“Cannot we do something,” Helen pleaded, in a voice of agony.
“If they catch the señor—” Manuel spoke very low, but the women’s straining ears caught the words—“they will ride off where is the little west fork. There they find—”
A word from the foreman hushed his speech. Sandy turned his horses and in an instant they were flying in the direction Manuel had indicated. For the first time Kate Hallard’s nerve was shaken.
“Oh, my God!” she muttered, “Manuel meant they’d find trees!”
As she spoke a revolver shot rang out distantly, upon the air, and with a wild yell the two cowboys dashed off, leaving those in the buckboard to follow.
CHAPTER XIII
So this was to be the end!
Gard, securely roped, stood with his back against a cottonwood tree, looking at his captors. There was no mistaking their condition, and they left him in no doubt as to their intentions.
He had not expected this. Re-arrest; re-imprisonment: these had presented themselves to his mind as possibilities; he had not looked to win justice and reinstatement without a struggle, but this—surely no sane mind could have foreseen it as a possibility.
The quick dusk of mid-December had fallen, but one of the men was provided with a stock-lantern. This had been lighted, and threw a miserable glare upon the sodden faces of the men who had him in their power. He glanced from one to the other, finding ground for hope in none.