Upon the veranda of the ranchhouse Barbara Harding came to a sudden halt.  Her entire manner indicated final decision, and determination.  A moment she stood in thought and then ran quickly down the steps and in the direction of the office.  Here she found Eddie dozing at his post.  She did not disturb him.  A glance through the window satisfied her that he was alone with the prisoner.  From the office building Barbara passed on to the corral.  A few horses stood within the enclosure, their heads drooping dejectedly.  As she entered they raised their muzzles and sniffed suspiciously, ears a-cock, and as the girl approached closer to them they moved warily away, snorting, and passed around her to the opposite side of the corral.  As they moved by her she scrutinized them and her heart dropped, for Brazos was not among them.  He must have been turned out into the pasture.

She passed over to the bars that closed the opening from the corral into the pasture and wormed her way between two of them.  A hackamore with a piece of halter rope attached to it hung across the upper bar.  Taking it down she moved off across the pasture in the direction the saddle horses most often took when liberated from the corral.

If they had not crossed the river she felt that she might find and catch Brazos, for lumps of sugar and bits of bread had inspired in his equine soul a wondrous attachment for his temporary mistress.

Down the beaten trail the animals had made to the river the girl hurried, her eyes penetrating the darkness ahead and to either hand for the looming bulks that would be the horses she sought, and among which she might hope to discover the gentle little Brazos.

The nearer she came to the river the lower dropped her spirits, for as yet no sign of the animals was to be seen.  To have attempted to place a hackamore upon any of the wild creatures in the corral would have been the height of foolishness—­only a well-sped riata in the hands of a strong man could have captured one of these.

Closer and closer to the fringe of willows along the river she came, until, at their very edge, there broke upon her already taut nerves the hideous and uncanny scream of a wildcat.  The girl stopped short in her tracks.  She felt the chill of fear creep through her skin, and a twitching at the roots of her hair evidenced to her the extremity of her terror.  Should she turn back?  The horses might be between her and the river, but judgment told her that they had crossed.  Should she brave the nervous fright of a passage through that dark, forbidding labyrinth of gloom when she knew that she should not find the horses within reach beyond?

She turned to retrace her steps.  She must find another way!

But was there another way?  And “Tomorrow they will shoot him!” She shuddered, bit her lower lip in an effort to command her courage, and then, wheeling, plunged into the thicket.