Bull Hunter's Romance

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MAX BRAND
WRITING AS DAVID MANNING

BULL HUNTER'S ROMANCE

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First published in Western Story Magazine, 22 October 1921

First book edition as by Dave Manning, Chelsea House, New York, 1924

Collected as "The Trail Up Old Arrowhead" in
Men Beyond the Law: A Western Trio, Five Star, Unity, ME, 1997

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Version Date: 2024-04-27

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Western Story Magazine, 22 October 1921
with "Bull Hunter's Romance"

Bull Hunter's Romance, Chelsea House, New York, 1924

Chapter I. Big Decision
Chapter II. Imprisoned
Chapter III. Flight
Chapter IV. Flight
Chapter V. Good News
Chapter VI. Bull Hunter
Chapter VII. Caught In A Trap
Chapter VIII. Hot Pursuit
Chapter IX. Facing The Enemy
Chapter X. A Daring Escape
Chapter XI. Setting The Stage
Chapter XII. The Battle

CHAPTER I
Big Decision

"SOMETHING has to be done," said big Hal Dunbar, and his handsome face clouded as he spoke. His ranch foreman, listening, swallowed a groan. For nearly fifteen years he had worked the will of this heir to the great Dunbar ranch and watched the headstrong child grow into the imperious, tyrannical man, sullen and dangerous whenever his will was thwarted. But closely as Jack Hood knew his young master, he had never seen Dunbar half so gloomy as today. In his hand, as they stood in the living room, Dunbar held out a small trinket, consisting of a gold chain, broken in several places, and what seemed to be a crushed and disfigured locket.

"You understand?" he repeated, as he dropped the locket into the hand of Jack Hood.

The latter examined it carelessly, finally prying open the locket. Inside he saw the miniature photograph of a woman's face, but hopelessly marred, scratched, and crushed beyond recognition of the features.

"Good heavens!" he muttered presently, "it's Mary's locket. She'll be a wild one when she finds out this has happened." Then he started as another idea came into his mind. "But where, Hal ... how did you get this? Or am I going crazy? Wasn't this stole from me by that skunk Dunkin, and ain't he half a hundred miles away, and ... ?"

Hal Dunbar interrupted calmly enough: "Wait a minute. I'll tell you a few things that link up with all this. You remember it was a month ago yesterday that I asked Mary for the hundredth time to marry me?"

"It was exactly then," reiterated Dunbar. "That was the time she said she would marry me in six weeks to the day."

"Then, the next morning, that blundering fool, Bull Hunter, appeared, and we chased him."

"Chased him out of sight. I nearly rode the blue roan to death that day." The foreman grinned at the memory.

"But we didn't ride far enough for all that," Dunbar growled. "The hound must have doubled back on us."

The patience of Hal Dunbar left him. Suddenly his face was suffused an ugly red. He was thundering the words: "I tell you, he must have doubled back, and he saw your daughter while the rest of us were riding our horses to death on a blind trail. That's what happened, and this is how I know. When I got back, Mary was in her room and said she had a headache. When she did come down, she wouldn't say a word about the marriage, and a little while later she said that she couldn't think of marrying me inside of six weeks. She wanted longer. She wouldn't give me any definite answer at all."

"You remember? Then why the devil don't you do something about it? You let your girl treat me as if she was the lady of the land and I a slave, or something." He controlled himself a little and went on: "Well, it never came into my head why she had changed her mind so quick that day. Till this morning. I was out walking in the garden, and I come on this behind a bush. You know what it is?"

"I saw a footprint over it. That happened pretty near a month ago, but it was stamped into the ground where the garden mold was soft and where it hasn't been disturbed since. So there was a shadow of a print of the shoe left. And the print was of Mary's shoe."

"I can tell you just about what happened," continued Hal Dunbar. "Bull Hunter came here to see Mary. He blundered up in full view, and we chased him. He dodged away from us and circled straight back to the house. When he arrived, he found Mary alone in the garden, and he came up and talked to her. What he returned for was to give back that locket. But they talked about other things, too. And in the end Mary was so cut up that she stamped the locket he had brought her into the ground."

Jack Hood sat as one stunned. "I dunno," he repeated again. "I don't understand."

"Sure you don't," said Hal Dunbar with a snarl. "Sure you don't understand what they could have talked about. But one thing is sure ... they weren't talking about the price of beef on the hoof! Why has Mary been glum this whole month? Why has she had a frown for me every time I came near her? I tell you that Bull Hunter has some sort of a hold on her, heaven knows how."

Her father shook his head. "Then how come she'd leave the locket lying there for a whole month, pretty near?"

"Just another proof that she was all wrought up that day. She was so excited she was blind. She dropped the locket, stamped on it, and then ran away. When her senses come back to her, she goes to the garden to look for it again, but she's forgotten just where she left it, and, besides, maybe a little dust had blown over it and kept it from shining. It was kind of under a bush, too. That explains it easy enough. And sometimes I think, Hood, that your girl is in love with that murdering outlaw."

The attack on his daughter's taste roused Hood to momentary remonstrance. "He ain't a murderer!"

"Because I got mad about nothing, picked a fight with him, and got what was coming to me. He could have killed me that day ... he only winged me instead."

"Well, let the murder side of it go. At least you have to admit that he's an outlaw?"

"And what for?" exclaimed Jack Hood with heat. "Because a friend of his that happened to be a robber got stuck in jail? And because Bull Hunter went down to White River like a man and got Pete Reeve out of the jail? They talk about how he done it still. Sure they outlawed him for doing it, but I'd like to have one or two friends that would break the law because they was that fond of me."

"I see how it is," said Dunbar bitterly. "You agree with Mary. You want her to marry him. Well, go ahead and take her to him. Go ahead. I won't stop you."

"Listen," replied Jack Hood, "d'you think I'm a fool? I'd rather see her dead, pretty near, than thrown away on Hunter."

"Yep," said Hal Dunbar, nodding, "you show some sense. You want Mary to own the ranch one of these days. And so do I. She's the one for the place. She's the lady to do it. But"—and here he began to beat out his points by striking his fist into the palm of his other hand—"she'll never marry me while Bull Hunter is alive. Hood, for your sake and my sake and in the long run for Mary's sake, too, that fellow has got to die!"

Jack Hood wiped his perspiring forehead. "Talk softer, Hal," he said pleadingly. "You don't mean what you just said, and, if you do mean it, it's just because you're wrought up over finding this here locket and... ."

"I'm not a fool. I don't pretend to be as clever as she is. That's one reason I want to marry her. Because I'm proud of her, Jack."

The foreman smiled and nodded. He had no real affection for Hal Dunbar, but he had a deep and abiding love for the Dunbar Ranch that he had run for so many years, and the bright dream of his life was to see Mary Hood the mistress of those wide lands.

"If it comes to the pinch, Hal," he said, "I can make Mary marry you. And I'll do it. She's learned one thing ... and that's to obey me. I'm not a soft man. I've taught my girl to do what I tell her to do. And if it comes to the pinch, I'll order her to marry you. Ain't it the best for her? Could she ever do better? No, sir. She couldn't."

"Maybe she couldn't," said Hal Dunbar, greatly mollified. "And ... you go as far as you like about persuading her, Jack. I've tried my hand long enough. Here it is three years since I first started to get Mary to marry me, and now I'm further away from it than ever. But I aim to find out where I stand. Will you call her in here?"

Jack Hood looked at him earnestly for a moment, and then went to the door. "Mary," he called.

His voice rang through the hall, and finally the answer came, thin and small, from a distance, swelling suddenly out at them as a door was opened.

They could hear her feet tapping swiftly down the stairs. At the door she paused before she came in and smiled at them, very beautiful with her dark hair and her dark eyes. Hal Dunbar lowered his own glance quickly. "Jim Laurel just come over from White River way," he said carelessly, "and Jim gave us some news might interest you. You remember the name of the gent that stole your locket from Jack?"

"That was it. You got a mighty good memory, Mary. Well, Jim says that Dunkin's been caught."

Hal Dunbar looked up at her in open admiration. For a moment his own conviction that she knew all about the locket was shaken, but he went on. "No, didn't hear Jim speak about any locket. But it's quite a story ... that yarn about the taking of Dunkin. There was another fellow with him, an outlaw, of course. They got cornered. The other gent was filled full of lead, and Dunkin surrendered."

"Who was the other man?" she asked without too much interest, for many such tales had she heard, and this was by no means violent compared with some.

"The other man?" said Dunbar, apparently trying to remember, but in reality watching her like a hawk. "His name," he finally drawled, "was Bull Hunter."

Dunbar had expected some slight paling, some infinitesimal start, for Mary was always well poised, but the result of his bluff was astonishing. Every sinew in her body seemed to be suddenly unstrung. She dropped into the chair behind her and sat, watching them with a deadly white face and numb lips that kept repeating the name of Bull Hunter soundlessly. There could have been no greater proof than that sudden change of expression. She loved Bull Hunter. Her father bowed his head. Hal Dunbar stared at her as one who has lost his last hope in life.

"It was a joke, Mary," he said gloomily. "It was just a trick to find out where you stood. And it worked a lot better than I expected ... or a lot worse."

The color struck back into her face in a wonderful manner. "Are you telling true, Hal?" she cried. "They ... they didn't kill him?"

And then she realized how completely she had betrayed herself. She saw it in the bowed head of her father and the drawn face of Hal Dunbar. She rose to escape, but at the door she turned and faced them.

"It was a cowardly thing to do," she said. "It was a base, base thing to do. But I thank you for it, Hal. Do you know that I've been in doubt of how I really felt about him? But now you've helped me to know the truth. I love him. I'm proud of it."

CHAPTER II
Imprisoned

FOR a long moment after she left, the two men struggled to recover from the shock, and then Jack Hood rose and began to pace the room.

"I don't believe it," he said. "I can't believe it. Think of throwing her away on an outlaw and... ."

"Curse him!" said Jack Hood with emphasis. "To sneak in here and take her away from you like a thief ... why, he hasn't seen her more than three times."

Hal Dunbar writhed as much in shame as in anger, crying: "What did he do? How did he talk to her? That great, stupid block of a man. A child has more sense."

"It's what is called an infatuation," decided Jack Hood. "I'm going up to try to talk her into her right senses. If I can't do that... ."

"I'll take her away, to begin with. There are ways of teaching girls obedience. I'll find one that will work."

"As far as you like," said Dunbar miserably. "Of course, I ought to give up the fight now, and, of course, I won't. I love her still, Jack. And I've got to have her. Do anything you can. I think you're right. This is an infatuation. Good heavens, how could she live with that penniless scoundrel? He's already under the ban of the law. He'll probably be a robber and a murderer in addition to being a jail-breaker before long. And Mary loves comfort, loves all the things that money can buy for her. Jack, get her for me, and I swear that neither you nor she will ever regret it."

It was the first time in his life, perhaps, that he had ever spoken so humbly. Jack Hood grasped his hand, and then hurried from the room with the will to do or die. Straight to the door of Mary's chamber he went and found it locked. In return for his noisy rapping she finally opened it a fraction of an inch.

"What ... ?" she began, but he violently pushed the door open the rest of the way and entered.

It was his way of asserting his mastery. He had used it with his wife until her death. He had always used it with Mary. In fact, the foreman had reduced his way with women to a philosophy. It was to give them everything they wanted without question or hesitation. But, when they crossed him on an important point, he suddenly became adamant—more than that, almost brutally aggressive. When he came in, however, he received another shock. His daughter's face was flushed, and tears were on her cheeks. He interpreted this to suit himself, man-like.

"I'm glad to see you've got your senses back," he said. "You made a fool of yourself down there. But it ain't so bad that you can't make up for it. Hal still wants you. Heaven knows why, after the way you've acted."

"Suppose it had been true," she gasped out. "Suppose they had really cornered Charlie Hunter. He'd fight to the last drop of blood in him. Oh, don't I know the sort of a man he is? But suppose it were true. How do I know what's happening to him? Dad, we've got to get him away from... ."

"Look here!" interrupted her father angrily. "D'you mean to tell me that you been up here crying like a baby because of what might happen to Bull Hunter?"

He shook her arm, but there was no resistance. The spitfire he had known as his daughter was gone, and in her place stood a misty-eyed girl he hardly recognized. Some strange thing had happened to change her, and the grim old fellow very shrewdly guessed that it was love, indeed. It abashed him and puzzled him. Also, it profoundly enraged him.

"You've played the idiot once too often," he said sternly. "Hal knows about everything. He has the locket that Bull Hunter brought back to you and... ."

"Do you know what he did?" said the girl with a sudden transport of enthusiasm. "He took that locket and brought it to me. But he wanted it for himself. I was like a foolish girl. He talked like a knight of the old days. I wanted to try him out. So I told him he could keep the locket if he would capture Dunkin and turn him over to the law. And he did it." She laughed with excitement at the thought. "He captured Dunkin alive and brought him to a jail. Then one of his friends, Pete Reeve, tried to rescue Dunkin and did it ... but got caught himself. Charlie Hunter didn't know of it until he came back here to tell me he had captured Dunkin as I asked him to do. But, when I told him what had happened, he turned on me and told me he scorned me. He talked to me as no man ever talked to me. He showed me how wickedly vain and foolish I had been. Three men were in peril of their lives because I had asked him to do a thing in which I had no real interest. Nothing but a whim. And, when he knew Pete Reeve was in jail, he swore he would get him out or die in the effort. And that's how he left me. He'll never see me again, Dad. But he did what he said he would do. He went down to the jail ... he smashed the wall of it ... he took his friend away and was outlawed for it." She threw out her hands in a gesture of what was both appeal and triumph. "And, when I know a man like that, how can you ask me to love such a fellow as Hal Dunbar?"

