She checked him with an imperious gesture. "I cannot send these men to face a peril that I am not willing to face myself. That would be dastardly. I will take my chances with the rest of them. You seem to forget that I spent a good many years of my life in the wilderness. This will not be my first experience with renegades and outlaws. When I first came to this State, the women had to know how to shoot. Not only to shoot birds and beasts, but men as well. Those were hard days. I was not like the men who cut notches in their rifle stocks for every Indian they slew, and yet there is a gun in my room upstairs that could have two notches on it if I had cared to put them there."
"What time do you start?" he said, the fire of excitement in his eyes. "I insist on being one of the—"
"You will not be needed," she said succinctly. "I think you had better go now. The storm will soon be upon us. Thank you for coming here to-night, Kenneth."
CHAPTER XIX — LAPELLE SHOWS HIS TEETH
Kenneth went to bed that night firmly resolved to accompany the sheriff when he set out to arrest Martin Hawk. Zachariah had instructions to call him at daybreak and to have breakfast ready on the dot.
No doubt the posse would start about sunrise,—in any case, he would be up and prepared to take to his saddle the instant he saw his neighbour leaving her house.
The thunderstorm came rollicking down the valley, crashed and rolled and roared for half an hour or so, and then stole mumbling away in the night, leaving in its wake a sighing wind and the drip of forsaken raindrops.
He was astir at cockcrow. The first faint glow of red in the greying east found him at breakfast, with Zachariah sleepily serving him with hot corn-cakes, lean side-meat and coffee.