Judith noticed a puzzled look on Bud's face. He called out: "What did
you say out there?"

Word for word came the command again:

"Pitch the money out of the window and we'll let you go."

Lee turned triumphantly to Judith.

"I've got his tag!" he whispered to her. "I played poker with that
voice one night not four months ago in Rocky Bend!"

"Who is he?" Judith whispered back. "With Crowdy down, if we know who
one of these men is, the rest will be easy. Who is he?"

"A bad egg," Lee told her gravely. "He's done time in the State pen.
He's been out less than a year. Gunman, stick-up man, convicted once
already for manslaughter . . ."

"Not Chris Quinnion, Bud Lee!" she cried excitedly. "Not Chris
Quinnion!"

"Sh!" he commanded softly. "There's no use tipping our hand off to
him. Yes; it's crooked Chris Quinnion. You don't know him, do you?"

He had never seen her eyes look as they looked now. They were as hard
and bright as steel; no true woman's eyes, he thought swiftly. Rather
the eyes of a man with murder in his heart.

"Then, thank God!" whispered Judith, her voice tense. "Can you keep a
secret with me, Bud Lee? Were it not for the man calling to us now,
Luke Sanford would be here in our stead. Crooked Chris Quinnion served
his time in San Quentin because my father sent him there. And he had
not been free six months before he kept his oath and murdered my poor
old dad!"

"Well?" came the interrupting snarl of Quinnion's voice, like the
ominous whine of an enraged animal. "What's the word?"

"Give us five minutes to think it over," returned Lee coolly. And,
incredulous eyes on Judith's set face, he said gently: "I was on the
ranch when the accident happened. He must have driven that heavy car a
little too close to the edge of the grade. The bank just naturally
gave way."

Judith, her lips tightly compressed, shook her head.

"You didn't find him under the car, did you? And the blow that killed
him might have been dealt with some heavy weapon in the hands of a man
standing behind him, mightn't it? I know, Bud Lee, I know!"

"How do you know?" he demanded intently. "You weren't here even."

"No. I was in San Francisco. But the day before I had a letter from
father. He expected me home very soon. He was going out, he said in
his letter, to look at the road over the mountain. He wrote that the
grade was dangerous, especially at the very place where the car went
over! He