II
THREE MEN AND A GIRL
Ann had crossed the creek and reached the prostrate man before the other horseman had time to dismount. She was bending over Garvin Westmore when the other stood over her.
"Hurt?" he asked tersely.
Ann looked up at him, meeting fairly a pair of keen eyes, grayed into coldness by an excitement that his manner did not betray.
"He doesn't move—his eyes are shut—" she answered breathlessly. Her own eyes were dark and dilated, her face a-quiver.
"Wait a minute."
He plunged down into the creek and came up with his cap filled with water, and, kneeling, dashed it over the unconscious man's face—and over Ann's hovering hands as well. "It's probably only a faint. The ground's soft—he's had the breath knocked out of him, that's all."
He appeared to be right, for Garvin Westmore stirred, and, when Ann had wiped the wet from his face, looked at the two with full consciousness; at Ann's frightened face and her companion's questioning eyes.
"He threw me—the damned brute."