"I have no papers of the kind you think I have, as you can readily determine by searching me," he said. "My name is Blount, and I am the son of ex-Senator David Blount, of this State. Now what are you going to do with me?" "What's that you say?" grated the outlaw. "You heard what I said. Go ahead and heave me into the canyon if you are willing to stand for it afterward." The hard-faced man turned without replying and went back to the other two at the fire. Blount caught only a word now and again of the low-toned, wrangling argument that followed. But from the overheard word or two he gathered that there were still some leanings toward the sound old maxim which declares that "dead men tell no tales." When the decision was finally reached, he was left to guess its purport. Without any explanation the thongs were taken from his wrists and ankles, and he was helped upon his horse. After his captors were mounted, the new status was defined by the spokesman in curt phrase. "You go along quiet with us, and you don't make no bad breaks, see? I more'n half believe you been lyin' to me, but I'm goin' to give you a chance to prove up. If you don't prove up, you pass out--that's all. Now git in line and hike out; and if you're countin' on makin' a break, jest ricollect that a chunk o' lead out of a Winchester kin travel a heap faster thern your cayuse." If Blount had not already lost all sense of familiarity with his surroundings, the devious mountain trail taken by his captors would soon have convinced him that the boyhood memories were no longer to be trusted. Up and down, the trail zigzagged and climbed, always penetrating deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountains. At times Blount lost even the sense of direction; lost it so completely that the high-riding moon seemed to be in the wrong quarter of the heavens. For the first few miles the trail was so difficult that speed was out of the question; but later, in crossing a high-lying valley, the horses were pushed. Beyond the valley there were more mountains, and half-way through this second range the trail plunged into a deep, cleft-like canyon with a brawling torrent for its pathfinder. Once more Blount lost the sense of direction, and when the canyon trail came out upon broad uplands and became a country road with bordering ranches watered by irrigation canals, into which the mountain torrent was diverted, there were no recognizable landmarks to tell him whither his captors were leading him. As he was able to determine by holding his watch, face up, to the moonlight, it was nearly midnight when the silent cavalcade of four turned aside from the main road into an avenue of spreading cottonwood trees. At its head the avenue became a circular driveway; and fronting the driveway a stately house, with a massive Georgian facade and colonnaded portico, flung its shadow across the white gravel of the carriage approach.