ed another old, worn-out trail on the south side of the ranch.
They met here just as I knew they would!"

"What for?" Lee frowned through the darkness at her eager face. "What
would they want to get together for? If they had any sense they would
scatter and clean out of the country."

"Unless," Judith reminded him, "they don't intend to clean out at all!
Unless they mean to stick to the cliffs and try their hands again at
their sort of game. They'll figure that we will expect them to be a long
way from here by now, won't they? Then where would they be safer than
right here in these mountains? Give me a rifle and something to eat and
I'll defy an army getting me out there. And think of it: If this is
Trevors's work, if he means business, think what two gunmen on these
heights could do to us. They could pick off a three-thousand-dollar
stallion down in the pens; they could drop more than one prize bull or
cow; and," she added sharply, "if they thought about girls as some men
think, they could take a chance on scaring Judith Sanford out of the
country."

Lee stared at her a long time in silence.

"I wouldn't have said," he offered finally, "that Bayne Trevors would
make quite so strong a play as that."

"You wouldn't! Then look him in the eye! And where's his risk, if he's
picked the right men, if he sees them through, keeping the back door open
when they want to run for it? You just gamble your boots, Bud Lee, that
Bayne Trevors . . ."

Without warning, without a sound of explosion came a wiry whine into the
still air, a little venomous ping, and a bullet sped by just over their
heads. But, through the gloom, they both saw the flash of the gun as it
spat fire and lead, and, as though one impulse commanded them, Judith's
rifle and Bud Lee's went to their shoulders and two reverberating reports
rang out in answer.

"Lie down, damn it!" cried Bud Lee to the girl at his side, as again
there came the flash from the cliffs off to the right and as again he
answered it with his rifle.

"Lie down yourself!" snapped Judith. And once more her rifle spoke with
his.

For one instant, framed against the darkening sky along the cliff edge
five hundred yards away to the right, they saw the silhouette of a man,
leaping from one boulder to another, a man who looked gigantically big in
the uncertain light. They fired; he jumped again and passed out of sight.

"Got his nerve," grunted Lee as he pumped lead at the r