Almost before she realized it the ordeal was over and her horse was
following its leader through a sparse grove of bull pine. The ascent
was still rather sharp, and the way strewn with boulders, and fallen
trees, but the awful precipice, with its sheer drop of many hundreds of
feet to the black rocks below, no longer yawned at her stirrup's edge,
and it was with a deep-drawn breath of relief that she allowed her eyes
once again to travel out over the vast sweep of waste toward the west
where the moon hung low and red above the distant rim of the bad lands.

The summit of Antelope Butte was, as the horse-thief had said, an ideal
camping place for any one who was "on the run." The edges of the
little plateau, which was roughly circular in form, rose on every side
to a height of thirty or forty feet, at some points in an easy slope,
and at others in a sheer rise of rock wall. The surface of the little
plane showed no trace of the black of the lava rock of the lower levels
but was of the character of the open bench and covered with buffalo
grass and bunch grass with here and there a sprinkling of prickly
pears. The four dismounted and, in the last light of the moon,
surveyed their surroundings.

"You make camp, Bat," ordered the Texan, "while me an' Win hunt up the
spring. He said it was on the east side where there was a lot of loose
rock along the edge of the bull pine. We'll make the camp there, too,
where the wood an' water will be handy."

Skirting the plateau, Tex led the way toward a point where a few
straggling pines showed gaunt and lean in the rapidly waning moonlight.

"It ought to be somewheres around here," he said, as he stopped to
examine the ground more closely. "He said you had to pile off the