not, I
assure you, with his consent."

"I don't believe your stories at all," she declared firmly.

De Spain flushed. The irritation and the serious danger bore in on
him. "If you don't believe me it's not my fault," he retorted. "I've
told you the truth. Ride on, Sassoon."

He spoke angrily, but this in no wise daunted Nan. She wheeled her
horse directly in front of them. "Don't you stir, Sassoon," she
commanded, "until I call Uncle Duke."

De Spain spurred straight at her; their horses collided, and his knee
touched hers in the saddle. "I'm going to take this man out of here,"
he announced in a tone she never had heard before from a man. "I've no
time to talk. Go call your uncle if you like. We must pass."

"You shan't pass a step!"

With the quick words of defiance the two glared at each other. De
Spain was taken aback. He had expected no more than a war of words--a
few screams at the most. Nan's face turned white, but there was no
symptom even of a whimper. He noticed her quick breathing, and felt,
instinctively, the restrained gesture of her right hand as it started
back to her side. The move steadied him. "One question," he said
bluntly, "are you armed?"

She hated even to answer, and met his searching gaze resentfully, but
something in his tone and manner wrung a reply. "I can defend myself,"
she exclaimed angrily.

De Spain raised his right hand from his thigh to the pommel of his
saddle. The slight gesture was eloquent of his surrender of the issue
of force. "I can't go into a shooting-match with you about this cur.
If you call your uncle there will be bloodshed--unless you drop me off
my horse right here and now before he appears. All I ask you is this:
Is this kind of a cutthroat worth that? If you shoot me, my whole
posse from Sleepy Cat is right below us in the aspens. Some of your
own people will be killed in a general fight. If you want to shoot me,
shoot--you can have the match all to yourself. If you don't, let us go
by. And if I've told you one word that isn't true, call me back to
this spot any time you like, and I'll come at your call, and answer
for it."

His words and his manner confounded her for a moment. She could not at
once make an answer, for she could not decide what to say. Then, of a
sudden, she was robbed of her chance to answer. From down the trail
came a yell like a shot. The clatter of hoofs rang out, and men on
horses dashed from the entrance of the Gap toward them. De Spa