22. EXIT THE KING
23. JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS' MEETING.



CHAPTER 1. A DESERT MEETING

An automobile shot out from a gash in the hills and slipped
swiftly down to the butte. Here it came to a halt on the white,
dusty road, while its occupant gazed with eager, unsated eyes on
the great panorama that stretched before her. The earth rolled in
waves like a mighty sea to the distant horizon line. From a
wonderful blue sky poured down upon the land a bath of sunbeat.
The air was like wine, pure and strong, and above the desert swam
the rare, untempered light of Wyoming. Surely here was a peace
primeval, a silence unbroken since the birth of creation.

It was all new to her, and wonderfully exhilarating. The infinite
roll of plain, the distant shining mountains, the multitudinous
voices of the desert drowned in a sunlit sea of space--they were
all details of the situation that ministered to a large serenity.

And while she breathed deeply the satisfaction of it, an
exploding rifle echo shattered the stillness. With excited
sputtering came the prompt answer of a fusillade. She was new to
the West; but some instinct stronger than reason told the girl
that here was no playful puncher shooting up the scenery to
ventilate his exuberance. Her imagination conceived something
more deadly; a sinister picture of men pumping lead in a grim,
close-lipped silence; a lusty plainsman, with murder in his