creep out of the silence. For a moment
he sat rigid and intent, wondering if it was made by a flight of cranes;
but he could see no dusky stain on the blue beyond the rise, and his
fingers closed upon the rifle as the sound grew plainer. It rose and fell
with a staccato rhythm in it, and he recognized the beat of hoofs.
Turning, he gently touched the girl.

"Hetty, you must rouse yourself," he said, with a pitiful quiver in his
voice.

The girl slowly lifted her head, and glanced about her in a half-dazed
fashion. Then, with an effort, she drew one foot under her, and again the
fear shadowed her face.

"Oh," she said, "they're coming! Lift me, dear."

Larry gently raised her to her feet, but it was a minute or two before she
could stand upright, and the man's face was haggard when he lifted her to
the saddle.

"I think the end has come," he said. "You can ride no farther."

Hetty swayed a little; but she clutched the bridle, and a faint sparkle
showed in her half-closed eyes.

"They want to take you from me. We will go on until we drop," she said.

Larry got into the saddle, though he did not know how he accomplished it,
and looked ahead anxiously as he shook the bridle. Away on the rim of the
prairie there was a dusky smear, and he knew it was a birch-bluff, which
would, if they could reach it, afford them shelter. In the open he would
be at the cow-boys' mercy; but a desperate man might at least check some
of the pursuers among the trees, and he was not sure that Torrance, whose
years must tell, would be among them. There was a very faint hope yet.

They went on at a gallop, though the horses obtained at Windsor were
already jaded, and very slowly the bluff grew higher. Glancing over his
shoulder, Grant saw a few moving objects straggle across the crest of the
rise. They seemed to grow plainer while he watched them, and more appeared
behind.

"We will make the bluff before them," he said hoarsely. "Ride!"

He drove his heels home; but the beast he rode was flagging fast when,
knowing how Torrance's cow-boys were mounted, he glanced behind again. He
could see them distinctly now, straggling, with wide hats bent by the wind
and jackets fluttering, across the prairie. Here and there a rifle-barrel
glinted, and the beat of their horses' hoofs reached him plainly. One,
riding furiously a few lengths ahead of the foremost, he guessed was
Clavering, and he fancied he recognized the Sheriff in another; but he
co