll take out to town fer the doc—an' one less posse-man in the hills. Yer a pretty slick article, Miss, but it hain't a-goin' to work."

Patty listened, speechless with rage. When the man finished she found her tongue. "You—you accuse me of being a—a horse-thief?" she choked.

"Yup," answered the man. "That's it—an' not so fur off, neither. Don't you s'pose I know that if the Old Man was worst one of his own boys would of be'n a foggin' it fer town hisself? I'd ort to take an' lock you up in the root cellar an' turn you over to Vil Holland, but I guess if we get all the he ones out of yer gang we kin leave you loose. 'Tain't likely you could run off no horses single-handed."

A woman whose appearance showed an evident hasty toilet had stepped from an inner room, and stood listening to the man. Patty was about to appeal to her when, from the outside came a thunder of hoofs, and suddenly a man burst into the room. Patty recognized him as Bill, of the Samuelson ranch. "Come on, Jack, quick! Git yer gun, while I slam the kak on yer cayuse. The raid's on, they've cut out a bunch of them three an' four-year-olds offen the east slope an' they're a-foggin' 'em off."

"Bill! Oh, Bill!" cried the girl, in desperation. But the man had plunged toward the corral, followed by Pierce, buckling on his cartridge belt as he ran. A moment later both men were in the saddle, and the sound of pounding hoofs grew far away.

In tears, Patty turned to the woman. "Oh, why couldn't he have believed me?" she cried. "He thinks I'm one of that detestable gang of thieves! But, you—surely you don't think I'm a horse-thief?" In broken sentences she related the facts to the woman, and finished by begging her to go up to the Samuelson ranch. "I'll ride on to town for the doctor myself!" she exclaimed. "And surely you can do that much for your neighbor."

"Do that much fer 'em!" the woman exclaimed. "I reckon they ain't nothin' I wouldn't do fer them. Mebbe Jack's right, an' mebbe he's wrong. I've saw him be both, 'fore now. Anyways, it ain't a-goin' to do Samuelsons no harm, nor the horse-thieves no good fer me to go up there. You hit the trail fer town, an' I'll ride up the crick." The woman cut short the girl's thanks. "You better take straight on down Porky 'til it crosses the trail," she advised. "It's a little longer but you won't git lost that way, an' chances is you would if I tried to tell you the short cut. Thompsons is great friends with Samuelsons," called the woman, as Patty mounted. "Better change horses there! Or, mebbe Thompson'll go on to town fer you."

Below the Pierce ranch the trail was not so good but, unheeding, the girl held her horse to his pace. In her heart now was no wild exhilaration of moonlight, nor was there any lurking fear of unknown horsemen, only a mighty rage—a rage engendered by Pierce's accusation, but which expanded with each leap of her horse until it included Vil Holland, Bethune, the Samuelson cowboys, and even Len Christie and the Samuelsons themselves—a senseless, consuming rage that caused the blood to throb hotly to her temples and found vicious expression in driving the rowels into her horse's sides until the animal tore down the rough, half-lit trail at a pace that sent the loose stones flying from beneath his hoofs in rattling volleys.

Possibly, it was the rattling of loose stones, possibly her anger dulled her sensibilities to the point where they were incapable of taking note of her surroundings, but the fact remains that as she approached the mouth of a wide coulee that gave into the valley from the eastward, she did not hear the rumble of hundreds of pounding hoofs that each second grew louder and more ominous, until as she reached the mouth of the coulee a rider swept into the valley, his horse straining every muscle to keep ahead of the herd that thundered in his wake.

Apparently the horseman did not notice her, and the next moment Patty was engulfed in the herd. The girl lived one wild moment of terror. In front, behind, upon each side were madly plunging horses, eyes staring, mouths agape exposing long white teeth that flashed wickedly in the moonlight, manes tossing wildly, and air whistling through wide-flaring nostrils. On and on they swept down the valley. The roar of hoofs rose to a mighty crescendo of thunder, above which, now and then, the terrified girl caught fierce yells from the flank of the herd. So close were the terrorized horses running that it was impossible for the girl to see the ground before her. Sweating, plunging bodies surged against her legs threatening each moment to scrape her feet from the stirrups. Gripping the horn with both hands she rode in a sort of daze.

Glancing over her shoulder, she caught an occasional flash of white as the men on the flanks waved sheets above their heads, whose flapping, fluttering folds urged the maddened horses into a perfect frenzy of action.

In front, and a little to one side of Patty, a horse went down, a big roan colt, and she got one horrible glimpse of a grotesquely twisted neck, and a tangle of thrashing hoofs as another horse plunged onto his fallen comrade. A horrible scream split the air as he, too, went down, and the sudden side-surge of the herd all but unseated the clinging girl. In a second it was over and the herd thundered on. Patty closed her eyes, and with white, tight-pressed lips, wondered when her horse would go down. She pictured the bloody, battered thing that had been herself, lying flattened and gruesome, in the moonlight when the pounding hoofs swept past.

Time and distance ceased to be. Patty was carried helplessly on, a part of that frenzied flood of flesh, muscles rigid, brain tense—waiting for the inevitable moment—the horrible moment that was to mark the climax of this ride of horrors. She wondered if it would hurt, or would merciful unconsciousness come with the first impact of the fall.

Suddenly she opened her eyes. She sensed a change in the rumble of hoofs. Horses surged together and the pace slackened from a wild rush to a wilder thrashing of uncertainty. In the forefront a thin red spurt of flame leaped forth and above the pounding hoofs rang the report of a shot. The leaders seemed to have stopped and the main body of the herd pressed and struggled against the unyielding front. Other spurts of flame pierced the night, and shots rang viciously from all sides. The horses were milling, churning, about in a huge maelstrom, in which Patty found herself being slowly forced to the outside as the unencumbered free horses crowded to the center away from the terrifying stabs of flame and the crack of guns. She could see a mounted form before her. Evidently it was the man who had ridden in the forefront of the herd. The rider was very close, now, his horse keeping pace with her own which had nearly reached the outer rim of the churning mass of animals. The brim of his hat shadowed his face but Patty could see that the gauntleted hand held a six-gun. A shift of position brought the moonlight full upon the man's front—upon a scarf of robin's-egg blue caught together at the throat with the polished tip of buffalo horn. No other horsemen were in sight, but an occasional sharp report sounded from the opposite side of the herd. "Vil!" she screamed. "Vil Holland!" The form stiffened in the saddle and the girl caught the flash of his eyes beneath the hat brim. The next instant the gun had given place to a heavy quirt in his hand, his tall, rangy horse plunged straight toward her, the wild horses, crowding frenziedly to escape the blows as the rider lashed furiously to the right and to the left as he forced his mount to her side.

"Good God! Girl, what are you doing here? I thought you were one of them—and I nearly—" The man leaned suddenly forward and grasped the bit-chain of her bridle. As if knowing exactly what was expected of them, side by side the two horses fought their way free of the herd, the big buckskin with ears laid back, snapping viciously at the crowding horses. A six-gun roared twice. Patty felt a sudden brush of air against her cheek and the next instant the two horses plunged down the steep side of a narrow ravine. In the bottom the man released her bridle. "You stay here!" he commanded gruffly.

"But, the Samuelsons! Mr. Samuelson is—" The words were drowned in a shower of gravel as the rangy buckskin scrambled up the bank and disappeared over the top. The rapid transition from anger to terror, and from terror to relief, proved too much for the girl's nerves and she burst into a violent fit of sobbing. The tears enraged her and she shouted at the top of her voice. "I won't stay here!" but the words sounded puny and weak, and she knew that they had not penetrated beyond the rim of the ravine. "I won't do it! I won't stay here!" she kept repeating, the sentences broken by the hysterical sobbing. Nevertheless, stay there she did, until with a mighty rumble of hoofs and a scattering volley of shots, the horse herd swept northward, and when finally she succeeded in gaining the upper level, the sounds came to her ears faint and far away.

Hurriedly she glanced about her. What was that stretching to the southward, a long ribbon of white in the moonlight? "The trail!" she cried. "The trail to town—and to Thompson's!" Just beyond the trail, upon the brown-yellow buffalo grass a dark object lay motionless. Patty stared at it in horror. It was the body of a man. Her first impulse was to put spurs to her horse and fly down that long white ribbon of trail—to place distance between herself and the thing that lay sprawled upon the grass. Then a thought flashed into her brain. Suppose it were he? Vil Holland, the man whom everybody trusted—the man who had calmly braved the shots of the horse-thieves to rescue her from that churning maelstrom of horror.

