the saddle and headed the roan
toward the grade. They were ahead of him, then; but how far?

It was impossible to make any speed along the rough uncertainties of this
rocky trail, but Buck wasted no time. Down in the further hollow he turned
aside to the spring, not knowing when he would again find water for his
horse. He did not dismount, and as the roan plunged velvet nozzle into the
spring, a picture rose in Buck's mind of that other day--how long ago it
seemed!--when he himself, sagging painfully in the saddle, had sucked the
water with as great an eagerness out of a woman's soggy Stetson, and then,
over the limp brim, gazed gratefully into a pair of tender hazel eyes
which tried in vain to mask anxiety beneath a surface of lightness.

He bit his lips and struck the saddle-horn fiercely with one clenched
fist. When the horse had finished drinking, he turned him swiftly and,
regaining the trail, pushed on feverishly at reckless speed.

About an hour later the first pale signs of dawn began to lighten the
darkness. Slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, a cold gray crept into
the sky, blotting out the stars. Little by little the light strengthened,
searching out shadowy nooks and corners, revealing this peak or that,
widening the horizon, until at length the whole, wide, tumbled mass of
peak and precipice, of canyon, valley, and tortuous, twisted mountain trail
lay revealed in all its grim, lifeless, forbidding desolation.

From his point of vantage at the summit of a steep grade, Buck halted and
stared ahead with a restless, keen eagerness. He could see the trail
curving over the next rise, and farther still he glimpsed a tiny patch of
it rounding the shoulder of a hill. But it was empty, lifeless; and as he
loosed the reins and touched the roan lightly with a spur, Stratton's face
grew blank and hard again.

From somewhere amongst the rocks the long-drawn, quavering howl of a
coyote sounded mournfully.

CHAPTER XXXIII

CARRIED AWAY

The same dawn unrolled before the eyes of a man and a girl, riding
southward along the ragged margin of the T-T ranch. Westward stretched the
wide, rolling range-land, empty at the moment of any signs of life. And
somehow, for the very reason that one expected something living there, it
seemed even more desolate than the rough, broken country bordering the
mountains on the other side.

That, at least, was Mary Thorne's thought. Emerging from the mountain
trail just as