from falling.

By this time the foremost rider had pulled in his horse near the door.
He was a young giant with hulking shoulders, ruddy-faced, bold-eyed,
ugly-mouthed. He reminded Allie of some one she had seen in California.
He stared hard at her.

"Hullo! Ain't you Durade's girl?" he asked, in gruff astonishment.

Then Allie knew she had seen him out in the gold-fields.

"No, I'm not," she replied.

"A-huh! You look uncommon like her.... Anybody home round here?"

"Slingerland went over the hill," said Allie. "He'll be back presently."

The fellow brushed her aside and went into the cabin. Then the other
three riders arrived.

"Mornin', miss," said one, a grizzled veteran, who might have been
miner, trapper, or bandit. The other two reined in behind him. One wore
a wide-brimmed black sombrero from under which a dark, sinister face
gleamed. The last man had sandy hair and light roving eyes.

"Whar's Fresno?" he asked.

"I'm inside," replied the man called Fresno, and he appeared at the
door. He stretched out a long arm and grasped Allie before she could
avoid him. When she began to struggle the huge hand closed on her wrist
until she could have screamed with pain.

"Hold on, girl! It won't do you no good to jerk, an' if you holler I'll
choke you," he said. "Fellers, get inside the cabin an' rustle around
lively."

With one pull he hauled Allie toward his horse, and, taking a lasso off
his saddle, he roped her arms to her sides and tied her to the nearest
tree.

"Keep mum now or it 'll be the wuss fer you," he ordered; then he went
into the cabin.

They were a bad lot, and Slingerland's reason for worry had at last been
justified. Allie did not fully realize her predicament until she found
herself bound to the tree. Then she was furious, and strained with all
her might to slip free of the rope. But the efforts were useless; she
only succeeded in bruising her arms for nothing. When she desisted she
was ready to succumb to despair, until a flashing thought of Neale, of
the agony that must be his if he lost her or if harm befell her, drew
her up sharply, thrillingly. A girl's natural and instinctive fear was
vanquished by her love.

She heard the robbers knocking things about in the cabin. They threw
bales of beaver pelts out of the door. Presently Fresno reappeared
carrying a buckskin sack in which Slingerland kept his money and few
valuables, and the others followed, quarreling over a cane-covered
de