ses to comb
the trails to the mine and beyond was under way at once.

Sautee ran to his office and got out his small car. He stopped at the
Red Feather and took one of the men from the mine with him. He
stopped again when he reached the Carlisle cabin, pounded on the
doors, and looked in the windows. But the place was deserted, and
Sautee's features were wreathed in perplexity as he went back to his
car.

"That's queer," he said as he climbed into his seat.

"What's that?" asked the man beside him.

But Sautee's answer was drowned in the roar of the motor as he sped up
the road toward the hogback and the mine.

CHAPTER XXI

A CAPTURE

When Rathburn rode away from Sautee's quarters he galloped up the
street straight for the road which led west out of town. He pulled his
horse down to a trot when he reached the Carlisle cabin and made
another brief inspection which showed that the place was deserted.
Then he struck into the trail behind the cabin and began the ascent
toward the Dixie Queen.

He rode slowly through the timber, depending upon his mount to keep to
the dim trail, but in the open stretches in meadows and on the crest
of ridges where the timber thinned, he made better time. On this
occasion one would not have noted an attitude of uncertainty about his
manner or movements. He had paid strict attention to the barn man's
description of this trail, and he had determined general directions
the day before. Rathburn was not a stranger to the art of following
new trails; nor was he the kind to become confused in a locality with
which he was not familiar unless he became absolutely lost. In this
instance it would be a hard matter to become lost, for the ridges rose
steadily upward toward the summits of the high mountains, the town was
in the narrow valley below, and the foothills ranged down to the
desert in the east.

He was halfway to the mine when he saw the gleam of an automobile's
lights in the road far below.

"Sautee got busy right quick," he said aloud. "I 'spect they're
hustlin' up to head me off at the hogback. They're figuring I'd try to
go back the way I come in."

He smiled grimly in the soft moonlight, and his gaze turned toward the
east, where the stars glowed over the shadowy reaches of desert which
he could not see, but the very thought of which stirred something in
his soul.

Then he pushed on up the trail toward the mine. For more than an hour
he rode, and then, when he came