The girl’s white face was an eloquent sign of her conception of the danger that confronted her. But she spoke no word while packing her handbag. When she was ready she turned to the door, to confront Martha, who also carried a satchel. Together the two went out of the house, crossed the level surrounding it, and began to descend the long slope that led down into the mighty basin in which, some hours before, the girl had seen the pin-point of light glimmering across the sea of darkness toward her. And toward that light, as toward a beacon that promised a haven from a storm, she went, Martha following. From a window of the house a man watched them—Parsons—in the grip of a paralyzing terror, his pallid face pressed tightly against the glass of the window as he watched until he could see them no longer. CHAPTER XVII—THE WRONG ANKLE Bud Hemmingway, the tall, red-faced young puncher who had assisted Quinton Taylor in the sprained-ankle deception, saw the dawn breaking through one of the windows of the bunkhouse when he suddenly opened his eyes after dreaming of steaming flapjacks soaked in the sirup he liked best. He stretched out on his back in the wall-bunk and licked his lips. “Lordy, I’m hungry!” But he decided to rest for a few minutes while he considered the cook—away with the outfit to a distant corner of the range. He reflected bitterly that the cook was away most of the time, and that a man fared considerably better with the outfit than he did by staying at the home ranch. For one thing, when a man was with the outfit he got “grub,” without having to rustle it himself—that was why it was better to be with the outfit. “A man don’t git nothin’ to eat at all, scarcely—when he’s got to rustle his own grub,” mourned Bud. “He’s got the appetite, all right, but he don’t know how to rassle the ingredients which goes into good grub. Take them flapjacks, now.” (He licked his lips again.) “They’re scrumptuous. But that damned hyena which slings grub for the outfit won’t tell a man how he makes ’em, which greediness is goin’ to git him into a heap of trouble some day—when I git so hungry that I feel a heap reckless!” Bud watched the dawn broaden. He knew he ought to get up, for this was the day on which Marion Harlan was to visit the Arrow—and Taylor had warned him to be on hand early to bandage the ankle again—Taylor having decided that not enough time had elapsed to effect a cure. But Bud did not get up until a glowing shaft entering the window warned him that the sun was soon to appear above the horizon. Then he bounded out of the bunk and lurched heavily to an east window. What he saw when he looked out made him gasp for breath and hang hard to the window-sill, while his eyes bulged and widened with astonishment. For upon the porch of the ranchhouse—seated in the identical chairs in which they had sat during their previous visit, were Marion Harlan and the negro woman!