Her father bit his lip. It was even worse than he had dared to suspect. "Love is one thing and marriage is another," he said. "You got your children to think about when you marry. How could you take care of children if you married a wild man like Hunter?"

"Mary, I've worked all my life to smooth the way for you to this marriage. It means the whole Dunbar estate, girl."

"He's a man who will risk death for his friends ... who will ride for weeks and risk his life again to do the foolish thing I asked of him. Do you call such a man a stupid block?"

"I've reasoned enough with you," said her father. "Now comes the time to just tell you what you'll do. You'll marry Hal Dunbar, girl, if I have to drag you to it."

She looked at him with a sort of fierce contempt that changed slowly to wonder and then to fear. "Do you think for a minute, Dad, that even if you would do such a horrible thing, Hal Dunbar would accept such a marriage? Hasn't he the pride of his family?"

"He's got pride enough, but he's in love ... bad. And he'll do anything to get you. Understand? Look here, Mary. I'm fond of you, but I'm fond of the work I've given my life to. That work has been to make you the lady of the Dunbar Ranch, and you're going to be that, whether you want it or not. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly," she said faintly. "But you don't understand, Dad. There aren't such things as forced marriages these days."

"Aren't there?" he said sneeringly, red with his anger. "I tell you there are a lot of queer things happening in these mountains. I've got men following me would swear black was white any minute, if I said the word. I got men who'd be witnesses and swear you looked happy when you got married. And here's another thing, my lady. Suppose Hal Dunbar took it into his head that the only way to get to you was by removing Bull Hunter? D'you think he'd stop a minute? No, he'd go out and get Hunter and smash him flat. He's bigger'n Hunter. He's stronger. He's a better shot. If you do love Charlie Hunter, think of that a little bit. He's in a sea of trouble now, and you ain't throwing him any life preserver if you get Hal on his trail."

"I'm not asking you for any promises, Mary. Treat me square, and I'll be the easiest father you ever seen. Cross me, and I'll raise more rumpus in a minute than you ever seen in a year. Understand? Now think this over till morning. That's plenty of time. Take every angle of it and give it a look. It's worth taking your time about."

And so he was gone. It was a very unnecessary touch, but he could not resist it. As he closed the door behind him, he turned the key in the lock and removed it.

The moment she heard the sound, the lips of Mary Hood curled. She had been badly frightened before. She was badly frightened now, remembering the brutal ways in which he had treated her mother. But, when she heard that turning of the lock that proclaimed her a forced prisoner, she revolted. It was just a little too much.

She went naturally to the window. To climb down would be the simplest thing in the world. There was a drop of ten feet to the ground from the first row of windows, but that would be nothing to her. The main problem was where would she go once she was on the ground? Easy enough to get there, but where flee once she had escaped?

The influence of Hal Dunbar spread over the mountains very, very far, and every soul in the ranges knew that she was expected to become the wife of the rich rancher. No matter in which direction she rode, she would be quickly taken at the first house where she stopped for food or shelter and returned to the ranch. She laughed with angry amusement. It was utterly absurd, and yet it was a little terrible, too. Then she looked beyond the treetops and across the wide domain of the Dunbar Ranch. In the old days what girl would have thought twice if a king had asked her to marry him? And certainly Hal Dunbar, in a way, was a king among men. His word was law. That very fact made her tremble again. His word was law!

Still she could not believe that the whole affair was more than a hoax to break her spirit. She refused to take anything seriously until evening, when there was a tap at the door to warn her, and then the rattle of a key in the lock. Presently without requesting permission to enter, the door swung open, and the old Chinese cook appeared.

Now, the old Chinaman had been the pet and the object of the girl's teasing all her life, and her face brightened when she saw him. But the old fellow placed a tray of food—at least they were not going to try to starve her—on a chair and backed out the door, keeping an immobile expression. She went after him, calling out in anger, but he stepped quickly into the hall, and the door closed in her face.

The grating of the lock had a new meaning to her now. It declared very definitely, that her father had meant what he said. They were going to try force. If the old Chinaman, whom she had teased and petted all her life, could be turned against her so easily, what trust could she put in any man on the ranch?

CHAPTER III
Flight

THE men were coming in from the bunkhouse for supper, and very soon she could hear the hum of their voices in the big dining room below. She had been a queen among them for many a year, and now she called up their faces one by one, searching for a friend she could trust. But the faces were grave and hard. Jack Hood was a grim master, and he had chosen grim men to do his bidding, men who would follow him without question. If she had been a queen among those rough cowpunchers, it was merely because she was the daughter of the boss and the prospective wife of the ranch owner. Certainly there was not one among them whom she could take into her confidence.

Also that hum of voices made her unutterably lonely. She was used to perfect freedom. She was used to the open. And now the cold fear of the prison entered the girl and made her quake in her chair. But where could she go? There was only one place, and that was to Charlie Hunter, big and fearless and trustworthy to the end, she knew. Somewhere in the northern mountains he lurked. How she could find a way to him when the posse that was hunting for Bull Hunter and Pete Reeve had failed was another mystery, but the attempt must be made. Otherwise—there was the marriage with Hal Dunbar. She had looked forward to it all her life without repulsion. But now that it was inevitable, it became a horror.

She could do nothing until she was reasonably sure that the people of the house were in bed, for at any time during the evening her father might come to ask her decision. She dreaded that coming, for she feared that she might become weak under another verbal attack.

The long hours wore away, and the noises of life in the house were at last hushed. She waited still longer, hooding her lamp so that not a ray of light could reach either the window or the door. Then she began her preparations. They were comparatively simple. She put on a riding skirt and packed some changes of clothes in a small bundle. Then she strapped the light Thirty-Two revolver with its cartridge belt around her waist and put the big, flaring sombrero on her head. She caught a glimpse of herself in the half-darkened mirror, and the sight of the slender body and the pale face with wide, frightened eyes, disturbed her. She was surely a small force to be pitted against the brains of Jack Hood and the force of Hal Dunbar. Yet, she went on with only the terror now that someone might come before she was out of the room.

She opened the window with infinite pains, lest there should be a squeak of wood against wood or a rattle of the sash. But there was no sound, and she leaned out the window. What had seemed so simple during the daylight now became a desperate thing, indeed. The dark ground seemed a perilous distance below her, and what if her foot should slip as she climbed down toward the sill of the first window from which she was to drop? She lifted one leg over the sill and listened again. The wind was full of whispers like light laughter. Perhaps they were in the garden, the watchers of her window, and laughing at her attempt to flee. Or what if they should see her climbing down and take her for a robber? In that case they would shoot without warning, no doubt.

Yet, she went on, though fear made the grip of her hands weak and kept her foot slipping from its hold as she climbed. She reached the broad molding above the window of the first story. She dropped perilously toward the lower sill and then lost her balance and toppled back. The scream that jumped into her throat swelled to aching, yet she kept it back. It was a short fall, but to the girl, as she shot through the air, it seemed death must come at the end of it. Then her feet struck deeply in the garden mold, and she toppled on her back. She lay a minute with the breath knocked out of her, slowly gasping to get it back, and then picked herself up with care.

She was unhurt, a little muddy from the newly wetted garden soil, but otherwise as sound as when she began the descent. She turned now straight across the garden to the barn. There the mare, Nancy, whinnied a greeting and rubbed a soft muzzle against her cheek. The girl cast her arms around the neck of the horse and hugged the familiar head close to her. Here, at least, was one true friend in a world of enemies.

The saddling was a slow process, for every now and then she had to stop to listen to the noises in the barn, little creaking sounds as the horses stirred on the wooden floor and very like the noise of men, approaching stealthily to seize her. But at last the saddle was on, and she led Nancy out the back door of the barn, let down the bars, and stepped onto the muffling grass of the field beyond. Then into the saddle, trembling when the leather stirrup creaked under her weight in mounting. Then down the hollow, fearful lest one of the horses in the neighboring corrals might neigh and bring an answer from Nancy.

But there was not a sound. Looking back, the house on the hill was huge and black, and Mary Hood wondered how she could ever have been happy in it. She had hardly drawn one great breath of relief when the deep night of the trees closed over her. She had ridden through those trees a hundred times before at night, but always in company with others, and now they were changed and strange, and the solemn, small noises of the night were before and behind her.

Her heart began to fail her. She would have turned back to the house of Dunbar and to all that waited for her there, but something made her arm weak to numbness, and she could only let Nancy go as she pleased. The little bay mare went daintily and wisely. She knew every nook and cranny of that wood. Every stump and tree and every root that worked up out of the ground was familiar. Once or twice a twig snapped under her foot, but on the whole she kept to the noiseless ground.

She understood that this was a secret expedition as well as if she had been able to understand human speech, and, though like any other horse she was not at all fond of traveling in the dark, she did her best to take care both of her mistress and herself, keeping her head high and her ears pricking as a wise horse will in dangerous country. Once or twice she turned her head and snorted a soft inquiry, wondering at the slackness of her rider's rein, but Nancy was the last horse in the world to take advantage of the loose feel of her bit. She neither lagged nor hurried, and, when they came out of the wood, she poked her head into the breeze and started off at a gentle gallop.

Mary Hood let the horse go as she would. Her way led north. That she knew and little else, for she had heard a rumor that Pete Reeve and Bull Hunter were in the Tompson Mountains. Since the mare had chosen that way by instinct, it began to seem that her ride was fated to succeed. Moreover, the wind of the galloping exhilarated her, and the darkness was no longer complete. Instead, the stars burned closer and closer to her through the thin mountain air.

Dunbar Ranch was whirling away under the hoofs of Nancy, and the old Mary Hood was disappearing behind her. It gave her an aerie feeling, this journey out of one life and into a new one. She could not guess her fate at the end of this trail, except that there would be dangers to pass, and in the end, when she found Bull Hunter, if she were so lucky, she had not the slightest idea how he would receive her. Perhaps he would cling stubbornly to all that he had said in their last talk, and he had spoken bitterly enough. But, whatever his personal attitude might be, she knew that he would help her to go wherever she might choose. How to find Bull Hunter? The Tompson Mountains themselves were huge—an endless wilderness of peaks. And how should she reach them unseen by men who might recognize her?

However, those were questions that would take care of themselves. In the meantime to reach the Tompsons required a two days' journey, and she remembered now with a start that she had taken no provisions with her. Neither had she more than touched her supper that night. She gathered the reins to turn back, but at this moment Nancy shied from a white stone and doubled her speed straight north. All people in danger are superstitious, and Mary Hood took that little incident, coming when it did, as a sign from heaven that she must not double back.

The stars were beginning to fade when she reached the first foothills, and by sunrise she was among the upper peaks, desperately hungry and with an ache at the base of her brain from the lack of sleep. Nancy, too, was very tired. She plodded willingly on, but her head was neither so proud nor so high. She had ceased thinking for herself and, like every tired horse, was surrendering her destiny into the hands of the rider.

At the first small stream they reached, a tiny trickle of spring water, the girl dismounted and bathed her face and throat and let Nancy drink a little and nibble some of the grass near the water. Then she went on again, greatly refreshed. Her sleepiness grew less now that the sun was bright, and with that brightness her chances of success seemed far greater.

But before very long she knew she was coming into a district crossed by many riders, and it would be far wiser for her to lie low until late afternoon or even until the evening. Looking about her for a shelter, she found a grove of aspens, with their leaves flashing silver when the wind struck them and a continual shiver of whispers passing through the trees. So she rode Nancy into the middle of the little wood, unsaddled her, and tied her on a long rope to graze or lie down as she pleased. For her part, she found the deepest shadow, unrolled her blankets, and was instantly asleep.

When she wakened, she was lying in a patch of yellow light. A branch, snapping under the hoof of Nancy as she grazed, had awakened her. Mary Hood sat up, bewildered. She had fallen asleep at about ten in the morning. It was now fully six in the evening, and the sun would be down very shortly. She had been sleeping cold for the last hour perhaps, and the rising sound of the wind promised her a chilly night, indeed.

She went methodically and mechanically about her preparations for the night ride, feeling more and more the folly of this journey to an unknown end. First she looked anxiously to Nancy, examining her hoofs, looking her over with minute care, while Nancy followed her mistress about and seemed, with her sniffing nose, to have joined the inquiry. Nancy seemed perfectly sound. And that was the most important thing just now. That, and the fact that her stomach was crying for food.

Mary was so hungry that her hand shook when she saddled the mare. She mounted and rode out of the wood. She had barely reached the open, however, when she whipped Nancy around and back into cover. Over a nearby hill jogged half a dozen horsemen, and at their head she recognized the formidable figure of Hal Dunbar. Her first impulse was to give Nancy the spur and ride as fast and as far as she could away from the pursuers. But she was already out of the country with which she was thoroughly familiar, and she felt that, even though she out-distanced the horses behind her, she would eventually be caught in a long chase. Certainly Hal Dunbar would not spare money or horseflesh to catch her.

