s to do
it.

Blue, because she still left the reins loose, chose his own trail,
which was easier than that which they had taken in the forenoon, but
more roundabout. Billy Louise, observing how he avoided rocky patches
and went considerably out of his way to keep his feet on soft soil,
stopped in the middle of a "Coma ti yi" to ask him solicitously if he
were getting tender-footed; and promised him a few days off, in the
pasture. Thereafter she encouraged the roundabout progress, even
though she knew it would keep them in the hills until dusk; for she was
foolishly careful of Blue, however much she might tease him and call
him names.

Quite suddenly, just at sundown, her cheerful journeying was
interrupted in a most unexpected manner. She was dreaming along a
flat-bottomed canyon, looking for an easy way across, when Blue threw
up his head, listened with his ears thrust forward, and sniffed with
widened nostrils. From his manner, almost anything might lie ahead of
them. And because certain of the possibilities would call for quick
action if any of them became a certainty, Billy Louise twisted her
gun-belt around so that her six-shooter swung within easy reach of her
hand. With her fingers she made sure that the gun was loose in its
holster and kicked Blue mildly as a hint to go on and see what it was
all about.

Blue went forward, stepping easily on the soft sidehill. In rough
country, whatever you want to see is nearly always around a sharp bend;
you read it so in the stories and books of travels, and when you ride
out in the hills, you find it so in reality. Billy Louise rode for
three or four minutes before she received any inkling of what lay
ahead, though Blue's behavior during that interval had served to
reassure her somewhat. He was interested still in what lay just out of
sight beyond a shoulder of the hill, but he did not appear to be in the
least alarmed. Therefore, Billy Louise knew it couldn't be a bear, at
any rate.

They came to the point of the hill's shoulder, and Billy Louise
tightened the reins instinctively while she stared at what lay revealed
beneath. The head of the gulch was blocked with a corral--small, high,
hidden from view on all sides save where she stood, by the jagged walls
of rock and heavy aspen thickets beyond.

The corral was but the setting for what Billy Louise stared at so
unbelievingly. A horseman had ridden out of the corral just as she
came into sight, had turn