In the brief half hour that was occupied by Ike Bray in making the last lap of his trip Mary lived in an agony of fear. He came up slowly, using such violent language as she had never heard before; and, combined with the curses that he called down on the guards, was the demand for drink, and more drink. As she crouched behind a boulder that stood on the rim she bit her lips with shame and the hot rush of anger at his obscene revilings made her reconciled to killing him, if she must. He was lower than the lowest of created animals, a vile, degenerate beast; and as he struggled to the top and made for the monument his curses were directed against Rimrock. "I'll show him!" he vaunted as he swayed before the sign, "I'll show him if Ike Bray's afraid. He can run a blazer over lawyers and women; but me--hey, tear off this notice!" There was a minute of fumbling and then, as she gazed out at them, the taller guard spoke up. "It's stuck," he said, "tighter than the back door of hell. Let it go and nail yours on top. Holy Smoke, if I'd knowed what a job this was--here, what are you doing now? Aw, give me that notice! Now where's your tacks? Say, Hank, pull him back from that hole!" The sound of hammering came to her ears, half-drowned by a drunken brawl, and then there was a horror-stricken yell. "He's fell down the hole! Are you hurt bad, Ike?" The answer was a muffled curse, and both guards hurried to the shaft. With a prayer on her lips Mary crept from her shelter, then crouched and ran for the trail. She saw them leaning over the shaft and heard them bandying oaths and then she had gained the path. "What's that?" cried one as she knocked a stone from the wall, and as it clattered she went dashing down the trail. She fell and lay breathless, listening dully for their footsteps, then rose up and went limping on. She paused for strength far down the path, where it swings along the wall, and her heart beat loud in her breast. They were still on the cliff-tops, still cursing and quarrelling and poisoning the clean silence with their words--but she had located first! The day was breaking when, lost and wandering, she found her machine on the plain, but as it took the smooth road and went gliding towards Geronimo she smiled with a great sense of power. It was not alone that she controlled that throbbing engine, which made the car pulsate and thrill; she had a handle that would make two men she knew bow down and ask her for peace--Rimrock Jones and Whitney Stoddard. She appeared the next morning at the Recorder's office with a copy of her notice for record. Her torn clothes were concealed beneath a full cloak and her hands within automobile gloves; but the clerk, even in the rush of New Year recording, glanced curiously at a bruise across her forehead. Then he filed her claim with a hundred others and she slipped out and drove away.