Grit was trailing us. Plimsoll wouldn't move. I heard more horses back of us and I turned to look. Two more men were coming up behind. They had rifles. So did the man with Plimsoll. He had a pistol under his vest. We couldn't go back very well and I could see from the way Plimsoll grinned that he was going to be nasty. Molly spurred Blaze on and cut at Plimsoll with her quirt. He grabbed her hand with his left. Grit sprang up at him and he got out his gun from the shoulder sling and shot him."

"Shot the dawg? Hit him?"

"Yes, in the leg. He fired at him again, but Grit got into the brush."

"Jest what were you doin' all the time?" Sandy knew the lad was a tenderfoot, knew he would have been small use on such an occasion, but the thought of Grit rising to the rescue, falling back shot, brought the taunt.

"The two men behind told me to throw up my hands," said young Keith, his face reddening. "What could I do?"

"Nothin', son. You c'udn't have done a thing. Go on."

"Plimsoll twisted Molly's wrist so that the quirt fell to the ground.

The man who was with him tossed his rope over her and they twisted it round her arms. I had the muzzle of a rifle poked into my ribs. They made me get off my horse. And they made me walk back along the trail.

They fired bullets each side of me and laughed at me when I dodged. They told me if I looked back they'd shoot my d.a.m.ned head off." Donald's eyes were filled with tears of self-pity and the remembrance of his helpless rage. "They kept firing at me until I'd pa.s.sed the stream. I hid in the willows, but I couldn't see anything. I couldn't even see the men who had been firing at me.

"I didn't know what to do. I couldn't rescue Molly without a horse. I only had a revolver against their rifles and I'm not much of a shot. I tried to get back here but it was hard to find the way. I knew it was east but the sun was high and I wasn't sure which way the shadows lay. I was all in when your man found me."

"All right, my son. Keith, I'm goin' to borrow that flask of yores.

Might need it."

He jumped from the car, flask in hand, and ran to the ranch-house. Kate Nicholson met him as he entered. "Has anything happened to Molly?" she gasped.

"That's what I'm goin' to find out," Sandy answered. "Mormon, git me my cartridge belt an' some extry sh.e.l.ls fo' my rifle."

"I got to go git me my hawss," demurred Mormon who had followed him in.

"Becos' I'm goin' on this trail."

"You can come erlong with Sam when the Brandon outfit shows. Or, if they don't show, you can bring erlong our own boys soon's they come in. But I'm hittin' this alone."

As he spoke he rummaged in a drawer and brought out the first-aid kit he always kept handy.

"You ain't takin' Sam?" asked Mormon, returning with the cartridge belt, Sandy's rifle and a box of sh.e.l.ls. "I know you're goin' to ride hard an'

fast, Sandy, but you got to go slow after you git tryin' to cut sign.

Plimsoll's likely taken her over to the Waterline range country. They got a place over there somewhere they call the Hideout. It's where they hide their hawsses when they want 'em out of sight an' I reckon it's hard to find. I c'ud keep within' sight of you till you start cuttin'

sign, Sandy, an' then catch up."

"Sam ain't comin'," said Sandy, filling his rifle magazine and breech, stowing away extra clips. "I'm goin' in alone. Mo'n one 'ud be likely to spoil sign, Mormon, mo'n one is likely to advertise we're comin'.

They're liable to leave a lookout. Know we'll miss Molly some time.

Figgered young Keith might git back some time. Plimsoll's clearin' out of the country an' I'm trailin' him clean through h.e.l.l if I have to. Ef he's harmed Molly I'll stake him out with a green hide wrapped round him an' his eyelids sliced off. I'll sit in the shade an' watch him frizzle an' yell when the hide shrinks in the sun. This is my private play, Mormon. You an' Sam can back it up, but I'm handlin' the cards. I'll leave sign plain fo' you to foller from Willer Crick. They must have crossed at the ford below the big bend."

He left the room and they saw him covering the ground in a wolf trot to where Sam, astride his own favorite mount, held p.r.o.nto ready saddled.

