n built up in places on the outer edge
with stones, dry-piled. They had fallen away, the grade following, so
that sometimes all that was left for passage was a ledge along which the
horses sidled carefully in single file, stirrups brushing the inside
bank. The zigzags ended, the canyon narrowed, deepened. Sandy looked down
to the dry bed of it four hundred feet below. The road rose at a steep
pitch, cliff to the right, precipice to the left, stretching on and up
to the summit of the pass.

Suddenly Pronto shied violently, tried to bolt up the cliff, scrambling
goatwise for twenty feet to stand shivering and snorting. Sandy's
balance was automatic, the muscles of his knees clamped for grip, he
gave the pinto its head, trusting to it to establish footing. He saw
Sam's roan dancing in the trail, the led mare plunging, dust rising all
about them. Left-handed, a Colt flashed out of Sandy's holster, barked
twice, the echoes tossing between the canyon walls. In the road a
rattlesnake writhed, headless, its body, thicker than a man's wrist,
checkered in dirty gray and chocolate diamonds.

"Git down there, you hysteric son of a gun," he said to the horse. "It's
all over." The pinto hesitated, shifted unwilling hoofs, squatted on its
haunches and, tail sweeping the dirt, tobogganed down to the road,
jumping catwise the moment it was reached, away from the squirming
terror. Sandy forced him back, leaned far down, tucked the barrel of the
gun under the snake's body and hurled it looping into the gorge. Sam got
his roan and the mare under control as the dust subsided.

"More'n a dozen buttons," said Sandy. "Listen!"

Grit, unseen, ahead, was barking in staccato volleys. There was another
sound, a faint shout, unmistakably; human. The men looked at each other
with eyebrows raised.

"That ain't no man's voice," said Sam. "That's a gal." He looked
quizzically at Sandy, knowing his chum's inhibition.

Sandy was woman-shy. Men met his level glance, fairly, with swift
certainty that here stood a man, four-square; or shiftily, according to
their ease of conscience, knowing his breed. Sandy was a two-gun man but
he was not a killer. There were no notches on the handles of his Colts.
In earlier days he had shot with deadly aim and purpose, but never save
in self-defense and upon the side of law and right and order. Among men
his poise was secure but, in a woman's presence, Sandy Bourke's tongue
was tied save in emergency, his wits tang