nd challenge to himself. It would be a sorry
reflection on his professional ability, as well as on his courage, and
he writhed in the shock to his really abnormal vanity. By established
code he should have "got" Matlock long ago; and now he would have to
defer the wiping out of that blot on his escutcheon until after the
season's work was over. In the cold fury of his bitter self-revilement,
he actually forgot the woman who had stirred his blood almost as
strongly a short half-hour ago.

The mischief had been made possible only by the fact that the day after
the horse round-up was ended he had indulgently granted a four days'
leave of absence to his entire force, excepting only McVey, who had
professed a lack of interest, to enable them to participate in a roping
and riding tournament over in South Park. His own and Red's temporary
absence to-day had given the perpetrator, of whose identity he had not
even a momentary doubt, the chance to do the contemptible trick, the
undoing of which would take a whole week's furious work with the
entailed strain on both men and horses. His provocation was very great.

The next day, working over the ground, he found the freshly-cast shoe of
the marauder's mount; it was a peculiarly constructed "blind-bar"
affair, and Matlock's horse, his own private property, taken with him
when he left the ranch, had a bad frog on his left hind hoof. His
conviction was made a certainty later when the blacksmith at Gunnison
identified the shoe as one that he had made for and attached to the left
hind foot of the deposed foreman's horse. The chain of evidence was
complete and conclusive.

By a rare bit of good fortune he discovered quite a large band of his
best horses quietly feeding in a little valley some three miles from the
house, and he quickly returned to the ranch, where he discussed with Red
the likelihood of their being able to corral it; it was a big contract
for two men, this particular band being a notoriously wild one and hard
to handle, and now the animals would especially resent a return to
durance vile after their previous week's confinement. But it meant an
indispensable factor to the ultimate recovery of the other horses,
without which, the outfit would be practically afoot. Red was logically
pessimistic.

"Three might do it, but two ain't got any more chanct than a snowball in
hell," was his opinion, and Douglass knew that he was right. It had
taken four of his best riders to tu