ear to be badly hurt. He was stretching away like a
hare, shaping his course toward the ranch as true as a pigeon. If they
overtook him they would have to ride harder than they ever rode in
their profitless lives before.

Lambert estimated the distance between the place where they had trapped
him and the fire as fifteen miles. It must be nine or ten miles across
to the Philbrook ranch, in the straightest line that a horse could
follow, and from that point many miles more to the ranchhouse and
release from his stifling ropes. The fence would be no security against
his pursuing enemies, but it would look like the boundary of hope.

Whether they lost so much time in getting around the fire that they
missed him, or whether they gave it up after a trial of speed against
Whetstone, Lambert never knew. He supposed that their belief was that
neither man nor horse would live to come into the sight of men again.
However it fell, they did not approach within hearing if they followed,
and were not in sight as dawn broke and broadened into day.

Whetstone made the fence without slackening his speed. There Lambert
checked him with a word and looked back for his enemies. Finding that
they were not near, he proceeded along the fence at easier gait, holding
the animal's strength for the final heat, if they should make a sudden
appearance. Somewhere along that miserable ride, after daylight had
broken and the pieced wire that Grace Kerr had cut had been passed,
Lambert fell unconscious across the horn of his saddle from the drain of
blood from his wounds and the unendurable pain of his bonds.

In this manner the horse came bearing him home at sunrise. Taterleg was
away on his beat, not uneasy over Lambert's absence. It was the
exception for him to spend a night in the bunkhouse in that summer
weather. So old Whetstone, jaded, scorched, bloody from his own and his
master's wounds, was obliged to stand at the gate and whinny for help
when he arrived.

It was hours afterward that the fence rider opened his eyes and saw
Vesta Philbrook, and closed them again, believing it was a delirium of
his pain. Then Taterleg spoke on the other side of the bed, and he knew
that he had come through his perils into gentle hands.

"How're you feelin', old sport?" Taterleg inquired with anxious
tenderness.

Lambert turned his head toward the voice and grinned a little, in the
teeth-baring, hard-pulling way of a man who has withstood a great deal
more