ound. He hardly expected to see it, for it would
have been beyond his sight in any one of a dozen different portions of
the body.

But if in one of the limbs, it would quickly show in the gait of the
animal.

"No," he murmured, "there is no change of pace; it could not have been
much, and it may be she was not hit at all."

The rustlers fired two shots at this moment, when the horseman was
more of a target than his animal, but he gave no heed to that; it was
she for whom he felt concern.

A glance backward brought a thrill of hope. The distance between him
and his pursuers had perceptibly increased. Queenie was showing her
heels to those who dared dispute with her the supremacy of fleetness.
She would soon leave them out of sight, unless it should prove she was
disabled by some of the shots.

All would have gone well but for the appearance of a new danger of
which he did not dream.

Suddenly Queenie emitted her faint, familiar whinny, and swerved to
the left. She had scented a new peril.

In the gloom almost directly ahead loomed the figures of other
horsemen bearing down upon the fugitive. They might be friends, and
they might be enemies, but it would not do to take chances. Without
an instant's hesitation Sterry wheeled to the left and spoke to his
horse:

"Now, Queenie, do your best."

The mare responded with the same gameness she always showed; but the
situation had suddenly become so grave that Monteith Sterry assuredly
would have been overwhelmed and cut off but for one of the most
extraordinary occurrences that ever came to any person in the
extremity of danger.

CHAPTER XI.

A STRANGE DIVERSION.

It was the wonderful sagacity of the little mare which intervened at
this crisis in the fate of her rider.

She was no more than fairly stretched away on a dead run from the new
peril when she shot into an arroya or depression in the prairie. Such
a depression suggests the dry bed of a stream through which the water
may not have flowed for years. It is sometimes a few feet only in
width, and again it may be a number of rods. The rich, alluvial soil
often causes a luxuriant growth of grass, cottonwood or bush, which
affords the best of grazing and refuge for any one when hard pressed
by the enemy.

The arroya into which Queenie plunged had gently sloping sides, and
was perhaps fifty feet wide. The bottom was covered not only with
grass, but with the thin undergrowth to which allusion has been