“My God!” cried the other, startled for once out of his calm.

The officer nodded.  “You’re on the trail right enough.  I wish we were both wrong, but we ain’t.”

“But surely she would have known he wasn’t her brother, surely—­”

The ranger shook his head.  “She hadn’t seen the black sheep since she was a kid of about seven.  How would she know what he looked like?  And Struve was primed with all the facts he had heard Kinney blat out time and again.  She wasn’t suspecting any imposition and he worked her to a fare-you-well.”

Larry Neill set his teeth on a wave of icy despair.

“And she’s in that devil’s power.  She would be as safe in a den of rattlers.  To think that I had my foot on his neck this mo’ning and didn’t break it.”

“She’s safe so long as she is necessary to him.  She’s in deadly peril as soon as he finds her one witness too many.  If he walks into my boys’ trap at the Arivaca cut-off, all right.  If not, God help her!  I’ve shut the door to Mexico and safety in his face.  He’ll strike back for the Mal Pais country.  It’s his one chance, and he’ll want to travel light and fast.”

“If he starts back Tom Long’s party may get him.”

“That’s one more chance for her, but it’s a slim one.  He’ll cut straight across country; they’re following the trail.  No, seh, our best bet is my rangers.  They’d ought to land him, too.”

“Oh, ought to,” derided the other impatiently.  “Point is, if they don’t.  How are we going to save her?  You know this country.  I don’t.”

“Don’t tear your shirt, amigo,” smiled the ranger.  “We’ll arrive faster if we don’t go off half-cocked.  Let’s picket the broncs, amble down to the spring, and smoke a cigaret.  We’ve got to ride twenty miles for fresh hawsses and these have got to have a little rest.”

They unsaddled and picketed, then strolled to the spring.

“I’ve been thinking that maybe we have made a mistake.  Isn’t it possible the man with Miss Kinney is not Struve?” asked Neill.

“That’s easy proved.  You saw him this mo’ning.”  The lieutenant went down into his pocket once more for a photograph.  “Does this favor the man with Miss Kinney?”

Under the blaze of another match, shielded by the ranger s hands, Larry looked into the scowling, villainous face he had seen earlier in the day.  There could be no mistaking those leering, cruel eyes nor the ratlike, shifty look of the face, not to mention the long scar across it.  His heart sank.

“It’s the man.”

“Don’t you blame yourself for not putting his lights out.  How could you tell who he was?”

“I knew he was a ruffian, hide and hair.”

“But you thought he was her brother and that’s a whole lot different.  What do you say to grubbing here?  We’ve got to go to the Halle ranch for hawsses and it’s a long jog.”

They lit a fire and over their coffee discussed plans.  In the midst of these the Southerner picked up idly a piece of wrapping-paper.  Upon it was pencilled a wavering scrawl: