to look for, and his humor, as he saddled up and left the ranch, was
far from amiable.

But gradually, as he rode rapidly along the trail, the crisp, clean air
brushing his face and the early morning sun caressing him with a pleasant
warmth, his mood changed. After all, it was really of very little moment
whether or not he was present when Lynch first learned that things had
failed to go his way. At best he might have had a momentary vindictive
thrill at glimpsing the fellow's thwarted rage; perhaps not even that, for
Tex was uncommonly good at hiding his emotions. It was much more important
for him to decide definitely and soon about his own future plans, and this
solitary ride over an easy, familiar trail gave him as good a chance as he
was ever likely to have.

A little straight thinking made him realize--with a half-guilty feeling of
having deliberately shut his eyes to it before--that he could not hope to
get much further under present conditions. Tied down as he was, a dozen
promising clues might pop up, which he would have no chance whatever of
investigating. Indeed, looking at the situation in this light, he felt a
wonder that Lynch should ever have tried to oust him from the ranch, where
he could be kept under constant observation and followed up in every move.
Working from the outside, with freedom to come and go as he liked, he
could accomplish a vast deal more than in this present hampered fashion.
There still remained traces of his vague, underlying reluctance to leave
the place at this particular time, but Buck crushed it down firmly, even a
little angrily.

"It's up to me to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste
any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch will
smell a rat."

At that moment the trail dipped down into a gully--the very one, in fact,
where he had passed Tex that first day he had ridden out to the ranch.
Thinking of the encounter, Buck recalled his own emotions with a curious
feeling of remoteness. The grotesque mental picture he had formed of Mary
Thorne contrasted so amusingly with the reality that he grinned and might
have broken into a laugh had he not caught sight at that moment of a
figure riding toward him from the other end of the gully.

The high-crowned sombrero, abnormally broad of brim, the gaudy
saddle-trappings and touches of bright color about the stranger's
equipment, brought a slight frown to Stratton's face. Apart even from is