"For a ride," she replied, feeling for the first time in her life the desire to scream.
"For a ride! Yes, it must have been a ride! Your horse is nearly dead—listen to his breathing! Crusted with foam from head to foot and still dripping. You have been——"
"For the soldiers. To protect your ranch from the devils who would kill you and get rid of your sheep—this very hour!"
"And you have lured me here, away from danger—away from the side of my men, away from my duty, with all a woman's cowardice! But what of them! You have called me bad! That may be, but I am not bad enough to be grateful to you for doing this, that you may, perhaps, have intended for a kindness! Anything would have been kinder to me than what you have done to-night."
"Where are you going?" she cried from the rocks where she had thrown herself. But he was running, with all his speed, down the mountain side.
CHAPTER XXIX
Then she knew that he was going straight into the very jaws of death. If it had been a trap set for him it could not have been any surer. In a sheep-shed far below, close to the reef of rocks above Fritz's grave, a score of men were waiting, and he was rushing toward them, down the mountain side, lighted by the white moonlight. And what was she doing, groveling there among the rocks? Like a flash she was after him, but at a speed much less than his had been.
Before she was halfway down three shots rang out. The girl clutched her heart and listened, but not a sound could be heard save the long echoes in the valley, which sounded like a dying breath.
On she sped from rock to rock, keeping ever out of sight of the shed, her senses keenly alive to the one object in view—a bit of white far below. It might have been a bunch of flowers along the hillside, but white flowers never grew there—a heap of bones, then, she thought. She made a zigzag line along the jagged ridge of rocks, closer and closer to the white object below. She wondered if he lay on his face or his back. How calm she was in the shock and terror of her grief! The light of the moon was growing dim, she had reached the very tip of the rocks, the white object was not twenty feet away, but out in the open in perfect view of the sheep-shed and the score of men it hid. Another shot broke the stillness. The white object moved, and then a moan followed, so low that none but the ears of the frenzied girl could have heard. Like an enraged lioness she sprang out into the open and dragged the heavy body up toward the shelter of rocks. Several bullets rang about her, but the increasing darkness made her an uncertain target. A couple of men ventured outside the sheep-shed, encouraged by the stillness. The girl laughed savagely, as if in glee, and pulled the man's body close to the side of rocks, covering it with her own.