“No, I tell you,” was the firm reply.  Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when the Ranchero began to pull down upon the lasso, and Frank, in spite of his desperate struggles, was drawn up until he almost swung clear of the floor.  Pierre held him in this position for a few seconds—­it seemed an age to Frank, who retained his consciousness all the while—­and then gradually slackened up on the lasso, until his prisoner’s feet once more rested firmly on the floor.  Frank reeled a moment like a drunken man, gazed about him with a bewildered air, and attempted to raise his hands to his throat, while the Ranchero stood watching him with a smile of triumph.

“I have given you one more chance,” said he.  “Have you come to your senses yet.”

Frank tried in vain to reply.  The choking he had endured had deprived him of his power of utterance, but it had not affected his courage or his determination.  There was not the least sign of yielding about him.

Pierre had thus far conducted his operations with the most business-like coolness, and in much the same spirit that he would have exhibited had he been breaking one of Mr. Winters’s wild horses to the saddle.  He had smiled at times, as he would have smiled at the efforts of the horse to escape, and the thought that he should fail in his object had never entered his head.  He had been certain that he could frighten or torture Frank into revealing the hiding-place of the office key; but now he began to believe that he had reckoned without his host.  He was astonished and enraged at the wonderful firmness displayed by his prisoner.  He had never imagined that this sixteen-year-old boy would prove an obstacle too great to be overcome.

“You are the most obstinate colt I ever tried to manage,” said Pierre, in a voice choked with passion; “but I’ll break one of two things—­your spirit or your neck; it makes no difference to me which.”

Without waiting to give his prisoner time to recover his power of speech, the Ranchero wound the lariat around his hands, and was about to pull him up again, when he was startled by the clatter of a horse’s hoofs in the court.

The sound worked a great change in Pierre.  As if by magic, the savage scowl faded from his face, and he stood for an instant the very picture of terror.  All thoughts of the twelve thousand dollars, and the vengeance he had determined to wreak upon his prisoner, were banished from his mind, and gave place to the desire to escape from the house as secretly and speedily as possible.

“Who can that be?” he muttered, dropping the lasso, and throwing a frightened glance ever his shoulder toward the door.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Frank, speaking with the greatest difficulty; “and I don’t care who it is, if he will only make a prisoner of you.”

The Ranchero scowled fiercely upon his plucky captive, hesitated a moment, as if he had half a mind to be revenged upon him before he left the house, and then, catching up his knife, and extinguishing the lamp, he jerked open one of the windows, and disappeared in the darkness.