y. "Let us see. You are a
man--how far would you go for the woman you loved?"

"The limit!"

Mrs. Austin frowned at this light-seeming answer. "I suppose you mean
that you would make any sacrifice?"

"Yes; that's it."

"Would you give up the woman herself, if you considered it your duty?"

"No. There couldn't be any duty higher than love--to my way of
thinking. But you shouldn't take me as a specimen. I'm not a good
representative of my sex."

"I think you are a very good one," Alaire said, quietly, and Dave
realized that no flattery was intended. Although he was willing to talk
further on this subject, Mrs. Austin gave him no opportunity of airing
his views. Love, it appeared, was a thing she did not care to discuss
with him on their footing of semi-intimacy.

Despite the rough roads, they made fair time, and the miles of cactus
and scrawny brush rolled swiftly past. Occasionally a lazy jack-rabbit
ambled out of his road-side covert and watched them from a safe
distance; now and then a spotted road-runner raced along the dusty ruts
ahead of them. The morning sun swung higher, and by midday the metal of
the automobile had become as hot as a frying-pan. They stopped at
various goat-ranches to inquire about Adolfo Urbina, and at noon halted
beside a watercourse for lunch.

Dave was refilling the radiator when he overheard Jose in conversation
with Mrs. Austin.

"Nowhere a trace!" the horse-breaker was saying. "No one has seen him.
Poor Rosa Morales will die of a broken heart."

Alaire explained to her guest: "Jose is worried about his cousin
Panfilo. It seems he has disappeared."

"So! You are Panfilo's cousin?" Dave eyed the Mexican with new interest.

"Si!"

"You remember the man?" Alaire went on. "He was with that fellow you
arrested at the water-hole."

"Oh yes. I remember him." With steady fingers Dave shook some tobacco
into a cigarette-paper. He felt Alaire's eyes upon him, and they were
eloquent of inquiry, but he did not meet them.

Jose frowned. "No one at La Feria has seen him, and in Pueblo there was
not a word. It is strange."

"Panfilo was in bad company when I saw him." Law finished rolling his
cigarette and lit it, still conscious of Alaire's questioning gaze. "He
may have had trouble."

"He was a good man," the horse-breaker asserted. "If he is dead--" The
Mexican's frown deepened to a scowl.

"What then?"

Jose significantly patted the gift revolver at his hip. "This little
fel