time to cry out only once before she felt herself gripped
by powerful hands and dragged from the wagon seat, where Hal Haines sat
shaking with laughter. He stood up and started to draw his revolver
slowly. From behind him a lasso was thrown lightly and the noose
tightened around his arms.

He kept on laughing, although he was a little afraid the boys were
overdoing matters. He knew his wife would never forgive him for this
actual kidnapping of Pauline--he certainly had never intended it.

And she was really frightened. He could tell that by her cries as she
was thrust across the pommel of the masked leader's horse and the horse
was spurred to a tearing gallop down the road.

Haines tried to shout a command and call the joke off, but the riders
had all followed after their leader, and he was alone in the
buckboard.

"They needn't have been so realistic with their knots," he said, as he
struggled to free himself from the rope.

It was ten minutes before he wriggled free. He picked up the lines and
drove on toward the ranch--a little nervous now over the receptions
he would get, but still laughing.

At the fork where the road to the mountains left the main highway,
Haines flashed out his revolver in real excitement. Another group of
five masked men had driven their horses out of a clump of small trees.
They fired their revolvers as they surrounded the buckboard. Then
suddenly discovering that there was no woman passenger, they tore off
their masks and came up with quick, eager inquiries.

Perhaps for the first time in his life Hal Haines knew what fear was--
not fear for himself, but for another.

"Boys, there was another party on the road. They took her. I took 'em
for you," he said in a stifled voice. "Come on. Cabot, give me your
horse; take the rig back and tell Mrs. Haines."

He sprang into the saddle, and, filling their revolvers as they rode,
the band of jesters, who had suddenly turned so grimly serious, dashed
back toward town.

Two miles from where Tom Patten had swung Pauline to his saddle bow
they picked up the train hoofs that left the road and made toward the
mountains.

The men who had set out so gaily a few hours before rode silently,
fiercely now. Mile after mile swept behind them as they held to the
trail. Sometimes it followed the roads, sometimes it broke over open
country. At last it reached the hills and stopped at the river.

Patten's band had ridden in the water upstrea