Unconsciously, but surely, under the influence of those upon whose judgment she knew she could rely, her suspicion and distrust of him had weakened. She had half-realized the fact days ago, when at thought of him she found herself forced to enumerate his apparent offenses over and over again to keep the distrust alive. She thought of him now as he had fought his way to her, lashing the infuriated horses from his path. He had appeared, somehow—different. She closed her eyes and clean cut as though chiseled upon her brain was the picture of him as he forced his way to her side. Like a flash the detail of difference broke upon her—The jug was missing! And close upon the heels of the discovery came the memory of the strange thrill that had shot through her as his leg pressed hers when their horses had been forced together by the milling herd, and the sense of security and well being that replaced the terror in her heart from the moment she had called his name. A sudden indescribable pain gripped her breast, as though icy fingers reached up and slowly clutched her heart. With staring eyes and breath coming heavily between parted lips, she rode toward the thing on the ground. As she drew near, her horse stopped, sniffing nervously. She attempted to urge him forward, but he quivered, shied sidewise, and, snorting his fear, circled the sprawling object with nostrils a-quiver.

Fighting a terrible dread, the girl forced her eyes to focus upon the gruesome form, and the next instant she uttered a quick little cry of relief. The man's hat had fallen off and lay at some distance from the body. She could see a shock of thick black hair, and noticed that he wore a cheap cotton shirt that had once been white. There were no chaps. One leg of his blue overalls had rolled up and exposed six inches of bare skin which gleamed whitely in the moonlight above the top of his shoe. The sight sickened, disgusted her, and whirling her horse she dashed southward along the trail forgetting for the moment the Samuelsons, the doctor, and everything else in a wild desire to put distance between herself and that awful thing on the ground.

Not until her horse's hoofs rang upon the hard rock of the canyon floor, did Patty slacken her pace. Thompson's was only a few miles farther on. It was dark in the high walled canyon and she slowed her horse to a walk. He stopped to drink in the shallow creek and the girl glanced over the back trail. Where was he now! Thundering along with the recaptured horse herd, or following the thieves in a mad flight through the devious fastnesses of the mountains. Was it possible that even at this moment he was lying upon the yellow-brown grass, or among the broken rock fragments of some coulee, twisted, and shapeless, and still—like that other who lay repulsive and ugly, with his bare leg shining white in the moonlight? She shuddered. "No, no, no!" she cried aloud, "they can't kill him. They're cowards—and he is brave!" Her voice rang hollow and thin in the rocky chasm, and she started at the sound of it. Her horse moved on, tongueing the bit contentedly. "They were right, and I was wrong," she muttered. "And—and, I'm glad."

The canyon was left behind and before her the trail wound among the foothills that rolled away to the open bench. She noticed that the moon had sunk behind the mountains, yet it was not dark. Glancing toward the east, she realized that it was morning. She urged her horse into a lope, and reached Thompson's just as the ranchman and his two hands were starting for the barn.

"Well, dog my cats, if it ain't Miss Sinclair!" exclaimed the man, and stood silent for a second as if trying to remember something. He rushed toward her excitedly. "You want that horse?" he cried, and without waiting for an answer, turned to the astonished ranch hands: "You, Mike, throw the shell onto Lightnin', an' git him out here, an' don't lose no time about it, neither!

"Pete, git that rifle an' lay along the trail! An' if anyone comes a-foggin' along towards town shoot his horse out from in under him! Never mind chawin'—you git! Shoot his horse, an' I'll pay the bill. Any skunk that would try fer to beat a lady out of her claim ain't a-goin' to expect nothin' but what he gits around this outfit. An' say, Pete—if it should be Monk Bethune—an' you happen to shoot a leetle high fer to hit the horse—don't worry none—git, now!

"You come right along of me, an' git a snack from Miz T. while Mike's a-saddlin' up. It's a long drag to town, even on Lightnin', an' you ain't et yet. If the coffee ain't hot, you can wait a couple o' minutes—that there Pete—he won't let nothin' git by—he kin cut a sage hen's head off twenty rod with that rifle!" Patty had made several unsuccessful attempts to speak—attempts to which Thompson paid no attention whatever. At last, she managed to make him understand. "No, no! It isn't the claim, Mr. Thompson—but, let him saddle the horse just the same. Mr. Samuelson is worse and I'm riding for the doctor."

"You!" exclaimed the astonished Thompson. "What's the matter with Bill or some of Samuelson's riders?"

"They're after the horse-thieves. They ran off a lot of Mr. Samuelson's horses last night, and they're after them. And they caught them, and had a battle, and I was in it, and there is a dead man lying back there beside the trail." Patty talked rapidly, and Thompson stared open-mouthed.

"Run off Samuelson's horses—battle—dead man—you was in it!" he repeated, in bewilderment. "Who run 'em off? Where's Vil Holland? Who's dead?"

"I don't know who's dead. A horse-thief, I guess. And Vil Holland's with them—with the Samuelson cowboys and that horrid Pierce, and that's why I had to ride for the doctor—because the cowboys were with Vil Holland, and Pierce thought I was one of the horse-thieves."

"If you know what you're talkin' about it's more'n what I do," sighed Thompson, resignedly, as the girl concluded the somewhat muddled explanation. "If the raid's come off, why wasn't I in on it—an' me keepin' Lightnin' up an' ready fer it's goin' on three months? They's a thing or two I do know, though. For one, you've rode fer enough." He called to Pete, who, rifle in hand, was making for the trail. "Hey, Pete, come back here with that gun, an' quick as Mike gits the hull cinched onto Lightnin', you fork him an' hightail fer town an' fetch Doc Mallory out to Samuelson's. Tell him the Old Man's worse. Better fetch Len Christie along, too. If there's a dead man, even if he's a horse-thief, it's better he was buried accordin' to the book. Take Miss Sinclair's horse to the stable an' tell Mike to onsaddle him an' give him a feed." He turned to Patty: "You come along in an' rest up 'til Miz T. gits breakfast ready. Then when you've et, you kin begin at the beginnin' an' tell what's be'n a-goin' on in the hills."

A couple of hours later when Patty concluded her detailed narrative, Thompson leaned back in his chair. "I got a crow to pick with Vil Holland, all right, fer not lettin' me in on that there raid."

"Maybe he didn't have time," suggested the girl, and suppressed a desire to smile at the readiness with which she sprang to the defense of her "guardian devil of the hills."

Protesting that she needed no rest after her night of wild adventure, Patty refused the pressing invitation of the Thompsons to remain at the ranch, and mounting her horse, headed for the cabin on Monte's Creek.

Once through the canyon, she turned abruptly into the hills and as her horse, unguided, topped low divides, and threaded mile after mile of narrow valleys, her thoughts wandered from the all-absorbing topic of her father's location, to the man for whom she had so recently experienced such a signal revulsion of feeling. "How could I ever have been deceived by that disgusting Monk Bethune?" she muttered. "Especially after he warned me against him. It's a wonder I couldn't have seen him for the sleek oily devil that he is. I must have been crazy." She shuddered at the recollection of that day in the little valley when he boldly made love to her. "It's just blind luck that—that something awful didn't happen. I could see the lurking devil in his eyes! And I saw it again, when he sneered at Mr. Christie. And when Pierce showed very plainly what he thought of him, he cursed everybody in the hills, and then offered his glaringly false explanation as to why people hate and distrust him." At the top of a low divide, she turned her horse into a valley that was not, by any means, the most direct route to the little cabin on Monte's Creek. A half hour later she came out onto the plateau, upon the edge of which Vil Holland's little tent nestled against its towering rock fragment.

For just an instant she hesitated, then, blushing, rode boldly across the open space toward the little patch of white that showed through the scrub timber. Pulling up before the tent door the girl glanced about her. Everything was in its place. Her eyes rested approvingly upon the well-scoured cooking utensils that hung in an orderly row. Evidently the camp had not been used the night before. She drew off her glove and, leaning over, felt the blankets that were thrown over the ridgepole. They were still wet with the heavy dew, and the dampened ashes showed that no fire had been built that morning. "Oh, where is he?" whispered the girl, glancing wildly about, "Surely, he has had time to reach here—if he's—all right." After a few moments of silence she laughed nervously: "He's all right," she assured herself with forced cheerfulness. "Of course, he wouldn't return here right away. He probably had to help drive those horses back, or—or help bury that man, or something. I wonder what he thinks of me? Pierce will tell him his suspicions, and then—finding me mixed in with those horses—he'll think I've 'thrown in' with Bethune, as he would say. I must see him. I must!"

