"Cyclone nothing!" he yelled. "It's a cloud-burst! Stay where you are, for your life, Miss Myra!" Even as he spoke the roar deepened until the vibration of it shook the solid earth, and a dark mass of water, turbid and débris-laden, shot from the head of the gulch and swept down the ravine. Bartrow lived an anguished lifetime in an instant of hesitation. To save the woman he loved was to sacrifice Constance. To help Connie first was to take the desperate chance that Myra would be safe till he could reach her. There was no time for the nice weighing of possibilities; and Richard Bartrow was a man of action before all else. Winding an arm about Constance, he dashed out of the ravine with her, getting back to Myra three seconds in advance of the boulder-laden flood. There was time enough, but none to spare. A tree gave him an anchorage on the bank above her; she sprang toward him at the word of command; and he plucked her up out of the reach of the foaming torrent which snapped at her and overturned the great rock upon which she had been standing. After which narrow escape they sat together on the slope of safety and watched the subsiding flood, laughing over the "stampede," as Connie called it, with all the reckless hardihood of youth and good spirits. "I wouldn't have missed seeing it for anything in the world," declared the enthusiast. "I had plenty of time to get out of the way, but I couldn't help waiting to see how it would look, coming over that last cliff up there." "Dick didn't give me a chance to see anything," Connie complained. "He whisked me out of the way as if I'd been a naughty little girl caught playing with the fire." Bartrow examined the field-glass to see if it had suffered in the scramble. It was unbroken, and he put it back into the case with a sigh of relief. "If you two had smashed that glass between you, I don't know what I should have done," he said; whereat they all laughed again and took up the line of march for the mine. That evening, after supper, the four of them were on the porch of the three-roomed cabin, enjoying the sunset. Constance had spoken to her father about the return to Denver, and Stephen Elliott was racking his brain for some excuse reasonable enough to satisfy Bartrow, when a man came up the trail from the direction of Alta Vista. It was Bryant, the station agent; and he was the bearer of a telegram addressed to Constance. She read it and gave it to Bartrow. The operator had taken it literally, and it was a small study in phonetics. "Shees gaun an got inter trubbel. P. Grims swipt her masheen. Wot shel I do. "T. REAGAN." Bartrow smiled and handed the message back. "That's Tommie, I take it. What's it about?" "It's a young woman I've been trying to help. They are persecuting her again, and I'll have to go back as quickly as I can."