urs, without the slightest success. There was not one chance in a
million of help from outside. In point of fact, Collins had not seen a
human being for a month. There was only one thing to do, and he did it."

"And that was?"

"You probably noticed that he wears a glove over his left hand. The
reason, sir, is that he has an artificial hand."

"You mean--" The Reverend Peter paused to lengthen his delicious thrill
of horror.

"Yes, sir. That's just what I mean. He hacked his hand off at the wrist
with his hunting-knife."

"Why, the man's a hero!" cried the clergyman, with unction.

Mackenzie flung him a disgusted look. "We don't go much on heroes out
here. He's game, if that's what you mean. And able, too. Bucky O'Connor
himself isn't any smarter at following a trail."

"And who is Bucky O'Connor?"

"He's the man that just ran down Fernendez. Think I'll have a smoke,
sir. Care to join me?"

But the Pekin-Bostonian preferred to stay and jot down in his note-book
the story of the bear-trap, to be used later as a sermon illustration.
This may have been the reason he did not catch the quick look that
passed without the slightest flicker of the eyelids between Major
Mackenzie and the young woman in Section 3. It was as if the old officer
had wired her a message in some code the cipher of which was known only
to them.

But the sheriff, returning at the head of his cohorts, caught it,
and wondered what meaning might lie back of that swift glance. Major
Mackenzie and this dark-eyed beauty posed before others as strangers,
yet between them lay some freemasonry of understanding to which he had
not the key.

Collins did not know that the aloofness in the eyes of Miss
Wainwright--he had seen the name on her suit-case--gave way to horror
when her glance fell on his gloved hand. She had a swift, shuddering
vision of a grim-faced man, jaws set like a vise, hacking at his
wrist with a hunting-knife. But the engaging impudence of his eye, the
rollicking laughter in his voice, shut out the picture instantly.

The young man resumed his seat, and Miss Wainwright her listless
inspection of the flying stretches of brown desert. Dusk was beginning
to fall, and the porter presently lit the lamps. Collins bought a
magazine from the newsboy and relapsed into it, but before he was well
adjusted to reading the Limited pounded to a second unscheduled halt.

Instantly the magazine was thrown aside and Collins' curly head thrust
out