ening eyes while the hot breath of the
conflagration fanned her cheeks. She was wondering, speculating, and
slowly the significance of their movements began to take hold of her.

At first she had thought that the movement was inspired by the
overpowering heat of the forest fire. She had warned herself of the
danger. The grass down there. The flying sparks. But almost in the
same breath she realized that there was more, far more in that
movement. The grass was far too green in the valley to form any real
danger and the bluff was sufficiently isolated. No, there was more in
it than the danger of fire.

She shivered, although the night air now possessed something of the
temperature of a summer noon. All her excitement had passed. She had
even forgotten for the time all that the doings of that night meant to
her. She was thinking of the deliberate administration of justice as
these men understood it. It was crude, deadly, and full of a painful
horror, and now, now, in saner moments, she beheld the dawn of emotions
which had come all too late. Whither were those men riding? Whither?
And then? Ah--she shuddered, and her shudder was full of realization.
For well she knew that the men she had seen grouped were living
prisoners. Living prisoners. How long would they remain so? What
would be their end?

CHAPTER VII

OUTLAND JUSTICE

The noon sun sweltered down through the rank vegetation of the narrow
defile. The heat was almost too burdensome to endure. It was moist;
it was dank with the reek of decaying matter. The way was a seemingly
endless battle against odds. But the travelers were buoyed with the
knowledge that it was a short cut, calculated to save them many hours
and many miles.

Bud Tristram had pointed the way. Furthermore, he had urged Jeff to
accept and endure the tortures and shortcomings which he knew they must
face in the heart of this remote gulch.

Nor were his warnings unneeded, for Nature had set up no inconsiderable
defenses. Here were swarms of over-grown mosquitoes of a peculiarly
vicious type, which covered their horses' flanks in a gray horde,
almost obliterating their original colors; and a bleeding mass resulted
every time either man raised a hand to the back of his own neck to
soothe the fierce irritation of the vicious attacks. Then the way
itself. It was a narrow gorge almost completely occupied by the muddy
bed and boggy shores of a drying mountain creek.

I