She followed a second and really braver impulse. She tethered Nancy in the center of the wood and crept back, on her hands and knees literally, to the edge of the copse. There she lay in covert and watched the coming of the horsemen. Her father was not among them, by which she was given to understand that he had taken other groups of men to hunt in different directions. But the rat-faced Riley, the close lieutenant and evil genius of Hal Dunbar, was among those who now brought their horses from a lope to a stand not twenty yards away. It seemed to the girl that, when once any pair of those keen eyes turned in her direction, they would pierce through her screen of leaves and reveal her. But, though many eyes turned that way, and she shrank in mortal fear each time, no one came closer.

"You see, it's what I told you," Hal Dunbar was saying. "She didn't come this way, and, if she did, she'd have ridden a lot farther. That would be her instinct, to jump on Nancy and ride like mad until the mare dropped. No sense in a woman. She wouldn't have the brains to cache herself away for the day and start on again at night."

"You're the boss," said Riley sullenly. "But I think she's got more brains than you credit her with, and, if I was you, I'd search every hollow and cave and clump of trees and old shack you can find right about in here. This is the distance she most likely went if she stopped a little after it was full day. If I was you, I'd begin and hunt through that bunch of aspens."

Mary Hood cast a frantic glance back toward Nancy. She could reach the horse in time to spur ahead of the pursuers, but she found suddenly that fear had stolen the strength from her body, and a leaden heart weighed her down.

"Wait a minute," called Hal Dunbar as Riley started toward the trees. "No use doing fool things like that. We'll ride for White Pine tonight. That'll be a good starting place for us tomorrow. No, I'll go to White Pine. Riley, you'd better take the trail to the hollow. And remember, you and the rest of the boys, when you see her, go out and get her. If you have to be rough, be rough. If you can't stop her without dropping her horse, shoot. I'll be responsible if any danger happens to the girl in the fall. But I'm not going to have that ungrateful slip get away from me. Understand?"

"And the lucky fellow who gets her for me will have nothing more to worry about in life. Understand? I'll take care of him."

One by one she watched them nod—sober, gloomy-faced men. If any illusion had remained to her that these cowpunchers were fond of her, that illusion was instantly dispelled. Whatever affection they had for her, they had more for money. And bitterly she recognized in this the result of the hand-picking of her father. Now the group split and rode in opposite directions.

CHAPTER IV
rELIEF

THEY spread, as though fate had directed them, to the right and left of the northern course that she had mapped out for herself. Luckily for her that cunning Riley did not have his way. She feared and hated the man for his insight, and, lest he should turn back to take a look at that grove of aspens as soon as the big boss was out of the way, she no sooner saw both groups of horsemen out of sight than she swung into the saddle and sent Nancy flying down the hollow toward the north.

A two minutes' ride brought her into another copse, well away, and, reining there, she turned and saw that Riley had indeed turned back toward the grove with his three companions. He disappeared into it. Presently she heard his shouting. She waited for no more but gave Nancy the rein again and fled on straight north. She had no immediate fear. Riley had found the impression of her body in the soft mold under the trees, and certainly he had found the sign of Nancy. More than that, he would doubtless be able to read her trail running north and follow it swiftly, but he and his men rode tired horses that had been urged hard all through the day, and she herself was on a runner as fresh as the wind. Moreover, the night would soon come and blot out the trail for them.

It was unlucky, of course. It meant that they had picked up the direction of her flight, at least, and they would follow hard, buying new horses when they rode out the ones they were on at present. Yet, too much hurry would spoil her game. Besides, she was weak from hunger and felt that she dared not risk collapse on her own part by hard riding. In thirty hours she had had only a bite of food.

When she dismounted at a water hole to let Nancy drink, she herself went to the pure trickle of water that ran into the pool, and the taste of the water made her head spin. Certainly she must have nourishment before long, or she could not keep the trail. A squirrel scolded at her from a branch above. And the girl looked up at the delicate little creature hungrily. Looking coldly and calmly at it, she forgot that she had always been horrified in the past when men shot these pretty little things out of the trees. Hunger and flight were deeply changing Mary Hood.

But she dared not fire a shot. There was no sound among the hills behind her, no neigh of horses, no clangor of iron-shod hoofs against the rocks. But she knew that the pursuit was coming slowly and surely behind her, and she must not help them along with such sign posts as rifle shots, or even the report of a revolver. The little Thirty-Two that she had balanced in her palm she shoved back into the holster and climbed again into the saddle and went on. Still, as she went, she looked back over her shoulder. The squirrel sat upon his branch, quite ignorant of the fact that he had been a small part of a second from death, and chattered a farewell to her.

Then the evening closed darkly around her, and they began to climb rapidly toward the summit. It was the weariest time in the girl's life. She dared not think of food now, because it brought an almost irresistible desire to weep and complain, and she felt that tears would be a foolish waste of necessary strength. Nancy went valiantly and skillfully about her work, but cat-foot though she was, she stumbled again and again. It was a wretched excuse for a trail that they were following, and, moreover, it was all strange country to Nancy. She was used to the sweeping, rolling lands of the Dunbar Ranch where a horse could gallop with never a care for her footing. She was much at a loss among these ragged rocks.

It must have been about eleven o'clock when they got over the summit and saw the mass of dark ranges, pitching down before them. The loftier masses of darkness against the stars, far north, were the Tompson Mountains. She might reach their foothills in the morning, if she were lucky.

Now, with Nancy laboring down a slope, the eye of the girl caught the wink of a campfire in the midst of the trees. A thousand thoughts of food rushed into her mind. A banquet or a crust of bread? She hardly knew which she would prefer. And straightway she sent Nancy scampering recklessly toward that cheerful spot of light.

All at once the light went out. Mary Hood reined the horse with a groan. She was in country now where she could not be known. But this covering of a campfire at the sound of an approaching traveler was not an auspicious sign. Many a ruffian, she knew, sought a refuge from the punishment of the law among the Tompson Mountains and the neighboring ranges with their intricate tangles of ravines.

Sadly the girl swung her mare's head to the right. In vain Nancy tossed her head. For fear lest the mare whinny, Mary reached over and tapped the muzzle of the bay, and Nancy, as though she understood that silence was desired, merely snorted softly, and went on sullenly with ears flattened. She was a company-loving horse, was Nancy, and she had caught the scent of companions of her own kind, no doubt, for the wind was blowing toward them from the place where Nancy had first seen the spot of light. The wind was coming toward them, and it blew—Mary Hood reined her horse sharply. Of all the tantalizing scents in the world there is none to the hungry man like the fragrance of frying bacon, and that was the odor that came richly down the wind to Mary until her mouth watered and her brain reeled. At once she forgot all caution. She wheeled Nancy and rode straight toward that scent. If there was danger, she would meet it gladly, but first she must have some rashers of that bacon. However grim these men might be, they would not refuse a woman food.

Yet, they might guess her a man, perhaps a pursuer on their trail, and so she began to call as she came closer, hallooing clearly through the woods till faint echoes came tingling back to her from the higher slopes. Still she saw nothing. She was riding through the utter black of the night. And then, under her very nose, someone said: "Pile up the fire again, boys. It's a woman."

A tongue of flame was uncovered—they had framed the fire with a blanket and a dry branch thrown upon it filled the woods around her with uncertain waves of light. It made the whole scene wild beyond description, but wilder than the strange old trees were the three men who walked boldly into the light of the fire. It was not their size that dismayed her. Though they were all stalwart six-footers, they were nothing to the giant bulk of Hal Dunbar or Bull Hunter. But the faces of these men made her quake, and, forgetting all thought of hunger, she wished suddenly to flee. Yet flight would be more fearful than to stay and face the danger bravely. For they were not men to be eluded if they wished for any reason to detain her.

A family likeness united the three men of the mountains. All were of one stature, tall and gaunt and wide of shoulder, powerful and tireless men, she could guess. All had streaming hair, uncut for months, and their lean faces were covered with scraggly beards. But the hair of one was gray—she guessed him to be a man of fifty—and the black-haired fellows beside him were doubtless his sons. All three looked at her from under heavy scowling brows with little bright eyes. They were armed to the teeth with revolvers and hunting knives, and their rifles leaned against the trees around the fire in convenient reaching distance. Habitually their gestures strayed to their weapons, fondling the butts of the revolvers, or toying with the knives, or idly fumbling with the rifles. Even a child would have known that these men did not keep the law. Their eyes were never still, their heads forever turning, and everything bespoke of that restlessness of men who are hunted by men. The fear of an outraged society was upon them.

No matter how much she wished to retreat, now it was too late. The hand of the father fell on the bridle rein of Nancy and drew the mare with her burden toward the fire, and the two tall sons closed in from either side. They seemed doubly formidable at this close range. Mary Hood could not move. Her arms hung limp. Her head sank.

The two boys spoke not a word. But they drew close to her with grins of strange pleasure. One of them took her nerveless hand in his huge, grimy paw, and, lifting it, he showed it to his brother and laughed foolishly. And the other touched her skirt, smiling into her face with eyes that flickered like lightning from feature to feature and back again. She thought them half-witted, or entirely mad.

"Hey, Harry, Joe!" cried the father. "What d'you mean, starin' the lady out of face like that? Been a long time since they seen a girl, and they mostly don't know how they should act. But they'll come around. Don't look so scared at 'em. They ain't going to do you no harm. Here, climb out'n your saddle and sit down and rest yourself."

It was the sweetest of sweet music to the girl, these hurried words, together with the sharp reproof to the two big fellows. She got out of the saddle but faltered the moment her heels struck the ground. She was weaker than she had thought. The old man was instantly beside her and had his arms beneath her shoulders.

"Get some water. Don't stand there like idiots," he called to Joe and Harry. "Step alive or I'll skin you. The lady's sick. Sit here, ma'am. Now rest yourself against that log. Wait till I get a blanket. There you are. Put your hands out to that fire. Heaven a'mighty, if you ain't plumb fagged."

The kindness was so unexpected, so hearty and genuine, that tears welled up in the eyes of the girl as she smiled at the wild woodsman. He squatted beside her, patting her hands.

"I know. You got lost. Been riding a couple of days and nothing to eat. Well, these hills would bother 'most anybody. But wait till I get a cup or two of coffee into you and a few slices of ... hey, Joe, lay your knife into that bacon and get some off ... and cut it thin. I know the way a lady likes her chuck."

CHAPTER V
Good News

AT least the cooking of Sam, as he said he was called, was better, she was willing to vow, than any she had ever tasted. What matter if the bacon was greasy and cut thick in spite of his injunctions, and the flapjacks unspeakably greasy, and the ample venison steak only half done, and the coffee bitter beyond imagining. It was food, and her blood grew rich and warmly contented again as she ate.

Sam himself sat cross-legged beside her and a little to the front, overseeing all the operations of that meal, applauding each mouthful she took with a smile and a nod, and eagerly following the motions of her hand as though he himself were half starved and the food she ate were nutriment to him.

As for the two gaunt sons, they were kept busy following the orders of their father to bring new delicacies for the girl, or to build up the fire, or to unsaddle her horse, or to cut evergreen boughs for her bed that night to lay in a comfortable place beside the fire. They obeyed these instructions with a sort of hungry eagerness that amazed her. She began to be surprised that she had ever feared them. When they had done something for her comfort, they stole small, abashed side glances at her and flushed under her answering smile. They were like half-wild puppies, fearing the hand of man but loving the touch of it. Her heart welled up in pity for them and their ragged clothes and their fierce lean faces, grown mature before their time.

"Just think of how you near missed us," said Sam as the meal reached an end at length. "When we heard your hoss come up the wind, I had the boys douse the fire. Never can tell in these parts. Wild folks are about, ready to do wild things, and old Sam ain't the one to be took by surprise. No, sir!"

He watched her face keenly and covertly to discover any doubt of the truth of his words.

"I don't think you are," replied Mary Hood. "The fire went out by magic, it seemed to me. And I only blundered on it again by chance."

"You see?" said Sam triumphantly to the two sons. "That's what I tell you all the time." He turned to the girl again. "Joe and Harry always want to leave the fire burning and slip off among the trees. If anybody comes up to snoop around the fire, then it's hunter hunt hunter. And there you are. But my way is best. Never take no chances. Keep away from trouble. Run from a fight. That's my way of doing things. In spite of all that, you'll find trouble enough in this world."

Still, he watched her while he talked. She answered his glance with difficulty, looking gravely and steadily into his face. Presently he laughed, embarrassed.

"Now, we're a rough-looking lot ourselves," he continued. "What might you take us to be, lady? You ain't told us your name yet."

"Mary Hood? That's a pretty plain name for a girl like you. But going back where I stopped ... how might you make us out, Mary Hood?"

She sighed. It might infuriate him if she told the truth, but, if she lied, they would soon suspect her dissimulation. "I only guess, of course," she said softly. "You are men who have been very kind to me, and, of course, I like you for your kindness. You are prospectors, perhaps, in the mountains."

