“I might not suit, either,” said Marian, her voice somewhat muffled.
“Oh, I'm not afraid of that. And—there's a message I want to send—I promised mother I'd—”
“Oh, hush! You're really an awfully poor prevaricator, Bud. This is to help me, you're planning.”
“Well—it's to help me that I want you to take part of the money. The gang won't hold you up, will they? And I want mother to have it. I want her to have you, too,—to help out when company comes drifting in there, sometimes fifteen or twenty strong. Especially on Sunday. Mother has to wait on them and cook for them, and—as long as you are going to cook for a bunch, you may as well do it where it will be appreciated, and where you'll be treated like a—like a lady ought to be treated.”
“You're even worse—” began Marian, laughing softly, and stopped abruptly, listening, her head turned behind them. “Sh-sh-someone is coming behind us,” she whispered. “We're almost through—come on, and don't talk!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: GUARDIAN ANGELS ARE RIDING POINT
They plunged into darkness again, rode at a half trot over smooth, hard sand, Bud trusting himself wholly to Marian and to the sagacity of the two horses who could see, he hoped, much better than he himself could. His keen hearing had caught a faint sound from behind them—far back in the crevice-like gorge they had just quitted, he believed. For Marian's sake he stared anxiously ahead, eager for the first faint suggestion of starlight before them. It came, and he breathed freer and felt of his gun in its holster, pulling it forward an inch or two.
“This way, Bud,” Marian murmured, and swung Boise to the left, against the mountain under and through which they seemed to have passed. She led him into another small gorge whose extent he could not see, and stopped him with a hand pressed against Sunfish's shoulder.
“We'd better get down and hold our horses quiet,” she cautioned. “Boise may try to whinny, and he mustn't.”