They saw Sam's protest, Sandy's vigorous overruling of it, and then Sandy was up-saddle and away at a brisk lope with Sam gazing after him disconsolately. Keith's car was turning for the trip to Hereford, spurning the dust of the Three Star Ranch forever--and not lamented.

"Ain't it jest plumb h.e.l.l--beggin' yore pardon, marm--but that's what it is--plain h.e.l.l!" cried Mormon. Tears of mortification were in his eyes, his voice was high-pitched and his chagrin was so much like that of an overgrown child that Kate Nicholson felt constrained to laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. "Me, I been punchin' cows, ridin' a hawss fo' a livin' fo' nigh thirty years," said Mormon. "I ain't what you'd call sooperannuated yit, if I am bald. I'm healthy as a woodchuck.

But I'm so goldarned, hunky-chunky, hawg-fat I can't ride a hawss no mo'--not faster 'n a walk or further than two mile', fo' fear of breakin' his back. So I git left home to sit in a d.a.m.n rockin' chair!

h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation!"

"You're going to follow him, aren't you?"

"That was jest Sandy's way of lettin' me down easy. Sam'll go, but I'll stay to home. I'm goin' to give away my guns an' learn milkin'. Sandy's got about three hours of daylight. He'll go 'cross lots on the hawss, fur as he reckons the sign shows safe, an' no man can read sign better'n Sandy. Then he'll play snake an' he can beat an Indian at takin' cover.

He'll drift over open country 'thout bein' spotted an', up there in the range, they'll never see, smell or hear him till he's on top of 'em an'

his guns are doin' the talkin'. You ought to see him in action. I've done it. I've been in action with him, me an' Sam. Now all I'm good fo'

is a close quarters ra'r an' tumble. He w'udn't take Sam erlong fo' fear of hurtin' my feelin's though even Sam 'ud be some handicap to Sandy on this trip of scoutin'.

"Sam can't take cover extra good, though he shoots middlin'. Sandy, he shoots like lightnin' fast an' straight."

"But there are four against him, at least."

"Fo' what?" asked Mormon with a look of scorn. "Plimsoll an' three of his cronies. Mebbe one or two mo' chucked in fo' good measure. What of it? Yeller, all of 'em, yeller as the belly of a Gila River pizen lizard. On'y way the odds 'ud be even w'ud be fo' them to git the drop on Sandy an' it can't be done. He's got his fightin' face on an' that means hands an' heart an' eyes an' brain an' every inch of him lined up to win. Sandy fights with his head an' he's got the heart to back it.

h.e.l.l's bells, marm, beggin' yo' pardon ag'in, I ain't worryin' none erbout Sandy! I ain't seen him lose out yet. I'm cussin' about _me_--warmin' an armchair an' waddlin' round like a fall hawg."

Mormon slammed his hat on the floor and jumped on it and Miss Nicholson fled, a little rea.s.sured by Mormon's eulogy, anxious to talk it over with Sam.

Sandy, his eyes like the mica flakes that show in gray granite, his humorous mouth a stern line, little bunches of muscles at the junction of his jaws, held the pinto to a steady lope that ate up the ground, drifting straight and fast across country for the opening in the mesa that he had marked as the short-cut to the spot described by Donald Keith. Through gray sage and ferny mesquite p.r.o.nto moved, elastic of every sinew, springy of pastern, without fret or fuss though he had not been ridden for two days. Even as the man fitted the saddle, counterbalanced every supple movement of his steed, so Sandy's will dominated that of p.r.o.nto, making his mood his master's, telling him the occasion was one for best efforts with no place for wasted energy.

"We're goin' to cross a hard country, li'l' hawss," said Sandy. "But I figger we can make it. Got to make it, p.r.o.nto. An' we're sure goin' to.

Doin' it fo' her."

Every now and then he talked his thoughts aloud, as the lonely rider will and, if the pinto could not understand, he listened with p.r.i.c.ked ears.

"Grit must have been hurt pritty bad, I'm afraid. Still he might have trailed her 'stead of comin' back. Sun's gettin' to'ards the no'th."

