edy, and the homesteaders were
beginning to draw breath in the open again, in the belief that
Macdonald must have driven the slayer out of the country. Nothing had
been seen or heard of Macdonald since the evening that he parted
company with Tom Lassiter, father of the murdered boy.

Macdonald, in the interval, was hard on the old villain's trail. He
had picked it up on the first day of his lone-handed hunt, and once he
had caught a glimpse of Thorn as he dodged among the red willows on
the river, but the sight had been too transitory to put in a shot. It
was evident now that Thorn knew that he was being hunted by a single
pursuer. More than that, there were indications written in the loose
earth where he passed, and in the tangled brushwood where he skulked,
that he had stopped running away and had turned to hunt the hunter.

For two days they had been circling in a constantly tightening ring,
first one leading the hunt, then the other. Trained and accustomed as
he was to life under those conditions, Thorn had not yet been able to
take even a chance shot at his clinging pursuer.

Macdonald was awake to the fact that this balance in his favor could
not be maintained long. As it was, he ascribed it more to luck than
skill on his part. This wild beast in human semblance must possess all
the wild beast's cunning; there would be a rift left open in this
straining game of hide and seek which his keen eyes would be sure to
see at no distant hour.

The afternoon of that day was worn down to the hock. Macdonald had
been creeping and stooping, running, panting, and lying concealed from
the first gleam of dawn. Whether by design on the part of Thorn, or
merely the blind leading of the hunt, Macdonald could not tell, the
contest of wits had brought them within sight of Alamito ranchhouse.

Resting a little while with his back against a ledge which insured him
from surprise, Macdonald looked out from the hills over the
wide-spanning valley, the farther shore of which was laved in a purple
mist as rich as the dye of some oriental weaving. He felt a surge of
indignant protest against the greedy injustice of that manorial
estate, the fair house glistening in the late sun among the
white-limbed cottonwoods. There Saul Chadron sat, like some distended
monster, his hands spread upon more than he could honestly use, or his
progeny after him for a thousand years, growling and snapping at all
whose steps lagged in passing, or whose wea