“I thought of staying with Weber and Hankinson to-night,” he mused, “but I think it hardly prudent.  The rustlers may pay them a visit, and my presence will only make matters worse; and yet those fellows don’t want to start up a band of regulators who will shoot them down without mercy, and that’s just what will take place if they carry their outrages too far.”

“My death won’t bring the regulators into existence,” he grimly reflected, “for one man, more or less, doesn’t count; but there is much bitter feeling in the country.”

Once he thought he caught the sounds of horses’ feet on the prairie, and checked his mare to listen, but she gave no evidence of suspicion—­a thing she was sure to do, if the cause existed.

Sterry was so well satisfied by this fact that he did not dismount to test the matter as before.  He rode on, however, and held her down to a walk.

His eventless course had continued some minutes before a thought came to him of the direction he was following, with the possibility that he was wrong.

“I wonder if we are on the right track, Queenie?” he said, addressing his animal, as was his custom when they were alone.  “It would be strange if we didn’t drift away from our bearings.  Hello! that can’t be Dick Hawkridge’s ranch; we haven’t gone far enough for that; but what the mischief can it be, unless a fire that some one has started in the open?”

The starlike twinkle of a point of light suddenly shone out directly in advance.  It puzzled him by appearing only for a moment, when it vanished as quickly as it entered his field of vision.

This fact suggested that it was within some dwelling and had been extinguished, or was shut from sight by being moved past a window or open door to another point in the interior.

“We are so near, Queenie, we may as well go farther,” he added, not unmindful of his danger from those who were making such a hot search for him.  He kept his horse on a walk, maintaining a keen watch between the dainty ears that were already pricked up as if she knew something was likely to happen quite soon.

Advancing in this deliberate fashion, the outline of one of those long, low wooden structures so common in the West was gradually defied in the moonlight, and he knew he was approaching the home of some ranchman.

But whose? was the question that perplexed him.  He recalled that some of his travelling had been done at a high rate of speed, but the distance between the Whitney and Hawkridge ranches was fully a dozen miles, and he was sure that that space had not been covered by him since bidding his friends good-by earlier in the evening, especially as he had not followed a direct course.

“Can it be?” he exclaimed, with a sudden suspicion.  “Yes, by gracious!  What a blunder!”

The exclamation was caused by the sight of a young man, with one arm in a sling, who came forward to welcome him.