the gun.

"That's the devil of it; I couldn't stay away. I had to come back to
you."

She restored the gun to her holster and looked steadily at him; he felt
a certain shock in countering her glance.

"Because I thought you might be lonely, Sally."

"I was."

It was strange to see how little fencing there was between them. They
were like men, long tried in friendship and working together on a great
problem full of significance to both.

"Do you know what I kept sayin' to myself when I found you was gone?"

"Well?"

"Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!"

She had said it so often to herself that now some of the original
emotion crept into her voice. His arm went out; they shook hands across
their breakfast pans.

She went on: "The next thing is Drew?"

"Yes."

"There's no changing you." She did not wait for his answer. "I know
that. I won't ask questions. If it has to be done we'll do it quickly;
and afterward I can find a way out for us both."

Something like a foreknowledge came to him, telling him that the thing
would never be done--that he had surrendered his last chance of Drew
when he turned back to go to Sally. It was as if he took a choice
between the killing of the man and the love of the woman. But he said
nothing of his forebodings and helped her quietly to rearrange the small
pack. They saddled and took the trail which pointed up over the
mountains--the same trail which they had ridden in an opposite direction
the night before.

He rode with his head turned, taking his last look at the old house of
Drew, with its blackened, crumbling sides, when the girl cried softly:
"What's that? Look!"

He stared in the direction of her pointing arm. They were almost
directly under the shoulder of rocks which loomed above the trail along
the edge of the lake. Anthony saw nothing.

"What was it?"

He checked his horse beside hers.

"I thought I saw something move. I'm not sure. And there--back,
Anthony!"

And she whirled her horse. He caught it this time clearly, the
unmistakable glint of the morning light on steel, and he turned the grey
sharply. At the same time a rattling blast of revolver shots crackled
above them; the grey reared and pitched back.

By inches he escaped the fall of the horse, slipping from the saddle in
the nick of time. A bullet whipped his hat from his head. Then the hand
of the girl clutched his shoulder.

"Stirrup and saddle, Anthony!"

He seized the pommel of the saddle, ho