"I'm sorry. I did my best to go carefully," the girl answered, stepping forward. His hand shot forward and caught her wrist Her startled eyes flashed to his face. The man was the convict Blackwell. "Got anything to eat with you. I'm starving," he snapped. "Yes. I shot some quail Let go my hand." He laughed evilly, without mirth. "Don't try any of your sassy ways on me. By God, I'm a wolf on the howl." In spite of her supple slenderness there was strength in her small wrists. She fought and twisted till she was worn out in her efforts to free herself. Panting, she faced him. "Let me go, I tell you." For answer his open hand struck her mouth. "Not till you learn your boss. Before I'm through with you a squaw won't be half so tame as you." He dragged her to the horse, took from its case the rifle that hung by the saddle, and flung her from him roughly. Then he pulled himself to the saddle. "March ahead of me," he ordered. As soon as they had reached the bed of the cañon lie called a halt and bade her light a fire and cook him the quail. She gathered ironwood and catclaw while he watched her vigilantly. Together they roasted the birds by holding them over the fire with sharpened sticks thrust through the wings. He devoured them with the voracity of a wild beast. Hitherto his mind had been busy with the immediate present, but now his furtive shifting gaze rested on her more thoughtfully. It was as a factor of his safety that he considered her. Gratitude was a feeling not within his scope. The man's mind worked just as Fendrick had surmised. He would not let her go back to the ranch with the news that he was hidden in the hills so close at hand. He dared not leave her in the prospect hole. He was not yet ready to do murder for fear of punishment. That was a possibility to be considered only if he should be hard pressed. The only alternative left him was to take her to the border as a companion of his fugitive doublings. "We'll be going now," he announced, after he had eaten. "Going where? Don't you see I'll be a drag to you? Take my horse and go. You'll get along faster." "Do you think so?" She opened her lips to answer, but there was something in his face--something at once so cruel and deadly and wolfish--that made the words die on her lips. For the first time it came to her that if he did not take her with him he would kill her to insure his own safety. None of the arguments that would have availed with another man were of any weight here. Her sex, her youth, the service she had done him--these would not count a straw. He was lost to all the instincts of honor that govern even hard desperate men of his class.