"No! No! Don't wait! Ride as fast as you can. I'll get there some way."
"Jerry!" in his anxiety Steve sent his voice ahead of him. At the sound the man leaped to the horse's back and galloped away into the dusk of the road. The girl strained her eyes after him before she turned.
"There is something queer about that man, Steve; he is a man of mystery," she confided as though Courtlandt's materialization out of the dark was quite what she expected.
"What did he want?"
"He wanted me. Don't look so incredulous. I may be an acquired taste like olives but—some people like me." She abandoned her teasing tone and hurried on, "That man is the range-rider at Bear Creek ranch. Mrs. Carey has been taken suddenly ill, there,—there is a baby coming, you know, Steve. He wanted me to go to her. Her husband is away. They haven't had a telephone put in and it may take hours to get the doctor and nurse from town, he may not be able to get them at all and so—and so he asked me to go and stay with her until he could get help."
"But you can't go, girl, at this time of night."
"Oh, yes, I can, Steve. I'm going. Please ask Tommy to drive me. We'll make better time going in the machine even by the roundabout wagon road. If I rode I'd have to go home first and change my clothes. He can come back for you. Hurry!"
"Back for me! Do you think you go off this ranch to-night with anyone but me? It's rank folly for you to go——"
She caught the lapel of his coat and looked up at him with dewy eyes.
"Suppose,—suppose that it were I, Steve——"