Deciding to return later in the day, Patty headed her horse for the divide and soon found herself at the much trampled notch in the hills. For some moments she sat staring down at the ground. She glanced toward the cabin that showed so distinctly in the valley below. "He certainly watches from here," she mused. "And not just occasionally either." Suddenly, she straightened in her saddle, and her eyes glowed: "I wonder if—if he has been watching—Monk Bethune? Watching to see that no harm comes to—me? Oh, if I only knew—if I only knew the real meaning of this trampled grass!" Resolutely, she gathered up her reins. "I will know!" she muttered. "And I'll know before very long, too. That is, I hope I will," she qualified, as the bay cayuse began to pick his way carefully down the steep descent to Monte's Creek.



CHAPTER XVI

PATTY FINDS A GLOVE

Dismounting before her cabin, Patty dropped her reins, pushed open the door, and entered. Her eyes flew to the little dressing table. The packet was gone! With a thrill of exultation she carefully inspected the room. Everything was exactly as she had left it. No blundering Microby had been here during her absence, for well she knew that Microby could no more have invaded the cabin without leaving traces of her visit than she could have flown to the moon. It was midday. She had intended to rest when she reached the cabin, but her impatience to establish once for all the identity of the cunning prowler dispelled her weariness, and after a hurried luncheon, she was once more in the saddle. "We've both earned a good rest, old fellow," she confided to her horse, as he threaded the coulee she had marked 1 NW, "but it's only six or seven miles, and we simply must know who it is that has been calling on us so persistently. And when I find daddy's mine and have just oodles of money, I'm going to make it up to you for working you so hard. You're going to have a nice, big, light, roomy box stall, and a great big grassy pasture with a creek running through it, and you're going to have oats three times a day, and you're never going to have to work any more, and every day I'll saddle you myself and we'll take a ride just for fun."

Having disposed of her horse's future in this eminently satisfactory manner, the girl fell to planning her own. She would build a big house and live in Middleton, and fairly flaunt her gold in the faces of those who had scoffed at her father—no, she hated Middleton! She would go there once in a while, to visit Aunt Rebecca, but mainly to show the narrow, hide-bound natives what they had missed by not backing her father with a few of their miserable dollars. She would live in New York—in Washington—in Los Angeles. No, she would live right here in the hills—the hills, that daddy had loved, and whose secret he had wrested from their silent embrace. And when she tired of the hills she would travel. Not the slightest doubt as to her ability to locate her father's claim assailed her, now that she had learned to read his map.

It was wonderfully good to be alive. Her glance traveled from the tiny creek whose shallow waters purled and burbled about her horse's feet, to the high-flung peaks of the mountains, their loftier reaches rearing naked and craggy above the dark green girdle of pines. Slowly and majestically, hardly more than a speck against the blue, an eagle soared. It was a good world—courage and perseverance made things work out right. It was cowardly to despair—to become disheartened. She would find her father's mine—but, first she would prove that Bethune was a scoundrel of the deepest dye. And she would prove, she admitted to herself she wanted to prove, that Vil Holland was all his friends believed him to be. But, she blushed with shame—what must he think of her? Of her defense of Bethune, of her deliberate rudeness, and worst of all, of her night ride with the horse-thieves? He knew she had suspected him—had even accused him. Would he ever regard her as other than a silly fool? Vividly she pictured him as he had looked lashing his way to her through the wildly crowding horse herd, determined, capable, masterful—and wondered vaguely what her answer would have been had he made love to her as Bethune had done? She smiled at the thought of Vil Holland, the unsmiling, the outspoken, the self-sufficient Vil Holland making love!

Upon the summit of a high ridge she paused and gazed down into the little valley where she had located the false claim. A few moments more and she would know to a certainty the identity of the prowler who had repeatedly searched her cabin. Certain as she was whose stakes she would find marking the claim, it was with a rapidly beating heart that she urged her horse into the valley and across the creek toward the rock wall. Yes, there was a stake! And another! And there was the plot of ground she had laboriously broken at the foot of the wall. She swung from the saddle and examined the spot. The rock fragments she had selected from her father's samples were gone! And now to find the notice! As she turned to search for the other stakes, her glance rested upon an object that held her rooted in her tracks. For a moment her heart stopped beating as she stared at the little patch of gray buckskin that lay limp and neglected where it had fallen. Slowly she walked to it, stooped, and recovered it from the ground. It was a gauntleted riding glove—Vil Holland's. She could not be mistaken, she had seen that glove upon the hand of its owner too many times, with its deep buckskin fringe, and the horseshoe embroidered in red and green silk upon its back.

For a long time she stared at the green and red horseshoe. So it was Vil Holland, after all, and not Monk Bethune, who had systematically searched her cabin. Vil Holland, who had watched continually from his notch in the hills. She had been right in the first place, and the others had been wrong. Everybody disliked Bethune, and disliking him, had attributed to him all the crookedness of the hill country, and all the time, under their very noses, Vil Holland was the real plotter—and they liked him! She could see it all, now—how, with Bethune for the scapegoat, he was enabled, unsuspected, to plan and carry out his various schemes, and with no possible chance of detection—for he himself was the confidential employee of the ranchmen—the man whose business it was to put an end to the lawlessness of the hill country.

Patty was surprised that she was not angry. Indeed, she was not conscious of any emotion. She realized, as she stood there holding the gaily embroidered glove in her hand, that the rapture, the gladness of mere existence had left her, and that where only a few minutes before, her heart had throbbed with the very joy of living, it now seemed like a thing of weight, whose heaviness oppressed her. She felt strangely alone and helpless. She glanced about her. The sun still shone on the green pines and the sparkling waters of the creek, and above the high-tossed crags the eagle still circled, but the thrill of joy in these things was gone. Slowly she turned and, still holding the glove, mounted, and headed for the cabin on Monte's Creek.

At the door she unsaddled her horse, hobbled him, and turned him loose. She realized that she was very tired, and threw herself down upon the bunk. When she awoke the cabin was in darkness. The door stood wide open as she had left it. For a moment she lay trying to collect her bewildered senses. Through the open door, dimly silhouetted against the starry sky, she made out the notch in the valley rim. Her sense rallied with a rush, and she started nervously as a pack rat scurried across the floor and paused upon the door sill to peer inquisitively at her with his beady eyes. Crossing the room, she closed and barred the door, and lighted the lamp. It was twelve o'clock. She peered at herself in the glass and with an exclamation of anger, dampened her wash-cloth and scrubbed furiously at her cheek where, in deep tracery appeared the perfect shape of a horseshoe.

She was very hungry, and rummaging in the cupboard set out a cold lunch which she devoured to the last crumb. Then she blew out the lamp and, removing her riding boots, threw herself down upon the bunk to think. She was angry now, and the longer she thought the angrier she got. "I can see it all as plain as day," she muttered. "There isn't anything he wouldn't do! He did cut that pack sack, and he ran the sheep man out of the hills because he knew it would be dangerous for him to have a neighbor that might talk. And the Samuelson horse raid! Of all the diabolical plotting! With his outlaw friends holding trusted positions on the ranch, and old Mr. Samuelson sick in bed! Oh, it was cleverly planned! And that Pierce was right in with them. No wonder he wanted to lock me in his cellar!

"Who, then, was the man that lay sprawled by the side of the trail?" The girl shuddered at the memory of the cheap cotton shirt torn open at the throat, and the moonlight shining whitely upon the bare leg. "Some loyal rancher, probably, who dared to oppose the outlaws. It's murder!" she cried aloud. "And yesterday I thought he was watching up there in the hills to see that no harm came to me!" She laughed—a hard, bitter laugh that held as much of mirth as the gurgle of a tide rip. "But he's come to the end of his rope! I'll expose him! I'm not afraid of his lawless crew! He'll find out it will take more than rescuing me from that herd of wild horses to buy my silence! I'll ride straight to Samuelson's ranch in the morning, and from there to Thompson's, and I'll tell them about his part in the raid, and about his watching like a vulture from his notch in the hills, and about his stealing what he thought was daddy's map, and about his filing the claim. And did show 'em the glove and—" She paused abruptly: "What a fool I was to come away without the notice! That would have proved it beyond any doubt, even if he hasn't recorded the claim!" For a long time she lay in the darkness planning her course for the day. All thought of sleep had vanished, and her eyes continually sought the window for signs of approaching light.

