to the rancho."

Fernando straightened his wizened frame. "Si! As the Senorita says, I
shall do. But first I go to look. Perhaps the patron shall not know
that the vaquero Corlees was here this morning. It is that I ask the
Senorita to say nothing to the patron until I look. Is it that you
will do this?"

"What can you do?" she asked.

"It is yet to know. Adios, Senorita. You will remember the old
Fernando, perhaps?"

"But you're coming back! Oh! it was terrible!" she cried. "I rode to
the canon and looked down."

Fernando meanwhile had been thinking rapidly. With quaint dignity he
excused himself as he departed to catch up one of the burros, which he
saddled and rode out to where his son was standing near the canon. The
boy shrank from him as he accosted him. Fernando's deep-set eyes
blazed forth the anger that his lips imprisoned. He sent the boy back
to the camp. Then he picked up the tracks of a horseman on the mesa,
followed them to the canon's brink, glanced down, shrugged his
shoulders, and again took up the horseman's trail toward the forest.
With the true instinct of the outlander, he reasoned that the horseman
had headed for the old trail to the Blue, as the tracks led diagonally
toward the south. Finally he realized that he could never overtake the
rider by following the tracks, so he dismounted and tied his burro. He
struck toward the canon. A mile above him there was a ford. He would
wait there and see who came. He made his perilous way down a notch in
the cliff, dropped slowly to the level of the stream, and followed it
to the ford. He searched for tracks in the sun-baked mud. With a sigh
of satisfaction, perhaps of anticipation, he stepped to a clump of
cottonwoods down the stream and backed within them. Scarcely had he
crossed himself and drawn his gun from its weather-blackened holster,
when he heard the click of shod hoofs on the trail. He stiffened and
his eyes gleamed as though he anticipated some pleasant prospect. The
creases at the corners of his eyes deepened as he recognized in the
rider the vaquero who had set the Concho dog upon his sheep some months
before. He had a score to settle with that vaquero for having shot at
him. He had another and larger score to settle with him for--no, he
would not think of his beloved sheep mangled and dead at the bottom of
the canon. That would anger him and make his hand unsteady.

Fadeaway rode his horse into the ford and sa