r and
over, he wrenched violently at his pinioned arms, he twisted his
powerful young body from Senor Johnson's grasp again and again. But it
was no use. In less than a minute he was bound hard and fast. Button
promptly slackened the rope. The dust settled. The noise of the
combat died. Again could be heard the single desert bird singing
against the dawn.

CHAPTER TWELVE

IN THE ARROYO

Senor Johnson quietly approached Estrella. The girl had, during the
struggle, gone through an aimless but frantic exhibition of terror.
Now she shrank back, her eyes staring wildly, her hands behind her,
ready to flop again over the brink of hysteria.

"What are you going to do?" she demanded, her voice unnatural.

She received no reply. The man reached out and took her by the arm.

And then at once, as though the personal contact of the touch had
broken through the last crumb of numbness with which shock had overlaid
Buck Johnson's passions, the insanity of his rage broke out. He
twisted her violently on her face, knelt on her back, and, with the
short piece of hard rope the cowboy always carries to "hog-tie" cattle,
he lashed her wrists together. Then he arose panting, his square black
beard rising and falling with the rise and fall of his great chest.

Estrella had screamed again and again until her face had been fairly
ground into the alkali. There she had choked and strangled and gasped
and sobbed, her mind nearly unhinged with terror. She kept appealing
to him in a hoarse voice, but could get no reply, no indication that he
had even heard. This terrified her still more. Brent Palmer cursed
steadily and accurately, but the man did not seem to hear him either.

The tempest bad broken in Buck Johnson's soul. When he had touched
Estrella he had, for the first time, realised what he had lost. It was
not the woman--her he despised. But the dreams! All at once he knew
what they had been to him--he understood how completely the very
substance of his life had changed in response to their slow
soul-action. The new world had been blasted--the old no longer existed
to which to return.

Buck Johnson stared at this catastrophe until his sight blurred. Why,
it was atrocious! He had done nothing to deserve it! Why had they not
left him peaceful in his own life of cattle and the trail? He had been
happy. His dull eyes fell on the causes of the ruin.

And then, finally, in the understanding of how he had bee