At the first faint glow of dawn the girl caught up her horse and headed for the false claim. It was but the work of a moment to locate the stake to which the notice was attached by means of a bit of twine. Removing the paper, she thrust it into her pocket and returned to the cabin where she ate breakfast before starting for the Samuelson ranch. Hurriedly washing the dishes, she picked up the glove and thrust it into the bosom of her shirt, and drawing the crumpled notice from her pocket, smoothed it out upon the table. Her glance traveled rapidly over the penciled words to the signature, and she stared like one in a dream. The blood left her face. She closed her eyes and passed her hand slowly over the lids. She opened them, and with a nerveless finger, touched the paper as if to make sure that it was real. Then, very slowly, she rose from her chair and crossing the room, stood in the doorway and gazed toward the notch in the hills until hot tears welled into her eyes and blurred the distant skyline. The next moment she was upon her bunk, where she lay shaken between fits of sobbing and hysterical laughter. She drew the glove, with its fringed gauntlet and its gaudily embroidered horseshoe from her shirt front and ran her fingers along its velvety softness. Impulsively, passionately, she pressed the horseshoe to her lips, and leaping to her feet, thrust the glove inside her shirt and stepping lightly to the table reread the penciled lines upon the crumpled paper, and over and over again she read the signature; RAOUL BETHUNE, known also as MONK BETHUNE.

The atmosphere of the little cabin seemed stifling. Crumpling the paper into her pocket, she stepped out the door. She must do something—go some place—talk to someone! Her horse stood saddled where she had left him, and catching up the reins she mounted and headed him at a gallop for the ravine that led to the trampled notch in the hills. During the long upward climb the girl managed to collect her scattered wits. Where should she go? She breathed deeply of the pine-laden air. It was still early morning. A pair of magpies flitted in short flights from tree to tree along the trail, scolding incessantly as they waited to be frightened on to the next tree. Patches of sunlight flashed vivid contrasts in their black and white plumage, and set off in a splendor of changing color the green and purple and bronze of their iridescent feathering. A deer bounded away in a blur of tan and white, and a little farther on, a porcupine lumbered lazily into the scrub. It was good to be alive! What difference did it make which direction she chose? All she wanted this morning was to ride, and ride, and ride! She had her father's map with her but was in no mood to study out its intricacies, nor to ride slowly up and down little valleys, scrutinizing rock ledges. She would visit the Samuelson ranch, and find out about the horse raid, and inquire after Mr. Samuelson, and then—well, there would be plenty of time to decide what to do then. But first, she would swing around by the little tent beside the creek and see if Vil Holland had returned. Surely, he must have returned by this time, and she must tell him how it was she had been riding with the horses—and, she must give him back his glove. She blushed as she felt the pressure of its soft bulk where it rested just below her heart. Surely, he would need his glove—and maybe, if she were nice to him, he would tell her how it came to be there—and maybe he would explain—this. Her horse had stopped voluntarily after his steep climb, and she glanced down at the trampled grass, and from that to her own little cabin far below on Monte's Creek.

She wondered, as she rode through the timber how it was she had been so quick to doubt this grave, unsmiling hillman upon such a mere triviality as the finding of a glove. And then she wondered at her changed attitude toward him. She had feared him at first, then despised him. And now—she recalled with a thrill, the lean ruggedness of him, the unwavering eyes and the unsmiling lips—now, at least, she respected him, and she no longer wondered why the people of the hills and the people of the town held him in regard. She knew that he had never sought to curry her favor—had never deviated a hair's breadth from the even tenor of his way in order to win her regard and, in their chance conversations, he had been blunt even to rudeness. And, yet, against her will, her opinion of him had changed. And this change had nothing whatever to do with her timely rescue from the horse herd—it had been gradual, so gradual that it had been an accomplished fact even before she suspected that any change was taking place.

The huge rock behind which nestled the little tent loomed before her, and hastily removing the glove from its hiding place, she came suddenly upon his camp. A blackened coffee pot was nestled close against a tiny fire upon which a pair of trout and some strips of bacon sizzled in a frying pan. She glanced toward the creek, at the same moment that Vil Holland turned at the sound of her horse's footsteps, and for several seconds they faced each other in silence. The man was the first to speak:

"Good mornin'. If you'll step back around that rock for a minute, I'll slip into my shirt."

And suddenly Patty realized that he was stripped to the waist, but her eyes never left the point high on his upper arm, almost against the shoulder, where a blood-stained bandage dangled untidily.

"You're hurt!" she cried, swinging from the saddle and running toward him.

"Nothin' but a scratch. I got nicked a little, night before last, an' I just now got time to do it up again. It don't amount to anything—don't even hurt, to speak of. I can let that go, if you'll just——"

"Well, I won't just go away—or just anything else, except just attend to that wound—so there!" She was at his side, examining the clumsy bandage. "Sit right down beside the creek, and I'll look at it. The first thing is to find out how badly you're hurt."

"It ain't bad. Looks a lot worse than it is. It was an unhandy place to tie up, left-handed."

Scooping up water in her hand Patty applied it to the bandage, and after repeating the process several times, began very gently to remove the cloth. "Why it's clear through!" she cried, as the bandage came away and exposed the wound.

"Just through the meat—it missed the bone. That cold water feels good. It was gettin' kind of stiff."

"What did you put on it?"

"Nothin'. Didn't have anything along, an' wouldn't have had time to fool with it if I'd been packin' a whole drug-store."

"Where's your whisky?"

"I ain't got any."

"Where's your jug? Surely there must be some in it—enough to wash out this wound."

The man shook his head. "No, the jug's plumb empty an' dry. I ain't be'n to town for 'most a week."

Patty was fumbling at her saddle for the little "first aid" kit that she faithfully carried, and until this moment, had never found use for. "Probably the only time in the world it would ever do you any good, you haven't got it!" she exclaimed, disgustedly, as she unrolled a strip of gauze from about a tiny box of salve.

"I'm sorry there ain't any whisky in the jug. I never thought of keepin' it for accident."

The girl smeared the wound full of salve and adjusted the bandage, "Now," she said, authoritatively, "you're going to eat your breakfast and then we're going to ride straight to Samuelson's ranch. The doctor will be there and he can dress this wound right."

"It's all right, just the way it is," said Holland. "I've seen fellows done up in bandages, one way an' another, but not any that was better 'tended to than that." He glanced approvingly at the neatly bandaged arm. "Anyhow, this is nothin' but a scratch an' it'll be all healed up, chances are, before we could get to Samuelson's."

"No, it won't be all healed up before you get to Samuelson's either! Run along, now, and I'll stay here while you finish dressing, and when you're through, you call me. I've had breakfast but I can drink a cup of coffee, if you'll ask me."

"You're asked," the man replied, gravely, "and while I go to the tent, you might take that outfit an' jerk a couple more trout out of the creek." He pointed to a light fishing pole with hook and line attached that leaned against a tree. "It ain't as fancy as the outfit Len Christie packs, but it works just as good, an' ain't any bother to take care of."

A few minutes later Vil Holland emerged from the tent. "Sorry I ain't got a table," he apologized, "but a fryin' pan outfit's always suited me best—makes a fellow feel kind of free to pull stakes an' drift when the notion hits him."

"But, you've camped here for a long time."

The man glanced about him: "Yes, a long time. I guess I know every place in the hills for a hundred miles round an' this is the pick of 'em all, accordin' to my notions. Plenty of natural pasture, plenty of timber, an' this little creek's the coldest, an' it always seems to me, its water is the sparklin'est of 'em all. An' then, away off there towards the big mountains, early in the mornin' an' late in the evenin', when it's all kind of dim down here, you can see the sunlight on the snow—purple, an' pink, an' sometimes it shines like silver an' gold. It lays fine for a ranch. Sometime, maybe, I'm goin' to homestead it. I'll build the cabin right there, close by the big rock, an' I'll build a porch on it so in the evenin's we could watch the lights way up there on the snow."

Patty smiled: "Who is 'we'?" she asked, mischievously.

The man regarded her gravely: "Things like that works themselves out. If there ain't any 'we', there won't be any cabin—so there's nothin' to worry about."

"Did you catch the horse-thieves?"

Vil Holland's face clouded. "Part of 'em. Not the main ones, though."

Patty shuddered. "I saw one of them lying back there by the trail. It was horrible."

"Yes, an' a couple of more went the same way, further on. We'd rather have got 'em alive, but they'd had their orders, an' they took their medicine. We got the horses, though."

"I suppose you're wondering how I came to be in among those horses?"

"I figured you'd got mixed up in it at Samuelson's, somehow. The boys didn't know nothin' about it—except Pierce—an' he guessed wrong."

Patty laughed. "He accused me of being one of the gang, and even threatened to lock me in his cellar."

"He won't again," announced the man, dryly.

"I rode down there to get him to go for the doctor. Mr. Samuelson was worse, and there was no one else to go. And when I started on for town, the horses swept down on me and carried me along with them."