"You make us out that way, eh?" said the old man, rubbing his hands together. "Hear that, boys? This lady has an eye, eh?"

She added slowly: "And I think that, perhaps, you are also fugitives from the law. I don't know. I only guess. But I'm afraid you're unhappy fellows, and the law hunts you."

The three men became three moveless statues, looking gravely at her, not with anger or sullen spite but as men who have been judged and cannot appeal from the judgment.

"You knowed all the time, maybe," said old Sam, sighing. "Well, I guess it sort of shows on a man after a time."

She did not answer but smiled faintly to make amends for her discovery of the unpleasant truth.

"After all, I'm kind of glad you talked straight. It ain't so much to me to be found out, but it's hard on the boys. I didn't know they was marked as plain as that. Yes, it's hard on Joe and Harry."

"I only guessed by the way you hid the fire and because your clothes haven't been mended by a woman for quite a while... ."

"That won't do, Mary Hood," said the father gravely. "It's more'n all that. It's in our faces, plain as day. If we was all dressed up in fine clothes for Sunday and shaved and got shiny boots on and walked into a town, we'd be knowed just the same. The minute the gents seen us, they'd reach for their guns, and the minute the ladies seen us, they'd let out a screech and cover their faces."

"You done your screeching inside, by the look in your eyes. When Harry took hold on your hand, you looked like you was about to die. Like his fingers was claws, maybe. Besides, you got more nerve than most ladies. Good many would've plumb fainted when they seen us. Ain't it happened before?" He smiled gloomily at the thought. "I was made what I am partly ... and partly I made myself. But the curse I carry around with me, Mary Hood, is my two boys that I've made like myself. But what could I do? Could I give 'em up? I ask you that, with their ma dead, could I give 'em up?"

"Of course, you couldn't," she answered, close to tears. "Of course, you couldn't give them up. And nobody with sense would blame you for keeping them with you. You'd have been unnatural not to keep them."

"D'you think so?" he asked earnestly. "You ain't saying that just to make me happy?"

She glanced at the wild, savage faces of the boys and controlled a shudder with difficulty. "No," she answered, steadily enough. "If you love them, it will repay them for anything else they lose."

"Maybe it would," he muttered. "And it helps a pile to hear you say it. A woman knows what's what about kids. They're her business. Sometimes it seems to me like every good woman was sort of a mother to every man, good or bad. That's why I prize you, saying what you do about me and the boys."

Her heart swelled with the pity of it. Perhaps for six months, perhaps for a year, these three had not sat so close to a girl and talked as they were talking now.

"If the boys' mother had lived," he continued, "it would have been different. She would have knowed what to do with 'em, whether for me to leave 'em or to bring 'em along. She looked a pile like you, come to think of it. She wasn't so clean cut around the mouth and the nose, and her eyes wasn't so big, quite, but she was a mighty pretty girl, she was. And she had an eye that looked straight ... as straight as yours." He went on to ask: "Her being honest ... that's bound to help make the boys decent in the long run, ain't it?"

The old man sighed deeply. Then a light grew in his eyes, the light of the dreamer. His face changed and softened, and it lifted so that his glance traveled past the dark treetops to the purity of the stars. "One of these days I'll give 'em their chance," he murmured. "I'll get a stake ... a pile of money. Ten thousand would do it. Yes, sir, with ten thousand dollars I'd send the boys away ... maybe to Australia. And I'd give them five thousand each. And I'd tell 'em to start a new life, and... ."

"Me? Go to Australia? Nope, this is my land. This is where I was meant to die, and this is where I mean to die. Maybe with my boots on ... I hope so. I know these mountains like faces, and they know me, pretty near. Or they'd ought to. But I ain't going to talk any more about myself. Only seeing you sit there all so quiet and ready to listen and sort of asking me ahead, well, I slipped into this talk sort of nacheral. A good woman is like that. She starts on a gent, explaining how he ain't quite so bad as he seems. After a while, maybe, she makes him be what he tells her he is." He shrugged his shoulders, and then his eyes cleared and became more sharply aware of her. "But how come you to get lost?"

She paused to think. If she told him that she had indeed lost her way, there were nine chances out of ten that he would discover the lie before he had talked with her for five minutes. But, if she confessed everything, she might win him to her side and then whoever followed her trail to these men would get no further clues from them.

At a stride the two tall youths came near with their great shadows standing boldly against the trees behind them. They looked earnestly down into her face as though by her confession she had been drawn closer to them. They, the fugitives, could understand the pursued.

But Sam was chuckling. "You had a little change of words with the gent you're engaged to marry, maybe, and got so mad you figured you'd leave and never see him again? Was that it?"

"Maybe I hit it the first time," he said, nodding. "Yes, I guess I pretty near did."

"Hmm. I've heard tell of such things before, but mostly the fathers I've seen has been stern just to do good to their boys and their girls."

"I think so," she confessed. "But sometimes they may be wrong. And this father of mine wants me to marry a man I don't love."

"Hmm," said Sam, nodding. "But maybe you could get to love him? Has he got money and looks and ... ?"

Mary's voice rose a little. "Because a friend of his was in jail, and he went and broke into that jail and brought his friend out."

"But he busts into jails, eh?" said Sam smilingly. "Well, that sounds kind of queer, but they ain't any use judging a man till you've seen him. And it's better to wait till you've watched him work. But you've talked pretty straight to me, Mary Hood."

"Pete Reeve!" cried Sam. "Him?" His face darkened, but finally he drove his angry memories away.

"Sure I know him," said Sam gloomily. "Him and me has tangled, and he got all the luck of the draw that day. But sometime maybe...," he paused abruptly. "But this ain't helping you. You turn in and sleep the sleep of your life now. When the morning comes, I'll point out the way to you. I come on the trail of Pete Reeve yesterday."

Mary Hood was sitting up, smiling with happiness. All her worries were on the verge of being solved, it seemed, by this veteran of the wilderness. "How could you tell that it was his trail when you crossed it?"

"By the way his noon fire was built. Fires is made as many different ways as clothes. Some likes 'em small and heaped to a point, and some likes 'em wide, and some lays 'em to windward of rocks, and some is just as happy when they can get a place in the lee of a hill. Well, I come on Pete Reeve's fire and knowed it as well as I know his face. Not having none too much good will for Pete ... you see, I talk as straight to you as you talk to me, Mary Hood ... I took the trail on Reeve for a while and seen that he had a big man on a big hoss with him. I just done those things because it was like dropping in on Reeve and having a chat with him without the trouble of talking, reading his trail like that. And I seen the way he was pointing his course before I turned back and took my own way. I think I can point him out to you within a mile of where he'll be in the morning."

CHAPTER VI
Bull Hunter

SHE slept that night as she had never slept before. With the sense of danger gone, the happy end of the trail made her relax in body and mind. When she wakened, the sun was already in the treetops, and the men had been up long since. Nancy came out from among the trees to whinny a soft inquiry after the well-being of her mistress.

Breakfast was a liberal feast, and then Sam took her out from the clump of trees and pointed out her way. She had stolen close upon the Tompson Mountains during her ride of the night before. Now Sam pointed out one bald-headed monster of a peak high above the rest.

"It's named after Old Arrowhead Mountain," he said. "Which is a hard trail and a long trail, but hardest of all and longest of all for another gent to follow. I dunno what's a better way of bothering a sheriff and a posse than to take the trail up Old Arrowhead. But I'll tell you how you'll most like get to Pete Reeve and the man you want. Old Arrowhead is split right in two with a gully about twenty feet wide and a thousand deep, pretty near. Them twenty feet is crossed with a bridge. And they's only one bridge. The way to it is right up to the top of that shoulder. You aim a straight line for it and ride out your hoss, an' they's a good chance that you'll get to 'em before they cross, unless it comes that they make a pretty early start. Of course, they may not be laying for Old Arrowhead at all. I can't read their minds, but yesterday afternoon, late, it sure looked that was what they was heading for."

"I'm always kind of tickled," said Sam, "to have white folks see me and know me. The next time somebody tells you that Sam Dugan eats his meat raw, you laugh at 'em. And don't you believe 'em when they tell how I kill folks when they sleep. It ain't my way. But the trouble is, I think a lot more of other folks than they think of me. My country don't own up to me no more, but that don't somehow stop me from owning up to my country. S'long, Mary Hood."

So he was gone among the trees back toward his morning campfire. As for Mary Hood, she looked a moment toward the place where this ragged philosopher had disappeared, and then she loosened the rein and gave Nancy her head. The mare ran eagerly to get the chill of the morning out of her legs, and in half an hour they were commencing the ascent of Old Arrowhead.

It was distinct in the range. It was bigger and more barren, a great crag of granite, thrust in the midst of beautiful, forest-bearing summits. It was hard footing for a man and very bad footing, indeed, for a horse. Even the mountain sheep, those incomparable climbers, were not very frequent visitors in the regions where Old Arrowhead soared above timberline, a bare, black mountain whose stones were polished by the storms.

She kept Nancy true to her work, for now the sun was rolling higher and higher in the sky. Unless Pete Reeve and Charlie Hunter wanted a ride in the heat of the day, they would start from their camp at once—if, indeed, they had ridden this way at all.

Now that she felt she was close to them, she began to wonder more and more how she could face them with her story. Above all, Bull Hunter might be changed from the simple, lovable fellow she had known. The taint of the lawless life he had been forced to lead might be in him, for all she knew. There were a thousand possibilities, and each one of them was gloomier than the other.

But there was no sign of smoke above her that made her more and more certain that Sam Dugan had been wrong, and the two had not ridden this way at all. For the very reason that she doubted, she pressed Nancy the more until the brave little mare was stumbling and sweating in her labor up the steep slope. While the girl worked up the slope in this manner, the first news of Charlie Hunter came down to her. It was nothing she saw, but a great voice that boomed and rolled and thundered above her. It was so great a voice that, when she shouted joyously in answer, her voice was picked up and washed away in the torrent of sound. The singing grew greater, rapidly, as she drew closer. Finally she could make out that the sound was double. A thin, weak, straining voice ran like a rough thread in the huge singing of Bull Hunter. The girl smiled to herself as she hurried on.

She came on a picture that turned her smile to laughter. The campfire was smoldering without smoke to the windward of two big rocks. The breakfast had been cooked and eaten, and the two companions sat together with their shoulders braced against boulders and sang a wild ballad to begin the day. The difference between the volume of their voices was hardly greater than their difference in physical bulk. It seemed that Charlie Hunter, huge of shoulder and mild of eye, could crush Pete Reeve with the weight of a hand. The latter was a little, time-dried man with the agility of a squirrel in body and eye. Yet, it was he who beat the time for the music with an emphatic hand and an arm that swung widely up and down, while the careless giant lolled back and without effort allowed that enormous voice to swell and roll from his throat. The singing of Pete Reeve was a mere sharp edge for the roar of Bull Hunter.

Mary Hood paused to marvel at the carelessness with which these two hunted men exposed themselves. In the first place, they had allowed her to come right up to them, unseen. In the second place, they were not even close to their horses that roamed about, nibbling the grass fifty yards away—one a small cow pony and the other a black giant close to seventeen hands tall and muscled in proportion. Diablo was a fresh marvel to Mary Hood each time she saw the horse.

A moment later, as she swung out of her saddle, the eye of Pete Reeve discovered her. His mouth froze over the next sound, and with staring eyes of wonder he continued for another instant to beat the measure. Then he came to his feet with a shout.

She let him take both her hands, but her eyes were for the giant who had come to his feet with almost as much speed as his companion. There, on the side of the mountain with only the empty blue sky to frame him, he seemed mightier of limb than ever. Then he came slowly, very slowly, toward her, his eyes never shifting. "Mary," he kept saying, "how have you come, and why have you come?"

"Heavens, man," cried Pete Reeve, stamping in his anger and disgust, "when your lady rides about a thousand miles through a wilderness to see you, are you going to start in by asking questions? If you want to say good morning, go take her in your arms. Am I right, Mary Hood?"

Somewhere in her soul she found the courage to murmur: You are. But aloud she said: "I've run away, Charlie, and there was only one place in the world I could go ... and that was to you."

His bewilderment was changing gradually to joy, and then full understanding came upon that slow mind. He checked a gesture as though he would sweep her into his arms, and instead he raised her hand and touched it with his lips. She loved him for that restraint. He had changed, indeed, from the Bull Hunter she had first known, growing leaner of face and more active of eye. He looked years older, and it seemed to the girl that in his eye there was a touch of that same restless light she had noted in the faces of the Dugan men. The brand of the hunted was being printed on him.

Now he drew her to a place, sitting between them, and the questions poured out at her. So she told all the story, only lightening the blame on her father for shame's sake. But, when she came to the story of the Dugans, Pete Reeve exclaimed: "I never knew he had it in him. I've had the hatchet out for Dugan ten years. Here's where I bury it."

"Heaven only knows," said Charlie Hunter, when the story was ended, "what I've done to deserve you, but now that you're here, I'll keep you, Mary, to the end of things. Not even Hal Dunbar can take you away while I have Pete Reeve to help. I'd given you up forever. We were going to ride north and get into a new country where neither of us is known. But the three of us can do the same thing. Can you stand the hard travel, Mary?"

