rn.

"Why don't you get away?" he asked in eager pleading. "That trail will
take you out of the mountains and down into the desert country. You're
from the desert, aren't you? You can make it. You've made a good haul.
Go! It'll be better for me and all of us!"

Rathburn laughed bitterly. "I can't go because I'm a worse fool than
you are," he said acridly. "Get in there. Sneaking lizards, man, can't
you see I'm tempted to put a shot into one of them boxes and blow us
both to kingdom come?"

Sautee shrank back into the powder house, and Rathburn slammed the
door.

As Rathburn snapped the padlock and thrust the keys into his pocket
his eyes again sought the trail to the left above him. No one was in
sight. The man and the boy had disappeared in a bend or depression in
the trail.

But when he looked down toward the hogback he saw a car coming up the
road toward the mine. A number of horsemen had taken its place on the
hogback.

Rathburn ran for his horse.

CHAPTER XXII

A SECOND CAPTURE

Rathburn rode straight up the trail which led from the powder house
toward the pass over the big mountain. His eyes were gleaming with
satisfaction, but several times they clouded with doubt, and he felt
the bank notes in his coat pocket. Each time, however, he would shake
his head and push on up the trail with renewed energy.

Looking backward and downward, he could see the posses gathering in
the street of the mine village. He sensed the excitement which had
followed the sudden disappearance of Sautee and smiled grimly. He saw
that the automobile from the hogback had reached the village. Scores
of men were clustered about it. He knew Mannix was taking personal
charge of the man hunt; but there was a chance to get away!

He looked wistfully eastward. Somewhere off there, beyond the rolling
foothills, was the desert. He thrilled. It had been there he had made
his first mistake. Goaded by the loss of his small cattle ranch he had
taken revenge on the man who had foreclosed on him and others in a
similar predicament. He had held up the bank and restored a small
measure of the losses. Even then the profit of the unscrupulous money
lender had been enormous.

But the law had marked Rathburn. The gunmen who were jealous of his
reputation as an expert at the draw had forced him to fall back upon
that draw to protect his life. Thus he had been driven to obtain a
living in the best way he could, and something in the dangerou