"Was the doctor got?" asked Holland with sudden interest.

"Yes, I rode on down to Thompson's, and Mr. Thompson sent a man to town. He was provoked with you for not letting him in on the raid."

"He'll get over it. You see, I didn't want to call out the married men. I surmised there'd be gun-play an' there wasn't any use takin' chances with men that was needed, when there's plenty of us around the hills that it don't make any difference to anyone if we come back or not. I didn't figure on lettin' Pierce in."

When they had finished washing the dishes the girl glanced toward the buckskin that was snipping grass in the clearing: "It's time we were going. The doctor may start for town this morning and we'll meet him on the trail."

"This ain't a doctor's job," protested the man. "My arm feels fine."

"It's so stiff you can hardly use it. It must feel fine. But it doesn't make a particle of difference how fine it feels. It needs attention. And, surely you won't refuse to do this for me, after I bandaged it all up? Because, if anything should go wrong it would be my fault."

Without a word the man picked up his bridle and walking to the buckskin, slipped it over his head and led him in. He saddled the horse with one hand, and as he turned toward the girl she held out the glove.

"Isn't this yours? I found it last evening—out in the hills."

Holland thrust his hand into it: "Yes, it's mine. I'm sure obliged to you. I lost it a couple of days ago. I hate to break in new gloves. These have got a feel to 'em."

"Do you know where I found it?"

"No. Couldn't guess within twenty miles or so."

Patty looked him squarely in the eyes: "I found it over where Monk Bethune has just staked a claim. And he staked that particular claim because it was the spot I had indicated on a map that I prepared especially for the benefit of the man who has been searching my cabin all summer."

Holland nodded gravely, without showing the slightest trace of surprise. "Oh, that's where I dropped it, eh? I figured Monk thought he'd found somethin', the way he come out of your cabin the last time he searched it, so I followed him to the place you'd salted for him." He paused, and for the first time since she had known him, Patty thought she detected a flicker of amusement in his eyes. "He didn't waste much time there—just clawed around a few minutes where you'd pecked up the dirt, an' then sunk his stakes, an' wrote out his notice, an' high-tailed for the register's office. That was a pretty smart trick of yours but it wouldn't have fooled anyone that knows rock. Bethune's no prospector. He's a Canada crook—whisky runner, an' cattle rustler, an' gambler. Somehow, he'd got a suspicion that your father made a strike he'd never filed, an' he's been tryin' to get holt of it ever since. I looked your plant over after he'd hit for town to file, an' when I tumbled to the game, I let him go ahead."

"But, suppose the rock had been right? Suppose, it had really been daddy's claim?"

"Buck can run rings around that cayuse of his any old day. I expect, if the rock had be'n right, Monk Bethune would of met up with an adventure of some sort a long ways before he hit town."

"You knew he was searching my cabin all the time?"

"Yes, I knew that. But, I saw you was a match for 'em—him an' the fake Lord, too."

"Is that the reason you threw Lord Clendenning into the creek, that day?"

"Yes, that was the reason. I come along an' caught him at it. Comical, wasn't it? I 'most laughed. I saw you slip back into the brush, but I'd got so far along with it I couldn't help finishin'. You thought the wrong man got throw'd in."

"You knew I thought that of you—and you didn't hate me?"

"Yes, I knew what you thought. You thought it was me that was searchin' your cabin, too. An' of course I didn't hate you because you couldn't hardly help figurin' that way after you'd run onto the place in the rim-rocks where I watched from. If it wasn't for the trees I could have strung along in a different place each time, but that's the only spot that your cabin shows up from."

"And you knew that they always followed me through the hills?"

"Yes, an' they wasn't the only ones that followed. Clendenning ain't as bad as Bethune, for all he's throw'd in with him. The days Bethune followed you, I followed Bethune. An' when Clendenning followed you, I prospected, mostly."

"You thought Bethune might have—have attacked me?"

"I wasn't takin' any chances—not with him, I wasn't. One day, I thought for a minute he was goin' to try it. It was the day you an' him et lunch together—when he pretended to be so surprised at runnin' onto you. I laid behind a rock with a bead draw'd on him. He stopped just exactly one step this side of hell, that day."

Patty regarded the cowboy thoughtfully: "And Bethune told me he had to go over onto the east slope to see about some horses. It was after we had met Pierce, and Bethune asked about Mr. Samuelson and Pierce snubbed him. I believe Bethune planned that raid. And seeing us together that day, Pierce jumped to the conclusion that I was in with him."

"Yes, it was Monk's raid, all right, an' him an' Clendenning got away. He doped it all out that day. I followed him when he quit you there on the trail, an' watched him plan out the route they'd take with the horses. Then I done some plannin' of my own. That's why we was able to head 'em off so handy. We didn't get Bethune an' Clendenning but I'll get 'em yet."

They had mounted and were riding toward Samuelson's. "Maybe he's made his escape across the line," ventured the girl, after a long silence.

Holland shook his head: "No, he ain't across the line. He don't think we savvy he was in on the raid, an' he'll stick around the hills an' prob'ly put a crew to work on his claim." He relapsed into silence, and as they rode side by side, under the cover of her hat brim, Patty found opportunity to study the lean brown face.

"Where's your gun?" The man asked the question abruptly, without removing his eyes from the fore-trail.

"I left it home. I only carried it once or twice. It's heavy, and anyway it was silly to carry it, I don't even know how to fire it, let alone hit anything."

"If it's too heavy on your belt you can carry it on your saddle horn. I'll show you how to use it—an' how to shoot where you hold it, too. Mrs. Samuelson ain't as husky as you are, an' she can wipe a gnat's eye with a six-gun, either handed. Practice is all it takes, an'——"

"But, why should I carry it? Bethune would hardly dare harm me, and anyway, now that he thinks he has stolen my secret, he wouldn't have any object in doing so."

"You're goin' to keep on huntin' your dad's claim, ain't you?"

"Of course I am! And I'll find it, too."

"An', in the meantime, what if Bethune finds out he's been tricked? These French breeds go crazy when they're mad—an' he'll either lay for you just to get even, or he'll see that he gets the right dope next time—an' maybe you know what that means, an' maybe you don't—but I do."

The girl nodded, and as the horses scrambled up the steep slope of a low divide, her eyes sought the hundred and one hiding places among the loose rocks and scrub that might easily conceal a lurking enemy, and she shuddered. As they topped the divide, both reined in and sat gazing silently down the little valley before them. It was the place of their first meeting, when the girl, tired, and lost and discouraged, had dismounted upon that very spot and watched the unknown horseman with his six-shooter, and his brown leather jug slowly ascend the slope. She glanced at him now, as he sat, rugged and lean, with his eyes on the little valley. He was just the same, grave and unsmiling, as upon the occasion of their first meeting. She noticed that he held his Stetson in his hand, and that the wind rippled his hair. "Just the same," she thought—and yet—. She was aware that her heart was pounding strangely, and that instead of a fear of this man, she was conscious of a wild desire to throw herself into his arms and cry with her face against the bandage that bulged the shirt sleeve just below the shoulder.

"I call this Lost Creek," said Holland, without turning his head. "I come here often—" and added, confusedly, "It's a short cut from my camp to the trail."

Patty felt an overpowering desire to laugh. She tried to think of something to say: "I—I thought you were a desperado," she murmured, and giggled nervously.

"An' I thought you was a schoolma'am. I guess I was the first to change my mind, at that."

Patty felt herself blushing furiously for no reason at all: "But—I have changed my mind—or I wouldn't be here, now."

Vil Holland nodded: "I expect I'll ride to town from Samuelson's. My jug's empty, an' I guess I might's well file that homestead 'fore someone else beats me to it. I've got a hunch maybe I'll be rollin' up that cabin—before snow flies."



CHAPTER XVII

UNMASKED

At the Samuelson's ranch they found not only the doctor but Len Christie. Mr. Samuelson's condition had taken a sudden turn for the better and it was a jubilant little group that welcomed Patty as she rode up to the veranda. Vil Holland had muttered an excuse and gone directly to the bunk house where the doctor sought him out a few minutes later and attended to his wound. From the top of "Lost Creek" divide, the ride had been made almost in silence. The cowboy's reference to his jug had angered the girl into a moody reserve which he made no effort to dispel.

The news of Patty's rescue from the horse herd had preceded her, having been recounted by the Samuelson riders upon their return to the ranch, and Mrs. Samuelson blamed herself unmercifully for having allowed the girl to venture down the valley alone. Which self-accusation was promptly silenced by Patty, who gently forced the old lady into an arm chair, and called her Mother Samuelson, and seated herself upon the step at her feet, and assured her that she wouldn't have missed the adventure for the world.

