ched the base
of the mountain, before he got into the timber. If not, sooner or later
he would cut Plimsoll's sign and follow it to the end.

As he rode over the finny ridge of Elk Mountain and saw the Nipple Peaks
gleaming above the black pines across the valley, with Elk River
gleaming in the middle, he realized that he had said nothing to Molly of
Keith, of the shutting down of the mine and his own action in her name.
While she had asked nothing of young Donald. For the time it had been as
if the rest of the world had been fenced off from them and their own
intimate affairs.

He compressed his knees and the mare answered in a lope that stretched
into a gallop, fast and faster as she reached the levels and sped toward
Elk River. Sandy was not going to waste time looking for a ford. The
mare could swim. The moon, sloping down toward the west, still above the
range, helped by the big white stars, made the valley bright almost as
day. He scanned the mountain toward the peaks, passed over the dark
impenetrable pines, surveyed the stretch of gently rising ground between
the Elk and the trees and shifted his guns in their scabbards. His rifle
he had left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in
the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had
not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and
roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for the cut-off.

The mare took the cold river water about her fetlocks with a little
shiver, wading in to the girths, sliding to a deep pool where she had to
swim a few strokes before she found gravel under her hoofs and scrambled
out. Suddenly, while Sandy hesitated how best to arrange his patrol, a
horse came floundering out of the pines less than a quarter of a mile
away, a black horse, shining with sweat, tired to its limit, staggering
in its stride, the rider hunched in the saddle more like a sack of meal
than a man.

Before Sandy could turn the mare toward them three riders burst from the
trees like bolts from a crossbow, spurring their mounts, the two in the
lead swinging lariats. They divided, one to either side of the
foundering black stallion, one at the rear, gaining, angling in. The
ropes slithered out, the loops seemed to hang like suspended rings of
wire for a second before they settled down, fair and true, about the
neck and shoulders of the black's rider. They tightened, the lariats
snubbed to the saddle