flicker from one notched summit to another. Out of the sandy waste they
came to a water hole, paused for a drink, and passed on. For the delay of
half an hour might mean the escape of their prey.

They came into the country of crumbling mesas and painted cliffs, of
hillsides where greasewood and giant cactus struggled from the parched
earth. This they traversed until they came to plateaus, terminating in
foothills, crevassed by gorges deep and narrow. The canyons grew steeper,
rock ridges more frequent. Gradually the going became more difficult.

Trails they seldom followed. Washes, with sides like walls, confronted
them. The ponies dropped down and clambered up again like mountain goats.
Gradually they were ascending into the upper country, which led to the
wild stretches where the outlaws lurked. In these watersheds were heavy
pine forests, rising from the gulches along the shoulders of the peaks.

A maze of canyons, hopelessly lost in the hill tangle into which they had
plunged, led deviously to a twisting pass, through which they defiled, to
drop into a vista of rolling waves of forest-clad hills. Among these wound
countless hidden gulches, known only to those who rode from out them on
nefarious night errands.

The ranger noted every landmark, and catalogued in his mind's map every
gorge and peak; from what he saw, he guessed much of which he could not be
sure. It would be hard to say when his suspicions first became aroused.
But as they rode, without stopping, through what he knew must be
Powderhorn Pass, as the men about him quietly grouped themselves so as to
cut off any escape he might attempt, as they dropped farther and farther
into the meshes of that forest-crowned net which he knew to be the Roaring
Fork country, he did not need to be told he was in the power of MacQueen's
gang.

Yet he gave no sign of what he knew. As daylight came, so that they could
see each other distinctly, his face showed no shadow of doubt. It was his
cue to be a simple victim of credulity, and he played it to the finish.

Without warning, through a narrow gulch which might have been sought in
vain for ten years by a stranger, they passed into the rim of a
bowl-shaped valley. Timber covered it from edge to edge, but over to the
left a keen eye could see a thinning of the foliage. Toward this they
went, following the sidehill and gradually dipping down through heavy
underbrush. Before him the officer of rangers saw daylight, and