The gate opened and Metcalf came in. He turned and carefully fastened the gate behind him. He was a third of the way across the corral when their eyes met. Then--with its serpent hiss of warning--the circling riata, snake-like, shot out, fastening its coils about him. And Topo, the little cow-horse trained to such work, wheeled at the touch of the spur as the turns of the rope fastened themselves about the horn of the saddle, and the man--furrowing the hoof-powdered dust of the corral--was dragged to the heels of the wild stallion. Lucas, glancing hastily at the face, earth-scraped and smeared and the full lips that were bleeding under their fringe of gold, saw that--though insensible for a moment from the quick jerk given the rope--the blue eyes of the man were opening. Lucas swung himself out of the saddle--leaving Topo to hold taut the riata. Then he began the work of binding the doomed Americano. When he had done, to the doubled rope of braided rawhide that was about the roan stallion, he made Carmelita’s lover fast with the riata he had taken from Nicolás. He removed it slowly from the man’s neck (the señor should not have his eyes closed too quickly to the valley through which he would pass!) and he put it about the body, under the arms. Lucas was lingering now over his work like one engaged in some pleasant occupation. The halter-rope was then unknotted, and the turns unwound from the center-post. Next, he pulled the crimson handkerchief from the horse’s eyes--shouted--and shook his hat at him! Maddened, terrified, and with the dragging thing at his heels, the four-footed fury fought man, and earth, and air about him like the very demon that he was till he came to the gate that Lucas had set wide for him, and he saw again the waves of sage and sand hills (little waves of sweet-scented sage) that rippled away to the mountains he knew. Out there was liberty; out there was the free life of old; and there he could get rid of the thing at his heels that--with all his kicking, and rearing, and plunging--still dragged at the end of the rope. Out through the wide set gate he passed, mad with an awful rage, and as with the wings of the wind. On, and on he swept; marking a trail through the sand with his burden. Faster and faster, and growing dim to the sight of the man who stood grim and motionless at the gate of the corral. Away! away to those far-lying mountains that are breakers on the beach of blue skyland! [Illustration] A SHEPHERD OF THE SILENT WASTES “To be hung. To be hung by the neck until dead.” Over and over I say it to myself as I sit here in my room in the hotel, trying to think connectedly of the events which have led to the culmination of this awful thing that, in so short a time, is to deprive me of life.