word came from Bud like a crack of a pistol. “I see that you and your men are itching for a fight. Steady! Take your hand away from your hip, Ricker, or I’ll bore you!”

Bud sat his horse facing Ricker. Both his hands were carelessly toying with his scarf knot, about breast high where the butt of a six-shooter protruded. It was a position feared by all his enemies.

Ricker laughed mirthlessly.

“Oh, well,” he said in a changed tone, “take a look around, but you won’t find the greaser here.”

Mason breathed a sigh of relief. The danger point seemed past for the moment. Bud left half of his men on guard in front of the house and made a careful search of the premises, but found no trace of the halfbreed.

“I suppose you are satisfied now,” Ricker sneered, as Bud gave the command for his men to leave.

“No, I’m not satisfied,” Bud answered him sharply. “I am certain the Mexican has visited you since yesterday. My men trailed him to Devil’s Gap and he was swinging in a circle towards your place when they lost his trail. That’s all I’ve got to say, but you’ll hear from me again.”

Bud gave a signal and the cowboys set a fast pace for home as the storm showed signs of breaking on them at any moment. Mason rode with Bud, and they kept up a conversation with difficulty amid flashes of lightning and the crash of thunder.

“Gee, this is some storm,” gasped Mason after an unusually bright flash of lightning, followed by a deluge of rain.

“Yes,” Bud roared in his ear to make himself heard, “we get them like this out here, but what I am sore about is that we didn’t get that greaser.”

Mason started to answer, but his words were drowned by the thunder. When the party finally arrived at the Bar X corral it was dark and lights were flashing in and out of the ranch house.

“Something must be wrong at the house,” Bud muttered as they hastily put their horses up.

As Bud and Mason started for the house, some one came towards them with a lantern. It proved to be Mrs. Walters, and she seemed to be in great distress.

“Oh, I am so frightened,” she cried, as she caught sight of them. “Josephine has disappeared. She went for a ride soon after you men left, and here it is nine o’clock and she 

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