rail revealed hopeful
glimpses of open spaces ahead. It was nothing really definite--merely a
falling away of the hills on either side and a wide expanse of
unobstructed sky beyond, but it made him feel that he was at last coming
out of this rocky wilderness. A moment or two later he gained the summit
of the slope and his eyes brightened as they rested on the section of
sandy, cactus-dotted country spread out below him.

A dozen feet ahead the trail curved sharply around a rocky buttress, which
hid the remainder of it from view. In his eagerness to see what lay
beyond, Stratton did not mount but led his horse over the short stretch of
level rock. But as he turned the corner, he caught his breath and jerked
back on Pete's reins.

By one of those freaks of nature that are often so surprising, the trail
led straight down to level ground with almost the regularity of some work
of engineering. At the foot of it stood the gray motor-car--empty!

The sight of it, and especially that unnatural air of complete desertion,
instantly aroused in Buck a sense of acute danger. He turned swiftly to
retreat, and caught a glimpse of a figure crouching in a little rocky
niche almost at his elbow.

There was no time to leap back or forward; no time even to stir. Already
the man's arm was lifted, and though Stratton's hand jerked automatically
to his gun, he was too late.

An instant later something struck his head with crushing force and
crumpled him to the ground.

* * * * *

When Buck began to struggle out of that black, bottomless abyss of
complete oblivion, he thought at first--as soon as he could think at
all--that he was lying in his bunk back at the Shoe-Bar. What gave him the
idea he could not tell. His head throbbed painfully, and his brain seemed
to swim in a vague, uncertain mist. A deadly lassitude gripped him, making
all movement, even to the lifting of his eyelids, an exertion too great to
be considered.

But presently, when his brain had cleared a little, he became aware of
voices. One in particular seemed, even in his dreamlike state, to sting
into his consciousness with a peculiar, bitter instinct of hatred. When at
length he realized that it was the voice of Tex Lynch, the discovery had a
curiously reviving effect upon his dazed senses. He could not yet remember
what had happened, but intuitively he associated his helplessness with the
foreman's presence, and that same i