returned. His voice rose tunefully and cheerily above the
steady drumming of Blizzard's hoofs.

Surely the scene that lay before his eyes could not have aroused his
enthusiasm. It was lonely and desolate enough, with its endless sweeps
dim against each horizon. The sky, blue, hot and pitiless, came down
to meet the land on every hand, making a great circle unbroken by hill
or mountain.

So clean-swept was the floor of the vast table-land that each mile
looked exactly like another mile. There was not a tree, not a shrub,
not a rock to break the weary monotony. It was no wonder that the
Spanish padres, who had crossed this enormous plateau long before, had
named it the Llano Estacado--the Staked Plains. They had had a good
reason of their own. In order to keep the trail marked, they had been
compelled to drive stakes in the ground as they went along. Although
the stakes had gone long since, the name still stuck.

The day before, the Texan had climbed the natural rock steps that led
upward and westward toward the terrible mesa itself, each flat-topped
table bringing him nearer the Staked Plains. And soon after reaching
the plateau he had found the trail left by a wagon train.

From the ruts left in the soil, Kid Wolf estimated that the outfit must
consist of a large number of prairie schooners, at least twenty. The
Texan puzzled his mind over why this wagon train was taking such a
dangerous route. Where were they bound for? Surely for the Spanish
settlements of New Mexico--a perilous venture, at best.

Even on the level plain, a wagon outfit moves slowly, and the Texan
gained rapidly. Hourly the signs he had been following grew fresher.
Late in the afternoon he made out a blot on the western horizon--a blot
with a hazy smudge above it. It was the wagon train. The smudge was
dust, dug up by the feet of many oxen.

"They must be loco," Kid Wolf muttered, "to try and cut across The
Terror's territory."

The Texan had heard much of The Terror. And what plainsman of that day
hadn't? He was the scourge of the table-lands, with his band of a
hundred cutthroats, desperadoes recruited from the worst scum of the
border. More than half of his hired killers, it was said, were Mexican
outlaws from Sonora and Chihuahua. Some were half-breed Indians, and a
few were white gunmen who killed for the very joy of killing.

And The Terror himself? That was the mystery. Nobody knew his
identity. Some rumors held