"Yes, and I'll kill you!" she yelled, "you miserable murderer! Go on, now—step off down that path!"
He hesitated, for his hot Southern blood was up, and Allifair sprang at her aunt.
"Run!" she cried, striking the gun aside, and Hall made a jump into the darkness. The dog, which had been watching him, rushed in and grabbed his leg; but McIvor turned and kicked him off and as Miz Zoolah began to shoot he plunged down the hill and was gone.
THE CASTLE IN THE AIR
When a man flees for safety it is seldom into the unknown, for that is always fearful. Nine times out of ten he heads for some old stamping-ground, and generally he heads for home. Hall McIvor was lost in a country so wild that not even a wagon-track entered it; four trails led in and out and he took the one he knew, the one that went to Tonto. It was night, but he had a horse that knew the way, or at least that could follow a trail; and at the first flush of dawn he spurred down Jump-Off Point and splashed into Turkey Creek. Then he rode without stopping until, at Cold Spring, his horse threw up its head and quit. Hall was back where his troubles had begun.
At this same spot, not a month before, Isham Scarborough and Red had held him up and charged him with being a Bassett. Now the month had passed and he was a Bassett, and the Scarboroughs would be hot on his trail; and if they caught him again the hangman's knot in the cliff-dwelling would be something more than a grim joke. The Scarboroughs were desperate; they had tried to kill off the Bassetts as they would stamp out a nest of rattlesnakes; but the most dangerous one had escaped, leaving his mark on three of them, and they would ride like the wind to cut him off. And, next after Winchester and the impetuous Bill, they would seek for Hall McIvor. Miz Zoolah would see to that, now that she knew he was Allifair's lover, and Isham would shoot him on sight. He looked around anxiously, casting about for some hiding place, and his eyes came to rest on a cliff-dwelling.
It was stuck like a swallow's nest in a hole in the rocks, high up against the base of the crag; and there, though he would have neither food nor water, he would find shelter from his enemies. For that very purpose the ancient cliff-dwellers had built it there, and every steep trail and close-built rampart had been constructed with the idea of defense. Yet if he left his horse below they would know he was hiding near and hunt him down like a rabbit—he mounted again and spurred on down the trail until once more he came to the creek. There he loosened the horse's saddle and set him free, stepping off into the running water.