ing the victims, and, about the neck of the
elder man, a rather peculiar locket, containing a portrait painted
on ivory. Keith was a long time opening this, the spring being very
ingeniously concealed, but upon finally succeeding, he looked upon
the features of a woman of middle age, a strong mature face of marked
refinement, exceedingly attractive still, with smiling dark eyes, and
a perfect wealth of reddish brown hair. He held the locket open in his
hands for several minutes, wondering who she could be, and what possible
connection she could have held with the dead. Something about that face
smiling up into his own held peculiar fascination for him, gripping him
with a strange feeling of familiarity, touching some dim memory which
failed to respond. Surely he had never seen the original, for she was
not one to be easily forgotten, and yet eyes, hair, expression,
combined to remind him of some one whom he had seen but could not bring
definitely to mind. There were no names on the locket, no marks of
identification of any kind, yet realizing the sacredness of it, Keith
slipped the fragile gold chain about his neck, and securely hid the
trinket beneath his shirt.

It was noon by this time, the sun high overhead, and his horse, with
dangling rein, still nibbling daintily at the short grass. There was
no reason for his lingering longer. He swept his gaze the length and
breadth of the desolate valley, and across the river over the sand
hills. All alike appeared deserted, not a moving thing being visible
between the bluffs and the stream. Still he had the unpleasant feeling
of being watched, and it made him restless and eager to be away. The
earlier gust of anger, the spirit of revenge, had left him, but it had
merely changed into a dogged resolution to discover the perpetrators of
this outrage and bring them to justice for the crime. The face in the
locket seemed to ask it of him, and his nature urged response. But he
could hope to accomplish nothing more here, and the plainsman swung
himself into the saddle. He turned his horse's head eastward, and rode
away. From the deeply rutted trail he looked back to where the fire
still smoked in the midst of that desolate silence.

Chapter III. An Arrest

The Santa Fe trail was far too exposed to be safely travelled alone
and in broad daylight, but Keith considered it better to put sufficient
space between himself and those whom he felt confident were still
watching hi