e developments, but in obedience to a settled
plan. Last night a party had set forth ahead. Its members were now
stationed at appointed posts in spots so lonely and so silent that one
might have passed them at a stone's throw without suspecting their
presence. They had gone singly and by different ways--at the start.
Others had come to cooperate from Viper and the net was spread with
meticulous care and completeness. For communication and signaling the
voices of forest things were available; the caw of the crow in the
timber, the bark of the fox in the thicket, the note of those birds
that the winter had not driven south.

Alexander's journey would not have been easy, had she ridden with no
prize to safeguard. There were washouts and quicksands; treacherous
fords and shelving precipices to be encountered, but here was a fortune
guarded only by a woman whose recklessness led her toward disaster.

"She's plum askin' fer hit--beggin' fer hit," grinned Lute Brown who
with a single companion strode along a wet and tangled trail shortly
after sunrise. "An' I reckon she'll get hit."

Soon after Alexander had taken her departure those interested in town
also began drifting toward the outbound trail. There must be, for
every campaign, a rear-guard as well as an advance.

But the three to whose earnest advice the young woman from
Shoulder-blade had turned a deaf ear, had not been content to accept
dismissal--or inactivity. Halloway and Sellers knew that the dangers
of which she made little could not be blinked at and they dared not
trust to luck nor rely solely upon her dauntlessness to see her through.

As for Halloway he had left Coal City under cover of the dawn's
twilight, while the white fog of mountain mornings still veiled the
world. He had gone on foot since, with his tireless strength, he could
so travel across the "roughs" at better than a mounted pace and be less
cumbered. His destination was the telegraph office at Viper. Jerry
O'Keefe and a handful of others were to mobolize inconspicuously
there--though they were to remain seemingly disconnected and await his
instructions. Brent was to come on later and in his command, though
not in his immediate company, were to be Bud Sellers and several more.

The chief difficulty, of course, lay in communication. It was rather a
matter of groping in the dark, and the only plan which had seemed
feasible had been to divide the intervening country into zones and t