rough
the trees, and Lorraine was glad that it had escaped.

Al slid the gun back into his holster, leaned from his saddle and
picked up the dead grouse as unconcernedly as he would have dismounted,
pulled his knife from his boot and drew the bird neatly, flinging the
crop and entrails from him.

"Them juniper berries tastes the meat if you don't clean 'em out right
away," he remarked casually to Lorraine, as he wiped the knife on his
trousers and thrust it back into the boot-scabbard before he tied the
grouse to the saddle by its blue, scaley little feet.

When he was ready to go on, Snake refused to budge. Tough as he was,
he had at last reached the limit of his energy and ambition. Al yanked
hard on the bridle reins, then rode back and struck him sharply with
his quirt before Snake would rouse himself enough to move forward. He
went stiffly, reluctantly, pulling back until his head was held
straight out before him. Al dragged him so for a rod or two, lost
patience and returned to whip him forward again.

"What a brute you are!" Lorraine exclaimed indignantly. "Can't you see
how tired he is?"

Al glanced at her from under his eyebrows. "He's all in, but he's got
to make it," he said. "I've been that way myself--and made it. What I
can do, a horse can do. Come on, you yella-livered bonehead!"

Snake went on, urged now and then by Al's quirt. Every blow made
Lorraine wince, and she made the wincing perfectly apparent to Al, in
the hope that he would take some notice of it and give her a chance to
tell him what she thought of him without opening the conversation
herself.

But Al did not say anything. When the time came--as even Lorraine saw
that it must--when Snake refused to attempt a steep slope, Al still
said nothing. He untied her ankles from the stirrups and her hands
from the saddle horn, carried her in his arms to his own horse and
compelled her to mount. Then he retied her exactly as she had been
tied on Snake.

"Skinner knows this trail," he told Lorraine. "And I'm behind yuh with
a gun. Don't forget that, Miss Spitfire. You let Skinner go to suit
himself--and if he goes wrong, you pay, because it'll be you reining
him wrong. Get along there, Skinner!"

Skinner got along in a businesslike way that told why Al Woodruff had
chosen to ride him on this trip. He seemed to be a perfectly
dependable saddle horse for a bandit to own. He wound in and out among
the trees and boulders, steppi