k it in his head to pull out with 'em! I dassent take no chances.
I gotta have them horses."

He knew by her silence that she was contemplating the possibility of
failure.

"If yuh say so, Mira, mebbe I cud git myself to take 'em now an' pull
out."

She was fighting the stern battle which in his innocence he had roused
in her hungry mind, and for a moment he trembled for the result.
Vaguely he felt that he had done something unfair in shifting the
responsibility to her shoulders, but whatever her answer he knew what
his duty was; and only her wishes could drown that duty.

"Bert is waiting for us down in the Hills," she sighed, not to unsettle
his convictions but merely as a fact to be considered.

"Mebbe yuh'd bes' run down an' tell him we'll be a while yet," he
replied, understanding her perfectly. "I don't see no way out neither.
I'll come 'long soon's I can. Whiskers an' me can git the horses down."

She gurgled softly into the darkness, and clasped his arm with both her
hands. Nothing more was necessary. A thrill ran through his big
frame, and almost reverently he pressed his dark cheek against her hair.

Thus they sat, until the gleam faded from the water and only a dim glow
remained; and the pale sky peeped down through the trees with the chill
of a clear moon. High up in the unseen trails of the air a flight of
wild geese honked its weary way southward, and the halfbreed read the
warning of approaching winter. Some creature splashed into the water
straight before them with a noise that awakened the forest echoes and
deepened the enveloping silence afterwards. Juno lifted her head and
sniffed, and nosed into her mistress. She longed to get into the open
and howl, and this was how she fought the instinct. Deepest peace
closed down on them with the night.

It was Juno heard the speeders first. With a faint whimper she lifted
her ears and sniffed to the east. It was sufficient for Blue Pete. In
an instant he had picked out the purring sound and went back into the
cave for blanket and moccasins and rifle. When he returned, the
throbbing was booming through the woods, though the grade was a mile
and a half away, and the speeders miles more.

At first he did not hurry. His move to closer quarters with the
oncoming speeders was little more than instinct. He had no reason to
be suspicious, but he always wanted to unravel the unknown that was
tangible and audible and visible. If the speeders wer