d pricking of them startled him, and an apparition
arose from the plain before him that seemed to sweep all other sense
away.

It was the figure of a handsome young horseman as abstracted as himself,
but evidently on better terms with his own personality. He was dark
haired, sallow cheeked, and blue eyed,--the type of the old Spanish
Californian. A burnt-out cigarette was in his mouth, and he was riding
a roan mustang with the lazy grace of his race. But what arrested
Clarence's attention more than his picturesque person was the narrow,
flexible, long coil of gray horse-hair riata which hung from his
saddle-bow, but whose knotted and silver-beaded terminating lash he
was swirling idly in his narrow brown hand. Clarence knew and instantly
recognized it as the ordinary fanciful appendage of a gentleman rider,
used for tethering his horse on lonely plains, and always made the
object of the most lavish expenditure of decoration and artistic
skill. But he was as suddenly filled with a blind, unreasoning sense
of repulsion and fury, and lifted his eyes to the man as he approached.
What the stranger saw in Clarence's blazing eyes no one but himself
knew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grew
lanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity,
and swerving his horse to one side he suddenly passed Clarence at a
furious gallop. The young American wheeled quickly, and for an instant
his knees convulsively gripped the flanks of his horse to follow. But
the next moment he recalled himself, and with an effort began to collect
his thoughts. What was he intending to do, and for what reason! He had
met hundreds of such horsemen before, and caparisoned and accoutred like
this, even to the riata. And he certainly was not dressed like either of
the mysterious horsemen whom he had overheard that moonlight evening. He
looked back; the stranger had already slackened his pace, and was slowly
disappearing. Clarence turned and rode on his way.

CHAPTER IX.

Without disclosing the full extent of Jim's defection and desertion,
Clarence was able to truthfully assure the Hopkins family of his
personal safety, and to promise that he would continue his quest, and
send them further news of the absentee. He believed it would be found
that Jim had been called away on some important business, but that not
daring to leave his new shanty exposed and temptingly unprotected, he
had made a virtue of necessi