"I'm not a kid," he said firmly. "I can make it from here alone. Not
another step, young lady. If you can get back home You'll be doing
enough. Take this--it's money, but I don't know how much. And watch your
chance and go down to mother with that message. Birnie, of the Tomahawk
outfit--you'll find out in Laramie where to go. And tell mother I'm all
right, and she'll see me some day--when I've made my stake. God bless
you, little woman. You're the truest, sweetest little woman in the
world. There's just one more like you--that's mother. Now go back--and
for God's sake he careful!"

He pressed money into her two hands, held them tightly together, kissed
them both hurriedly and plunged down the hill with Sunfish slipping and
sliding after him. For her safety, if not for his own, he meant to get
away from there as quickly as possible.

In the creek bed he mounted and rode away at a sharp gallop, glad that
Sunfish, thoroughbred though he was, had not been raised tenderly in
stall and corral, but had run free with the range horses and had learned
to keep his feet under him in rough country or smooth. When he reached
the crossing of the stage road he turned to the left as Marian had
commanded and put Sunfish to a pace that slid the miles behind him.

With his thoughts clinging to Marian, to the harshness which life had
shown her who was all goodness and sweetness and courage, Bud forgot to
keep careful watch behind him, or to look for the place where the hill
trail joined the road, as it probably did some distance from Crater.
It would be a blind trail, of course--since only the Catrock gang and
Marian knew of it.

They came into the road not far behind him, out of rock-strewn, brushy
wilderness that sloped up steeply to the rugged sides of Gold Gap
mountains. Sunfish discovered them first, and gave Bud warning just
before they identified him and began to shoot.

Bud laid himself along the shoulder of his horse with a handful of mane
to steady him while he watched his chance and fired back at them. There
were four, just the number he had guessed from the sounds as they came
out of the tunnel. A horse ran staggering toward him with the others,
faltered and fell. Bud was sorry for that. It had been no part of his
plan to shoot down the horses.

The three came on, leaving the fourth to his own devices--and that, too,
was quite in keeping with the type of human vultures they were. They
kept firing at Bud, and once he fel