She felt around her, and her hand came in contact with a cold, hard, yet yielding substance.  Then she heard the rumble of wheels, and knew that she was in a vehicle of some sort.  The motion of the couch on which she was lying was such that she came to the conclusion that she was in one of those old stagecoaches hung on leather springs, which were so much in use in the West before the advent of the railroads.

As her mind grew clearer she tried to remember all that had occurred.  Suddenly it flashed upon her.  The capture of old Norris, the attempt of Shan Rhue and his gang to take him away to lynch him, and the beginning of the fight.  How it had been finished she did not know.

Neither did she know whether or not she was in the care of her friends or in the custody of her enemies.  Probably the latter, for if Ted and the boys were taking her somewhere, surely she would have more attention, and the blood would have been washed from the wound on her forehead.

The curtains of the stage were down, and she did not know whether it was day or night.

Outside she heard the voices of men.

“Hurry up them mules, Bill,” a man’s voice came to her gruffly.

“Can’t get any more out o’ them.  We’ve come nigh twenty mile on the run.  I tell you, the mules is ’most all in,” said a man, evidently the driver of the stage.

“Well, we ain’t got much farther to go,” said the other.  “But we got to get there before moondown, er we’ll be up against it.”

“What time is the bunch goin’ to be at the lone tree?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Then we’ve got just about an hour, eh?”

“Just about.  But we’re a long ways off yet.  Git all y’u can out o’ them mules.  Kill ’em if y’u have to get them there on time.”

“They’re doin’ all they can.  Y’u don’t want me to kill them before we get there, do y’u?” asked the driver crossly.

“No, but if y’u miss the bunch y’u know what will happen.  Shan ain’t much on the sweet temper since the kid bumped him so hard, an’ he don’t like y’u too well, nohow.  I’m just givin’ y’u a friendly tip.”

“Keep it.  I ain’t so stuck on Shan myself as I used to be.”

“Only don’t let him know it.  We ain’t none of us in love with him, an’ yet we come up an’ eat out o’ his hand when he calls us, just like a lot o’ hound dogs.”

The conversation told Stella the truth she had dreaded.  She had been captured by Shan Rhue’s ruffians, and she knew that she was in a precarious predicament, for she could hope for no mercy from Ted’s merciless and beaten enemy.

She would be used to punish Ted, and she sighed at the thought of what grief her disappearance would cause her aunt and the boys.

Suddenly the curtain on the window was drawn aside.  It was bright moonlight without, and in it she saw the villainous face of a man looking in upon her.

Her eyes met his, and she uttered an exclamation.