eepherder, or any of the Moran gang, between here and Crawling Water.
The fighting will all be in town, thank goodness."

At the word "fighting" Dorothy caught her breath sharply, too proud to
urge him against his duty and yet afraid for him. He had not been able
to muster courage enough to speak to her of what was in his heart,
foolish though that was in him, and he sat there in the saddle for a
moment, looking tenderly down on her as she stood smoothing out his
horse's forelock.

"Do be careful of yourself, Gordon," Mrs. Purnell called to him from the
porch, but he did not hear her.

"I haven't had a chance yet to get into my church-going clothes, have
I?" he said whimsically to Dorothy, who flushed prettily and looked
away.

"I don't see what clothes have to do with talking to me," she said half
coyly and half mischievously.

"Neither do I," he agreed. She had stepped aside and his horse's head
was free. "I guess they haven't a thing to do with it, but I haven't
been seeing things exactly straight lately. I reckon I've been half
locoed."

Touching his horse with the spurs, he loped away to join Santry, who was
waiting for him on ahead.

CHAPTER XIX

BAFFLED, BUT STILL DANGEROUS

When Trowbridge left Dorothy Purnell, promising to find his friend for
her sake, he had assumed a confidence that he was far from feeling. No
man knew the country thereabout any better than he did, and he realized
that there was, at best, only a meager chance of trailing the miscreant
who had succeeded in trapping his victim somewhere in the mountains. A
weaker man would have paused in dismay at the hopelessness of the task
he had undertaken, but Lem Trowbridge was neither weak nor capable of
feeling dismay, or of acknowledging hopelessness. Time enough for all
that after he should have failed. In the meantime it was up to him to
follow Moran. He had learned from Santry of the place where Wade was
stricken down, but how far from there, or in what direction he had been
taken, was a matter of conjecture only, and the only way to learn was to
trail the party that had undoubtedly carried the helpless man away
perhaps to his death, but possibly, and more probably, to hold him
captive.

Desperate as he knew Moran to be, he did not believe that the immediate
murder of Gordon Wade was planned. That would be poor strategy and Moran
was too shrewd to strike in that fashion.

It seemed clear enough that parley of some sort was int