down the stairs and running toward the little barn. Slipping the bridle
on her pony, she swung to its back without thought of a saddle, and
turned the willing creature into the street. As she passed the house,
she waved her hand to her mother, at the window, and vanished like a
specter into the night.

"Oh, hurry, Gypsy, hurry!" she breathed into the pony's twitching ear.

Her way was not far, for she was going first to the hotel, but that
other way, into the mountains after Gordon, would be a long journey, and
no time could be wasted now. She was going to see Helen Rexhill, not as
a suppliant bearing the olive branch, but as a champion to wage battle
in behalf of the missing ranchman. She no longer thought of giving him
up, and the knowledge that she might now keep the love which she had won
for her very own made her reel on the pony's back from pure joy. She was
his as he was hers, but the Rexhills were his enemies: she knew that
positively now, and she meant to defeat them at their own game. If they
would tell her where Gordon was, they might go free for all she cared;
if they would not, she would give them over to the vengeance of Crawling
Water, and she would not worry about what might happen to them.
Meanwhile she thanked her lucky stars that Trowbridge had promised to
keep a man at the big pine.

She tied her pony at the hitching-rack in front of the hotel and entered
the office. Like most of the men in the town, the proprietor was her
ardent admirer, but he had never seen her before in such radiant mood.
He took his cigar from between his lips, and doffed his Stetson hat,
which he wore indoors and out, with elaborate grace.

"Yes, Miss, Miss Rexhill's in, up in the parlor, I think. Would you like
me to step up and let her know you're here?"

"No, thank you, I'll go right up myself," said Dorothy; her smile doubly
charming because of its suggestion of triumph.

Miss Rexhill, entirely unaware of what was brewing for her, was
embroidering by the flickering light of one of the big oil lamps, with
her back to the doorway, and so did not immediately note Dorothy's
presence in the room. Her face flushed with annoyance and she arose,
when she recognized her visitor.

"You will please pardon me, but I do not care to receive you," she said
primly.

This beginning, natural enough from Helen's standpoint, after what her
father had told her in Moran's office, convinced Dorothy that she had
read the writing on the