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 they meant danger to her he was not so sure. The ways of men with men had always baffled him. Men whom he trusted associated with those he knew to be dangerous in the extreme. Of the way of men with women he knew nothing at all. Perhaps these men that meant death to him would not harm his lovely mistress in the least.

The sounds which he heard so clearly did not reach the girl until she rounded a sudden bend in the canyon. She heard a man’s laugh at the same instant that she saw the dim, wavering light of a fire gleaming through the fog. It appeared far off but was in reality only fifty feet. It meant but one thing to her. Kinney had come at last and some one else was with him.

In her relief at escaping the imaginary dangers of the night she hurried toward the very real one at the fire. The voices which covered the sound of her approach ceased suddenly as she appeared like a wraith out of the night. The group of half a dozen men around the fire stared incredulously. She too, was startled by the unexpected number and the absence of any familiar face. Kinney was not there.

“I’m lost,” she said unsteadily. And she saw the hungry gleam leap into the eyes of one after