Holderness again laughed harshly, and turning to the cabin, he fastened the door with a lasso.

It was a long time before Hare recovered from the starting revelation of the plot which had put Mescal into Holderness’s power.  Bad as Snap Naab had been he would have married her, and such a fate was infinitely preferable to the one that now menaced her.  Hare changed his position and settled himself to watch and wait out the night.  Every hour Holderness and his men tarried at Silver Cup hastened their approaching doom.  Hare’s strange prescience of the fatality that overshadowed these men had received its first verification in the sudden taking off of Snap Naab.  The deep-scheming Holderness, confident that his strong band meant sure protection, sat and smoked and smiled beside the camp-fire.  He had not caught even a hint of Snap Naab’s suggested warning.  Yet somewhere out on the oasis trail rode a man who, once turned from the saving of life to the lust to kill, would be as immutable as death itself.  Behind him waited a troop of Navajos, swift as eagles, merciless as wolves, desert warriors with the sunheated blood of generations in their veins.  As Hare waited and watched with all his inner being cold, he could almost feel pity for Holderness.  His doom was close.  Twice, when the rustler chief had sauntered nearer to the cabin door, as if to enter, Hare had covered him with the rifle, waiting, waiting for the step upon the threshold.  But Holderness always checked himself in time, and Hare’s finger eased its pressure upon the trigger.

The night closed in black; the clouded sky gave forth no starlight; the wind rose and moaned through the cedars.  One by one the rustlers rolled in their blankets and all dropped into slumber while the camp-fire slowly burned down.  The night hours wore on to the soft wail of the breeze and the wild notes of far-off trailing coyotes.

Hare, watching sleeplessly, saw one of the prone figures stir.  The man raised himself very cautiously; he glanced at his companions, and looked long at Holderness, who lay squarely in the dimming light.  Then he softly lowered himself.  Hare wondered what the rustler meant to do.  Presently he again lifted his head and turned it as if listening intently.  His companions were motionless in deep-breathing sleep.  Gently he slipped aside his blankets and began to rise.  He was slow and guarded of movement; it took him long to stand erect.  He stepped between the rustlers with stockinged feet which were as noiseless as an Indian’s, and he went toward the cabin door.

He softly edged round the sleeping Holderness, showing a glinting six-shooter in his hand.  Hare’s resolve to kill him before he reached the door was checked.  What did it mean, this rustler’s stealthy movements, his passing by Holderness with his drawn weapon!  Again doom hovered over the rustler chief.  If he stirred!—­Hare knew instantly that this softly stepping man was a Mormon; he was true to Snap Naab, to the woman pledged in his creed.  He meant to free Mescal.