ded, swung to the
saddle, and rode forward. After a few minutes Bellamy followed slowly. He
was unarmed, not having doubted that his letter to the cattleman would
make his journey safe. That he should have waited for an answer was now
plain, but the contract called for an immediate delivery of the sheep, as
he had carefully explained in his note to Farnum.

Presently he heard again the clatter of a horse's hoofs in the loose shale
and saw Melissy returning.

"Well?" he asked as she drew up.

"I've told them. I think they believe me, but I'm going through the gorge
with you."

He looked up quickly to protest, but did not. He knew that her thought was
that her presence beside him would protect him from attack. The rough
chivalry of Arizona takes its hat off to a woman, and Melissy Lee was a
favorite of the whole countryside.

So together they passed into the gulch, Bellamy walking by the side of her
horse. Neither of them spoke. At their heels was the soft rustle of many
thousands of padding feet.

Once there came to them the sound of cheering, and they looked up to see
a group of vaqueros waving their hats and shouting down. Melissy shook her
handkerchief and laughed happily at them. It was a day to be remembered by
these riders.

They emerged into a roll of hill-tops upon which the setting sun had cast
a weird afterglow of radiance in which the whole world burned. The cactus,
the stunted shrubbery, the painted rocks, seemed all afire with some magic
light that had touched their commonness to a new wonder.

A sound came to them from below. A man, rifle in hand and leading a horse,
was stealthily crossing the trail to disappear among the large boulders
beyond.

Melissy did not speak, scarce dared to draw breath, for the man beneath
them was Boone. There was something furtive and lupine about him that
suggested the wild beast stalking its kill. No doubt he had become
impatient to see the end of his foe and had ridden forward. He had almost
crossed the path before he looked up and caught sight of them standing
together in the fireglow of the sunset.

Abruptly he came to a standstill.

"By God! you slipped through, did you?" he said in a low voice of
concentrated bitterness.

Bellamy did not answer, but he separated himself from the girl by a step
or two. He knew quite well what was coming, and he looked down quietly
with steady eyes upon his foe.

From far below there came the faint sound of a horse breakin