"We'll have a jolly little dinner party this evening," beamed Mrs. Samuelson, an hour later when the girl had finished recounting her part in the night's adventure, "there'll be you and Mr. Christie, and Doctor Mallory, and the boys from the bunk house, and Vil Holland, and it will be in honor of Mr. Samuelson's turn for the better, and your escape, and the successful routing of the horse-thieves."

"Too late to count Vil Holland in," smiled the doctor, who had returned to the veranda in time to hear the arrangement, "said he had important business in town, and pulled out as soon as I'd got his arm rigged up." And, in the doorway, the Reverend Len Christie smiled behind a screen of cigarette smoke as he noted the toss of the head, and the decided tightening of the lips with which Patty greeted the announcement.

"But, he's wounded!" protested Mrs. Samuelson. "In his condition, ought he attempt a ride like that?"

The doctor laughed: "You can't hurt these clean-blooded young bucks with a flesh wound. As far as fitness is concerned, he can ride to Jericho if he wants to. Too bad he won't quit prospecting and settle down. He'd make some girl a mighty fine husband."

Christie laughed. "I don't think Vil is the marrying kind. In the first place he's been bitten too deep with the prospecting bug. And, again, women don't appeal to him. He's wedded to his prospecting. He only stops when driven to it by necessity, then he only works long enough to save up a grub-stake and he's off for the hills again. I can't imagine that high priest of the pack horse and the frying pan living in a house!"

And so the talk went, everyone participating except Patty, who sat and listened with an elaborate indifference that caused the Reverend Len to smile again to himself behind the gray cloud of his cigarette smoke.

"You haven't forgotten about my school?" asked Patty next morning, as Christie and the doctor were preparing to leave for town.

"Indeed, I haven't!" laughed the Bishop of All Outdoors. "School opens the first of September, and that's not very far away. But badly as we need you, somehow I feel that we are not going to get you."

"Why?" asked the girl in surprise.

"A whole lot may happen in ten days—and I've got a hunch that before that time you will have made your strike."

"I hope so!" she exclaimed fervidly. "I know I shall just hate to teach school—and I'd never do it, either, if I didn't need a grub-stake."

As she watched him ride away, Patty was joined by Mrs. Samuelson who stepped from the house and thrust her arm through hers. "My husband wants to meet you, my dear. He's so very much better this morning—quite himself. And I must warn you that that means he's rough as an old bear, apparently, although in reality he's got the tenderest heart in the world. He always puts his worst foot foremost with strangers—he may even swear."

Patty laughed: "I'm not afraid. You seem to have survived a good many years of him. He really can't be so terrible!"

"Oh, he's not terrible at all. Only, I know how much depends upon first impressions—and I do want you to like us."

Patty drew the old lady's arm about her waist and together they ascended the stairs: "I love you already, and although I have never met him I am going to love Mr. Samuelson, too—you see, I have heard a good deal about him here in the hills."

Entering the room, they advanced to the bed where a big-framed man with a white mustache and a stubble of gray beard lay propped up on pillows. Sickness had not paled the rich mahogany of the weather-seamed face, and the eyes that met Patty's from beneath their bushy brows were bright as a boy's. "Good morning! Good morning! So, you're Rod Sinclair's daughter, are you? An' a chip of the old block, by what mama's been tellin' me. I knew Rod well. He was a real prospector. Knew his business, an' went at it business fashion. Wasn't like most of 'em—makin' their rock-peckin' an excuse to get out of workin'. They tell me you ain't afraid to live alone in the hills, an' ain't afraid to make a midnight ride to fetch the doc for an old long-horn like me. That's stuff! Didn't know they bred it east of the Mizoo. The ones mama an' I've seen around the theaters an' restaurants on our trips East would turn a man's stomach. Why, damn it, young woman, if I ever caught a daughter of mine painted up like a Piute an' stripped to the waist smokin' cigarettes an' drinkin' cocktails in a public restaurant, I'd peel the rest of her duds off an' turn her over my knee an' take a quirt to her, if she was forty!"

"Why, papa!"

"I would too—an' so would you!" Patty saw the old eyes twinkling with mischief, and she laughed merrily:

"And so would I," she agreed. "So there's no chance for any argument, is there?"

"We must go, now," reminded Mrs. Samuelson. "The doctor said you could not see any visitors yet. He made a special exception of Miss Sinclair, for just a few minutes."

"I wish you would call me Patty," smiled the girl. "Miss Sinclair sounds so—so formal——"

"Me, too!" exclaimed the invalid. "I'll go you one better, an' call you Pat——"

"If you do, I'll call you Pap—" laughed the girl.

"That's a trade! An' say, they tell me you live over in Watts's sheep camp. If you should happen to run across that reprobate of a Vil Holland, you tell him to come over here. I want to see him about——"

"There, now, papa—remember the doctor said——"

"I don't care what the doctor said! He's finished his job an' gone, ain't he? It's bad enough to have to do what he says when you're sick—but, I'm all right now, an' the quicker he finds out I didn't hire him for a guardian, the better it'll be all round. As I was goin' to say, you tell Vil that Old Man Samuelson wants to see him pronto. Fall's comin' on, an' I'll have my hands full this winter with the horses. He's the only cowman in the hills I'd trust them white faces with, an' he's got to winter 'em for me. He's a natural born cowman an' there's big money in it after he gets a start. I'll give him his start. It's time he woke up, an' left off his damned rock-peckin', an' settled down. If he keeps on long enough he'll have these hills whittled down as flat as North Dakota, an' the wind'll blow us all over into the sheep country. Now, Pat, can you remember all that?"

The girl turned in the doorway, and smiled into the bright old eyes: "Oh, yes, Pap, I'll tell him if I see him. Good-by!"

"Good-by, an' good luck to you! Come to see us often. We old folks get pretty lonesome sometimes—especially mama. You see, I've got all the best of it—I've got her, an' she's only got me!"

As Patty threaded the hills toward her cabin her thoughts followed the events of the past few days; the visit of Len Christie in the early morning, when he had inadvertently showed her how to read her father's map, the staking of the false claim, the visit to the Samuelson ranch, the horse raid, the finding of Vil Holland's glove and the bitter disappointment that followed, then the finding of the notice that disclosed the identity of the real thief, and her genuine joy in the discovery, her visit to Holland's camp, and their long ride together. "I tried to show him that all my distrust of him was gone, but he hardly seemed to notice—unless—I wonder what he did mean about having a hunch that he would build that cabin before snow flies?"

For some time she rode in silence, then she burst out vehemently: "I don't care! I could love him—so there! I could just adore him! And I don't wonder everybody likes him. He seems always so—so capable—so confident. You just can't help liking him. If it weren't for that old jug! He had to drag that in, even up there when he stood on the spot where we first met—and then at the Samuelsons' he wouldn't even wait for dinner he was so crazy to get his old whisky jug filled. It never seems to hurt him any," she continued. "But nobody can drink as much as he does and not be hurt by it. I just know he meant that the cabin was going to be for me—or, did he know that Mr. Samuelson was going to ask him to winter the cattle? He's a regular cave man—I don't know whether I've been proposed to, or not!"

She crossed the trail for town and struck into a valley that should bring her out somewhere along the Watts fences. So engrossed was she in her thoughts that she failed to notice the horseman who slipped noiselessly into the scrub a quarter of a mile ahead. Slowly she rode up the valley: "If he comes to teach me how to shoot, I'll tell him that Mr. Samuelson wants to see him, and if he says any more about the cabin, or—or anything—I'll tell him he can choose between me and his jug. And, if he chooses the jug, and I don't find daddy's mine—it isn't long 'til school opens. I don't mind—he has to work to get his grub-stake, and so will I."

Her horse snorted and shied violently, and when Patty recovered her seat it was to find her way blocked by a horseman who stood not ten feet in front of her and leered into her eyes. The horseman was Monk Bethune—a malignant, terrifying Bethune, as he sat regarding her with his sneering smile. The girl's first impulse was to turn and fly, but as if divining her thoughts, the man pushed nearer, and she saw that his eyes gleamed horribly between lids drawn to slits. Had he discovered that she had tricked him with a false claim? If not why the glare of hate and the sneering smile that told plainer than words that he had her completely in his power, and knew it.

