A moment later Ben Thurston was alone. Alone on Comanche Point—gazing over the broad sweep of lands that had been his princely heritage, but which he had now lost forever! The valley lay beneath him, bathed in the mellow evening sunshine. But his eyes were riveted on a single spot. And what a transformation scene for the erstwhile cattle king—this new city with its checkerboard of streets and all around it new homes amid plots of young fruit trees and meadows of alfalfa! The whole picture was one of fascinating beauty—the city itself the finishing touch that gave it human interest. But in Ben Thurston’s soul there was nothing but bitterness and disgust. He had kept on complaining that he had been unscrupulously plundered by the Los Angeles syndicate, and with the realization now of what enterprise and enlightened progress could achieve, he began to feel that he had been mercilessly stripped of what was rightfully his. Greed and envy and vain regrets were all commingled in his surge of envenomed thoughts. But avarice predominated. “Good God, to think I parted with the rancho at a beggarly acreage price, when I might have been selling town lots today. There will be a dozen other towns springing up to follow this one.” In his agony he groaned aloud and covered his eyes with his hands to shut out the hateful sight. Just at that moment the sound of a twig crackling underfoot smote his ear. He turned round; into his face stole an ashen look of terror as he watched an approaching figure wrapped in a Spanish cloak and crowned by a broad-brimmed sombrero. His haggard eyes asked: “Is it man or ghost?” He would have screamed aloud, but found himself voiceless from fear. At last the figure stood before him with proudly folded arms. “The White Wolf!” gasped Thurston, in a faint whisper. “Yes, Don Manuel de Valencia—the White Wolf, as you choose to call him. And now at last, Ben Thurston, we meet face to face, and alone—after thirty long years, and without a woman’s tears this time to save you!” Ben Thurston sank to the ground, a huddled heap, trembling in every limb. CHAPTER XXXVI—-Outwitted PIERRE LUZON led Leach Sharkey along the trail. Beyond Comanche Point it dipped again owing to the contour of the mountain, then at a distance of about fifty yards, took a sharp turn round an abrupt face of rock. “Where the hell are you taking me?” asked the sleuth, as they approached this bend. “Only a little further,” replied the guide, in a feeble quavering voice as he glanced over his shoulder. The men were only a few paces apart. In the shadow cast by the cliff, Pierre’s pallid face with its stubbly white beard looked like that of a veritable ancient, and his bent form and tottering steps completed the picture. The sleuth smiled at his momentary discomposure.