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198 "Texas will sleep better to-night when he knows how I've squared the deal for him!" the bandit declared.

"What are you going to do?" Judith demanded.

A gesture drew her attention to a huge boulder poised on the very lip of the chasm.

"We're going to tip that over on your friends, Miss Judith," Marrophat replied. "Simple, neat, efficient—eh? What more can you ask?"

She answered only with an irrepressible gesture of horror. Marrophat's laugh followed her as she turned away.

For some moments she strained her vision vainly. Then she made out the faintly marked line of the lower trail and caught a glimpse of three figures, mounted, toiling painfully toward the point where death awaited them.

Hastily she glanced over-shoulder. Hopi Jim and Marrophat were straining themselves against the boulder without budging it an inch, for all its apparent nicety of poise. For an instant a wild hope flashed through her mind, it was exorcised when Hopi Jim stepped back and uttered a few words of which only two—"dynamite" and "fuse" reached her ears.

Then he turned and lumbered off to a rude plank cabin which, hidden in the brush nearby, had until that moment escaped Judith's notice. He kicked