Judge Lindman shivered, though a merciless, blighting sun beat down on the great stone ledge that spread in front of the opening, smothering him with heat waves that eddied in and out, and though the interior of the low-ceilinged chamber pulsed with the fetid heat sucked in from the plains generations before. The adobe walls, gray-black in the subdued light, were dry as powder and crumbling in spots, the stone floor was exposed in many places; there was a strange, sickening odor, as though the naked, perspiring bodies of inhabitants in ages past had soaked the walls and floor with the man-scent, and intervening years of disuse had mingled their musty breath with it. But for the presence of the serene-faced, steady-eyed young man who leaned carelessly against the wall outside, whose shoulder and profile he could see, the Judge might have yielded completely to the overpowering conviction that he was dreaming, and that his adventures of the past twelve hours were horrors of his imagination. But he knew from the young man's presence at the door that his experience had been real enough, and the knowledge kept his brain out of the threatening chaos. Some time during the night he had awakened on his cot in the rear room of the courthouse to hear a cold, threatening voice warning him to silence. He had recognized the voice, as he had recognized it once before, under similar conditions. He had been gagged, his hands tied behind him. Then he had been lifted, carried outside, placed on the back of a horse, in front of his captor, and borne away in the darkness. They had ridden many miles before the horse came to a halt and he was lifted down. Then he had been forced to ascend a sharp slope; he could hear the horse clattering up behind them. But he had not been able to see anything in the darkness, though he felt he was walking along the edge of a cliff. The walk had ended abruptly, when his captor had forced him into his present quarters with a gruff admonition to sleep. Sleep had come hard, and he had done little of it, napping merely, sitting on the stone floor, his back against the wall, most of the time watching his captor. He had talked some, asking questions which his captor ignored. Then a period of oblivion had come, and he had awakened to the sunshine. For an hour he had sat where he was, looking out at his captor and blinking at the brilliant sunshine. But he had asked no questions since awakening, for he had become convinced of the meaning of all this. But he was intensely curious, now. "Where have you brought me?" he demanded of his jailor.