e swiftness of Satan which never tired, and above all the rider who
directed them both and kept them to their work. His was the arm which
could strike from the distance and bring them down. They spurted down
the hill.

No sooner were they in full motion than Joan, for the first time, seemed
to realize what it was all about. She was still carried by Lee Haines,
who cradled her easily in his powerful left arm, but now she began to
struggle. Then she stiffened and screamed: "Daddy Dan! Daddy Dan!"

"For God's sake, stop her mouth or he'll hear!" groaned Buck Daniels.

"He can't!" said Haines. "We're too far away even if he were at the cave
now."

"I tell you he'll hear! Don't talk to me about distance."

Kate reined her horse beside Lee.

"Joan!" she commanded.

They were sweeping across the meadow now at an easy gallop. Joan
screamed again, a wild plea for help.

"Joan!" repeated Kate, and her voice was fierce. She raised her quirt
and shook it. "Be quiet, Munner whip--hard!"

Another call died away on the lips of Joan. She looked at her mother
with astonishment and then with a new respect.

"If you cry once more, munner whip!"

And Joan was silent, staring with wonder and defiance.

When they came close to the cabin, Lee Haines drew rein, but Kate
motioned him on.

"Where to?" he called.

"Back to the old ranch," she answered. "We've got to have help."

He nodded in grim understanding, and they headed on and down the slope
towards the valley.

Chapter XXIX. Billy The Clerk

If Sheriff Pete Glass had been the typical hard-riding, sure-shooting
officer of the law as it is seen in the mountain-desert, his work would
have died with his death, but Glass had a mind as active as his hands,
and therefore, for at least a little while, his work went on after him.
He had gathered fifteen practiced fighters who represented, it might be
said, the brute body of the law, and when they, with most of Rickett at
their heels, burst down the door of the Sheriff's office and found his
body, they had only one thought, which was to swing into the saddle and
ride on the trail of the killer, who was even now in a diminishing cloud
of dust down the street. He was riding almost due east, and the cry went
up: "He's streakin' it for the Morgan Hills. Git after him, boys!" So
into the saddle they went with a rush, fifteen tried men on fifteen
chosen horses, and went down the street with a roar of hoof-beats. That
was the bod