re canyons swept down to the gray plain. To the south was
the sagebrush, a soft, gray-green carpet under the sun. The sky was
blue, the clouds were handfuls of clean cotton floating lazily. Of the
night's storm remained no trace save slippery mud when his horse struck
a patch of clay, which was not often, and the packed sand still wet and
soggy from the beating rain.

Rock City showed black and inhospitable even in the sunlight. The rock
walls rose sheer, the roofs slanted rakishly, the signs scratched on the
rock by facetious riders were pointless and inane. Lone picked his way
through the crooked defile that was marked MAIN STREET on the corner of
the first huge boulder and came abruptly into the road. Here he turned
north and shook his horse into a trot.

A hundred yards or so down the slope beyond Rock City he pulled up short
with a "What the hell!" that did not sound profane, but merely amazed.
In the sodden road were the unmistakable footprints of a woman. Lone did
not hesitate in naming the sex, for the wet sand held the imprint
cleanly, daintily. Too shapely for a boy, too small for any one but a
child or a woman with little feet, and with the point at the toes
proclaiming the fashion of the towns, Lone guessed at once that she was
a town girl, a stranger, probably,--and that she had passed since the
rain; which meant since daylight.

He swung his horse and rode back, wondering where she could have spent
the night. Halfway through Rock City the footprints ended abruptly, and
Lone turned back, riding down the trail at a lope. She couldn't have
gone far, he reasoned, and if she had been out all night in the rain,
with no better shelter than Rock City afforded, she would need
help,--"and lots of it, and pretty darn quick," he added to John Doe,
which was the ambiguous name of his horse.

Half a mile farther on he overtook her. Rather, he sighted her in the
trail, saw her duck in amongst the rocks and scattered brush of a small
ravine, and spurred after her. It was precarious footing for his horse
when he left the road, but John Doe was accustomed to that. He jumped
boulders, shied around buckthorn, crashed through sagebrush and so
brought the girl to bay against a wet bank, where she stood shivering.
The terror in her face and her wide eyes would have made her famous in
the movies. It made Lone afraid she was crazy.

Lone swung off and went up to her guardedly, not knowing just what an
insane woman might do wh