one me a service
by getting into this scrape. It's the first time I have been off the
ranch in a year."

"If you call that doing you a service, I'm going to ask you to let me
do something also for you." Bud half smiled to himself in the darkness,
thinking how diplomatic he was. "If you're found out, you'll have to
keep on going, and I take it you wouldn't be particular where you went.
So I wish you 'd take charge of part of this money for me, and if you
leave, go down to my mother, on the Tomahawk ranch, out from Laramie.
Anyone can tell you where it is, when you get down that way If you need
any money use it. And tell mother I sent her the finest cook in the
country. Mother, by the way, is a great musician, Marian. She taught
me all I know of music. You'd get along just fine with mother. And she
needs you, honest. She isn't very strong, yet she can't find anyone to
suit, down there--"

"I might not suit, either," said Marian, her voice somewhat muffled.

"Oh, I'm not afraid of that. And--there's a message I want to send--I
promised mother I'd--"

"Oh, hush! You're really an awfully poor prevaricator, Bud. This is to
help me, you're planning."

"Well--it's to help me that I want you to take part of the money. The
gang won't hold you up, will they? And I want mother to have it. I want
her to have you, too,--to help out when company comes drifting in there,
sometimes fifteen or twenty strong. Especially on Sunday. Mother has to
wait on them and cook for them, and--as long as you are going to cook
for a bunch, you may as well do it where it will be appreciated, and
where you'll be treated like a--like a lady ought to be treated."

"You're even worse--" began Marian, laughing softly, and stopped
abruptly, listening, her head turned behind them. "Sh-sh-someone is
coming behind us," she whispered. "We're almost through--come on, and
don't talk!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: GUARDIAN ANGELS ARE RIDING POINT

They plunged into darkness again, rode at a half trot over smooth, hard
sand, Bud trusting himself wholly to Marian and to the sagacity of the
two horses who could see, he hoped, much better than he himself could.
His keen hearing had caught a faint sound from behind them--far back in
the crevice-like gorge they had just quitted, he believed. For Marian's
sake he stared anxiously ahead, eager for the first faint suggestion of
starlight before them. It came, and he breathed freer and felt of his
gun in its holster, pul