He came out again, and nervously paused on the threshold of the door to listen.

A sound reached his ears—­the heavy drumming of a horse’s hoofs on the hard sand in the vicinity of the ranchhouse; and Dale gulped down his fear as he ran to his horse, threw himself into the saddle and raced around a corner of the house.

He had hardly vanished into the gloom of the night when another rider burst into view.

The second rider was Sanderson.  He did not halt Streak at the door of the Bar D ranchhouse, for from a distance he had seen a man throw himself upon a horse and dash away, and he knew of no man in the basin, except Dale, who would find it necessary to run from his home in that fashion.

So he kept Streak in the dead run he had been in when approaching the house, and when he reached the corner around which Dale had vanished, he saw his man, two or three hundred yards ahead, flashing across a level toward the far side of the big basin.

He knew that Dale thought his pursuer was Nyland, and that thought gave Sanderson a grim joy.  In Sanderson’s mind was a picture of Dale’s face—­of the stark, naked astonishment that would be on it when he discovered that it was Sanderson and not Nyland who had caught him.

For Sanderson would catch him—­he was convinced of that.

The conviction became strengthened when, after half an hour’s run, Streak had pulled up on Dale.  Sanderson could see that Dale’s horse was running erratically; that it faltered on the slight rises that they came to now and then.  And when Sanderson discovered that Dale’s horse was failing, he urged Streak to a faster pace.  In an hour the space between the two riders had become less.  They were climbing the long, gradual slope that led upward out of the basin when Dale’s horse stumbled and fell, throwing Dale out of the saddle.

There was something horribly final in the manner of Dale’s falling, for he tumbled heavily and lay perfectly quiet afterward.  His horse, after rising, stumbled on a few steps and fell again.

Sanderson, fully alive to the danger of haste, rode slowly toward the fallen man.  He was taking no chances, for Dale might be shamming in an effort to shoot Sanderson as he came forward.

But Dale was not shamming.  Dismounting and drawing his pistol, Sanderson went forward.  Dale did not move, and when at last Sanderson stood over the fallen man he saw that his eyes were closed and that a great gash had been cut in his forehead near the right temple.

Sanderson saw that the man was badly hurt, but to make sure of him he drew Dale’s pistol from its sheath and searched his clothing for other weapons—­finding another pistol in a pocket, and a knife in a belt.  These he threw into some brush near by, and then he bent over the man.

Dale was unconscious, and despite all Sanderson could do, he remained so.

Sanderson examined the wound in his temple, and discovered that it was deep and ragged—­such a wound as a jagged stone might make.