"The horse is ready, Señor Americano," she told him. "It remains only for me to tell the boy that you have promised to return." Sure enough, pawing the gravel in front of the house, half jerking off his feet the _mestizo_ holding it, was a tall, rangy sorrel horse looking as fine an animal as any man in a hurry could wish. "Señor Kendric will ride, Pedro," called Juanita. "Give him the horse." Pedro gave the reins over to Kendric and turned away toward the stables. Kendric swung up into the saddle and for a moment curbed the big sorrel's dash toward the gates, to say meditatively to Juanita: "If I took that paper away from you and made a run for it, what then?" A look of fear leaped into the girl's dark eyes and she drew hastily back, clutching the paper to her breast. "Señor!" she cried, breathless and aghast. "You would not! She--she would kill me!" "She would _what_?" he scowled. "She would give me to her cat, her terrible, terrible cat, to play with!" Juanita shivered, and drew still further back. "With my life I must guard this paper until it goes from my hand into her hand." He laughed his disbelief and gave his horse his head at last. They shot away through the shrubberry; the horse slid to a standstill before the closed gate. Of the man smoking a cigaret before it Kendric said curtly: "You are to let me through. And direct me to Bruce West's ranch." "Si, señor." The man opened the gate. "It is yonder; up the valley. The trail will carry you up over the mountain; there are piled stones to mark the way to the pass. In an hour, from the other side of the ridge, you will see houses. Ten miles from there." Kendric rode through and as he did so his figure straightened in the saddle, his shoulders squared, he put up his head. Free and in the open, if only for twenty-four hours. And with a horse, a real horse, between his knees. He looked off to the left to Barlow's three peaks; the sun was gilding the top of the tallest and it was unquestionable that it was flat-topped. But he did not dwell long upon buried gold nor yet on the query which suggested itself: "Where were Barlow and Zoraida riding so early?" The immediate present and the immediate surroundings were all that he cared to interest himself in on a day like this. The man at the gate had said it was ten miles from the far side of the ridge to the Bruce West ranch house; the entire distance, therefore, from the Hacienda Montezuma would be about double that distance. The trail, once he reached the hills, was a dilatory, leisurely affair, thoroughly Mexican; it sought out the gentlest slope always and appeared in no haste to arrive anywhere. Well, his mood could be made to suit the trail's; he was in no hurry, having all day for his talk with young West.