Now she must stand motionless while every fibre of her being demanded action; now she must curb impetuosity to the call of caution.  As the seconds passed, all but insupportable in their tedious slowness, she stood rigid and tense, waiting.  But soon she knew that the drug had had its will with him, that he was steeped in deep sleep, that no longer must she wait, that now at length she might act.

Carrying her saddle-blanket she came to him and stood quietly looking down into his upturned face.  At last she could let the tears burst into her eyes unchecked, now she could suddenly go down on her knees beside him, for an instant laying her cheek lightly against his in the first caress.  Would it be the last?  He stirred a little and sighed again.  She drew back, still upon her knees again breathlessly rigid.  But his stupor clung heavily to him, and she knew that it would hold him thus for hours.

A score of burning questions clamoring in her mind she disposed of briefly, since time was of the essence.

“If I let you have your way, Rod Norton,” she whispered, “you will go on from crime to tragedy.  If I hand you over to the law, I will be betraying you for no end; for your type of man finds the way to break jail and so force his own hand to further violence.  There is the one way out. . . .  And God help me to succeed.  God forgive me if I fail!”

She stole by him and stepped upon the outer ledge.  She was leaving him helpless . . . the thought presented itself that she would have another thing to answer for if one of the many men with such cause to hate him should come upon him thus.  Well, that was but one of the more remote chances she must take.  There was scant enough likelihood that any one should come here before she could race into Las Estrellas and back.

Then it was that she saw Patten.  She did not know at first that it was Patten, but just that within a few feet of her upon the ledge which she must travel to the steps a man was standing, his body jerking back, pressed against the rocks as he saw her.  She drew back swiftly, her blood in riotous tumult.

But now, above aught else, the one thought in her mind was that there was no time for loitering, that the dawn would come all too soon, that there must be no delay.  She stooped quickly and drew from its holster Norton’s heavy revolver.  Her saddle-blanket over her left arm, the gun gripped in her right hand, she was once more upon the ledge, moving cautiously toward the figure seen a moment ago, gone now.

That it was Patten she knew only when she had gone down the steps and had overtaken him there.  Retreating thus far, reassured when he had made out that it was the girl alone, he waited for her.  And as she demanded nervously, “Who is it?” it was Patten’s disagreeable laugh which answered her.

“So,” he jeered at her, “this is the sort of thing you do when you are supposed to be out on a case all night!”