Quick as thought every Thug turned his face upward, for the voice had come from the star-kissing cliffs overhead. The next instant a wild cry leaped from the throats of all, and the Thugs dodged shudderingly. As for Tom Terror, he fairly shrieked as he ducked his unhandsome head, and the next second a stone which would have crushed a giant grazed his hat and was shivered on the bed of the canyon. “Great Jove! missed by a hair!” gasped the Tiger, and the spurring that he administered to his horse carried him many rods from the almost fatal spot. Then, white-faced and gasping, he drew rein, and looked up at the cliffs overhead. “It warn’t the boy,” he said. “The voice didn’t sound like a human one. I’d call it a speerit, if speerits could handle sich rocks as that. Whar ar’ the boys with the strings?” “Here, chief.” Tom Terror looked; his band actually surrounded him. “We must get away from here, for we can’t dodge sich bullets every time,” he said. “No, monsters! the time is near at hand when they will strike and kill.” “Great Jehosaphat!” ejaculated the Canyon Terror. “Thar’s vengeance and death in that voice. I recognize it now, though I only heard it once. It ar’ the voice of the girl who war with the boy last night--the girl what got the string.” The red Thugs did not answer; but their gaze wandered from their chief to the top of the canyon wall. * * * * * The horse that carried Old Jack from the spot where Tom Terror had sacrificed him to the deadly cords of his inhuman miscreants, dashed through the canyon at the top of his speed. Unconscious and bleeding the bonanza-hunter lay, corpse-like, on the strong neck underneath which his rough hands were tightly clasped. Out into the soft moonlight beyond the mouth of the gulch, went the animal with undiminished speed down the road to Custer until, having galloped through the woe-begone suburbs of the mining-town, he was checked by several iron hands before the hotel. Flecked with foam, wild-eyed and panting heavily, the steed elicited a thousand ejaculations of wonder and surprise. The excited men, a score of whom belonged to Maverick Joe’s Vigilantes, felt that the demons of Cut-throat had sent the horse on his awful gallop, and the marks of the cord, still visible on the driver’s neck, confirmed their belief. But what had taken Old Jack from the stage stables so soon after his arrival? They carried him into the bar-room and examined his wounds. They found a bullet-hole in the right breast and a furrow in his neck, as if the last pellet had actually cut the fatal string loose. Old Jack was subjected to some rough surgery, but it had the desired effect. He opened his eyes in the midst of the rough crowd burning to question him. “What took me to Cut-throat?” he said. “Mebbe I dropped a valuable package from the stage. Would ye believe thet?”