Part 67 (2/2)

”I am down.”

”How you feel?”

”Pretty good--considering.”

”Close squeak--considerin'.”

”Yes,” said she in a small voice, ”it was a close squeak. You--you saved my life, Racey.”

”Shucks,” he said, much embarra.s.sed, ”that wasn't anythin'--I mean--you--you know what I mean.”

”Surely, I know what you mean. All the same, you saved my life. Tell me, was that man shooting at us all the time after I fainted until you got me under cover?”

”Not all the time, no.”

”But most of the time. Oh, you can make small of it, but you were very brave. It isn't everybody would have stuck the way you did.”

Smack! Tchuck! A bullet struck a rock two feet below where Racey lay on his stomach, his rifle-barrel poked out between two shrubs of smooth sumac--another bored the hole of a gray stub at his back.

He fired quickly at the first puff of smoke, then sent two bullets a little to the left of the centre of the second puff.

”Not much chance of hittin' the first feller,” he said to Molly. ”He's behind a log, but that second sport is behind a bush same as me....

Huh? Oh, I'm all right. I got the ground in front of me. He hasn't. Alla same, we ain't stayin' here any longer. I think I saw half-a-dozen gents cuttin' across the end of the slide. Give 'em time and they'll cut in behind us, which ain't part of my plans a-tall.

Let's go.”

He crawfished backward on his hands and knees. Molly followed his example. When they were sufficiently far back to be able to stand upright with safety they scrambled to their feet and hurried to the horse.

”I'll lead him for a while,” said Racey, giving Molly a leg up, for the horse was a tall one. ”He won't have to carry double just yet.”

So, with Racey walking ahead, they resumed their retreat.

The ridge of rock cutting across the burned-over area could not properly be called rimrock. It was a different formation. Set at an angle it climbed steadily upward to the very top of the mountain.

In places weatherworn to a slippery smoothness; in others jagged, fragment-strewn; where the rain had washed an earth-covering upon the rock the cheerful kinnikinick spread its mantle of s.h.i.+ning green.

The man and the girl and the horse made good time. Racey's feet began to hurt before he had gone a mile, but he knew that something besides a pair of feet would be irreparably damaged if he did not keep going.

If they caught him he would be lynched, that's what he would be. If he weren't shot first. And the girl--well, she would get at the least ten years at Piegan City, _if_ they were caught. But ”if” is the longest and tallest word in the dictionary. It is indeed a mighty barrier before the Lord.

”Did you ever stop to think they may come up through this brush?” said Molly, on whom the silence and the sad gray stubs on either hand were beginning to tell.

”No,” he answered, ”I didn't, because they can't. The farther down you go the worse it gets. They'd never get through. Not with hosses. We're all right.”

”Are we?” She stood up in her stirrups, and looked down through a vista between the stubs.

They had reached the top of the mountain. It was a saddle-backed mountain, and they were at the outer edge of the eastern hump. Far below was a narrow valley running north and south. It was a valley without trees or stream and through it a string of dots were slipping to the north.

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