the end of the first fifteen
miles. He swung out of his saddle, stretched his long legs, remarked
lightly that it was a real fine day, and was gone again upon a fresh
mount with twenty-five miles between him and Rocky Bend. The clock at
the bank marked forty-three minutes after two as Lee, leaving a
sweating horse at the door on Main Street, presented his check at the
paying teller's window. The money, in a small canvas bag, was ready.

"Hello, Bud," and "Hello, Dan'l," was the beginning and end of the
conversation which ensued. Lee did not stop to count the money. He
drew his belt up a hole as he went back to the door, found a fresh
horse there fighting its bit and all but lifting the stable-boy off his
feet, mounted and sped back along Main Street.

Judith was to send out another man leading still another fresh horse
for him so that he could not fail to be back at the ranch-house by six
o'clock. As Bud Lee, riding hard but never without thought for the
horse which carried him, began the return trip, he drew the heavy
caliber revolver from his shirt and thrust it into his belt. When he
had left Rocky Bend half a dozen miles behind him and was hurrying on
into the outskirts of that country of rolling hills and pine forests,
his hand was never six inches from the gun-butt.

The road wound in and out among the pines, always climbing. Lee raced
on, his eyes bright and keen, watchful and suspicious of every still
shadow or stirring branch. Coming up the two-mile-long Cuesta Grade,
he saved his horse a little. From the top of the mountain, before he
again followed a winding road back to the river's side, he saw a
horseman riding a distant ridge; the glinted upon the rider's rifle.

"Old Carson himself," thought Lee. "Looking for the hold-up man.
Shucks! They'll never find him this trip."

Letting his own animal out into its swinging stride as he got down to
more level going, he hammered on at his clip of fifteen miles an hour.
In the thick shade of the forest, three miles before he came to the
line fence of the Blue Lake ranch, he saw another horseman, this one Ed
Masters, the "college kid." The young fellow's flushed, eager face
passed in a blur as Lee shot by.

Another mile, and Bud Lee was riding through a clearing, with the tall
cliffs of Squaw Creek canon looming high on his left, when suddenly and
absolutely without warning, his horse screamed, gathered itself for a
wild plunge, staggered, stood a m