“Val Collins is his name,” said the major. “Sometimes called ‘Bear-trap Collins.’ He has always lived on the frontier. At least, I met him twelve years ago when he was riding mail between Aravaipa and Mesa. He was a boy then, certainly not over eighteen, but in a desperate fight he had killed two men who tried to hold up the mail. Cow-puncher, stage-driver, miner, trapper, sheriff, rough rider, politician—he’s past master at them all.” “And why the appellation of ‘Bear-trap,’ may I ask?” The smack of pulpit oratory was not often missing in the edifying discourse of the Reverend Peter Melancthon Brooks. “Well, sir, that’s a story. He was trapping in the Tetons about five years ago thirty miles from the nearest ranch-house. One day, while he was setting a bear-trap, a slide of snow plunged down from the tree branches above and freed the spring, catching his hand between its jaws. With his feet and his other hand he tried to open that trap for four hours, without the slightest success. There was not one chance in a million of help from outside. In point of fact, Collins had not seen a human being for a month. There was only one thing to do, and he did it.” “And that was?” “You probably noticed that he wears a glove over his left hand. The reason, sir, is that he has an artificial hand.” “You mean—” The Reverend Peter paused to lengthen his delicious thrill of horror. “Yes, sir. That’s just what I mean. He hacked his hand off at the wrist with his hunting-knife.” “Why, the man’s a hero!” cried the clergyman, with unction. Mackenzie flung him a disgusted look. “We don’t go much on heroes out here. He’s game, if that’s what you mean. And able, too. Bucky O’Connor himself isn’t any smarter at following a trail.” “And who is Bucky O’Connor?” “He’s the man that just ran down Fernendez. Think I’ll have a smoke, sir. Care to join me?” But the Pekin-Bostonian preferred to stay and jot down in his note-book the story of the bear-trap, to be used later as a sermon illustration. This may have been the reason he did not catch the quick look that passed without the slightest flicker of the eyelids between Major Mackenzie and the young woman in Section 3. It was as if the old officer had wired her a message in some code the cipher of which was known only to them. But the sheriff, returning at the head of his cohorts, caught it, and wondered what meaning might lie back of that swift glance. Major Mackenzie and this dark-eyed beauty posed before others as strangers, yet between them lay some freemasonry of understanding to which he had not the key. Collins did not know that the aloofness in the eyes of Miss Wainwright—he had seen the name on her suit-case—gave way to horror when her glance fell on his gloved hand. She had a swift, shuddering vision of a grim-faced man, jaws set like a vise, hacking at his wrist with a hunting-knife. But the engaging impudence of his eye, the rollicking laughter in his voice, shut out the picture instantly.