"We can't keep on the trail we started," explained Pete Reeve. "I'll show you why."

He took her to the edge of the gulch of which Sam Dugan had spoken. It was a full twenty-five feet across and a perilous drop between sheer walls of over eight hundred feet. Once a narrow bridge had been hung across the gorge, and she could see far below the broken remnants of it.

"We've got to go back and climb around to the right. Costs another day's work, the breaking of this little bridge."

"But why do you keep your camp so carelessly?" asked the girl. "Anyone could have surprised you, just as I did."

"No enemy could," answered Pete Reeve. "There's our guard, and he can't be beat."

He pointed to a great, gray-coated wolf dog who lay stretched at full length among the rocks a little farther down the hill.

"The Ghost knew you," said Reeve, "or he would've give us warning when you were a thousand yards away. And now we'll have to pack up and hurry."

"Somehow," murmured the girl, "I don't like the thought of turning back. It seems unlucky."

"We got to," answered Pete Reeve, "because we got to make a big circle and come through Patterson City and get a minister. Then we can hit north again."

CHAPTER VII
Caught In A Trap

WHEN Sam Dugan came back to his camp, he gave quick orders. "Get the shovel, Joe," he commanded, "and cover that fire. We done a fool thing in starting it in plain daylight. That smoke can be seen about five miles away. Get the hosses ready, Harry. We mooch out of here as fast as we can. We sure stayed too long."

Indeed, they had never lighted a fire in broad daylight for many a month at a time, but for the sake of Mary Hood they had broken that time-honored custom. When the father saw that the preparations were well under way, he stepped to the edge of the circle of trees and walked around it, keeping an anxious watch on the hill tops and the big, swift slopes of the mountains. Presently over a southern crest he saw four horsemen, riding straight for the trees.

As he turned back into the trees again, his eyes flashed toward the west, and he made out a scattering half dozen more hard riders, breaking out of a grove. It was easy to see that they had been surrounded, and that the aim of all those men was the group of trees from which the smoke had been seen to rise. He made his resolution at once and went back to tell it to his sons.

"They got us dead to rights," he said quietly. "They's ten men in sight and maybe ten more coming after them. Boys, we might make a long stand in these trees and hold 'em off, but they could starve us to death. They's just one chance we got again' bad luck, and that is that these gents ain't on our trail. If they don't know us, it's all right. If they do know us, we're lost. Now, go right ahead with your packing up, but take it slow. When they's a bunch of gents around asking questions, it's always a good thing to have plenty to keep your hands busy with. These folks will be here pronto ... they're here now. I'll do the talking."

Even as he spoke, the first of the riders crashed through the shrubbery beyond the trees, and a moment later from every side ten grim-faced men were in view, surrounding the little clearing where the campfire had burned. They discovered old Sam Dugan in the act of tamping down the tobacco in his corncob pipe. He continued that work and even lighted the pipe while the leader of the newcomers was speaking. He was such a man as Sam Dugan had never seen. He and his tall sons were dwarfed by the mighty dimensions of this man. The stout gray horse from which he dismounted was downheaded from the weariness of bearing that load. He had been riding long and hard, and the lines of continued exertion had made his handsome face stern. He looked fiercely up and down at Sam Dugan.

"We've come on a trail that points pretty straight toward this campfire you've just put out so quickly," he said. "We want to know if you've seen a girl pass this way? A very pretty girl riding a bay mare?"

Sam Dugan stopped and rubbed his knuckles through his beard in apparent thought. "Girl on a bay mare. I dunno, I dunno. Boys, you ain't seen anybody like that around in sight? Nope, I guess we ain't seen her, partner. Sorry about it. Runaway, maybe?"

His calm seemed to madden the big stranger. But the latter controlled an outburst. "Look here, my friend," he continued, "I'm Hal Dunbar. I'm a little outside of my own country, but, if you were down there, they'd tell you that I'm a man of my word. And I promise you that, if you have seen that girl in passing and can give me any idea where she's gone, I'll make it mighty well worth your while to talk."

"Well," said Sam Dugan genially, "that sounds to me like pretty easy money, and, if I could get a hold on it, I sure would. But what I don't know, I can't very well tell, and I guess that's about all there is to it."

"Hmm," said Dunbar, growling. "It looks that way. But bad luck is certainly following me on this trail. However, we'll keep trying. Heads up, boys. We've got a lot more riding before us, it seems, and I hoped that this might be the end of the trail."

Jack Hood tapped his friend Riley on the arm. "There's something a bit queer about it," he said. "That fire was burning high just a minute ago. Look at that stick, poking out through the dirt. It ain't half charred. That fire wasn't burned out by no means. But inside of five minutes they got that fire covered and their packs about made up. I admit there ain't very much in those packs, but still it's fast work. And now them two long lanky gents are lazing along as if they didn't have any hurry at all in mind. Looks to me, Riley, like the three of them made up their minds for a quick start a while back, and then changed their minds pronto. Talk to 'em, Riley."

The latter nodded. Big Hal Dunbar was turning away gloomily when Jack Hood stopped him with a signal.

"Might get down and give the hosses a spell, chief, eh?" suggested Riley to Dunbar, and the latter, receiving the wink from Jack Hood, nodded. Instantly the crew was on the ground, lolling at ease.

"Been long on the trail?" asked Riley, fixing his shoulders comfortably against the trunk of a tree.

He named all those present. Then he paused. The challenge was too direct to be passed.

"Glad to meet you gents," returned Sam Dugan. "My name's Sam Saunderson, and these are my two boys, Joe and Harry."

"You been prospecting coming down, I figure," said Riley, glancing at the packs.

"Nothing particular," said Sam Dugan. "Raised color a couple of times. That was all. Nothing particular much to talk about."

"Might say I didn't start from nowheres. Me and the boys have been traveling for so long we don't hardly stop much anywhere."

It was dexterous fencing and done, withal, with such consummate ease that Riley could not tell whether the old fellow was making a fool of him or telling the truth. He shrewdly suspected the former, but pinning down Sam Dugan was like pinning down another old man of the sea. He was slippery as oil.

"Oh, I dunno. Ain't much that I ain't turned a hand to for a spell, take it all in all."

"But liking to follow the rocks, I guess you been around the Twin River Mines, maybe?"

"Oh, long about five year back, I guess, or maybe it was only three. I dunno. Dates and things like that get out of my head pretty easy."

"Well, well, he don't?" said mild Sam Dugan. "Come to think about it, I guess it was a gent named Jud Chambers I had that drink with."

"Cartwright? Lemme see. Well, I'll tell you a funny story about a gent by name of Cartwright. It was back in... ."

Riley sighed. He had thought a moment ago that he was cornering this ragged mountaineer, but Sam Dugan had skillfully wound out of a dangerous corner and come into the clear again. It was useless to try to corner a man who told stories. It was like trying to drink all the water in a lake to get at a bright pebble on the bottom of it. After all, the man was probably entirely innocent of having seen Mary Hood. Riley gave up, and, in sign that he had surrendered, he rose, yawned, and stretched himself.

Jack Hood's eye had been caught by something beneath a dry log at one side of the clearing. He crossed to it.

"Sorry to leave you gents," went on Sam Dugan. "But I'm leaving you a right good camp. Got good water over yonder, and there's all the wood and forage an army would want. Get my hoss for me, Harry. So long, gents. Sure hope you find the girl, stranger."

And so speaking, waving genially to each of them as he passed, Sam Dugan sauntered across the clearing, leading his horse. The call of Jack Hood stopped him as he was about to disappear among the trees. He turned and saw the foreman of the Dunbar Ranch, standing with his hands on his hips.

"Then," said Jack Hood, "I got to tell you that my daughter has been here, and she sure has been here inside of twenty-four hours, and she sure couldn't've come without being seen."

"That's kind of hard talk, ain't it?" said Sam Dugan, feeling that a crisis had come.

"It sure is, but it's straight talk. Maybe you got your own reasons for not talking. I dunno what they are, but they sure ain't any good. Here's all the sign I want that she was here."

He raised a hand in which fluttered a filmy bit of white, the handkerchief of a girl.

CHAPTER VIII
Hot Pursuit

WITH a triumphant yell Hal Dunbar shot across the clearing and caught at the handkerchief as though it had been the girl herself. Then he turned furiously on Sam Dugan. "Now," he said, "will you talk?"

"It kind of looks like I'd been doing a lot of lying that got me nowheres in particular," said Sam Dugan, grinning and quite unabashed. "But still, I don't figure any particular call I got to talk. Not by a pile. So long, gents."

As he turned, Hal Dunbar, with a leap, barred his way. It was a hard trial for Sam Dugan. It was not the first time he had been halted, but it was the first time a rash intruder had escaped unscathed. The odds were too greatly against him. Though Sam Dugan loved a fight above all things in the world, he loved best of all a fight that he had a chance of winning. Moreover, he guessed shrewdly that this man alone would be more than a match for him. Hal Dunbar was no mere mountain of flesh. From head to foot he was the well-knit, nervous type of fighting man, quick of eye and steady of hand. That he was now ready to fight there could be no question. Every muscle in his big body was trembling with eagerness. In his youngest, strongest prime Sam Dugan would have thought twice before he engaged this giant among men.

"Saunderson," said Hal Dunbar grimly, "or whatever your name is, I've been on this trail for a long time, and there are twenty other men riding it with me. And I'm going to keep them riding till the trail comes to an end. That girl is going to be found. Why not speak up like a man and tell me what way she went?"

"Mind your tongue," said Hal Dunbar, his eyes instantly on fire. "Look around at these mountains. Chopped up like the waves in a wind. I could spend a month hunting over ten square miles unless I have a lead to follow with my men."

"That sounds like sense," said Sam Dugan, and he spoke more kindly now. He liked the fact that the big man had not yet threatened him with the power of numbers. He liked the big, clean look of Hal Dunbar.

"If a runaway child of six asked you not to tell where it had gone, would you keep the promise?"

"An outlaw," said Hal Dunbar hotly. "A fellow she's only seen three times. It makes me turn cold when I think about it. Suppose she marries him ... though, heaven knows, how they can ever get to a minister ... what would come of their life? What of their children?"

"Saunderson, if that's your name, you're saving that girl if you tell me how I can follow her. I've an idea that in certain places you may be wanted, my friend. I think that the sheriffs, any one of them, would be very much interested if I brought in you and your sons. Eh?"

Dugan watched him narrowly, decided that the big fellow could do it if he wished, and then determined that he would make his last stand here rather than be ignominiously captured. Yet, he would avoid the blow as long as he could. He was greatly relieved by the next words of Hal Dunbar.

"I could take you and your boys along. You look suspicious. You must have bought those clothes five years ago, and yet you've been traveling for five hundred miles near towns. Very queer. But instead of forcing you, I'm going to do the opposite. Saunderson, if that girl gets into those mountains with Hunter, she's lost. No man on earth could follow her. For heaven's sake, tell me where she's gone. I love her, I tell you frankly, but I want to stop her in the first place simply to keep her from marrying an outlaw. Is she cut out for camp life like this? Answer that, Saunderson, and you know that camp life in winter... ."

"I'll give her a home, and she won't have to marry me for it. I know you're only trying to do what's best for the girl, so, you see, I open my mind to you. Another thing ... you and your two boys might need a bit of a stake. I'm the man who can fix that for you."

Sam Dugan sighed. "I guess you're straight about her," he admitted. "I figure, if you'll pay ten thousand just to find her trail, you sure love her, and... ."

"Part of that sum I'll give you in gold. I'll give you my note for the rest and... ."

"I don't want the money. I only wanted to find out if you was really fond of her. And you are. And I'll show you the way. But maybe you're too late." He pointed. "Look yonder to Old Arrowhead. Ride straight for the center of the hill, and you'll catch her trail. And ride hard."

A muffled shout from Hal Dunbar and he was in the saddle on the weary gray. His men followed him with less alacrity. Sam Dugan, however, watching them stream out of the grove and across the open country, shook his head as he turned back to his two sons.

"Word-breaking don't generally bring no good to nobody," he said doubtfully. "Maybe I've been all wrong to tell the big chap. But I done what I thought was right."

Meantime, though Hal Dunbar was urging his men on with shouts, the gray could not keep pace. Only fox-faced Riley drew back beside the big boss. "There's a gorge up there and a small bridge across it," he said. "If they get across that and have time to break down the bridge, we're done for."

Hal Dunbar groaned and returned no answer except by spurring his horse cruelly. The gray, attempting in vain to increase his speed, stumbled and staggered and then went on with greater labor than ever. His head was hanging, his sides working like bellows, and the noise of his breathing was a horrible bubbling, rasping sound. Riley, with a glance, knew that the gray was being ridden to death, but he said nothing. Advice, when Hal was in one of his furies, only maddened him the more. They were working up the hill rapidly.

"They've sighted us!" called Riley at length, "and, if they start for the bridge, we can never stop them."

"Where are they?" asked Hal Dunbar, ceasing for the instant his steady labor of flogging the gray and spurring him on.

He pointed to a gray streak, moving with incredible speed and smoothness across the face of the hill.

