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Tom wondered why they were up so early at the ranch. It was about half past three when he came in sight of the house, with dawn yet two hours off, but there was light in the kitchen, the movement of somebody evident within. He felt a crinkling of anxiety, a creeping of foreboding. Eudora, he dreaded, had met with an accident. That was the first leap of his thought—to Eudora. The first kindling of his concern was for her, as a man thinks of his money and his precious things when he finds the tracks of vandals at his door.

With the scent of home in his nostrils the horse had gone ahead eagerly the last several miles. Now Tom urged it to greater effort, the sense of something wrong about the place coming out to him on the beam of that lonely light. This early rising could not be on his account, this watch could not be for him. He had not set any time for his return; they hardly would expect him back before the evening of the day just then on the distant verge of dawn.

Mrs. Ellison heard him ride in; she met him at the door with the disturbing news. Wade Harrison's gang had raided the place. They had come looking for him, slipping in so stealthily that old Shep, the shaggy, indolent household dog, had not even barked.

"Where's Eudora?" Tom inquired, his voice small in