sealed between them. Each of them was strangely taken with the other,
but it is not the way of the Anglo-Saxon fighting man to voice his
sentiment. Though each of them admired the stark courage and the
flawless fortitude he knew to dwell in the other, impassivity sat on
their faces like an ice-mask. For this is the hall-mark of the
Southwest, that a man must love and hate with the same unchanging face
of iron, save only when a woman is in consideration.

They were to camp that night by Cottonwood Spring, and darkness caught
them still some miles from their camp. They were on no road, but were
travelling across country through washes and over countless hills. The
ranger led the way, true as an arrow, even after velvet night had
enveloped them.

"It must be right over this mesa among the cottonwoods you see rising
from that arroyo," he announced at last.

He had scarcely spoken before they struck a trail that led them direct
to the spring. But as they were descending this in a circle Fraser's
horse shied.

"Hyer you, Pinto! What's the matter with--"

The ranger cut his sentence in two and slid from the saddle. When his
companion reached him and drew rein the ranger was bending over a dark
mass stretched across the trail. He looked up quietly.

"Man's body," he said briefly.

"Dead?"