He glanced at the luminary, slowly descending. "But the moon's up already an' she's full." He looked to where a wan plate of battered silver hung in the east. "We got some luck on our side, p.r.o.nto, after all.

"Wonder who the three were with Plimsoll? They've gone to the Hideout an' we got to find it, li'l' hawss. Some job, I reckon. But Plimsoll's goin' to be mighty sorry fo' himse'f befo' long."

As they neared the foot-hills of the range he lapsed to silence. He was taking chances, crossing country this fashion. He knew it fairly well, and he guessed at what lay behind the visible contours from the experience of years. Deep barrancas might crop up in their path, ma.s.sed thickets of cactus that had to be ridden around for loss of time. The mesa, looking like a solid block of rock at a distance, was, he knew well, broken into tortuous ravines and canons, eroded into wild thrusts of the mother rock, its central part eaten away by time and weather.

Part of the Three Star range, shared by two ranches, ran over the southern part of the mesa and it was close to its boundary fence that Sandy was heading. Then came the range of Plimsoll's Waterline, a rough country, unknown to Sandy, with scant food for many cattle, but sweet gra.s.s enough for a horse herd and containing pockets where the slicktails sometimes came.

Sandy struck the first rise. He was now a crucible filled with glowing white fury. Thoughts of what Plimsoll might achieve in insult and injury to Molly could not be kept out of his mind and they but added fuel. It was not Sandy Bourke of the Three Bar, riding his favorite pinto, but a desperate man on a horse infected with the same grim determination, a man with a face that, despite the fiery heat within, blazing from his eyes, would have chilled the blood of any meeting him.

He did not spare p.r.o.nto nor did p.r.o.nto attempt to spare himself, going at the task set before him with all the superb coordination of muscle and tendon and bone that he possessed. They slid down the sides of ravines that were almost as steep as a wall, the pinto squatting on its tail; they climbed the opposing banks with the surety of a mountain goat, a rush, a scramble of well-placed hooves, a play of fetlocks; then, with a heave of spreading ribs and hammer-strokes of a gallant heart under Sandy's lean thighs, they were over the top and away, with Sandy's eyes searching the land for the shortest, most practical way.

The place it had taken Molly and young Keith nearly three hours to reach in leisurely fashion, Sandy gained in one, splashing through the shallows of Willow Creek at the ford below the big bend and giving p.r.o.nto the chance to cool his fetlocks and rinse out his mouth in the cold water.

Ahead lay the chimney ravine that led around into Beaver Dam Lake, in which Molly and the boy had been attacked. Sandy viewed the chaparral, the trees that covered the lesser slopes, the stark cliffs above. Part of this lay in the Waterline territory. The chances that Plimsoll had left some one on guard were not to be slighted. But he rode on down the narrow trail. Once in a while he broke a branch and left it swinging as a guide to Sam when he should follow with the riders from the ranch.

They would be coming in now and in a few minutes would start on remounts. Perhaps Brandon had come? Sandy wasted little time on surmise.

The tracks of Molly's Blaze and the horse Donald had been riding were plain as print to Sandy. He even noticed the slot of Grit's pads here and there in softer soil. He had picked them up at the coming-out place of the ford. Two more sets of hoofs came out of the chaparral and from there on the sign was badly broken. But Sandy knew the story and the interpretation was sufficient.

The shadows were getting longer, half the eastern side of the ravine was in shadow that steadily crept down as if to obliterate the telltale imprints. The moon was slowly brightening. Sandy's eyes, burning steadily, were untroubled by doubt.

The place of the struggle was plain. The brush was trampled. To one side of the trail there was a clot of blood, almost black, with flies buzzing attention to it. It must have come from Grit. He caught sight of another fleck of it on some leaves where Grit had raced into the brush out of the way of the crippling fire.

"I'll score one fo' you, Grit, while I'm about it," muttered Sandy as he dismounted and carefully surveyed the sign. He even picked up Donald's returning shoemarks. Six horses had gone on, one led.

Sandy swung up the heavy stirrups and tied them above the saddle seat.

He stripped the reins from the bridle and pulled down p.r.o.nto's wise head.