bject of having a writ served
on Brick Willock, he would be justified in preventing Brick from being
warned out of the country.

They galloped on in silence, Lahoma slightly holding back. Night
rapidly drew on.

CHAPTER XX

TOGETHER

Before them, the trail, beaten and rutted, stretched interminably,
losing itself in the darkness before it slipped over the rounded margin
of the world. As darkness increased, the trail seemed to waver before
their eyes like a gray scarf that the wind stirs on the ground. On
either side of it, the nature of the country varied with strange
abruptness, now an unbroken stretch of dead sage-brush showing like
isolated tufts in a gigantic clothes-brush--suddenly, a wilderness of
white sand shifting as the wind rose--again, broken rocks sown
broadcast. Before final darkness came, the trail itself was
varicolored, sometimes white with alkali, sometimes skirting low hills
whose sides showed a deep blue, streaked with crimson.

But now all was black, sand, alkali, gypsum-beds, for the night had
fallen.

In their wide detour they had endeavored to escape detection from the
stage-station, but sheltered by no appreciable inequalities of land,
and denied the refuge that even a small grove might have furnished,
they had, as it were, been held up to view on the prairie; and though
so far away, their horses had been as distinctly outlined as two ants
scurrying across a white page.

Wilfred reflected. "If Kimball, when he came out of that restaurant,
happened to look in this direction, he must have seen us; and the first
inquiry at the barn would inform him who're on the horses.' But he
said nothing until, from the rear, came the sound long-dreaded,
telling, though far away, of bounding horses and groaning wheels.

"Lahoma!"

"Yes--I hear them."

"My horse is about used up. We'll have to side-trail, or they'll ride
us down."

"I could go on," Lahoma answered, as she drew bard on the bit, "but I
wouldn't like to leave you here by yourself."

"You couldn't travel that distance by yourself. And good as your horse
is, it wouldn't last. But thank you for thinking of me," he added,
smiling in the darkness, as he dismounted. "Let me lead your horse as
well as my own."

"No," said Lahoma, "if leading is to be done, I'll do my part." She
leaped lightly to the ground and seized her bridle. Side by side they
slowly ventured from the trail into the invisible country on the left.
They f