The second rider was Sanderson. He did not halt Streak at the door of
the Bar D ranchhouse, for from a distance he had seen a man throw
himself upon a horse and dash away, and he knew of no man in the basin,
except Dale, who would find it necessary to run from his home in that
fashion.

So he kept Streak in the dead run he had been in when approaching the
house, and when he reached the corner around which Dale had vanished,
he saw his man, two or three hundred yards ahead, flashing across a
level toward the far side of the big basin.

He knew that Dale thought his pursuer was Nyland, and that thought gave
Sanderson a grim joy. In Sanderson's mind was a picture of Dale's
face--of the stark, naked astonishment that would be on it when he
discovered that it was Sanderson and not Nyland who had caught him.

For Sanderson would catch him--he was convinced of that.

The conviction became strengthened when, after half an hour's run,
Streak had pulled up on Dale. Sanderson could see that Dale's horse
was running erratically; that it faltered on the slight rises that they
came to now and then. And when Sanderson discovered that Dale's horse
was failing, he urged Streak to a faster pace. In an hour the space
between the two riders had become less. They were climbing the long,
gradual slope that led upward out of the basin when Dale's horse
stumbled and fell, throwing Dale out of the saddle.

There was something horribly final in the manner of Dale's falling, for
he tumbled heavily and lay perfectly quiet afterward. His horse, after