blue-gray of his eyes. He lifted his
broad shoulders. "Or wise man enough to do my own work when needs be,
and when I'd have no bungling? I'm going to square with you, girl.
Square with you for meddling, for a bullet-hole in each shoulder. If
there's a fool in our little junketing party, it's a girl who thought
she could handle a man's-size job."

They went on, over the ridge and down. Judith made no second attempt
to surprise him, for always his eyes watched her. Nor did she seek to
hold back or in any way to hamper him now. For, swiftly adjusting
herself to the new conditions, she made her first decision: Trevors did
think her a "fool of a girl," Trevors did sneer at her helplessness in
that man's way of his. Let him think her a little fool; let him hold
her in his contempt; let him grow to think her cowed and afraid and
helpless. Then, when the time came----

Again she had been blindfolded; seeing the look in Trevors's eyes, she
had offered no objection. Again she had followed him in a darkness
made at sunrise by a bandage across her eyes. Again, the bandage
removed, she winked at the sunlight. Again they climbed ridges,
dropped down into tiny valleys, fought their way along thunderous
ravines where the water was lashed into white foam. Again blindfolded,
again trudging on, her whole body beginning to tremble with fatigue,
the weakness of hunger upon her. And at length, out of a canon, making
a perilous way up the steep walls of rock, they came to the mouth of
the black cavern in which she lay now, waiting for the sound of a
stirring foot.

Only an instant had Judith stood upon the ledge outside the cave before
she was thrust into the black interior. But in that instant her eager
eyes had made out, upon a tiny bit of table-land across the chasm of
the gorge, a cabin, sending aloft a plume of smoke.

Then, after an hour, the terrible woman had come to whom Trevors had
intrusted her, bringing food and water in her hard, blackened hands,
carrying the flickering fires of madness in her unfathomable eyes. A
lantern set on the floor made rude shadows, and out of them crept this
woman, leering at Trevors, peering at Judith, licking her thin lips,
and chuckling to herself.

"I have brought her back to you, Ruth," he said, speaking softly, more
softly than Judith had thought the man could speak. "You will know
what to do with her. And you will not let her escape you again."

The mad woman, for only t