"The wolf ... The Ghost," replied Hal Dunbar with a significant nod. "The beast is their outpost, eh?" He groaned as he spoke. "One last try, boys!" he yelled to his men. "Drive the horses. We've only got seconds left to us!"

He suited his actions to his words by spurring the gray again. But that honest horse had given the last of his strength already and had been running on his nerve alone for some time, crushed under the huge burden of Hal Dunbar. Now he threw up his head as though he had been struck and fell like a clod.

He dropped straight down, and, Dunbar, unhurt, kicked his feet out of the stirrups and ran on, cursing. There was no pity for the horse in him, only a wild anger that he should be hampered at such an hour even by the horseflesh that he rode. But he had not taken a dozen steps when a rifle exploded far up the slope, and a bullet hummed wickedly past him, yet it was far above his head.

"Rush Pete Reeve?" said the other sneeringly. "I'd as soon rush dynamite. Get the boys to cover."

He was following his own suggestion as he spoke, and the rest of his men needed no order. They dived from their horses and took up their positions behind the big rocks that littered the side of Old Arrowhead Mountain. Riley found a place close to the ranch owner.

"I dunno what's happened," he said. "They ought to be across that bridge by now, but they ain't. Listen."

The rifle snapped above them again, and one of the men cursed as the bullet splashed on the rock near his head.

"He's just shooting to warn us that he means trouble," interpreted Riley. "When Reeve shoots to kill, he either kills, or he doesn't shoot at all. Ain't many bullets he's wasted on thin air, I can tell you. He's trying to hold us back with his lead, and that simply means that something has happened to the bridge, and they can't get across it."

He shouted a few orders—men scampered from rock to rock until the cordon had been drawn in a perfect semicircle all the way around the crest of the hill. The three fugitives were hemmed in with only one way of escape without a fight, and that way led across a twenty-five foot gorge.

"If you got a white handkerchief," said Hal Dunbar, "put it up on the end of your revolver for a flag of truce, and then go up and talk to them. Tell them that all I want is the girl. The rest of 'em can go. Tell 'em that. Also, tell them that, if money talks to them, I'll hold as long a conversation as they want."

"Sure I don't," replied Hal Dunbar, chuckling. "But I want to get her out of the way before I finish those two skunks. So make all the promises you want to make. A promise made to an outlaw isn't a promise at all, is it?"

Straightway he tied a white handkerchief to the end of his revolver and waved it above the rock. There was an answering call from up the hill.

CHAPTER IX
Facing The Enemy

LITTLE Pete Reeve, lying prone among the rocks at the crest of the hill and maintaining a sharp outlook, kept watch for Hunter and the girl. She had lost her courage with the firing of the first shot and sat white and sick of face, leaning into the arms of Charlie Hunter. The big man soothed her as well as he could.

"But if something happens," she kept saying, "it will all have been my fault. I laid the trail that they followed to you."

The voice of cunning Riley came to them from the other side of the knoll, where he had been stopped by the challenge of Pete Reeve before he should clear the top and be able to see that the bridge had actually fallen and that the three were definite and hopeless prisoners.

"Look here, Reeve," said Riley, "we know what's happened. Something's busted the bridge, and you fellows can't get over. Now, the boss doesn't care about you and Bull Hunter. He's got only one thing he's thinking about ... and that's the girl. He says, if you'll send her down to him, he'll let you two go clear."

"That's something for the girl to answer, not me," replied Pete Reeve. "Keep back a bit while I talk to them." He turned, walked back up the slope, and then said softly: "You've heard what he said ... maybe he means it and maybe he don't. I think he'd have his fill of fighting before he got us. But he could starve us out. That's the straight of how we stand just now. I want you to know that pretty clear. I also want you to know that there ain't one chance in a million of you or anyone of us getting away. This is a tight trap. But, if you want to stay, then the three of us stick, and welcome."

"There's only one answer to give him," said the girl, rising to her feet steadily enough. "Tell him I'm coming. But first I want to hear Hal Dunbar swear to let you both go free."

"No," interrupted Charlie Hunter, speaking for the first time. "Tell him to go back. He gets no sight of Mary Hood."

"She'll talk up for herself, I guess," said Pete Reeve, gloomy, as he saw the one possible chance of escape slipping away from them.

"No," answered Bull Hunter solemnly. "She's come up here to me, and she's mine. I'd rather have her dead than belonging to Hal Dunbar. And she'd rather die than leave us. Is that so, Mary?"

It was the first time that either the girl or Reeve had heard the giant speak with such calm force, but in the crisis he was changing swiftly and expanding to meet the exigencies of that grim situation. He stood up now—and the little hollow at the top of the hill was barely deep enough to cover him from the eyes of the men down the slope.

"It's a crazy answer," muttered Pete Reeve. "You've got no right to put words in her mouth."

"Every right in the world to," said the big man with the same unshaken calm. "In the first place, I don't trust Dunbar. A gent that'll hound a woman the way he's hounded Mary Hood ain't worth trusting. Suppose we die? I wouldn't live a happy day in a hundred years if I knew I'd bought my life by sending Mary back to Dunbar. Pete, you know I'm right."

"You can leave if you want to, Pete. They'll be glad to let you through. That'll make their odds still bigger."

The little man smiled. "Leave you in a pinch like this?" he said. "After what we've been through together?"

He turned sharply toward Riley. The latter, during the conversation between Reeve and Bull Hunter, had stolen a few paces farther up the hill until his eye came above the ridge. There, across the gap where there had once been a bridge, was now empty space. Riley shrank back again, grinning and satisfied.

"You seen, did you?" asked Pete Reeve grimly. "And for spying like that you'd ought to be shot down like a dog, Riley. But I'm not that kind. Go back and tell your master that we'll not let the girl go back to him. Tell him we know there's all sorts of prices for a life, but, when a woman is the price, then the man that lets her pay ain't man enough to be worth saving."

It had not been exactly the attitude of Pete Reeve the moment before, but, having been persuaded, he was not one to miss a rhetorical opening of this size.

Riley sneered at him. "That's what you say now," he said. "But we ain't going to rush you, Reeve. We're going to sit down and wait for the heat and the thirst to do the work with you. May take more than today. Then again, it may be that you'll change your mind before night. But we'll get you, Reeve, and we'll get the girl. And we'll cart your scalps in to the sheriff and collect the prices on your heads. So long, Pete."

"It's going to be a long play," he reported to his men. "The girl won't hear no reason, or rather she lets Bull Hunter do her thinking and her talking for her. We'll have to find the nearest water and start carting it in here. Because the thing that's going to beat them up on the hill before night is that."

He pointed above his head toward the sun. It was losing its morning color and rapidly growing a blinding white. Already its heat was growing every moment, and before noon the effect would be terrible. Old Arrowhead Mountain was a mass of rock that instantly was heated along its surface until the stone burned through the soles of boots and the reflected warmth became furnace-like.

For the circle of guards along the lower slopes the watch through the day was bad enough, though they had the shelter of tall rocks here and there, and one of them was steadily at work, bringing freshly filled canteens. But for the trio imprisoned at the top of the hill it was a day of torture. The small basin in which they were protected was perfect for gathering and focusing the rays of the sun. By ten in the morning the heat had become intolerable, and still that heat was bound to increase by leaps and bounds for five hours!

Mary Hood endured the torment without a word, though her pallor increased as time went on. There was one tall pine, standing on the very verge of the cliff, but storm and lightning had blasted away most of the limbs except toward the top, and it gave them hardly any shade worth mentioning. In the shadow of the trunk there was room only for Mary Hood, and the men forced her to stay there. Pete Reeve, withered and bloodless, endured the oven heat better than the others. Bull Hunter, suffering through all of his great bulk, went panting about the work of fanning Mary, or talking as cheerily as he could to keep her mind from the horror of their situation.

Then at noon, with the sun hanging straight above them and the heat a steady agony unrelieved by a breath of wind, Hal Dunbar came up under another flag of truce and made a final appeal. Their reply was merely to order him back, and he went, trailing curses behind him. That newly refused offer of help made everything seem more terrible than before. It was the last offer, they knew, that would be received from big Hal Dunbar. After that, he would merely wait, and waiting would be more effective than bullets.

There remained a single half pint of hot water in the bottom of Bull Hunter's canteen, and this they reserved for Mary Hood. Twice that afternoon she tried to fight them away, refusing the priceless liquid, but Bull Hunter forced her like a stubborn child and made her take a small swallow. But that was merely giving an edge to the thirst of the girl. As for Hunter and Reeve, their tongues were beginning to swell. They spoke seldom, and, when they did, their syllables were as thick as from drunkenness.

When the crisis of the afternoon came, between half past two and half past three, they made their decision. They could wait until full night, then they would mount their horses and ride down the slope with Mary behind them to be given shelter from the bullets. It was an entirely hopeless thought, they knew perfectly well. Such men as Jack Hood and Hal Dunbar, in particular, did not miss close shots. Those two alone could account, shooting as they would from behind perfect shelter, for a dozen men. But there was nothing else for it. The horses were growing mad with thirst. Mary Hood was becoming feverish, and Bull Hunter was at the last of his endurance.

A wind came out of the north at this moment, but it served rather to put the hot air in circulation than to bring any relief of coolness. The day wore on. The shadows grew cooler and more blue along the sides of the tall mountain above them. There was a haven for them almost within reach of the hand, and yet they were hopelessly barred from it by the small distance across the gulch. All the time they could see the flash and sparkle of silver-running spring water on the slope not a hundred yards from them.

The shadows were beginning to lengthen. It was impossible to find more than one shelter from the sun, and they lay at full length, praying for night. And so Bull Hunter, watching the shade of the great pine tree lengthen and stretch across the cañon, received his great idea and sat bolt erect. Thirst and excitement choked him. He could only point and gibber like a madman. Then speech came.

"Pete," he gasped out, "we've been blind all day. There's a bridge for us. You see? That pine tree can be cut down, and, if it falls across the gulch, we can cross it."

Pete Reeve leaped to his feet, and then shook his head with a groan. "Can't be done, Bull. That wind will knock it sidewise, and it'll simply drop down into the cañon."

CHAPTER X
A Daring Escape

IT was an axe specially made for him. The haft was twice the ordinary circumference, and the head had the weight of a sledge hammer. Yet, standing with his feet braced for the work, he made the mighty weapon play like a feather about his head. The girl and Pete Reeve sat silently to watch, not daring to speak, not daring even to hope. The first blow fell with power that almost buried the axe head in the wood. Then the steel was pried out with a wrench, and the second blow bit out a great chip that leaped out of sight in the void of the cañon.

After that the chips flew regularly until the tree was well nigh eaten through, and the top of it swayed crazily in the wind. Bull Hunter stopped. If he continued cutting till the trunk was severed, the tree, as Pete Reeve had said, would blow sidewise in the cañon. So he waited.

"Pray for one breath of south wind," he told the others. "Pray for that. If it comes, we're saved."

They nodded and sat about with their eyes glued to the top of the tree, hoping against hope that they would see the wind abate from the north and swing.

"No hope," said Bull Hunter at last. "We'd be fools to wait for the wind to swing. Mary, lie down there between those two rocks with your revolver. If you see anyone show a head down the hill, shoot as close to them as you can. Pete, get your axe, and as soon as the wind falls off to nothing, you start chopping, and I'll try to give the tree a start from this side."

They obeyed him silently. Reeve stood ready with his axe. The girl, with her revolver before her, lay between the rocks to keep watch. Bull Hunter stood, waiting for the wind to cease before he gave the word. The Ghost, that mighty wolf dog, as though he realized that the girl was taking his own old post of sentinel, came sniffing beside her and lay down with his head dropped on his paws, close to the head of the girl. And big Diablo, the black stallion, apparently guessing that salvation was somehow connected with the cutting of the tree, came with his ears pricking and sniffed the raw wound in the side of the tree. Then he backed away to watch and wait, his eyes fixed in steady confidence on Bull Hunter.

When the wind fell away for a moment, Pete Reeve attacked the slender remnant of the trunk that remained whole, and Bull Hunter, reaching as far as he could up the tree, thrust with his whole weight against it. At that angle he could do little, but the small impulse might decide the entire direction of the fall. And so the trunk was bitten through deep on the one side, and Pete Reeve, stepping around to Hunter's side of the pine, gave half a dozen short, sharp, back strokes. There was a great rending, and the top of the pine staggered and began to fall.

At the same time the unlucky north wind, that had been blowing most of the afternoon, sprang up again and swung the tree sidewise. Yet the impetus of the fall had already been received. The pine fell at a sharp angle, but it spanned the gulch from side to side. Still, it was by no means a comfortable bridge. The Ghost sped across it with a bound and sat down on the far side and grinned back an invitation to follow. The three laughed in spite of themselves, but their laughter was drowned by a shout of rage down the slope. It had taken them this time to realize the meaning of the cutting of the tree, and now, after the first yell of anger, a confused babel of voices swept up to them.

"They know what we're going to try to do," said Pete Reeve, "and they'll press us pretty close."

His words were interrupted by the explosion of Mary Hood's revolver, answered by a shout of mocking defiance.

"Someone tried to edge higher up the hill," she explained through tight lips. "I hit the rock above him, and he ducked back."

