and
returned to whip him forward again.

"What a brute you are!" Lorraine exclaimed indignantly. "Can't you see
now tired he is?"

Al glanced at her from under his eyebrows. "He's all in, but he's got to
make it," he said. "I've been that way myself--and made it. What I can
do, a horse can do. Come on, you yella-livered bonehead!"

Snake went on, urged now and then by Al's quirt. Every blow made
Lorraine wince, and she made the wincing perfectly apparent to Al, in
the hope that he would take some notice of it and give her a chance to
tell him what she thought of him without opening the conversation
herself.

But Al did not say anything. When the time came--as even Lorraine saw
that it must--when Snake refused to attempt a steep slope, Al still said
nothing. He untied her ankles from the stirrups and her hands from the
saddle horn, carried her in his arms to his own horse and compelled her
to mount. Then he retied her exactly as she had been tied on Snake.

"Skinner knows this trail," he told Lorraine. "And I'm behind yuh with a
gun. Don't forget that, Miss Spitfire. You let Skinner go to suit
himself--and if he goes wrong, you pay, because it'll be you reining
him wrong. Get along there, Skinner!"

Skinner got along in a businesslike way that told why Al Woodruff had
chosen to ride him on this trip. He seemed to be a perfectly dependable
saddle horse for a bandit to own. He wound in and out among the trees
and boulders, stepping carefully over fallen logs; he thrust his nose
out straight and laid back his ears and pushed his way through thickets
of young pines; he went circumspectly along the edge of a deep gulch,
climbed over a ridge and worked his way down the precipitous slope on
the farther side, made his way around a thick clump of spruces and
stopped in a little, grassy glade no bigger than a city lot, but with a
spring gurgling somewhere near. Then he swung his head around and looked
over his shoulder inquiringly at Al, who was coming behind, leading
Snake.

Lorraine looked at him also, but Al did not say anything to her or to
the horse. He let them stand there and wait while he unsaddled Snake,
put a drag rope on him and led him to the best grazing. Then, coming
back, he very matter-of-factly untied Lorraine and helped her off the
horse. Lorraine was all prepared to fight, but she did not quite know
how to struggle with a man who did not take hold of her or touch her,
except to steady her in dismounting