Drew. They had been far
less than five hours on the way, yet his long detour to the south had
given him three days of hard riding to cover the same points. His desire
to meet Logan again became almost a passion. He swung to the ground, and
advanced to Sally with his hands outstretched.

"You've shown me the short cut, all right," he said, "and I thank you a
thousand times, Sally. So-long, and good luck to you."

She disregarded his extended hand.

"Want me to leave you here, Bard?"

"You certainly can't stay."

She slipped from her horse and jerked the reins over its head. In
another moment she had untied the cinch and drawn off the saddle. She
held its weight easily on one forearm. Actions, after all, are more
eloquent than words.

"I suppose," he said gloomily, "that if I'd asked you to stay you'd have
ridden off at once?"

She did not answer for a moment, and he strained his eyes to read her
expression through the dark. At length she laughed with a new note in
her voice that drew her strangely close to him. During the long ride he
had come to feel toward her as toward another man, as strong as himself,
almost, as fine a horseman, and much surer of herself on that wild
trail; but now the laughter in an instant rubbed all this away. It was
rather low, and with a throaty quality of richness. The pulse of the
sound was like a light finger tapping some marvellously sensitive chord
within him.

"D'you think that?" she said, and went directly through the door of the
house.

He heard the crazy floor creak beneath her weight; the saddle dropped
with a thump; a match scratched and a flight of shadows shook across the
doorway. The light did not serve to make the room visible; it fell
wholly upon his own mind and troubled him like the waves which spread
from the dropping of the smallest pebble and lap against the last shores
of a pool. Dumfounded by her casual surety, he remained another moment
with the rein in the hollow of his arm.

Finally he decided to mount as silently as possible and ride off through
the night away from her. The consequences to her reputation if they
spent the night so closely together was one reason; a more selfish and
more moving one was the trouble which she gave him. The finding and
disposing of Drew should be the one thing to occupy his thoughts, but
the laughter of the girl the moment before had suddenly obsessed him,
wiped out the rest of the world, enmeshed them hopelessly together in