"They don't rush Pete Reeve in broad daylight. Nope, not if they was a hundred of 'em. The price is too high!" He waved to Bull. "I'm the lightest, and I'm next across."

"Don't look down," Reeve cautioned her. "Look straight ahead. Look at The Ghost on the far side, and you'll keep your head. There's plenty of time. Get down on your hands and knees and crawl. I'm here behind you. Now, steady."

She obeyed without a word, casting one glance at Bull Hunter. And then she started with Pete Reeve moving close behind her, waiting for a slip. But the trunk was far more firmly lodged than they had imagined. Once in the center, feeling the quiver of the tree beneath her, the girl paused, trembling, but the steady voice of Reeve gave her courage, and she went on. A moment later she was on the far side, waving back to Bull Hunter.

He waved in return and then, from between the rocks, poured half a dozen shots down the slope.

"They're getting restless. That'll keep 'em for a while," Pete Reeve explained to the girl. "And now comes the hardest part for poor Charlie Hunter."

"It ain't the same," said Pete. "Diablo is more than just hoss to Bull. He's sort of a pal, too. Combination of partner and slave that's hard to beat. Look there ... if the hoss don't know that Bull is giving him up?"

For, as Bull Hunter approached the tree trunk, the great black stallion pushed in before him with ears laid flat back and made a pretext of biting him, his teeth closing on the shoulder of his master. Bull Hunter patted the velvet muzzle and stroked the forelock. Then he turned and made a gesture of despair to the two on the other side.

"I've got to go," he said, "but I can't do it. Pete, I'd rather see Diablo dead than have Hal Dunbar ride him."

"There's no other way, Bull," said Reeve sadly. "If Dunbar gets him, you'll get him back before long."

Bull Hunter shook his head, passed his hand for the last time along the smooth, shining neck of the stallion, and then stepped out on the fallen pine. Diablo, fooled by the petting of his master, wheeled and started in pursuit—but Bull Hunter was already beyond reach of his teeth. Holding out his arms wide, he crossed and jumped off to join Mary Hood and Pete Reeve. The stallion reared and struck at the thin air. Then he danced in an ecstasy of rage and disappointment, while Nancy and Reeve's horse backed as far away as possible and, in amazement, watched this exhibition. Next the stallion came to the trunk and placed both forefeet upon it, as though he would try to cross, despite a glance into the depths below that made him shrink. The sunlight trembled along his glossy coat.

"Let's start," he said. "Takes the joy out of life to leave that horse, Pete. I'll never see him again. Dunbar won't be able to ride him, and he'll go so crazy mad that he'll kill him. I know!"

He turned away among the rocks, with the girl and Reeve following in silence, but they were stopped by a great neigh from across the gulch. They looked back with a cry of wonder coming from every throat, and that cry was taken up and echoed along the crest on the farther side. There they stood, man after man—Jack Hood, Hal Dunbar, and all their followers. They had rushed the crest at last only to find their quarry gone, but now they stood careless of the fact that they were exposed to the guns of Reeve and Hunter. For Diablo had ventured a step along the trunk with his head stretched out, his legs bent, his whole body trembling with terror. The wind caught his mane and tail and set them flaring. He took another step and shuddered as the trunk, beneath his great weight, settled and quaked.

"Send him back," shouted Hal Dunbar. "Send him back, Hunter, and we'll stop the chase here. I didn't know such horses were ever bred!"

"How can he turn and go back," called Bull Hunter in answer. "But will you let me try to help him across that tree, Dunbar?"

Friends and enemies, they stood ranged on either side of the gorge and watched the giant stallion's effort to gain back his master. Each step he made in mortal terror, and yet he kept on.

Bull Hunter waited for no second permission. He was instantly at the far end of the log, and at his call the gallant horse pricked his ears. They flicked back again the next moment as a gust of wind nearly knocked him from his position. He steadied himself and made the next step. But now the trunk grew smaller and therefore less steady, and moreover the central depth of the cañon was straight beneath him.

Then Bull Hunter stepped out on the log. His own weight helped to make the trunk less steady, but the moral effect of his coming would more than counter-balance that. Standing straight up, he placed himself in mortal danger, for the jar of one false step on the part of the horse would kill his master as well as himself. In appreciation of what was happening, Mary Hood covered her eyes, and a deep-throated murmur of applause came from the followers of Hal Dunbar on the farther side.

With short, trembling steps the big stallion moved along the trunk, and now Bull Hunter met him midway over the chasm and with his outstretched hand caught the reins close to the bit. The ears of Diablo quivered forward in recognition of this assistance. Though the powerful hand of Bull Hunter was useless, practically, to steady the great bulk of the horse, the confidence that he gave was enough to make Diablo straighten and step forward with a greater surety.

Within a yard of safety a rear hoof slipped violently from the curved surface of the trunk, and a groan came from the anxious watchers on either side of the gulch. They had been mortal enemies the minute before. Now the heroism of the horse gave them one common interest, and they forgot all else. The groan changed to a great gasping breath of relief as Diablo, quaking through every limb, steadied himself on the verge of reeling from the tree trunk. Here the hand and voice of Bull Hunter saved him, indeed. Another step and he was on the level ground beyond, and Pete Reeve and Mary Hood and all the men of Hal Dunbar joined in one rousing shout of triumph. Diablo stood trembling beside his master, and Bull Hunter let his hand wander fondly over that beautiful head.

The noise fell away as Hal Dunbar stepped forward. He took off his hat and bowed across the chasm to Mary Hood.

"Mary," he said, "I've followed you hard and rough. But I followed for what I thought was your own good. I didn't know Hunter then, as I know him now. But a man whose horse will risk death to follow him, and who will risk death to save his horse, can't be much wrong at the heart. Only one thing, Mary, I want you to know. I could have stopped you here ... we had Reeve and Hunter under our guns ... Diablo saved them. And I want to ask you one favor in return. Ask Bull Hunter to cross the gulch and speak with me on this side for a moment. I give him my solemn word of honor that no harm will come to him from my men."

She shook her head. "I've tried you before, Hal. And I won't trust you now. I can't persuade Charlie to go ... not a step."

Bull Hunter answered: "I don't need persuading. I'll meet you on that side, Dunbar."

There was a faint cry from Mary Hood, but the big man stepped quietly onto the log and recrossed the chasm. A moment later he stood face to face with Hal Dunbar, and a murmur of awe passed over Dunbar's men. For they saw that for the first time their big boss was matched against a man who was his equal in size and in apparent strength.

Pete Reeve had drawn back into the shelter of a great ragged rock, jutting from the mountainside, and now he called from his concealment: "I'm on guard, Dunbar. The first crooked step you take or the first suspicious move you make, I'll shoot and shoot to kill. You may drop Bull Hunter, but you'll never live to talk about it!"

Hal Dunbar bowed in mock courtesy. He had drawn Hunter aside so that their voices could not be heard by the others when they were lowered to a whispering compass.

"Dunbar," said his rival earnestly, "you've played a fair game and a square game today. I'm thanking you. I don't know how you feel about it, but I'd like to shake hands. Are you willing?"

The smile that Hal Dunbar turned on him did not falter in the slightest. But what he said was: "Hunter, I hate the ground you walk on. There's only one thing that keeps me from finishing you today. It's not the gun of Pete Reeve. It's the fact that Mary Hood is watching us. That's why I smile, Hunter, but I'm cursing you inside."

"I haven't asked you over here to make friends," said Hal Dunbar. "And you can rest content that there'll never be rest for either of us until one of us is dead, and the other is safely married to Mary Hood. Just now she's had her head turned by you ... a little later it may be my turn."

"That turn won't come," answered Bull, unshaken by the quiver of hatred that ran through the voice of the other. "She'll be married to me by tomorrow night."

Hal Dunbar closed his eyes as though a flash of sunlight had blinded him. Then he looked out again from beneath puckered brows. "Tell me, Hunter," he said, "what'll be the outcome of that marriage? You may be happy with her for a few days, but how long d'you think it will last when you and she have to run through the mountains to keep clear of the law that follows you? Are you going to drag her with you and spoil her life because of this selfish thing you call your love for her?"

Bull Hunter paled. "I am not a very wise man, Dunbar," he said, "and I may be wrong, and you may be right, but it seems to me that, if a man and a woman love each other enough, they have the right to take some chances."

Bull Hunter sighed. "I don't know," he said. "It looks impossible. But there may be a way."

"That's why I've asked you to come and talk with me. I'll tell you what I can do. I have a little weight with the governor of the state. He needs financial support now and then and ... but it's no use going into politics. The short of it is that the governor will do pretty much what I want him to do. Hunter, suppose I were to ask him for a pardon for you ... and for your friend, Reeve, as well? Suppose I were to do that and leave you free to marry Mary Hood and settle down where you please and live your own happy lives?"

"If you did that," said Bull Hunter gravely, "you'd be the finest man that ever lived."

"But I'm not the finest. I want to know if it's worth taking a risk to get a pardon for yourself and Reeve?"

"Then listen to me. I'll go back to the nearest town with a telegraph and get in touch with the governor at once. I can have your pardon wired all over the state by tomorrow morning. You can take Mary Hood into Moosehorn before tomorrow night. You understand?"

"Here's the part of it that will wake you up again," said Hal Dunbar with his evil smile. "In Moosehorn you leave Mary Hood and come straight back toward Five Roads."

"Because on the road you'll meet me. It'll be after dark, but that doesn't make any difference. If it's dark, we'll fight without guns. For a fight it's going to be, Hunter, without the girl standing by to pity you and weep over you and never forget that I killed you ... you understand?"

"Yes, I begin to," said Bull Hunter. "You get me a pardon from the governor. I take Mary to safety. I come back and meet you. And one of us dies. If it's me, nothing could be better for you. You will be able to pose before Mary as having secured my pardon. It will be proof to her that you had no hand in my killing. If I kill you, you have lost everything, indeed, and I've the guilt of killing my benefactor. Is that it?"

"Is it worth the risk?" asked the other, husky with excitement. "Think of it, Hunter! It means your chance for happiness with the girl. Do you fear me too much to meet me? I'll give you every advantage. I'll come without a gun on me. We'll fight bare hand to bare hand. I've some skill with a gun as you know. But I'll throw that away. Do you agree?"

Bull Hunter sighed. He looked across the chasm at Mary Hood, where she stood watching him anxiously. Never had she seemed so beautiful. Yes, for the sake of her happiness it was worth risking everything. She could not lead that wandering life through the mountains.

"I'll meet you tomorrow night," said Bull Hunter. "On the way from Moosehorn to Five Roads. You have my word that I'll be there."

"Shake hands?" said Bull huskily. "What sort of a devil are you, Dunbar? Shake hands when we intend to try to kill one another?"

"It's for the sake of the girl. It'll make her easier if she thinks that we're friends."

Bull Hunter reluctantly took the hand of the other and then went back across the chasm to join his two companions.

CHAPTER XI
Setting The Stage

ALL was done punctually as the ranch owner had promised. Until late that night he kept a telegraph wire to the capital of the state busy. At midnight the pardons of Pete Reeve and Bull Hunter were signed, and the news was being flashed across the mountain desert. Only one person had been with Hal Dunbar while he was doing his telegraphing, and that person was the invaluable lieutenant, Riley. The fox-faced little man blinked when he saw the contents of the first wire sent, but after that he showed no emotion whatever, for he was not an emotional man. He stayed quietly with the big boss until the job was finished.

Then Dunbar went to bed, and Riley slept late. He was awakened before noon by the heavy tread of Hal Dunbar, pacing in the next room of the hotel. Presently the big man came to him and talked while Riley dressed. His ordinary ease of manner was gone. His very walk was jerky and halting. His speech was of the same pattern. A tremendous nervous gloom had fallen upon him. It seemed to Riley that it might be the result of the only generous thing that he had ever known the big fellow to do. He had been truly stunned by the unselfish work of Hal Dunbar the night before. It had made him uneasy. For, having felt during many years that he knew his man so to speak, he was bewildered by this sudden change. As far as he knew Hal Dunbar, there was little good in the big, handsome fellow. He had been a pampered child; he had grown to a spoiled youth and into an utterly selfish manhood. That he should go out of his way to clear the path of his successful rival was beyond the comprehension of Riley.

So he waited this morning, half expecting a confession, with his ratty little eyes continually flashing across at Dunbar's gloomy face. But the latter said nothing until they had finished breakfast, and then he took Riley for a short stroll outside the village.

"How's your eyes these days, Riley?" he asked. "You used to be a pretty fair sort of a shot."

"Never a hand like you with a gun," said Riley modestly, "but I'm as good as I ever was."

"Let me see you try," said Dunbar. "You've got your Colt with you. There's a white knot in that fence post over yonder. Take a try at it."

It was by no means usual for Dunbar to make such requests. But Riley was not in the habit of asking questions. He drew his revolver, lined it with the post, dropped it on the mark, and fired. Dunbar strode forward to examine the results.

"Low left," he said critically when he returned. "You've got a good squeeze when you pull the trigger, but the trigger pull is too light in that gun. And you drop it too far."

"Only half an inch from a dead center," said Riley, somewhat angered by this seemingly carping criticism. "That ain't so bad."

