d.

By a rather ironical chance, on the very morning when he decided that
he must start his journey the next day but one, Vic learned that he
must not linger even so long as that. Pete Glass and the law had not
forgotten him, indeed, nearly so well as he had forgotten the law and
Pete Glass, for as he sat in his room filling a pipe after breakfast
the voice of Barry called him out, and he found his host among the rocks
which rimmed the southern end of the plateau, in front of the house. To
the north the ground fell away smoothly, rolled down to the side of the
mountain, and then dipped easily to the valley--the only direction from
which the cabin was accessible, though here the grade was possible for a
buckboard. To the south the plateau ended in a drop that angled sharply
down, almost a cliff in places, and from this point of vantage the eye
carried nameless miles down the river.

"Are them friends of yours?" asked Dan Barry, as he stood among those
rocks. "Take a long look." And he handed a strong pair of field glasses
to Gregg.

The latter peered over the dizzy edge. Down there, in the very act
of fording the river to get to their side of it, he marked five
horsemen--no, six, for he almost missed the leader of the troop, a dusty
figure which melted into the background. All the terror of the first
flight rushed back on Vic. He stood palsied, not in fear of that posse
but at the very thought of pursuit.

"There's only one way," he stammered at length. "I'll--Dan, give me a
hand to get a saddle on Grey Molly and I'll laugh at 'em yet. Damn 'em!"

"What you goin' to do?" It was the same unhurried voice which had spoken
to Vic on the day of the rescue and it irritated him in the same manner
now. Kate had come running from the house with her apron fluttering.

"I'm going down that slope to the north," said Vic, "and I'll get by 'em
hell-bent-for-election. Once I show my heels to that lot they're done!"

He talked as much to restore his courage as from, confidence, for if
the posse sighted him going down that slope on the gray it would take a
super-horseman and a super-horse to escape before they closed the gap.
Barry considered the situation with a new gleam in his eye.

"Wait a minute," he said, as Vic started towards the corral. "That way
you got planned is a good way--to die. You listen to me."

But here Kate broke in on them. "Dan, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to take the gray and go down the slope.