As Justin rode away in an angry mood Lucy Davison looked at his receding figure with some degree of uneasiness. Justin had on a few occasions showed a decidedly inflammable temper. Ordinarily mild in word and manner, borrowing much of that mildness doubtless from Clayton, when he gave way to a sudden spasm of rage it was likely to carry him beyond the bounds of reason. The provocation came in a most unexpected, and at the time inexplicable, way. Justin, riding along the trail by the stream, saw Lucy come out from the shadows of the young cottonwoods near Sloan Jasper’s and walk in his direction, as if to join him. The sight of her there filled his sky with brightness and the music of singing birds. He pricked up his broncho and turned it from the trail. As he did so he beheld William Sanders appear round the end of the cottonwood grove, mounted on one of his big, raw-boned horses. Riding up to Lucy, Sanders slipped from his saddle and walked along by her side. Justin’s anger burned. It was apparent to him, great as was the separating distance, that Sanders’ presence and words were distasteful to her. She stopped and seemed about to turn back to the grove. Justin saw Sanders put out his hand as if to detain her. As he did so she stooped; then she screamed, and fell forward, apparently to avoid him. Justin drove his broncho from a trot into a wild gallop. His anger increased to smoking rage. It passed to ungovernable fury, when he beheld Sanders catch the screaming girl in his arms, lift her to the back of his horse, and scramble up behind her in the saddle. Justin yelled at him. “Stop—stop, you villain!” In utter disregard of him and his shouted command Sanders plunged his spurs into the flanks of his big horse, and began to ride away from the cottonwoods at top speed. Lucy lay limp in his arms. “I’ll have his life!” Justin cried, longing now for one of the cowboy revolvers he had made it a practice, on the advice of Clayton, never to carry; and he drove the broncho into furious pursuit of the big horse that was bearing Lucy and Sanders away. The light, clean-limbed broncho, unimpeded by a cumbersome double weight, began to gain in the mad race. Justin ploughed its sides mercilessly with the spurs, struck it with his hands, and yelled at it, to increase its speed. “Go, go!” he cried; “we must catch that scoundrel quick!” His line of action when that was accomplished was not formulated, further than that he knew he would hurl himself on Sanders, tear him from the saddle, and punish him as it seemed he deserved. Steadily the separating distance was decreased. Sanders still sent the big horse on, almost without a backward glance. He held Lucy tightly in his arms. Apparently she had fainted, for Justin could not observe that she struggled to release herself.