"At a hundred yards it would have given you a wounded man instead of a dead one," said the big man coldly. "When you shoot, shoot to kill."

The other nodded respectfully. There was at least one subject upon which Hal Dunbar was a profound authority, and that was every sort of fighting. From guns to fists and knives there was nothing that Hal Dunbar did not know about battle, and there was nothing he loved more than conflict. He would ride fifty miles to pick a quarrel with a man who was said to be big enough to wrestle with him. Accordingly, Riley accepted his judgment.

"Every time you shoot at a small target, try to think it's the button over the heart of the man you hate most in the world. That's what I've always done, and that's why I've made myself a good shot. I'm not a dead shot. There's no such thing. But I'm very nearly as good as they come. And I'm going to keep on getting better and better ... if I live."

He uttered this last phrase with such strange emotion that Riley turned and gaped at him. He recovered himself at once, however, and presented the usual blank face to the big boss. Certainly there was something strange in the mind of Hal Dunbar today.

"But," continued Dunbar, "you shoot well enough ... quite well enough for my purpose, Riley. Long shooting isn't your specialty. At a short distance I think you might do very well."

Riley breathed deeply. "It will be the greatest fight that ever was fought in the mountains. But I hope not with guns?"

"Because Hunter was trained to shoot by Pete Reeve, and he's almost as good as the man who taught him. Not with guns, Hal."

"I know everything you know, and that's why I had guns ruled out, but I put it as if I was doing him a favor."

He chuckled at the thought, and Riley grinned in sympathy. This was the Hal Dunbar he had always known, crafty, hard, cunning under all of his apparent carelessness.

"I don't think you care whether I win or not," said Hal angrily. "All you want is to see the fight."

"Never mind. This is the point. With so much at stake I must not lose the fight ... you understand?"

"I'll fight him fairly and squarely," said Dunbar, "and I ought to beat him with fists and hands. He's strong, but I'm still stronger, I think. Besides, I know boxing and wrestling, and he doesn't. It's a finish fight. If I down him, I'll kill him with my hands. If he downs me, he'll finish me the same way. But, even if he leaves me dead on the ground, he must not win the fight!"

"Listen to me," said Hal Dunbar. "I love that girl in a way you can't understand. I've loved her so long that the thought of her is in my brain and my blood ... part of me. No matter to whom she goes, she must not go to Hunter. He ruined everything for me. If I thought that after my death he was to have her, I tell you my ghost would come up and haunt them. Whatever happens, no matter if he kills me, Hunter must not win. You understand?"

"You fool!" gasped out Dunbar, maddened because he had to bring out the brutal truth in so many words. "You're to be hidden near the place where we meet, and, if Hunter wins ... you shoot him down. You shoot him like a dog!"

Hal Dunbar sighed with relief. "You'll do it? I thought for a minute that I was mistaken in you ... that you were weak. But you're still my right-hand man, Riley. I'll tell you where. There's a wood between Five Roads and Moosehorn. We're to meet somewhere between those two towns after dark. And I'll leave early and wait for him near the trees. That will give you a chance to stay close to the fight, and there'll be a full moon to help you ... if you have to shoot. You understand, Riley?"

"Leave now. I'll follow along after a while. Go around through Five Roads. We mustn't be seen to ride in the same direction. Be sure that, if you have to lie for a long time during the fight, you don't get your right arm cramped." He turned back. "Start now, Riley!"

CHAPTER XII
The Battle

IT was thick twilight when Bull Hunter stood up from his chair in the room at Moosehorn where he and Pete Reeve had celebrated their return from outlawry to peaceful citizenship. Now the big man went to Mary Hood and took her hands.

"When a man's heart gets too full," he said quietly, "he has to go off by himself. I'm too happy, Mary. I'm going out for a ride on Diablo all alone. I'm not even going to take The Ghost with me. Pete will take care of you."

She smiled faintly and anxiously at him as he turned to the big wolf dog, pointed out a rug in the corner of the room, and commanded him to stay there until he was called away. The Ghost obeyed sulkily, dropping his huge scarred head upon his paws and watching the master with an upward glance. Then Hunter turned at the door, gave himself a last look at Mary Hood, waved to Pete Reeve, and was gone.

"Pete," she said, "there's something about to happen ... something about to happen to Charlie. I feel it. I sensed it in his voice when he said he was going. It was queer, too, the way he watched the coming of the night. Pete, you must go out and follow him and see that he comes to no harm. Will you?"

The little man shook his head soberly. "If you're wrong, and Bull finds that I'm following him, it'll be bad business," he declared. "He hates to be spied on ... even by me."

"But I know that I'm right," she said eagerly. "I'm cold with the fear of it, Pete. Will you go?"

He rose slowly from his chair. "I'd ought to laugh at you," he answered. "But I can't. There's something spooky in the way a girl gets ideas about things she don't really know. Maybe you're right this time. Anyway, we can't take any chances. I'll saddle up the roan and follow Diablo as close as I can. But that isn't any easy job if Bull starts riding hard."

She thanked him huskily as he left, and from the window of the hotel she saw him lead out his little cow pony, swing into the saddle, and disappear instantly into the dusk.

The black horse was a glimmering phantom in the night far ahead of Pete Reeve, and he spurred hard after it. If Diablo had been extended to three quarters of his usual speed, he would have drawn out of sight at once, but tonight for some reason Bull Hunter was riding merely at a long-ranging gallop, giving the stallion his own way in the matter of taking hill and dale. Pete Reeve, by dint of spurring now and then, was able to keep barely within eyeshot of the rider before him.

Yet it was precarious work to keep barely within view without being seen himself, and he kept his eyes riveted on the shadow in the darkness. The way was leading straight to Five Roads, and, with every mile he put behind him, he became more and more convinced that the girl had been right. For Bull Hunter did not ride in the careless fashion of one who is following a whim. He kept to a steady, purposeful gait, and the little man who trailed him began to suspect more and more definitely that there was a rendezvous ahead.

He rode a little closer now, for it was complete night, and the moon had not yet risen, though the light in the east gave promise of it. Pressing on with his eyes fastened on the form that moved before him, he swung a little from the beaten trail—the next moment the roan, putting his foot into an old squirrel hole, pitched forward on his head. Pete Reeve shot out of the saddle and landed heavily on his back.

When, after a time, he wakened from the trance, it was with the feeling that he had been asleep for endless hours. But he could tell by the moon, low in the east, that it had not been long. The poor roan had broken its leg and lay snorting and groaning. Pete put it out of misery with a bullet, but he did not wait to remove the saddle.

A moral certainty had grown in him that Bull Hunter was, indeed, riding toward a rendezvous, perhaps into danger. Otherwise why such secrecy, such care in leaving even The Ghost behind? No doubt he could not arrive in time to ward off trouble, but, if there were a fight, he might come in time to help at the finish. Throwing his hat and cartridge belt away to lighten him, and, carrying his naked Colt in his hand, Reeve started running down the road.

In the meantime Bull Hunter had come, at moonrise, to that clump of tall trees by the road, and he had found Hal Dunbar, waiting on horseback. He halted, dismounted, led Diablo to the side of the road, and then advanced. Hal Dunbar—a mighty figure—came to meet him half way.

"I have nothing but my bare hands," said Bull quietly. "But, before we start, Dunbar, I want to make a last appeal to you. You've been... ."

"You've not only played the sneak, but now are you going to play the fool, too, and maybe the coward?"

On the heels of his words he leaped at Bull Hunter. His right fist, driven with all the power of his body and of his leap, landed fair and true on the jaw of the other, such a blow as Bull Hunter had never felt before—it sent him reeling back and cast a cloud of misty darkness across his mind. Hal Dunbar paused an instant to see the colossus drop. Yet, to his amazement, the other giant did not fall. His slight pause gave Hunter's brain a chance to clear. They rushed together, shocked, and again the heavy fists of Dunbar crushed home. This time he changed his aim, and the blows thudded against the body of Hunter.

It was like smiting ribs of steel. Hal Dunbar gave back, gasping his astonishment. Here was a man of stone, indeed. The first fear in battle he had ever had came to the big man. He tried again and again every trick at his command. Dunbar hooked and swung and drove long straight rights with all the strength of his big body behind them. Half of those punches landed fairly and squarely. They shook Bull Hunter, but they did not topple him from his balance. His face was bleeding from half a dozen cuts—the flesh of his body must have been bruised purple—but there was not the slightest faltering. Yet, he seemed to be fighting a helpless, hopeless fight. The trained footwork of Dunbar kept him easily out of the range of Hunter's unskillful punches, while from a distance he whipped his own blows home and then danced away again.

But at the very moment when Dunbar seemed to have victory in the hollow of his hand, with only time as the question, his terror began to become blind panic. For the strength and endurance of Hunter were incredible. Blows that should have felled an ox glanced harmlessly from him.

Finally a blow landed squarely. It was not a powerful blow, but it sent a jar up the arm of Hunter, and the new sensation excited him. He was a new man. He came in with a low shout, rushing eagerly, no longer dull-eyed but keenly aggressive. He became lighter on his feet, infinitely swifter of hand. At the very time that Dunbar was beating him he had been studying the methods of the tall fellow, and now he used them himself.

It became impossible to avoid him altogether. For all his lightness of footwork Dunbar found terrific punches crashing through his guard. He himself was fighting like a madman, striking three times to every once for Hunter. His arms were growing weary, his guard lowering—and then like a flash, striking overhand, the long arm of Hunter shot across, and his right fist met the jaw of Dunbar. The latter dropped as though hit by a club, and Hunter leaned over him.

In the shadow of the trees Riley raised his revolver, but Hunter was saying: "Dunbar, this is the end. You're growing tired. You're getting weak. I can feel it. Don't force this on. You've fought hard. You've cut me to pieces. But now you're done. And I've no malice."

He stopped. Hal Dunbar had worked himself to his knees, looking up with a bleeding face at the conqueror, and, as he kneeled there, his hand closed on a huge, knotted branch of a tree, torn off in some storm by wind or lightning or both, and flung here beside the road. The feel of the wood sent a thrill of new and savage hope through him. Vaguely he realized, not that his enemy had spared him when he might have finished the battle with a helpless foe, but simply that he was alive and that a chance to kill had been thrust into his hand. He leaped from his knees straight at Hunter, swung the branch, and struck.

The first blow beat down the arms that Hunter had raised to guard his head and struck him a glancing blow, but the second landed heavily, and the big man crumpled on the ground in a shapeless heap. Hal Dunbar, with savage joy, caught him by the shoulder and wrenched him back. He laid his hand on the heart. It beat steadily but feebly and Dunbar, gone mad with the battle, swung up the club for the finishing blow.

He was stopped by a cold, sharp voice from the wood that he hardly recognized as the voice of Riley.

The amazement turned his blood to ice. He turned, gaping, and there came little Riley walking from the shadow out of the wood with the revolver leveled.

"I couldn't stand the gaff," said Riley calmly. "All the time you were fighting, I watched. When I seen Hunter knock you down, I pulled the gun to kill him. But he let you get up ... and then you whale him with a club ... and want to brain him after you've knocked him cold. Listen, Dunbar, I'm through with you. I ain't a saint, but neither am I a skunk. I'm through with you, and so will be every other decent man some of these days. Step back from Hunter, or I'll kill you."

The giant obeyed, his face working, unable to speak. And the little man followed, making savage gestures with his weapon.

"You ain't worthy of touching his hand," said Riley slowly. "You ain't as good as the dirt he walks on. Now, get on your hoss and ride!"

"It's Pete Reeve," said Riley. "He must've guessed at some dirty work. Get on your hoss and ride one way, and I'll get on mine and ride another. It won't do much good for either of us to be found here by Pete Reeve."

"Riley," said Hal Dunbar, "the day will come when you'll drag yourself on your knees to me, and I'll kick you away."

"Maybe, but it ain't come yet. What I'm thinking about just now is that, being so wise as you and me have been, Dunbar, don't always pay. Here's a simple gent, lying here stunned. Well, it ain't the first time that he's beat the both of us. He's lying there knocked cold, but he'll be found by a partner, Pete Reeve. And he'll be brought back to Moosehorn, and he'll marry the prettiest girl we ever seen. How does he get all this? Just by being simple, Hal, and honest. Which, God help our souls, we ain't either of them things. Now get out of my sight!"

Whether he fled from his own shame or remorse, or was moved by the threat of his companion, or dreaded the voice of Pete Reeve coming down the road, the big man mounted, turned his horse, and galloped away. Riley returned to his covert in the woods until he had seen Pete Reeve come and bend over the fallen man. When he heard Bull Hunter sigh, then Riley turned and slipped away into the night. He had lived one perfect day.

THE END

MAX BRAND WRITING AS DAVID MANNING

BULL HUNTER'S ROMANCE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I Big Decision

CHAPTER II Imprisoned

CHAPTER III Flight

CHAPTER IV rELIEF

CHAPTER V Good News

CHAPTER VI Bull Hunter

CHAPTER VII Caught In A Trap

CHAPTER VIII Hot Pursuit

CHAPTER IX Facing The Enemy

CHAPTER X A Daring Escape

CHAPTER XI Setting The Stage

CHAPTER XII The Battle