was coming
back with a single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart a
consuming hatred for Pierre and all the other of Boone's men.

Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would
not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so
carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye. A
man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to
high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance for
a rider of the mountain-desert.

Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master. It was a
cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species
common to the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish
thoroughbreds from which the Western cow-pony is descended. The mare
was not over-large, but the broad hips and generous expanse of chest
were hints, and only hints, of her strength and endurance. There was
the speed of the blooded racer in her and the tirelessness of the
mustang.

Now, down the rocky, half broken trail she picked her way as daintily
as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life
had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake
Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual
twenty miles a day, which was no more to her than a canter through the
park is to the city horse.

The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride
after Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her
small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side
of the curve. And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back
at the master for a moment and then whinnied across some echoing ravine.

It was Mary's way of showing happiness, and her master's acknowledgment
was to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and with his
ungloved right, that tanned and agile hand, pat her shoulder lightly.

Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward
incline, and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke
into a gallop, a matchless, swinging stride. Swerving to right and to
left among the great boulders, like a football player running a broken
field, she increased the gallop to a racing pace.

That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the
toes, but Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into
the crook of his left arm and