rsued was wounded. Something in
the manner of the fellow's riding had suggested this to him, but a drop
of blood splashed on a stone that happened to meet his eye made the
surmise a certainty.

He was gaining now--not fast, almost imperceptibly, but none the less
surely. He could see the man looking over his shoulder, once, twice, and
then again, with that hurried, fearful glance that measures the approach
of retribution. Barring accidents, the man was his.

But the unforeseen happened. Buck stepped in the hole of a prairie
dog and went down. Over his head flew the rider like a stone from a
catapult.

How long Ned Bannister lay unconscious he never knew. But when he came
to himself it was none too soon. He sat up dizzily and passed his hand
over his head. Something had happened.

What was it? Oh, yes, he had been thrown from his horse. A wave
of recollection passed over him, and his mind was clear once more.
Presently he got to his feet and moved rather uncertainly toward Buck,
for the horse was grazing quietly a few yards from him.

But half way to the pony he stopped. Voices, approaching by way of the
bed of Dry Creek, drifted to him.

"He must 'a' turned and gone back. Mebbe he guessed we was there."

And a voice that Bannister knew, one that had a strangely penetrant,
cruel ring of power through the drawl, made answer: "Judd said before
he fainted he was sure the man was Ned Bannister. I'd ce'tainly like to
meet up with my beloved cousin right now and even up a few old scores.
By God, I'd make him sick before I finished with him!"

"I'll bet y'u would, Cap," returned the other, admiringly. "Think we'd
better deploy here and beat up the scenery a few as we go?"

There are times when the mind works like lightning, flashes its messages
on the wings of an electric current. For Bannister this was one of them.
The whole situation lighted for him plainly as if it had been explained
for an hour.

His cousin had been out with a band of his cut-throats on some errand,
and while returning to the fastnesses of the Shoshone Mountains had
stopped to noon at a cow spring three or four miles from the Lazy D.
Judd Morgan, whom he knew to be a lieutenant of the notorious bandit,
had ridden toward the ranch in the hope of getting an opportunity to
vent his anger against its mistress or some of her men. While pursuing
the renegade Bannister had stumbled into a hornet's nest, and was in
imminent danger of being stung to deat