be leaving her. She found herself slipping and
sliding on the rock.

Another look at the riders showed them very near--so near that her courage
failed her. In a panic she began to climb again. She must reach the little
cave before they saw her. She could not fall into the hands of Angel
Gonzales. She caught her breath in little sobs, her heart seemed about to
burst, every foot gained meant a desperate effort. She clutched at the
tufts of mesquite that grew out of the rock and thanked Providence that
her brown suit was so nearly the color of the cliff. Gasping and sobbing,
she finally sank behind the mesquite bush which covered the cave.

It was not really a cave, she discovered, but merely a crevice in the
cliff, made into a little shelf by the rock which protruded above it,
while the bush growing thickly in front of it gave it the look of a cave.
It was, however, a shelter, and Polly crouched in it thankfully, breathing
with difficulty and keeping one eye on the line of men filing along below
her. They were a hard looking lot, clad in all sorts of clothes from
uniforms to overalls. They seemed to her inexperienced eye innumerable;
they were, perhaps, seventy-five or a hundred.

"And poor--like an army of tramps," she thought. "Very desperate
tramps--oh, why didn't I keep on and try to warn Marc?"

She could not understand her panic, now that her own danger was over and
the men had passed. Marc Scott had called her a brave girl, and she had
saved her own skin and let him walk into the trap. She sobbed bitterly. If
there was only anything that she could do! To sit there in that awful
silence was more than she could bear. She could no longer see the riders,
who had turned the curve and were out of sight and sound. Far off in the
distance two buzzards circled about over something that was dead or dying.
Perhaps it was a man--at the thought the girl rose unsteadily to her feet.
She could not stay alone another moment in this horrible place; she would
go and find Scott, if she had to brave Angel Gonzales to do it. With a
recklessness born of desperation she slid and scuffled down the side of
the cliff and ran blindly down the trail.

CHAPTER XV

ANGEL

Scott, starting breezily down the trail after the recreant horses,
whistled a tune as he went, for he was happy. He did not weigh reason
against happiness--it was too soon for that. He would have given you,
however, if pressed, a number of very good reasons why