He could have stalked the sand dunes from which the unknown bushwhacker had fired. There was cover of a sort up to the very base of the dunes. But the ambusher’s fire had been entirely too craftsmanlike, too nearly deadly, to make the prospect of scaling the low slope before him seem anything but the brief preliminary to a funeral. Ware’s Kid preferred to ride off with a whole skin and calculate upon another meeting under conditions more equal. They said of him, in the Rangers, that for a youngster no more than nineteen he had a mighty level head. A half-mile, perhaps, he galloped without turning. Then, reaching for the field glasses, he checked the stallion. Far behind him, a horseman streaked it eastward. The Ranger studied rider and brown horse through the glasses. “Mebbe he’s tall,” he grunted at last. “But--mebbe he’s just a-forkin’ a little pony.” * * * * * For ten miles he kept the stallion at a mile-eating running walk. He had never been at the O-Bar house, but he knew its location from hearsay, and so, when the black began climbing a steady incline, studded by boulders and covered with taller-than-ordinary mesquite, he nodded to himself. This was the way, all right. The stallion made the incline’s top and paused for a moment, expelling its breath in a great snort. At the sound, the flaxen-haired girl on the lookout rock turned sharply. She and Ware’s Kid stared, one at another, her great, dark eyes meeting his narrowed gaze levelly. “Howdy!” he drawled, after a--to him--long and uncomfortable silence. He was always ill at ease with women. They usually wanted a man to make some sort of damned fool of himself to suit a feminine whim. “Good morning,” she replied, still examining him calmly. “Trail to the O-Bar?” he grunted awkwardly, after another silence. “Yes. The house is a mile away. But there’s nobody there except the cook and his helper. Do you want to see my father, Sim Rutter?” Ware’s Kid stared. He recalled nothing about a daughter on the O-Bar. And that Simeon Rutter, huge, gaunt, black-haired, black-eyed, black-bearded, grim and taciturn, should have such a daughter as this slim, fair-skinned creature seemed somehow unbelievable. She seemed to read his thoughts. “I’ve been away at school--Las Cruces--convent, you know,” she enlightened. “But I’m not going back--I hope.” “Stay here, huh?” “I hope not! This is just as bad. Oh, I hate this bare, desolate country! Don’t you?” “Don’t know,” shrugged Ware’s Kid. He had never thought about the matter, one way or the other. “Don’t know--as I do.”