t snappy!"

The driver did as directed. Gray pocketed the automatic, slipped in
behind the steering wheel, and drove away into the night, followed by
loud and earnest objurgations.

He was still smiling cheerfully when, a mile farther on, he brought the
car to a stop and clambered out. Passing forward into the illumination
of the headlights, he busied himself there for several moments before
resuming his journey.

For the first time in a long while Calvin Gray was thoroughly enjoying
himself. Here was an enterprise with all the possibilities of a
first-class adventure, and of the sort, moreover, that he was
peculiarly qualified to cope with. It possessed enough hazard to lend
it the requisite zest, it was sufficiently unusual to awaken his
keenest interest; he experienced an agreeable exaltation of spirit, but
no misgivings whatever as to the outcome, for he held the commanding
cards. Little remained, it seemed to him, except to play them
carefully and to take the tricks as they fell. He had not the slightest
notion of permitting Mallow to lay hands upon that case of jewels.

There was no mistaking the road, but Gray did not bother to stick to
the main-traveled course when detours or short cuts promised better
going, for he knew full well that Mallow would be waiting, if at all,
in some place he was bound to pass. It was an ideal country for a
holdup; lonely and lawless. Derrick lights twinkled over the mesquite
tops, and occasionally the flaming red mouth of some boiler gaped at
him, or the foliage was illuminated by the glare of gas
flambeaux--vertical iron pipes at the ends of which the surplus from
neighboring wells was consumed in what seemed a reckless wastage.
Occasionally, too, a belated truck thundered past, but the traffic was
pretty thin.

At last, however, he beheld some distance ahead the white glare of two
stationary lights. The road was narrow and sandy here, and shut in by
banks of underbrush; as he drew nearer a figure stepped out and stood
in silhouette until his own lights picked it up. The figure waved its
arms, and called attention to the car behind--evidently broken down.
Here, then, the drama was to be played.

Gray brought his machine on at such a pace and so close to the man in
the road that the latter was forced to step aside, then he swung it far
to the right, brought it back with a quick twist of the steering wheel,
and killed his motor. He was now in the ditch and outside the blindin