ays use them in a good cause."

He swung himself to his saddle. "Good-by."

"Good-by--till we meet again."

"And that will be never. So-long, sheriff. Tell Forbes I've got a
particular engagement in the hills, but I'll be right glad to meet him
when he comes."

He rode up the draw and disappeared over the brow of the hillock. She
caught another glimpse of him a minute later on the summit of the hill
beyond. He waved a hand at her, half-turning in his saddle as he rode.

Presently she lost him, but faintly the wind swept back to her a
haunting snatch of uncouth song:

"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,
In my narrow grave just six by three,"

Were the words drifted to her by the wind. She thought it pathetically
likely he might get the wish of his song.

To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with his
posse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, he
had followed Miss Mackenzie's trail into the hills and found her at a
mountain ranch-house. She had been there a couple of days, and was about
to set out for the Rocking Chair with the owner of the place, when he
arrived and volunteered to see her as far as her uncle's ranch.

"I reckon there ain't any use asking you if you seen anything of Wolf
Leroy's outfit," said Forbes, a weather-beaten Westerner with a shrewd,
wrinkled face.

"No, I reckon there's no use asking me that," returned Collins, with a
laugh that deceptively seemed to include the older man in the joke.

"We're after them for rustling a bunch of Circle 33 cows. Well, I'll
be moving. Glad you found the lady, Val. She don't look none played out
from her little trek across the desert. Funny, ain't it, how she could
have wandered that far and her afoot?"

The Arizona sun was setting in its accustomed blaze of splendor, when
Val Collins and Alice Mackenzie put their horses again toward the ranch
and the rainbow-hued west. In his contented eyes were reflected the
sunshine and a serenity born of life in the wide, open spaces. They rode
in silence for long, the gentle evening breeze blowing in soughs.

"Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? He
might have been anything--and it has come to this, that he is hunted
like a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would give
anything to save him."

He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. "Can't be done. Good
qualities bulge out all over him, but they don't count fo