Cavendish!  Her mind grasped clearly now the fact that the man was not dead.  It had not been his body found in the Waldron Apartments, but that of some other man substituted for purposes of crime.  Cavendish himself had been lured westward, waylaid in some manner and made prisoner, as she and Westcott had suspected.

Through the co-operation of Lacy he had been brought to this desert den, where he could be held indefinitely, with no chance of discovery—­killed if necessary.  She had heard of such places as this, read of them, yet never before had she realised the possibility of their real existence.  It all seemed more like a delirium of fever than an actual fact.  She rubbed her eyes, gazing about on the rock walls, scarcely sure she was actually awake.  Why, one might ride across that desert, and pass by within a hundred yards of its rim, and never even be aware of the existence of this sunken valley.  Perhaps not a dozen men outside this gang of outlaws had ever gazed down into its green depths, and possibly no others knew of that narrow, winding trail leading down to its level.  Yet these men must have made use of it for years, as a place to hide stolen cattle, and into which to retreat whenever pursuit became dangerous.

Those huts without were not newly built, and this underground cavern had been extended and changed by no small labour.  What deeds of violence must have happened here; what scenes of unbridled debauchery this desert rendezvous must have witnessed.  She shuddered at the thought, comprehending that these cells had never been chiselled without a purpose, and that she was utterly helpless in the hands of a band of thieves and cutthroats, to whom murder meant little enough, if it only served their ends.  Mendez, no doubt, was brute and monster, yet it was Juan Cateras whom she really feared—­he was cruel, slimy, seeking to hide his hatefulness behind that hideous smile; and he had already chosen her for his victim.  Who would save her—­Mendez?  Lacy?  God, she did not know:  and somehow neither of these was the name which arose to her lips, almost in the form of prayer; the name she whispered with a faint throb of hope in its utterance—­Jim Westcott.

The big miner was all she had to rely upon; he had been in her mind all through the long ride; he arose before her again now, and she welcomed the memory with a conscious throb of expectation.  Those people back there could not conceal for long her absence from him; if he lived he would surely seek her again.

Her womanly instinct had read the message in the man’s eyes; she was of interest to him, he cared; it was no mere ordinary friendliness which would bring him back; no! not even their mutual connection with the case of Frederick Cavendish.  Her eyes brightened, and a flush of colour crept into her cheeks.  She believed in him, in his courage—­he had appealed to her as a man.