"So, my fine lady—we meet again! We have much to talk about—you and I. But, first, about the claim. You thought you were very wise with your lying about not having a map. You thought to save the whole loaf for yourself—you thought I was fool enough to believe you. If you had let me in, you would have had half—now you have nothing. The claim is all staked and filed, and the adjoining claims for a mile are staked with the stakes of my friends—and you have nothing! You were the fool! You couldn't have won against me. Failing in my story of partnership with your father, I had intended to marry you, and failing in that, I should have taken the map by force—for I knew you carried it with you. But I dislike violence when the end may be gained by other means, so I waited until, at last, happened the thing I knew would happen—you became careless. You left your precious map and photograph in plain sight upon your little table—and now you have nothing." So he had not discovered the deception, but, through accident or design, had seized this opportunity to gloat over her, and taunt her with her loss. His carefully assumed mask of suave courtliness had disappeared, and Patty realized that at last she was face to face with the real Bethune, a creature so degenerate that he boasted openly of having stolen her secret, as though the fact redounded greatly to his credit.

A sudden rage seized her. She touched her horse with the spur: "Let me pass!" she demanded, her lips white.

The man's answer was a sneering laugh, as he blocked her way: "Ho! not so fast, my pretty! How about the Samuelson horse raid—your part in it? Three of my best men are in hell because you tipped off that raid to Vil Holland! How you found it out I do not know—but women, of a certain kind, can find out anything from men. No doubt Clen, in some sweet secret meeting place, poured the story into your ear, although he denies it on his life."

"What do you mean?"

"Ha! Ha! Injured innocence!" He leered knowingly into her flashing eyes: "It seems that everyone else knew what I did not. But, I am of a forgiving nature. I will not see you starve. Leave the others and come to me——"

"You cur!" The words cut like a swish of a lash, and again the man laughed:

"Oh, not so fast, you hussy! I must admit it rather piqued me to be bested in the matter of a woman—and by a soul-puncher. I was on hand early that morning, to spy upon your movements, as was my custom. I speak of the morning following the night that the very Reverend Christie spent with you in your cabin. I should not have believed it had I not seen his horse running unsaddled with your own. Also later, I saw you come out of the cabin together. Then I damned myself for not having reached out before and taken what was there for me to take."

With a low cry of fury, the girl drove her spurs into her horse's sides. The animal leaped against Bethune's horse, forcing him aside. The quarter-breed reached swiftly for her bridle reins, and as he leaned forward with his arm outstretched, Patty summoned all her strength and, whirling her heavy braided rawhide quirt high above her head, brought it down with the full sweep of her muscular arm. The feel of the blow was good as it landed squarely upon the inflamed brutish face, and the shrill scream of pain that followed, sent a wild thrill of joy to the very heart of the girl. Again, the lash swung high, this time to descend upon the flank of her horse, and before Bethune could recover himself, the frenzied animal shot up the valley, running with every ounce there was in him.

The valley floor was fairly level, and a hundred yards away the girl shot a swift glance over her shoulder. Bethune's horse was getting under way in frantic leaps that told of cruel spurring, and with her eyes to the front, she bent forward over the horn and slapped her horse's neck with her gloved hand. She remembered with a quick gasp of relief that Bethune prided himself upon the fact that he never carried a gun. She had once taunted Vil Holland with the fact, and he had replied that "greasers and breeds were generally sneaking enough to be knife men." Again, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled grimly as she noted that the distance between the two flying horses had increased by half. "Good old boy," she whispered. "You can beat him—can 'run rings around him,' as Vil would say. It would be a long knife that could harm me now," she thought, as she pulled her Stetson tight against the sweep of the rushing wind. The ground was becoming more and more uneven. Loose rock fragments were strewn about in increasing numbers, and the valley was narrowing to an extent that necessitated frequent fording of the shallow creek. "He can't make any better time than I can," muttered the girl, as she noted the slackening of her horse's speed. She was riding on a loose rein, giving her horse his head, for she realized that to force him might mean a misstep and a fall. She closed her eyes and shuddered at the thoughts of a fall. A thousand times better had she fallen and been pounded to a pulp by the flying hoofs of the horse herd, than to fall now—and survive it. The ascent became steeper. Her horse was still running, but very slowly. His neck and shoulders were reeking with sweat, and she could hear the labored breath pumping through his distended nostrils.

A sudden fear shot through her. Nine valleys in every ten, she knew, ended in surmountable divides; and she knew, also, that one valley in every ten did not. Suppose this one that she had chosen at random terminated in a cul-de-sac? The way became steeper. Running was out of the question, and her horse was forging upward in a curious scrambling walk. A noise of clattering rocks sounded behind her, and Patty glanced backward straight into the face of Bethune. Reckless of a fall, in the blind fury of his passion, the quarter-breed had forced his horse to his utmost, and rapidly closed up the gap until scarcely ten yards separated him from the fleeing girl.

In a frenzy of terror she lashed her laboring horse's flanks as the animal dug and clawed like a cat at the loose rock footing of the steep ascent. White to the lips she searched the foreground for a ravine or a coulee that would afford a means of escape. But before her loomed only the ever steepening wall, its surface half concealed by the scattering scrub. Once more she looked backward. The breath was whistling through the blood-red flaring nostrils of Bethune's horse, and her glance flew to the face of the man. Never in her wildest nightmares had she imagined the soul-curdling horror of that face. The lips writhed back in a hideous grin of hate. A long blue-red welt bisected the features obliquely—a welt from which red blood flowed freely at the corner of a swollen eye. White foam gathered upon the distorted lips and drooled down onto the chin where it mingled with the blood in a pink meringue that dripped in fluffy chunks upon his shirt front. The uninjured eye was a narrow gleam of venom, and the breath swished through the man's nostrils as from the strain of great physical labor.

"Oh, for my gun!" thought the girl. "I'd—I'd kill him!" With a wild scramble her horse went down. "Vil! Vil!" she shrieked, in a frenzy of despair, and freeing herself from the floundering animal, she struggled to her feet and faced her pursuer with a sharp rock fragment upraised in her two hands.

Monk Bethune laughed—as the fiends must laugh in hell. A laugh that struck a chill to the very heart of the girl. Her muscles went limp at the sound of it and she felt the strength ebbing from her body like sand from an upturned glass. The rock fragment became an insupportable weight. It crashed to the ground, and rolled clattering to Bethune's feet. He, too, had dismounted, and stood beside his horse, his fists slowly clenching and unclenching in gloating anticipation. Patty turned to run, but her limbs felt numb and heavy, and she pitched forward upon her knees. With a slow movement of his hand, Bethune wiped the pink foam from his chin, examined it, snapped it from his fingers, cleansed them upon the sleeve of his shirt—and again, deliberately, he laughed, and started to climb slowly forward.

A rock slipped close beside the girl, and the next instant a voice sounded in her ear: "I don't reckon he's 'round yere, Miss. I hain't saw Vil this mo'nin'." Rifle in hand, Watts stepped from behind a scrub pine, and as his eyes fell upon Bethune, he stood fumbling his beard with uncertain fingers.

"He—he'll kill me!" gasped the girl.

"Sho', now, Miss—he won't hurt yo' none, will yo', Mr. Bethune? Gineral Jackson! Mr. Bethune, look at yo' face! Yo' must of rode again' a limb!"

"Shut up, and get out of here!" screamed the quarter-breed. "And, if you know what's good for you, you'll forget that you've seen anyone this morning."

"B'en layin' up yere in the gap fer to git me a deer. I heerd yo'-all comin', like, so's I waited."

"Get out, I tell you, before I kill you!" cried Bethune, beside himself with rage. "Go!" The man's hand plunged beneath his shirt and came out with a glitter of steel.

The mountaineer eyed the blade indifferently, and turned to the girl. "Ef yo' goin' my ways, ma'am, jest yo' lead yo' hoss on ahaid. They's a game trail runs slaunchways up th'ough the gap yender. I'll kind o' foller 'long behind."

"You fool!" shrilled Bethune, as he made a grab for the girl's reins, and the next instant found himself looking straight into the muzzle of Watts's rifle.

"Drap them lines," drawled the mountaineer, "thet hain't yo' hoss. An' what's over an' above, yo' better put up yo' whittle, an' tu'n 'round an' go back wher' yo' com' from."

"Lower that gun!" commanded Bethune. "It's cocked!"

"Yes, hit's cocked, Mr. Bethune, an' hit's sot mighty light on the trigger. Ef I'd git a little scairt, er a little riled, er my foot 'ud slip, yo'd have to be drug down to wher' the diggin's easy, an' buried."

Bethune deliberately slipped the knife back into his shirt, and laughed: "Oh, come, now, Watts, a joke's a joke. I played a joke on Miss Sinclair to frighten her——"

"Yo' done hit, all right," interrupted Watts. "An' thet's the end on't."

