ld never be able to carry her to Lazette.

She would be forced to go to the Double R now, there was nothing else that
she could do. Standing beside the pony, debating whether she had not
better walk than try to ride him, even to the Double R, she heard a
clatter of hoofs and turned to see Dakota riding the trail toward her. He
was traveling in the direction she had been traveling when the accident
had happened, and apparently had left the trail somewhere back in the
distance, or she would have seen him. Perhaps, she speculated, with a
flash of dull anger, he had followed her near to Doubler's cabin, perhaps
had been near when she had dragged the wounded nester into it.

His first word showed her that there was ground for this suspicion. He
drew up beside her and looked at her with a queer smile, and she, aware of
his guilt, wondered at his composure.

"You didn't stay long at Doubler's shack," he said. "I was on a ridge,
back on the trail a ways, and I saw you hitting the breeze away from there
some rapid. I was thinking to intercept you, but you went tearing by so
fast that I didn't get a chance. You're in an awful hurry. What's wrong?"

"You ought to know that," she said, bitterly angry because of his
pretended serenity. "You--you murderer!"

His face paled instantly, but his voice was clear and sharp.

"Murderer?" he said sternly. "Who has been murdered?"

"You don't know, of course," she said scornfully, her face flaming, her
eyes alight with loathing and contempt. "You shot him and then let me ride
on alone to--to find him, shot--shot in the back! Oh!"

She shuddered at the recollection, held her hands over her eyes for an
instant to keep from looking at the expression of amazement in his eyes,
and while she stood thus she heard a movement, and withdrew her hands from
her eyes to see him standing beside her, so close that his body touched
hers, his eyes ablaze with curiosity and interest and repressed anxiety.
She cringed and cried with pain as he seized her arm and twisted her
forcibly around so that she faced him.

"Stop this fooling and tell me what has happened!" he said, with short,
incisive accents. "Who did you find shot? Who has been murdered?"

Oh, it was admirable acting, she told herself as she tore herself away
from him and stood back a little, her eyes flashing with scorn and horror.
"You don't know, of course," she flared. "You shot him--shot him in the
back and sent me on to find him. You gl