"We'll try and sneak through the pass," I answered, putting unpleasant thoughts resolutely behind me. "We can't take time to argue the point out with old King."
"Sneak nothing," Frosty retorted grimly. "You don't know King, if you're counting on that."
I came near asking how he expected to get through, then; when I remembered my own spectacular flight, on a certain occasion, I felt that Frosty was calmly disowning our only hope.
We rode quietly into the mouth of King's Highway, our horses stepping softly in the deep sand of the trail as if they, too, realized the exigencies of the situation. We crossed the little stream that is the first baby beginning of Honey Creek—which flows through our ranch—with scarce a splash to betray our passing, and stopped before the closed gate. Frosty got down to swing it open, and his fingers touched a padlock doing business with bulldog pertinacity. Clearly, King was minded to protect himself from unwelcome evening callers.
"We'll have to take down the wires," Frosty murmured, coming back to where I waited. "Got your gun handy? Yuh might need it before long." Frosty was not warlike by nature, and when he advised having a gun handy I knew the situation to be critical.
We took down a panel of fence without interruption or sign of life at the house, not more than fifty yards away; Frosty whispered that they were probably at supper, and that it was our best time. I was foolish enough to regret going by without chance of a word with Beryl, great as was my haste. I had not seen her since that day Frosty and I had ridden into their picnic—though I made efforts enough, the Lord knows—and I was not at all happy over my many failures.
Whether it was good luck or bad, I saw her rise up from a hammock on the porch as we went by—for, as I said before, King's house was much closer to the trail than was decent; I could have leaned from the saddle and touched her with my quirt.
"Mr. Carleton"—I was fool enough to gloat over her instant recognition, in the dark like that—"what are you doing here—at this hour? Don't you know the risk? And your promise—" She spoke in an undertone, as if she were afraid of being overheard—which I don't doubt she was.
But if she had been a Delilah she couldn't have betrayed me more completely. Frosty motioned imperatively for me to go on, but I had pulled up at her first word, and there I stood, waiting for her to finish, that I might explain that I had not lightly broken my promise; that I was compelled to cut off that extra sixty miles which would have made me, perhaps, too late. But I didn't tell her anything; there wasn't time. Frosty, waiting disapprovingly a length ahead, looked back and beckoned again insistently. At the same instant a door behind the girl opened with a jerk, and King himself bulked large and angry in the lamplight. Beryl shrank backward with a little cry—and I knew she had not meant to do me a hurt.
"Come on, you fool!" cried Frosty, and struck his horse savagely. I jabbed in my spurs, and Shylock leaped his length and fled down that familiar trail to the "gantlet," as I had always called it mentally after that second passing. But King, behind us, fired three shots quickly, one after another—and, as the bullets sang past, I knew them for a signal.