"Sorry I can't tell y'u, lady. Orders is orders."
"Oh, well, I don't suppose it would do me any good to know where I am, anyway, but you might as well tell me what you are going to do with me. It would relieve my anxiety, and make me feel better."
"There ain't no harm comin' to y'u, lady, while I am with y'u," said the fellow, with a hateful leer that made Stella shudder.
"Thank you," she said faintly, as with a sigh she laid her head back again with her wet handkerchief on her brow.
So the stage rumbled on for almost an hour, with Stella the prey of sickness and pain. She doubted if she could have walked even if she had been permitted to leave the stage.
But as she lay there she thought, and from the scraps of conversation she had heard, and from what her guide was about to tell her when he was interrupted by the driver, she knew that she had been captured and abducted during the fight by Shan Rhue's men, and that she was in the Wichita Mountains.
That much, at least, she knew, but what caused her much anxiety was that she did not know the result of the fight.
She came to the conclusion that the broncho boys and their friends must have lost in the encounter, else she would not be in her present predicament.
But what of poor old Norris, for in spite of his rascality she was sorry that he had fallen into the hands of the ruthless Shan Rhue.
"Keep off to the left," shouted the guide. "We're almost there. Down into that coulee y'u go. There ain't another crossin' this side o' three mile, an' we ain't got time to go so far out o' our way."