t faded to colder tints, and then disappeared.
The purple saw-toothed range softened to a violet hue. With the coming of
the moon the hard, dry desert lost detail, took on a loveliness of tone
and outline that made it an idealized painting of itself. Myriads of stars
were out, so that the heavens seemed sown with them as an Arizona hillside
is in spring with yellow poppies.

Kate was tortured with anxiety, but the surpassing beauty that encompassed
them was somehow a comfort to her. Deep within her something denied that
her father could be gone out of a world so good. And if he were alive,
Curly Flandrau would find him--Curly and Dick between them. Luck Cullison
had plenty of good friends who would not stand by and see him wronged.

Any theory of his disappearance that accepted his guilt did not occur to
her mind for an instant. The two had been very close to each other. Luck
had been in the habit of saying smilingly that she was his majordomo, his
right bower. Some share of his lawless temperament she inherited, enough
to feel sure that this particular kind of wrongdoing was impossible for
him. He was reckless, sometimes passionate, but she did not need to
reassure herself that he was scrupulously honest.

This brought her back to the only other tenable hypothesis--foul play. And
from this she shrank with a quaking heart. For surely if his enemies
wished to harm him they would destroy him, and this was a conclusion
against which she fought desperately.

The plaza clock boomed ten strokes as they rode into Saguache. Mackenzie
was waiting for them on the steps of the hotel.

"Have they--has anything been----?"

The owner of the Fiddleback shook his grizzled head. "Not yet. Didn't you
meet Curly?"

"No."

"He rode out to come in with you, but if he didn't meet you by ten he was
to come back. You took the north road, I reckon?"

"Yes."

His warm heart was wrung for the young woman whose fine eyes stared with
dumb agony from a face that looked very white in the shining moonlight. He
put an arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the hotel with cheerful
talk.

"Come along, Bob. We're going to tuck away a good supper first off. While
you're eating, I'll tell you all there is to be told."

Kate opened her lips to say that she was not hungry and could not possibly
eat a bite, but she thought better of it. Bob had tasted nothing since
noon, and of course he must be fed.

The lad fell to with an appetite grief