id not quite like the idea. He would rather have kept
the note himself and burnt it later. But it was out of his charge now.
Without stirring doubts he could not make any objection. Anyhow, he
would be in Sonora and safely married to Ruth long before the deception
was discovered.

Mrs. Seymour made her protest against such an unconventional trip, but
Ruth rode her objections down after the fashion of American girls.

"Why can't I go for a ride with the man to whom I'm engaged? What's
wrong with it? I'll stay with the lady that keeps house for General
Pasquale. In two or three days I'll be back. Don't say no, mommsie."
Her voice broke a little as she pleaded the cause. "He's dying--Mr.
Yeager is--and he wants to see me. I'd always blame myself if I didn't
go. I've just got to go."

"I don't see why you have to go riding all over the country to see one
man when you're engaged to another. In my time--"

"If Chad doesn't object, why should you?"

"Oh, I know you'll go. I suppose it's all right, but I wish Phil could
go with you too."

"So do I, but of course he can't. Chad says that affairs are so
disturbed across the line that probably the Government won't make Phil
any trouble, but that if he showed himself in Sonora some of the friends
of that man Mendoza would be sure to kill him."

"I suppose so." Mrs. Seymour sighed. Her harum-scarum young son was on
her mind a good deal. "Now, don't you fret, honey, about Steve Yeager.
He's the kind of man that will take a lot of killing. A man who has
lived outdoors in the saddle for a dozen years is liable to get over a
wound that would finish some one else."

In his haste to reach Los Robles before Yeager the prizefighter had
ruined the horse he rode. He picked up another one cheap and got for
Ruth her brother's pony. Within an hour of his arrival the two animals
were brought round for the start.

The mother, still a little troubled in her mind, took Harrison aside for
a last word.

"Chad Harrison, you look after my little girl and see no harm comes to
her. If anything happens to her I'll never forgive you."

"Rest easy about that, Mrs. Seymour. You don't think any more of Ruth
than I do. If I thought there was any danger I sure wouldn't take her.
She'll come back to you safe and sound," he promised.

They rode away in the afternoon sunlight toward the south. It had been
understood that they were to spend the night at the Lazy B Ranch, but at
the point where the roa