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Ellen Jorth would be with them Jean had seen her It had been his shot that killed Colter's horse And he had withheld further fire because Colter had dragged the girl behind hi his body with hers Sooner or later Jean would coht of her dark beauty, wasted in wantonness upon these rustlers, added a deadly rage to the blood lust and righteous wrath of his vengeance Let her again flaunt her degradation in his face and, by the God she had forsaken, he would kill her, and so end the race of Jorths!

Another night fell, dark and cold, without starlight The wind moaned in the forest Shepp was restless He sniffed the air There was a step on his trail Again a ry wolf cry broke the silence It was deep and low, like that of a baying hound, but infinitely wilder Shepp strained to get away During the night, while Jean slept, he ed to chew the cowhide leash apart and run off

Next day no dog was needed to trail Queen Fog and low-drifting clouds in the forest and a s He was lost, and showed that he realized it Strange how a hter of a hundred battles, steeped in bloodshed, and on his last stand, should grow panic-stricken upon being lost! So Jean Isbel read the signs of the trail

Queen circled and wandered through the foggy, dripping forest until he headed down into a canyon It was one that notched the Rim and led down and down, mile after mile into the Basin Not soon had Queen discovered his ht overtook hiht the sun burst out of the east to flood that low basin land with light Jean found that Queen had traveled on and on, hoping, no doubt, to regain what he had lost But in the darkness he had climbed to the manzanita slopes instead of back up the canyon And here he had fought the hold of that strange brush of Spanish name until he fell exhausted

Surely Queen would make his stand and wait somewhere in this devilish thicket for Jean to catch up with him Many and many a place Jean would have chosen had he been in Queen's place Many a rock and dense thicket Jean circled or approached with extrerew in patches that were impenetrable except for a sh that Jean could not look over it, and of a beautiful appearance, having glossy, solden berry, and branches of dark-red color These branches were tough and unbendable Every bush, almost, had low branches that were dead, hard as steel, sharp as thorns, as clutching as cactus Progress was possible only by endless detours to find the half-closed aisles between patches, or else by crashing through with ht over the tops Jean preferred this last method, not because it was the easiest, but for the reason that he could see ahead so much farther So he literally walked across the tips of the ain;him down; but for the most part he stepped from fork to fork, on branch after branch, with balance of an Indian and the patience of aand immutable