with twitching lips as though, with no will to take up the trail again, it sought to deceive its master into thinking that it was still drinking.  The man yawned and his drowsy eyes came away from the wood-topped hills before him to the moist earth under foot.  For the moment they did not seem the eyes of the Buck Thornton who had ridden to the bank in Dry Town a little before noon, but were gentle and dreamily meditative with all of the earlier sharp alertness gone.  And then suddenly there came into them a quick change, a keen brightness, as he jerked his head forward and stared down at the ground at his feet.

“Now what is she doing out this way?” he asked himself aloud.  “And where is she going?”

Though the soil was cut and beaten with the sharp hoofs of the many cattle that had drunk here earlier in the day, it was not so rough that it hid the thing which the quick eyes of the cattle man found and understood.  There, close to the water’s edge and almost under his own horse’s body, were the tracks a shod horse had left not very long ago.  The spring water was still trickling into one of them.  There, too, a little to the side was the imprint of the foot of the rider who had gotten down to drink from the same stream, the mark of a tiny, high heeled boot.

“It might be some other girl,” he told himself by way of answer to his own question.  “And it might be a Mex with a proud, blue-blooded foot.  But,” and he leaned further forward studying the foot print, “it’s a mighty good bet I could tell what she looks like from the shape of her head to the colour of her eyes!  Now, what do you suppose she’s tackling?  Something that Mr. Templeton says is plumb foolish and full of danger?”

He slipped the bit back into his horse’s mouth and swung up into the saddle.

“She didn’t come out the way I came,” he reflected as for a moment he sat still, looking down at the medley of tracks.  “I’d have seen her horse’s tracks.  She must have made a big curve somewhere.  I wonder what for?”

Then slowly the gravity left his eyes and a slow smile came into them.  He surprised his horse with a touch of the spurs.

“Get into it, you long-legged wooden horse, you!” he chuckled.  “We’ve got something to ride for now!  We’re going to see Miss Grey Eyes again.  There’s something besides stick-up men worth a man’s thinking about, little horse!”

He reined back into the trail, rode through the little valley, climbed the ridge beyond and so pushed on deeper and ever deeper into the long sweep of flat country upon the other side.  Often his eyes ran far ahead, seeking swiftly for the slender figure he constantly expected to see riding eastward before him; often they dropped to the trail underfoot to see that her horse’s tracks had not turned to right or left should she leave this main horseman’s highway for some one of the countless cross trails.

The afternoon wore on, the miles dropped away behind him; and he came to the end of the flat country and again was in low rolling hills.  Her horse’s tracks were there always before him, and yet he had had no sight of any rider that day since leaving the county road.  Again much gravity came back into his eyes.