Bannister nodded agreement. “He’s near the end of his rope. He could see that if he were blind. When we captured Bostwick and they got a confession out of him, that started the landslide against him. It began to be noised abroad that the government was going to wipe him out. Folks began to lose their terror of him, and after that his whole outfit began to want to turn State’s evidence. He isn’t sure of one of them now; can’t tell when he will be shot in the back by one of his own scoundrels for that two thousand dollars reward.” The foreman strolled negligently to the door. His eyes drifted indolently down into the valley, and immediately sparkled with excitement. “The signal’s out, Bann,” he exclaimed. “It’s in your window.” The sheepman leaped to his feet and strode to the door. Down in the valley a light was gleaming in a window. Even while he looked another light appeared in a second window. “She wants us both,” cried the foreman, running to the little corral back of the house. He presently reappeared with two horses, both saddled, and they took the downward trail at once. “If Miss Helen can keep him in play till we arrive,” murmured Mac anxiously. “She can if he gives her a chance, and I think he will. There’s a kind of cat instinct in him to play with his prey.” “Yes, but he missed his kill last time by letting her fool him. That’s what I’m afraid of’ that he won’t wait.” They had reached lower ground now, and could put their ponies at a pounding gallop that ate up the trail fast. As they approached the houses, both men drew rein and looked carefully to their weapons. Then they slid from the saddles and slipped noiselessly forward. What the foreman had said was exactly true. Helen Messiter did want them both, and she wanted them very much indeed. After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of Chopin’s waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she knew, and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the intruder. Without turning she called over her shoulder: “Shall I finish the waltz?” No faintest tremor in the clear, sweet voice betrayed the racing heart. “Y’u’re a cool hand, my friend,” came his ready answer. “But I think we’ll dispense with the music. I had enough last time to serve me for twice.” She laughed as she swung on the stool, with that musical scorn which both allured and maddened. “I did rather do you that time,” she allowed. “This is the return match. You won then. I win now,” he told her, with a look that chilled. “Indeed! But isn’t that rather discounting the future?” “Only the immediate future. Y’u’re mine, my beauty, and I mean to take y’u with me.”