“You make love in a most peculiar way,” Sybil replied, with a smile that made the villain grit his teeth. “Until to-day I was scarcely aware that you existed. But your stupendous insolence has forced you upon my notice. Be kind enough to remove your hand from the bridle. If you were a gentleman, I would not have to ask twice.” With an oath, Frams let his hand fall to his side. As the girl rode on, he shook his fist at her and said loud enough for her to hear: “Go on, but don’t think you have done with me. A day of reckoning is coming.” On her return to the ranch house, Sybil did not mention her meeting with Edward Frams. She believed that the incident was closed, and that the cowboy would in future keep his distance. She was not ill pleased when at night Frams threw up his job, received his money, mounted his pony, and rode away, declaring that he was going back to Mexico. Two nights afterward, Sybil, who slept in a room on the first floor, with window opening on the long veranda, was awakened from a sound sleep by a noise near her couch. Before she could cry out, a handkerchief, saturated with chloroform, was pressed against her nostrils, and her senses left her. When she returned to consciousness, she found herself strapped to the back of a horse. It was still dark, and the horse was going at a gallop along the trail toward the mountains. In front was another horse, and upon its back, a cruel smile upon his dark face, was Edward Frams, the cowboy. The next day the news of the abduction reached Colonel Hayden. Well-nigh distracted, he reached the ranch at the earliest possible moment, and learned that several parties were out in pursuit of the abductor. The animal Frams bestrode had peculiar hoof marks, and several of the cowboys at once recognized them. A week went by and there was no report from any one of the pursuing parties. Colonel Hayden had come too late to hope to overtake the men who had gone on the trail of Frams, and so he remained at the ranch in an agony of suspense. While awaiting news, he telegraphed a description of the abductor to the officers of all the towns, north, south, and west, and after the lapse of several days received a letter from the Denver chief of police, stating that the description fitted one of the most daring and conscienceless scoundrels in the West, one whose whereabouts had been unknown for many years. He had been the leader of a gang of outlaws whose range of operations extended from Mexico to Dakota. Five years before the gang had been broken up, but Black-face Ned and three of his men had escaped and gone south toward Mexico. This intelligence increased Colonel Hayden’s alarm. He chafed at the suspense, and would have taken the field himself if the members of one of the pursuing parties had not returned ten days after setting out. The leader reported that the trail had been followed into Colorado, and there lost.