herself down on the bunk in despair. As she lay there looking through a crack in the roof at the stars, she could hear the men swearing and still at their card game. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. The men were talking in English now, and she caught a word that caused her to listen breathlessly.

She heard the name of Mason and Bud spoken, and the conversation that followed caused her blood to run cold. It was a diabolical plot that they were planning to run Bud and his men into a trap carefully set for them. All of a sudden the talking ceased, and she heard one of the outlaws glide stealthily up to her shanty. Josephine’s heart almost stopped beating as she feigned sleep. The footsteps halted and she was conscious of eyes looking in on her through the one small window. After a brief moment, that seemed ages to the frightened girl, the footsteps softly retreated.

“She’s asleep,” she heard Powers say, after which they resumed their conversation.

The plot had been formed by Powers, and as he unfolded it word for word to the Mexican, Josephine could hardly keep herself from screaming. The plan was for Powers to take her away and force her to marry him. The halfbreed was to go with them, and as the two had a little money saved, they were to strike some town near the coast and start a gambling house.

First, Powers was to write a decoy note and the halfbreed was to take it to Ricker’s and get the Spanish girl Waneda to deliver it.

The note was to be addressed to Mason and worded in such a way as to make him think it was written by the Spanish girl herself. The note was to state that Waneda had discovered Josephine’s captors’ place of concealment, and wishing to repay him for his kindness to her when he had protected her from the halfbreed, she had hastened to him at once with the information. It was to be a clever forgery by Powers, using Waneda as the innocent tool.

Powers figured by the time that Waneda got the note to Bar X ranch, the cowboys would have become frantic in their failure to find Josephine, and would fall easy prey to the trap set for them.

Waneda after delivering the note was to ride back at once to Ricker’s.

Waneda was to be especially instructed not to deliver the note to Mason, but to give it to one of the cowboys, the plan being to let her get away before Mason could question her. The note was to state that Bud and his men were to go to Devil’s Gap and they 

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