wind more easily, and all ready to kill on this man trail.

All at once a great hate welled up in him, and he went on with gritting
teeth.

It was out of this anger, oddly enough, that the memory of the girl came
to him. She was like the falling of this starlight, pure, aloof, and
strange and gentle. It seemed to Andrew Lanning that the instant of
seeing her outweighed the rest of his life, but he would never see her
again. How could he see her, and if he saw her, what would he say to
her? It would not be necessary to speak. One glance would be enough.

But, sooner or later, Bill Dozier would reach him. Why not sooner? Why
not take the chance, ride to John Merchant's ranch, break a way to the
room where the girl slept this night, smash open the door, look at her
once, and then fight his way out?

He swung out of the ravine and headed across the hills. From the crest
the valley was broad and dark below him, and on the opposite side the
hills were blacker still. He let the pinto go down the steep slope at a
walk, for there is nothing like a fast pace downhill to tear the heart
out of a horse. Besides, it came to him after he started, were not the
men of Bill Dozier apt to miss this sudden swinging of the trail?

In the floor of the valley he sent the pinto again into the stretching
canter, found the road, and went on with a thin cloud of the alkali dust
about him until the house rose suddenly out of the ground, a black mass
whose gables seemed to look at him like so many heads above the
tree-tops.