abreast the flying girl, caught her bridle, and to her astonishment
dragged her horse and his own rudely to their haunches. They were
almost at the bridge itself.

"Back up!" he exclaimed. "Back up!"

"Jim!" she cried, "_please_ don't throw me!"

"Don't speak--back!!" he said low and sharply. Something in the tone
and manner of the command admitted of no parley.

With her horse cavorting, half strangled, as he was jerked and backed,
Kate, looking amazed at Laramie, saw in his face a man new to her--a
man she never had seen before. Not her questioning look, nor the
frantic struggles of the rearing horses touched him; nothing in the
confusion of the sudden moment drew his eye for an instant from the
bridge before him and his drawn revolver was already poised in his
hand. Kate knew her part without another protest. She tore her
horse's mouth cruelly with the curb. Where the danger was, or what,
she did not know, but she could obey orders. Her eyes tried to follow
Laramie's, bent ahead. The bottoms spread level in every direction.
The approach to the little bridge and beyond was as open as the day.
Not a living creature was anywhere in sight, nothing with life had
anywhere stirred, nothing of sound broke the silence of the morning,
except--when Laramie allowed them to stop--the startled breathing of
the horses.

"Jim!" exclaimed Kate in awed restraint. "What is it?"

His eyes were riveted straight ahead, but he answered in a most
matter-of-fact tone: "There's somebody under that bridge."

She strained her eyes to see something he must have seen that she could
not see. The dazzling sunshine, the dusty road, the rough-built, short
wooden bridge before them, were all plain enough. And Kate realized
for the first time that Laramie, who had been riding on her right was
now on her left and presently that his revolver was sheathed and his
rifle, which had hung in its scabbard at the horse's shoulder, was
slung across the hollow of his right arm.

"Kate," he said, speaking without looking at her, "will you ride back
about a mile and wait for me?"

She turned to him: "What are you going to do, Jim?"

"Smoke that fellow out."

She spoke almost in a whisper: "Is it Van Horn, Jim?"

"I don't believe he'd hide there. It's more like Stone."

"Jim! Stone's a deadly shot!"

Looking into the distance he only replied: "From cover. This may be a
long-winded affair, Kate." He added, pausing, "you'd better ride