Scott and Baxter lay awake far into the small hours of the morning discussing the events of the past evening. Baxter had been in the West long enough to have lost his aversion to a gun, if indeed he had ever had any, and could not understand Scott’s scruples.

“If ever a man had need of gun,” he exclaimed, “you have now. Here you are traipsing around the country with a bad man on your trail and not so much as a cap pistol in your belt. Why, man, if you’d had a gun there to-night you could have blown that skunk into kingdom come and ended all this rumpus.”

“And thought about it all the rest of my life,” Scott replied.

Baxter looked at him hopelessly and gave it up. “Well, you ought to be pretty safe up there at the dam if they don’t know you are there. Ramsey is evidently looking out for you down there and I’ll keep a weather eye on the pass here. Let’s go to sleep so that you can get away from here in the morning before anybody sees you.”

The nerves of youth are easily settled and Scott was soon sleeping as peacefully as though nothing had happened. At his first snore Baxter raised up cautiously and crawled out of bed. He slipped on his clothes and took his seat at the open doorway with his revolver lying within easy reach. “Let that devil come snooping around here,” he muttered, “and I’ll see how my scruples work on him.”

At the first streak of day the faithful guardian arose and quietly prepared breakfast. “Come out of it, Burton, and throw some of this into you,” he called to Scott when all was ready.

“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” Scott complained.

“Because I had not been out dodging bullets all night and did not need the sleep.”

“How about grub up there at the dam?” Scott asked. “I don’t know anything about the place and never thought about provisions last night.”

“Strange, not having anything else to think about,” Baxter commented sarcastically. “Better take along a few things from here to make sure, but the cabin up there is usually pretty well stocked, I think. If you are ready we better be going; we are not so likely to meet any one on the trail now.”

He threw such perishable provisions as he happened to have into a bag and started for the corral. Scott saw him pick his revolver up from the bench by the door and stick it into his holster.

It was just light enough to see when they started up the trail which led over the pass. They were nearly to the place where they were fighting the fire the day before when Baxter turned from the trail into the heavier timber.

“What’s the big scare now,” Scott asked looking curiously around.

“May not be anything in it,” Baxter replied, “but old Benny up there in the lookout tower has eyes like a hawk. If he sees anything moving within fifty miles he hauls out those old field glasses and identifies it. He might recognize you and spread the news all over the country. He is all right and would not tell any one if he knew why you were going, but he doesn’t know and has nothing to do but talk gossip over the ’phone.”

So they stuck to the hillside in spite of the rough going and managed to keep out of Benny’s sight.

“Now you are all right,” Baxter assured him. “This trail is not very good but you can follow it easy enough and it will lead you straight to the dam. There is not supposed to be any one up that way, but if you should see any one duck.”

“I suppose there is a telephone up there?” Scott asked.

“Yes, and you better listen in on every call you hear, because some of us may want to warn you, but don’t talk unless you are sure who it is. They might try to locate you that way.”

“Well, so long,” Scott said, “I certainly appreciate what you have done for me.”

“Haven’t had a chance yet,” Baxter replied cheerfully, “but I am praying for the opportunity. Don’t you think you better take my gun? I have another at the cabin.”

“No,” Scott laughed, “I might shoot myself. So long.”

Once more he was alone with his thoughts, taking to the hills like a hunted animal and not knowing who might be on his trail or where. At least he felt certain that no enemies were ahead of him and he did not fear those who followed as long as he was in the open. He was going into a new country and that always pleased him. The thought of his dangers was soon wiped out by the wildness and ruggedness of the mountains around him.

This trail was little more than a cow track and he lost sight of it several times, but Jed followed it as easily as a hound no matter how vague it seemed to Scott. If this was the only trail to the dam he thought the supervisor had picked a very good hiding place for him. Here and there the mountains receded enough to make a fairly respectable valley, but for the most part they crowded in pretty close and left little more than a narrow ca?on. There were traces of a dry stream bed in the bottom of it and Scott guessed that it was the spillway for the dam in time of flood. He noticed that if there should be much of a run-off there would be scant room for the trail.

After two hours of steady climbing Jed emerged into a small flat, grassy and an ideal meadow. At the upper end of the flat was a heavy mason work wall, twenty feet high in the middle and stretching clear across from slope to slope. Back of it was a great amphitheater surrounded by mountain peaks. It was a magnificent picture and Scott sat for a few minutes drinking it in. The grandeur of it awed him a little, but it had a wonderful, mysterious beauty that fascinated him. He had often read of the eagle’s eyrie on the mountain peaks and now he felt that he had found it. The prospect of a week in that little cabin on the end of the dam would have been an unadulterated joy to him if it had not been for the silent hunter on the slopes below.

“Well, Jed, old boy, they were mighty considerate of you, anyway. I don’t know what there is in that cabin but if it is half as well stocked as this meadow I’ll be satisfied.”

He threw the saddle and bridle on the ground in one corner of the meadow near the end of the dam and turned Jed loose to graze. A tiny stream trickled through the dam, in one place, filling a little basin in the sod of the meadow. Jed drank long and deep and seemed perfectly contented with his surroundings. There was no danger of his wandering off even if he had not been so faithfully attached to Scott. No dog could have thought more of its master.

An examination of the cabin showed ample supplies to withstand a long siege. The view back into the encircling mountains was superb and down through the cut of the ca?on was a vista of hill and gorge that extended clear to the main valley miles away. There was eighteen feet of crystal clear water in the reservoir which was about twenty acres in extent. To a man from the lake-sprinkled section of New England it was a welcome sight. It was the most water he had seen in that semi-arid country.

The dam itself was a rather poorly constructed mason work affair and its safety was a matter of anxiety every spring to the ranchers who lived in the valley below. Since it had come into the hands of the Service, a man had been stationed there whenever the melting of the snows in the surrounding mountains threatened an overflow. Scott could not imagine a more pleasant job under normal conditions. He even felt that he could enjoy it now for he felt very little fear of not being able to take care of himself in such a place.

He marked the height of the water so that he could note its progress and went back into the cabin to fix it up for his occupancy. It was a cozy little place but Scott had not been in there long when he began to feel uneasy. The same old feeling of being trapped was stealing over him once more. He kept going to the door to peer down the ca?on, and was constantly glancing at the window, half............