They had wheeled their mounts toward the open.
“Hark! What’s that?” whispered Judith.
The quavering cry of a screech-owl came across the gulch to them. The girl crouched in her saddle, shivering slightly, and stroking Selim’s nose so that he might make no stir nor sound.
“They use—that—for a signal,” she breathed at last. “The boys is out guardin’ the trails. And ’pears like they’re a-movin’. We got to go quick.”
They set forth in silence; Judith riding ahead, skirted at a considerable distance the buildings on the old Turrentine place, then followed down a rocky stream-bed, dry now and leading abruptly into a ravine. Here the girl took her bearings by the summits she could see black against the star-lit sky, and, avoiding the open, made for the old Indian trail which would lead them directly down to Garyville. They could ride abreast sometimes, and they began to talk together in these broken intervals.
“And Little Buck cried when he told you,” Judith said, in that tender, brooding voice of hers. “That was my fault. I’m mighty sorry. I wouldn’t ’a’ hurt the child’s feelings for anything; but I never thought.”
“I fixed it up with him some,” said her lover, quickly. “I told him you only said that because I was hurt and you was sorry for me. I thought I was telling the truth.”
“Uncle Jep feels mighty bad about this business,” she began another time, hastening to offer what consolation she could. “Nothin’ would have made him willin’ to it, but the fear that when you brought the raiders up he’d get took hisself. He ain’t had nothin’ to do with stillin’ for more’n six year, but of course hit’s on his land, and the boys is his sons. He says he’s too old to go to the penitentiary.”
Creed reached out in the gloom and got the girl’s hand.
“Oh, Judith, darling!” he said eagerly. “Let me tell you right now, and make you understand—I never had any more notion of bringing raiders into the mountains than you have yourself. I do know that blockaded stills and what they mean are the ruin of this country; but honey, you’ve got to believe me when I say I never wanted to get any information about them or break them up.”