Her words came cold and collected, expressing, together with her calm manner, perfect self-possession “If you can give any good reason why I should not kill you, I will let you go.”

The man was carefully drawing backward toward the tree against which he had placed his rifle.

She watched him, with a disconcerting smile.  “You may as well stop now,” she said, in those even, composed tones.  “I shall fire, the moment you are within reach of your gun.”

He halted with a gesture of despair; his face livid with fear at her apparent indecision as to his fate.

Presently, she spoke again.  “Don’t worry.  I’m not going to kill you—­unless you force me to—­which I assure you will not be at all difficult for you to do.  Move down the trail until I tell you to stop.”  She indicated the direction, along the ridge of the mountain spur.

He obeyed.

“That will do,” she said, when he was some twenty paces away.

He stopped, turning to face her again.

Picking up his Winchester, she skillfully and rapidly threw all of the shells out of the magazine.  Then, covering him again with her own weapon, she went a few steps closer and threw the empty rifle at his feet.  “Now,” she said, “put that gun over your left shoulder, and go on ahead of me down the trail.  If you try to dodge or run, or if you change the position of your rifle, I’ll kill you.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to take you down to your camp at Burnt Pine.”

James Rutlidge, pale with rage and shame, stood still.  “You may as well kill me,” he said.  “I will never go into camp, this way.”

“Don’t be uneasy,” she returned.  “I am no more anxious for the world to know of this, than you are.  Do as I say.  When we come within sight of your camp, or if we meet any one, I will put up my gun and we will go on together.  That’s why I am permitting you to carry your rifle.”

So they went down the mountainside—­the man with his empty rifle over his shoulder; the girl following, a few paces in the rear, with ready weapon.

When they had come within sight of the camp, James Rutlidge said, “There’s some one there.”

“I see,” returned Sibyl, slipping her gun in its holster and stepping forward beside her companion.  And there was a note of glad relief in her voice, for it was Brian Oakley who was bending over the camp-fire “Come,” she continued to her companion, “and act as though nothing had happened.”

The Ranger, on his way down from somewhere in the vicinity of San Gorgonio, had stopped at the hunters’ camp for a belated dinner.  Finding no one at home, he had started a fire, and had helped himself to coffee and bacon.  He was just concluding his appropriated meal, when Sibyl and James Rutlidge arrived.