hiding it against Shorty's heaving
shoulder, and tightened his grip. Shorty struggled to his feet,
shaking at him, tearing at him, driving one fist after the other into
Hampton's body. But with a grimness of purpose as new to him as was
the whole of to-night's adventure Hampton held on.

Judith and Lee and Burkitt came to them as they were falling again.
Now suddenly, with other hard hands upon him, Shorty relaxed, and
Hampton, his face bloody, his body sore, sank back. He had done a mad
thing--but triumph lay in that he had done it.

"A man never can tell," muttered Bud Lee, with less thought of the
captive than of the captor--"never can tell."

"I am thinking," said Judith wonderingly, "that I never quite did you
justice, Pollock Hampton!"

XIV

SPRINGTIME AND A VISION

Hampton's captive, known to them only as Shorty, a heavy, surly man
whose small, close-set eyes burned evilly under his pale brows, rode
that night between Hampton and Judith down to the ranch-house. He
maintained a stubborn silence after the first outburst of rage. His
hands tied behind his back, a rope run round his waist and down on each
side through a cinch-ring, he sat idly humped forward, making no
protest.

Burkitt and Lee, despite Judith's objections because of Lee's wounded
leg, remained at the cabin with Bill Crowdy. Crowdy had lost a deal of
blood, and though he complained of little pain, was clearly in sore
need of medical attention. Judith, coming to the bunk-side just before
she left, assured him very gently that she would send Doc Tripp to him
immediately and, further, that she would telephone into Rocky Bend for
a physician. Crowdy, like Shorty, refused to talk.

"Aw, hell," he grunted as Lee demanded what influence had brought him
with Shorty and Quinnion into this mad project, "let me alone, can't
you?"

And Lee let him alone. He and Burkitt sat and smoked and so passed the
remaining hours of a long night. The folly of seeking Quinnion in this
thick darkness was so obvious that they gave no thought to it,
impatiently awaiting the dawn and the coming of the men whom Judith
would send.

The events of the rest of the night and of the morrow may be briefly
told: Shorty's modest request of a glass of whiskey was granted him.
Then, his hands still bound securely by Carson, he was put in the small
grain-house, a windowless, ten-by-ten house of logs. An admirable jail
this, with its heavy padlock snapped into a