“Sanderson,” he said, gulping, “I’m sorry.”

“Sure,” returned the other.  “If I hadn’t wised up to that quite a spell ago, you’d be back on the trail, waitin’ for some coyote to come along an’ get his supper.”

They rode in silence for a long time.  They came to the gentle slope of the basin and began to climb it.

A dozen times Owen rode close to Sanderson, his lips trembling over unuttered words, but each time he dropped back without speaking.  His eyes, fixed worshipfully on the back of the big, silent man ahead of him, were glowing with anxiety and wonder.

In the ghostly darkness of the time before the gray forerunner of the dawn appears on the horizon they came in sight of the Double A ranchhouse.

Sanderson was still leading.  The ranchhouse burst upon his vision as his horse topped a rise that had obscured his view of the ranchhouse, and he saw it, clearly outlined.

Riding down the slope of the rise he smiled.  For there was a light in one of the ranchhouse windows.  Mary had left it burn on his account, he divined.

He halted and allowed Owen to come near him.

“Mary ain’t to hear about this deal tonight,” he told the little man.  “Not a peep—­understand?”

Without waiting for an answer he rode onward.

Thinking that, perhaps, in spite of the burning lamp Mary might be sleeping, Sanderson cautiously dismounted at the corral gates, and, leaving Owen to put his own horse away, he walked toward the house, stealthily, for he did not wish to awaken the girl.

Halfway across the ranchhouse yard, Sanderson saw a shadow cross the light in the window.  Again he grinned, thinking Mary had not gone to bed after all.

But, going forward more unconcernedly, Sanderson’s smile faded and was succeeded by a savage frown.  For in the shadow formed by the little “L” at the junction of the house and porch, he saw a horse saddled and bridled.

Suddenly alert, and yielding to the savage rage that gripped him, Sanderson stole softly forward and looked closely at the animal.  He recognized it instantly as Dale’s, and in the instant, his face pale, his eyes blazing with passion, he was on the porch, peering through one of the darkened windows.

Inside he saw Dale and Mary Bransford.  They were in the sitting-room.  Dale was sitting in a big chair, smoking a cigar, one arm carelessly thrown over the back of the chair, his legs crossed, his attitude that of the master.

Standing perhaps a dozen feet from him was Mary Bransford.

The girl’s eyes were wide with fright and astonishment, disbelief, incredulity—­and several other emotions that Sanderson could not analyze.  He did not try.  One look at her sufficed to tell him that Dale was baiting her, tantalizing her, mocking her, and Sanderson’s hatred for the man grew in intensity until it threatened to overwhelm him.

There was in his mind an impulse to burst into the house and kill Dale where he sat.  It was the primitive lust to destroy an unprincipled rival that had seized Sanderson, for he saw in Dale’s eyes the bold passion of the woman hunter.