"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, stepping carefully over fallen logs; he thrust his nose out straight and laid back his ears and pushed his way through thickets of young pines; he went circumspectly along the edge of a deep gulch, climbed over a ridge and worked his way down the precipitous slope on the farther side, made his way around a thick clump of spruces and stopped in a little, grassy glade no bigger than a city lot, but with a spring gurgling somewhere near. Then he swung his head around and looked over his shoulder inquiringly at Al, who was coming behind, leading Snake.
Lorraine looked at him also, but Al did not say anything to her or to the horse. He let them stand there and wait while he unsaddled Snake, put a drag rope on him and led him to the best grazing. Then, coming back, he very matter-of-factly untied Lorraine and helped her off the horse. Lorraine was all prepared to fight, but she did not quite know how to struggle with a man who did not take hold of her or touch her, except to steady her in dismounting. Unconsciously she waited for a cue, and the cue was not given.
Al's mind seemed intent upon making Skinner comfortable. Still, he kept an eye on Lorraine, and he did not turn his back to her. Lorraine looked over to where Snake, too exhausted to eat, stood with drooping head and all four legs braced like sticks under him. It flashed across her mind that not even her old director would order her to make a run for that horse and try to get away on him. Snake looked as if he would never move from that position until he toppled over.
Al pulled the bridle off Skinner, gave him a half-affectionate slap on the rump, and watched him go off, switching his tail and nosing the ground for a likeable place to roll. Al's glance went on to Snake, and from him to Lorraine.
"You sure do know how to ride hell out of a horse," he remarked. "Now he'll be stiff and sore to-morrow—and we've got quite a ride to make."
His tone of disapproval sent a guilty feeling through Lorraine, until she remembered that a slow horse might save her from this man who was all bad,—except, perhaps, just on the surface which was not altogether repellent. She looked around at the tiny basin set like a saucer among the pines. Already the dusk was painting deep shadows in the woods across the opening, and turning the sky a darker blue. Skinner rolled over twice, got up and shook himself with a satisfied snort and went away to feed. She might, if she were patient, run to the horse when Al's back was turned, she thought. Once in the woods she might have some chance of eluding him, and perhaps Skinner would show as much wisdom going as he had in coming, and take her down to the sageland.
But Skinner walked to the farther edge of the meadow before he stopped, and Al Woodruff never turned his back to a foe. An owl hooted unexpectedly, and Lorraine edged closer to her captor, who was gathering dead branches one by one and throwing them toward a certain spot which he had evidently selected for a campfire. He looked at her keenly, even suspiciously, and pointed with the stick in his left hand.
"You might go over there by the saddle and set down till I get a fire going," he said. "Don't go wandering around aimless, like a hen turkey, watching a chance to duck into the brush. There's bear in there and lion and lynx, and I'd hate to see you chawed. They never clean their toe-nails, and blood poison generally sets in where they leave a scratch. Go and set down."
Lorraine did not know how much of his talk was truth, but she went and sat down by his saddle and began braiding her hair in two tight braids like a squaw. If she did get a chance to run, she thought, she did not want her hair flying loose to catch on bushes and briars. She had once fled through a brush patch in Griffith Park with her hair flowing loose, and she had not liked the experience, though it had looked very nice on the screen.