The rifle muzzle still covered Bethune's chest in the precise region of his heart, and once more he changed his tactics: "Don't be a fool, Watts," he said, in an undertone, "I'm rich—richer than you, or anyone else knows. I've located Rod Sinclair's strike and filed it. If you just slip quietly off about your business, and forget that you ever saw anyone here this morning—and see to it that you never remember it again, you'll never regret it. I'll make it right with you—I'll file you next to discovery."

"Yo' mean," asked Watts, slowly, "thet you've stoled the mine offen Sinclair's darter, an' filed hit yo'self, an' thet ef I go 'way an' let yo' finish the job by murderin' the gal, yo'll give me some of the mine—is thet what yo' tryin' to git at?"

"Put it anyway you want to, damn you! Words don't matter, but for God's sake, get out! If she once gets through the gap——"

"Bethune," Watts drawled the name, even more than was his wont, and the quarter-breed noticed that the usually roving eyes had set into a hard stare behind which lurked a dangerous glitter, "yo're a ornery, low-down cur-dog what hain't fitten to be run with by man, beast, or devil. I'd ort to shoot yo' daid right wher' yo' at—an' mebbe I will. But comin' to squint yo' over, that there damage looks mo' like a quirt-lick than a limb. Thet ort to hurt like fire fer a couple a days, an' when it lets up yo' face hain't a-goin' to be so purty as what hit wus. Ef she'd jest of drug the quirt along a little when hit landed she c'd of cut plumb into the bone—but hit's middlin' fair, as hit stands. I'm a-goin' to give yo' a chanct—an' a warnin', too. Next time I see yo' I'm a-going' to kill yo'—whenever, or wherever hit's at. I'll do hit, jest as shore as my name is John Watts. Yo' kin go now—back the way yo' come, pervidin' yo' go fast. I'm a-goin' to count up to wher' I know how to—I hain't never be'n to school none, but I counted up to nineteen, onct—an' whin I git to wher' I cain't rec'lec' the nex' figger, I'm a-goin' to shoot, an' shoot straight. An' I hain't a-goin' to study long about them figgers, neither. Le's see, one comes fust—yere goes, then: One ... Two...." For a single instant, Bethune gazed into the man's eyes and the next, he sprang into the saddle, and dashing wildly down the steep slope, disappeared into the scrub.

"Spec' I'd ort to killed him," regretted the mountaineer, as he lowered the rifle, and gazed off down the valley, "but I hain't got no appetite fer diggin'."



CHAPTER XVIII

PATTY MAKES HER STRIKE

It was noon, one week from the day she had returned from the Samuelson ranch, and Patty Sinclair stood upon the high shoulder of a butte and looked down into a rock-rimmed valley. Her eyes roved slowly up and down the depression where the dark green of the scrub contrasted sharply with the crinkly buffalo grass, yellowed to spun gold beneath the rays of the summer sun.

She reached up and stroked the neck of her horse. "Just think, old partner, three days from now I may be teaching school in that horrid little town with its ratty hotel, and its picture shows, and its saloons, and you may be turned out in a pasture with nothing to do but eat and grow fat! If we don't find our claim to-day, or to-morrow, it's good-by hill country 'til next summer."

The day following her encounter with Bethune, Vil Holland had appeared, true to his promise, and instructed her in the use of her father's six-gun. At the end of an hour's practice, she had been able to kick up the dirt in close proximity to a tomato can at fifteen steps, and twice she had actually hit it. "That's good enough for any use you're apt to have for it," her instructor had approved. "The main thing is that you ain't afraid of it. An' remember," he added, "a gun ain't made to bluff with. Don't pull it on anyone unless you go through with it. Only short-horns an' pilgrims ever pull a gun that don't need wipin' before it's put back—I could show you the graves of several of 'em. I'm leavin' you some extry shells that you can shoot up the scenery with. Always pick out somethin' little to shoot at—start in with tin cans and work down to match-sticks. When you can break six match-sticks with six shots at ten steps in ten seconds folks will call you handy with a gun." He had made no mention of his trip to town, of his filing a homestead, or of their conversation upon the top of Lost Creek divide. When the lesson was finished, he had refused Patty's invitation to supper, mounted his horse, and disappeared up the ravine that led to the notch in the hills. Although neither had mentioned it, Patty somehow felt that he had heard from Watts of her encounter with Bethune. And now a week had passed and she had seen neither Vil Holland nor the quarter-breed. It had been a week of anxiety and hard work for the girl who had devoted almost every hour of daylight to the unraveling of her father's map. Simple as the directions seemed, her inability to estimate distances had proven a serious handicap. But by dogged perseverance, and much retracing of steps, and correcting of false leads, she finally stood upon the rim of the valley she judged to lie two miles east of the humpbacked butte that she had figured to be the inverted U of her father's map.

"If this isn't the valley, I'm through for this year," she said. "And I've got to-day and to-morrow to explore it." She wondered at her indifference—at her strange lack of excitement at this, the crucial moment of her long quest, even as she had wondered at her absence of fear, believing as she did, that Bethune was still in the hills. The feeling inspired by the outlaw had been a feeling of rage, rather than terror, and had rapidly crystallized in her outraged mind into an abysmal soul-hate. She knew that, should the man accost her again, she would kill him—and not for a single instant did she doubt her ability to kill him. Vaguely, as she stood looking out over the valley, she wondered if he were following her—if at that moment he were lying concealed, somewhere among the surrounding rocks or patches of scrub? Yet, she was conscious of no feeling of fear. She even attempted no concealment as, standing there upon the bare rock, she drew her father's map and photographs from her pocket and subjected them to a long and minute scrutiny. And then, still holding them in her hand, gazed once more over the valley. "To 'a,' to 'b,'" she repeated. "What is there that daddy would have designed as 'a,' and 'b?'" Suddenly, her glance became fixed upon a point up the valley that lay just within her range of vision. With puckered eyes and hat-brim drawn low upon her forehead, she stared steadily into the distance. She knew that she had never before seen this valley, and yet the place seemed, somehow, strangely familiar. With a low cry she bent over one of the photographs. Her hands trembled violently as her eyes once more flew to the valley. Yes, there it was, spread out before her just the way it was in the photograph—the rock-strewn ground—she could even identify the various rocks with the rocks in the picture. There was the lone tree, and the long rock wall, higher at its upper end, and—yes, she could just discern it—the zigzag crack in the rock ledge! Jamming the papers into her pocket she leaped into the saddle and dashed toward a fringe of scrub that marked the course of a coulee which led downward into the valley. Over its edge, and down its brush-choked course, slipping, sliding, scrambling, she urged her horse, reckless of safety, reckless of anything except that her weary, and at times it had seemed her hopeless, search was about to end. She had stood where her daddy had stood when he took that photograph—had seen with her own eyes—the jagged crack in the rock wall!

In the valley the going was better, and with quirt and spur she urged her horse to his best, her eyes on the lone pine tree. At the rock wall beyond, she pulled up sharply and stared at the jagged crevice that bisected it from top to bottom. It was the crevice of the photograph! Very deliberately she began at the top and traced its course to the bottom. She noted the scraggly, stunted pines that fringed the rim of the wall and that the crack started straight, and then zigzagged to the ground. Producing the "close up" photograph, she compared it with the reality before her—an entirely superfluous and needless act, for each minute detail of the spot at which she stared was indelibly engraved upon her memory. For hours on end, she had studied those photographs, and now—she laughed aloud, and the sound roused her to action. Slipping from the horse, she fumbled at the pack strings of the saddle and loosened the canvas bag. She reached into it, and stood erect holding a light hand-axe. Once more she consulted her map. "Stake l. c.," she read. "That's lode claim—and then that funny wiggly mark, and then the word center." Her brows drew together as she studied the ground. Suddenly her face brightened. "Why, of course!" she exclaimed. "That mark represents the crack, and daddy meant to stake the claim with the crack for the center. Well, here goes!" She vehemently attacked a young sapling, and ten minutes later viewed with pride her four roughly hacked stakes. Picking up one of them and the axe, she paced off her distance, and as she reached the first corner point, stared in surprise at the ground. The claim had already been staked! Eagerly she stooped to examine the bit of wood. It had evidently been in place for some time—how long, the girl could not tell. Long enough, though, for its surface to have become weather-grayed and discolored. "Daddy's stakes," she breathed softly, and as her fingers strayed over the surface two big tears welled into her eyes and trickled unheeded down her cheeks. "If he staked the claim, I wonder why he didn't file," she puzzled over the matter for a moment, and dismissed it. "I don't know why. But, anyway, the thing for me to do is to get in my own stakes—only, I'll file, just as soon as I can get to the register's office."