g near by. He slipped the
bit into its mouth. Then he sprang on to its bare back and galloped
off.

And as he rushed out Eve fell back into a chair laughing and crying at
the same time.

CHAPTER XXX

WILL HENDERSON REACHES THE END

Will Henderson stalked his prey with a caution, a deliberateness, as
though he were dealing with a grown man, a man who could resist, one
whose power to retaliate was as great as was his to attack. But
nothing of this was in his thoughts. It was the fell intent to murder
that now cast its furtive, suspicious, even apprehensive spell over
his mind, and so influenced his actions.

As Elia at one time had trailed him, so he was now tracking Elia. From
bush to bush and shadow to shadow he searched the bluff for the hunter
of jack-rabbits. But the bluff was extensive, the night dark, and the
movements of the snarer as silent as those of the man hunting him.
There was black murder in Will's heart, the cruel purpose of a mind
turned suddenly malignant with a desire for adequate revenge. His was
nothing of the fiery rage which drives a man spontaneously. He meant
to kill his victim after he had satisfied his lust for torture, and no
one knew better than he how easy his task was, and how cruelly he
could torture this brother of Eve.

The starlit night yielded up the bluff a wide black patch amidst a
shadowed world. There was no moon, but the wealth of stars shed a
faint glimmer of soft light on the surrounding plains. The conditions
could not have been more favorable for his purpose, and they gave him
a fiendish satisfaction.

He had skirted the bluff all round. He had passed through its length.
And still no sign of his quarry. Twice he started up a jack-rabbit,
but the snarer did not seem to be in the vicinity. Now, with much care
and calculation, he began to traverse the breadth of the bush in a
zigzag fashion which was to continue its whole length. His old
trapping instincts served him, and none but perhaps an Indian would
have guessed that a human being was searching every inch of the
woodland shadow.

The man had already traversed a third of the bush in this fashion when
the unexpected happened. For the tenth time he approached the southern
fringe of the bluff and stood half hidden in the shadow of one of the
large, scattered bushes outlying. And in the starlight he beheld a
familiar figure out in the open, watching intently the very spot at
which he had emerged.

There was